BX 9315 .C427 1864 v. 3
Charnock, Stephen, 1628-
1680.
The complete works of
CJ f-£ir-vl-ifar» P r» a vr\r\r>lr
NICHOL'S SERIES OF STANDARD DIVINES.
PURITAN PERIOD.
Wxfy (Smrnl Jrtface
BY JOHN C. MILLER, D.D.,
ummm college ; hoxoeaky caso* oe n^u i hector oe st M.axuVs, uniu-.
THE
WORKS OF STEPHEN CHARNOCE", B.B.
VOL. III.
COUNCIL OF PUBLICATION.
W. LINDSAY ALEXANDER, D.D., Professor of Theology, Congregational
Union, Edinburgh.
JAMES BEGG, D.D., Minister of Newington Free Church, Edinburgh.
THOMAS J. CRAWFORD, D.D., S.T.P., Professor of Divinity, University,
Edinburgh.
D. T. K. DRUMMOND, M.A., Minister of St Thomas's Episcopal Church,
Edinburgh.
WILLIAM H. GOOLD, D.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and Church
History, Reformed Presbyterian Church, Edinburgh.
ANDREW THOMSON, D.D., Minister of Broughton Place United Presby-
terian Church, Edinburgh.
©erteral Got'tor.
REV. THOMAS SMITH, M.A., Edinburgh.
THE COMPLETE WORKS
STEPHEN CHARNOCK, B.D.
BY THE REV. JAMES M'COSH, LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS, QTJEEn's COLLEGE, BELFAST.
VOL. III.
CONTAINING :
THE NECESSITY— THE NATUBE— THE EFFICIENT— AND
THE INSTRUMENT OF REGENERATION.
GOD THE AUTHOR OF RECONCILIATION.
THE CLEANSING VIRTUE OF CHRIST'S BLOOD.
EDINBURGH : JAMES NICHOL.
LONDON : JAMES NISBET AND CO. DUBLIN : G. HERBERT.
M.DCCC.LXV.
edinbhrgh:
printed by john greco and son,
OLD PHYSIC GARDENS.
CONTENTS.
DISCOURSES.
Page
To the Reader. . . . . . .3
The Necessity of Regeneration. . . John III. 3, 5. . 7
A Discourse of the Nature of Regeneration. 2 Cor. V. 17. . 82
A Discourse of the Efficient of Regeneration. John I. 13. . 16G
A Discourse of the Word, the Instrument of
Regeneration. . . . . James I. 18. . 307
A Discourse of God's being the Author of
Reconciliation. . . . .2 Cor. V. 18, 19. 336
A Discourse of the Cleansing Virtue of
Christ's Blood. . . 1 John I. 7. . 501
DISCOURSES.
TO THE READER.
The quick sale of this excellent author's former volume, viz., his Discourses
upon the Existence and Attributes of God, as well as that of Divine Provi-
dence, considering how heavily the works of some others on such like sub-
jects have gone off in our decrepit age, may be abundant evidence what
acceptance they have found with the judiciously pious, who converse with
books, and thereupon afford persuasive hopes that more of the genuine and
useful issue of the same father, not less like to him than those born before,
will yet be more favourably entertained. Wherefore, presuming we have
not any way impeached oar reputation by anything we wrote in the fore-
going Prefaces, if thou wilt (without any repetition of the same with respect
to these) but give us credit till thou hast took a distinct view by a due pro-
portion of the several well-made parts and features here presented to thine
eye by us, who were desired to perform this office of love to our deceased
worthy friend, we doubt not but thou wilt easily say, As those treatises
were, so these are, Judges viii. 18 ; yea (as Joseph's brethren said, Gen.
xlii. 11, 13), • All sons of one man in the land of Canaan ' above, each one
resembling the children of him that now ' rests from his labours, and his
works do follow him,' Rev. xiv. 13, being ' made a king and priest unto
God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,' Rev. i. 5, whom he served with
his spirit in the gospel, Rom. i. 9, which the choice heads of evangelical
truths, clearly opened and practically applied in this volume, may largely
attest, and so give a supersedeas to any further recommendation of ours. The
rather, when thou mayest be fully assured that a considerable part, namely,
the learned and spiritual Discourses of Regeneration, were carefully copied
out by one f of the former happy undertakers ; and though another, who
attained to the skill of perfectly reading his manuscripts, was chiefly
employed in transcribing the major part of this great work from the author's
own copy, yet the transcript hath been diligently compared with the original
by the other J of the former transcribers before we read it each of us
separately, and afterwards those passages conjunctly, in consultation to-
gether, wherein either of us conceived any little scruple might arise
concerning the author's genuine sense, we saw re-examined, being studious
to do him all the right we could, and give his own meaning in his own words
unto the world, without adventuring to interpose our own conceptions.
Yet after our utmost care, and the vigilant supervisal of the press by an in-
genious person, § who did much honour the author, we doubt not but
had he himself survived the publication of what now appears, he would have
sweetened and given grace to some lines that we presume not to alter. If,
* This Address to the Beader is prefixed to Vol. II. of the original edition of
Cliarnock's Works, from which this Volume and the succeeding one will bo re-
printed. It is Iherefore appropriately introduced here. — Ed.
t Mr Wickens. { Mr Nich. Ashton. \ Mr Taylor.
4 TO THE READER.
then, there should be found some things less clear, or any metaphor less
pleasing, there be other things of greater weight singularly well delivered
will abundantly compensate it ; yea, which will greatly inform the judgment,
affect the serious heart, and notably quicken to the main business of religion,
and possibly, as the remains of the prophet Elisha, 2 Kings xiii. 21, which
revived the man that was occasionally let down into his sepulchre, be a
means, under God's gracious influence, to enliven some spiritually dead soul,
set him upright, and enable him to run the ways of God's commandments ;
or, like the writing left behind Elijah, 2 Chron. xxi. 12, compared with
2 Kings ii. 11, and iii. 11, serve to warm some who are contributing to
the removal of the gospel from among us. However, this later, with the
former volume, will evince to those who are addicted to an over hasty
censuring men of his persuasion, without any just ground?, what his
great soul was mostly exercised about, namely, not matters of human
policy, but the great things of the kingdom of God ; not meats and drinks,
i.e. mere circumstances, but the essentials and substantial of the Christian
institution, righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, Kom xiv.
17, which we 'are confident he hath explained very consonant to the doc-
trinal articles of religion, drawn up by our first reformers, and subscribed
by the minsters of the Church of England. We know not that he doth at all
vary from them, or other of the reformed churches. Discipline he doth not
insist on. And we suppose ingenuous readers, if they find in any little
matter his sentiments different from their own, will freely give an allowance
for a fair interpretation of the authot's sense, at least in a posthumous
work, and not wiredraw any sentences a working fancy might produce, and
not review, to make them look crooked ; considering what we are put in
mind of in this book,* viz., every error in the head doth no more destroy
the truth of faith, than every miscarriage in the life, through infirmity, nulls
the being of grace ; or every spot upon the face impairs the beauty and
features of it
Some who have heartily blessed God for those good things they have
already received since this author's departure (and we have no small engage-
ment upon us to be thankful to God for good books, when there be such
swarms of bad ones), do with greedy eyes long to peruse his meditations
upon the proposed subjects ; which now appearing to their view, we are per-
suaded will easily gain their grateful acknowledgments that they are not dis-
appointed, when they here find the fruitful products of the very same spirit
of Mr Charnock, which was of no ordinary elevation.
And however, in the Discourse of Christ's Exaltation, there be some few
materials which be of the same import with some of those in that of Recon-
ciliation, yet handled with an acceptable variety, this might easily so fall
out in the course of his celebrated preaching, not designing to lay them to-
gether in one volume, without the least disparagement ; yea, now they are
printed, the bottomless pit being opened, Rev. ix. 2, by the papists' causing
smoke to arise thence to trouble the eyes of real Chistians, the inculcating
of such choice notions seems to be an angelical voice from heaven opened,
Rev. xix. 11, to direct God's chosen ones into that way of truth which others
have not known. And if, in two or three smaller tracts, the author seem
not altogether so elaborate as in his other pieces, it cannot but be granted
that they were some occasional sermons composed in great straits of time ;
yet such as kindly savour of the same spirit with the rest, unto which it
was thought fit to annex them, that there might not be any occasion to
mutter that we had kept back part of what was primarily dedicated to the
* Page 007.
TO THE READER.
use of the church ; or locked up in secret any pieces of so good an author,
whose business, whilst he lived, was to benefit others ; being happy in veri-
fying the Arabic proverb, viz., that that learned scholar is the worst of men,
who doth not profit others by his learning.
As to that discourse about The Spirit's convincing the World of Sin, the
author's own notes, upon stricter search, not being found, two skilful short-
band writers,* who constantly attended his ministry, have supplied the
defect, from what they both took from his own mouth, when they had
compared their notes ; which supply, though it should want somewhat
of the accuracy of those other parts transcribed from his own manuscripts,
yet those who are not over critical will find, for the completing of tbese
discourses upon that text, not much real detriment ; and upon the whole
matter, not any detracting from that powerful name which the title page
is adorned witb. We therefore taking the freedom to advise thee, Christian
reader, of those things, are not much concerned with the carping censures
of supercilious critics, having, we hope, conscientiously done what was
incumbent on us with all faithfulness, in emitting these writings, which
might, as Peter's, be beneficial after his decease to the public, 2 Peter i. 15,
which was not more the design of the deceased author in his ministry, than
of his yet surviving friends, and
Thy servants, for Jesus's sake,
Richard Adams.
Edward Veal.
Sept. 24. 1683.
* Mr Taylor, Mr Newberry.
THE NECESSITY OF REGENERATION
■Jesu% answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a
man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Jesus answered,
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water, and of the
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. — John III. 3, 5.
These words contain the foundation of all practical religion here, and hap-
piness hereafter. It is the principal doctrine Christ, as a prophet, came to
teach, and as a king to work in the heart. It is an answer to Nicodemus
his compliment, who came to him with some veneration of him. His de-
scription is in ver. 1 : ' There was a man of the'pharisees named Nicodemus,
a ruler of the Jews.' 1. By his profession or sect, a pharisee. 2. His name,
Nicodemus. 3. His quality, a ruler of the Jews ; "A^oov, a prince, one of
the great Sanhedrim, who had the supreme power in all affairs which con-
cerned religion, even under the Roman government. His coming to Christ
is described, ver. 2 : ' The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him,
Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God : for no man can do
these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.' Where we have
(1.) the time of his coming, by night ; (2.) the manner of coming and speak-
ing to him with reverence, Rabbi, a title of honour. He comes to Christ ;
therefore is to be commended. He comes by night ; hath some failure in
his respect to Christ, afraid publicly to own him. Nicodemus was one of
the number which believed Christ for his miracles, John ii. 23. He comes
hereupon to discourse with him about divine things. He acknowledges him
a prophet sent by God. The reason of his acknowledgment is the conside-
ration of his miracles, which manifested a divine power, both in the greatness
and multitude of them. For he knew that God would not set the seal of his
power, to one that had not his commission. Miracles are the credential
letters, to signify the divine authority of any person sent upon any new dis-
pensation by God.
Observe,
1. God doth not force any man's belief, but gives such undeniable evi-
dences of his will and mind, that not to believe is flat contradiction to him.
When he sent Moses to deliver and give a new law to the Israelites, he at-
tended him with a miraculous power, to testify it to be his will, that what
Moses delivered should be entertained. So it was with our Saviour, and in
the primitive times, at the first promulgation of the gospel in several places.
8 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
But when a doctrine is settled and a church established, God forbears those
extraordinary works, as he did the raining down manna after the Israelites'
entrance into Canaan, where they might have provision in an ordinary way of
providence ; and they had miracles afterward in a more scanty measure, now
and then. We have now rational ways to introduce us to a belief of the
Christian doctrine ; and though there are no sensible miracles as before, yet
there hath been in all ages, and is still, a miracle Jiept up in the world, greater
than wrought by Christ upon the bodies of men.'' And that is the conversion
of many obstinate sinners, and subduing them on a sudden, which in Christ's
account, was the chiefest miracle he wrought when he was upon the earth :
Luke vii. 22, ' Go your way, and tell John what things you have seen and
heard : how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the
deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.' Christ
had cured many in their sight ; but he added in the end of the enumeration,
' To the poor the gospel is preached ;' Uru^oi iuayyiXifyvrai. The poor are
evangelised, brought into a gospel frame, a renewed state for the kingdom of
heaven, which is greater than the raising a man from a natural death to a
natural life.
Nicodemus comes by night. He is fond of his own honour, loath to im-
pair it by a free and open confession. He was a master in Israel. Had he
come by day, his reputation had suffered in the vulgar opinion, who might
well wonder that he, a pharisee, of a profound knowledge, should come to
receive instruction from the son of a carpenter, a man despised by his fel-
lows of the Sanhedrim. Yet he comes, though by night.
Observe,
1. It is a hard matter for us to perform a duty we are convinced of, with-
out a flaw in it. Nicodemus is convinced by the miracles of Christ's divine
authority ; but he forbears an open acknowledgment of him. He creeps to him
in the night, unwilling to be seen with him in the day. If Christ were
not a prophet, why should he be acknowledged at all ? If a prophet, why
not in the day as well as in the night ? Strange not to consult him in the
day, whom he confesseth to have his commission from God ! How weak is
the faith of the best at first ! How staggering between Christ and self.
2. Our own reputation will be apt to mix itself in our religious services.
It is his fear of the loss of this makes him choose the darkness. This
greatest piece of old Adam in us will be rising in various forms, when we
are in the most spiritual exercises. What a contest is there between reli-
gion and reputation ! He was willing to gratify the one, but not displease
the other.
3. Ambition is the great hindrance of a thorough conversion. Nicodemus
had a mind to speak to Christ, but his reputation bears too much sway in
him against a thorough giving up himself to him. He was ashamed to
be taken notice of in this little address he made : John v. 44, ' How can
ye believe, that receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour
which comes from God only ?'
4. Men may have a high esteem of Christ, yet not such an esteem as
amounts to a saving faith. Nicodemus acknowledges him a teacher, and that
sent from God ; but not the teacher, the great prophet Moses had spoken of,
Deut. xviii. 15. He confesseth him a prophet, but not the Messiah. Look
to your estimations of Christ ; see whether they be supreme, superlative, the
Saviour, the mediator, the Lord and King.
5. Convictions may be a long time before any appearance of conversion.
If we consider Nicodemus here, only as one convinced of the divine autho-
rity of Christ, and not a thorough convert at this time ; for he seems by his
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 9
questions, vers. 4 and 9, to be rather a malcontent, than a convert ; yet the
seed then sown by our Saviour's discourse sprung up at last in fruit. He
doth upon a signal occasion plead Christ's cause before a council of phari-
sees, probably the great Sanhedrim, yet but faintly: John vii. 50, 51, ' Doth
our law judge any man before it hears him, and knows what he doth ?'
Before, he would have no witness of his coming to Christ. Here he takes
his part, as he might have done any man's upon a common principle of jus-
tice and equity, that he should not be condemned before he was heard. But
there is more generous fruit afterwards, where he joins with Joseph of Arima-
thea in doing honour openly to our Saviour's crucified body : John xix. 39,
1 And there came also Nicodemus (which at the first came to Jesus by night),
and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.'
What grace he had seems to be in a long sleep, but is very vigorous upon
its awaking.
6. True grace doth one time or other discover itself most contrary to
that which was the natural crime before. In both these places, fear had
been his sin. It is now over- matched by confidence. The Holy Ghost takes
notice of it, ' which at the first came to Jesus by night.' He came by night
before, now he comes by day. He and another never named before, Joseph
of Arimathea, who being possessed with the same passion of fear, was a dis-
ciple in secret, — John xix. 38, ' Being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for
fear of the Jews,' — own him publicly at his death, when those that had been
familiar with him in his life forsook him. Christ will make timorous hares
to own his cause, when those that think themselves courageous lions turn
their backs upon him.
Paul had the most transcendent affection to the church, who before was
guilty of the smartest persecution. And Peter, after the coming of the
Spirit, was as courageous as before he was cowardly in his Master's cause.
We have seen the pharisee. Let us consider our Saviour's answer: ver. 3,
' Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a
man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.'
Some think that Nicodemus asked a question which is not expressed, but
may be gathered out of Christ's answer, and seems to be this, What was
requisite to a man's entrance into the kingdom of heaven ? Whereupon
Christ tells him, that there was a necessity of being born again. Others
think that Nicodemus asked no question, and that these words are a very
proper reply to Nicodemus.
1. Christ answers not his compliment, but useth his authority, acknow-
ledged by Nicodemus, of a teacher to inform him. Since you acknowledge
my commission from God to be a teacher, I will teach you what I have to
declare. The great design of my coming is to bring men to the kingdom of
God ; and the great means to this is a new birth, which can only fit you for
evangelical truths here, and eternal happiness hereafter. He acknowledges
Christ to be a teacher, and Christ in his reply would teach him how to
become a Christian.
2. Christ frames his answer according to the pharisee's corruption.
Nicodemus came by night, out of love to his credit, that might be impaired
by his coming in the day-time. What would the people think ? Surely
this man, and the rest of his tribe, are not so knowing as they pretend to be,
since he comes to Jesus to be taught, and out of fear of the pharisees, who
thereby might be offended.
Christ's answer therefore very well suits him. You must become a new
man, if you would have acquaintance with evangelical mysteries. Away with
your old notions, and pharisaical pride. Deny your honour, credit, and
10 charnogk's works. [John III. 3, 5.
whatsoever partakes of the name of self. A legal frame, and a pharisaical
righteousness, will not advance you to the kingdom of God. The Jews were
proud of being Abraham's children, and thought the gates of heaven could
not be shut against any of that relation.
John had touched them before for this : Mat. iii. 9, ' And think not to
say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father.' Christ doth tacitly
here do the same, and puts him in mind of another birth, and the falseness
and deceitfulness of his bottom of legal righteousness.
3. Christ frames his answer according to his weakness and ignorance.
Nicodemus acknowledged him a teacher, not the Messiah. Christ would
bring him to the knowledge of himself as the Messiah. Christ therefore by
his answer would lift up his thoughts higher, and puts him in mind of the
kingdom of God, which the Jews in their common discourse signified the
kingdom of the Messiah by, and have entitled it in ages since, the kingdom
of God, and the kingdom of heaven. So that Christ would bring him to
the knowledge of himself as the Messiah, not only as an extraordinary
prophet.
These three things evidence what relation this speech of Christ hath to
that of Nicodemus.
Observe from the relation of this to Nicodemus his speech :
1. We shall gain nothing by our applaudings and praises of Christ, with-
out a renewed nature. Nicodemus comes with much reverence, gives Christ
the title of rabbi, confesseth him to be sent of God, owns the divinity of his
miracles. Christ doth not compliment him again, takes no notice of his
civility, but falls roundly to his work, acquaints him with the necessity of
regeneration, without which he could not see the kingdom of God, for all
his fine praises of him. A glavering reverential religion is insignificant
with Christ. A new birth, a likeness to Christ in nature, a conformity to
him, is accounted by Christ an higher estimation of him, than all external
applauses given to him.
2. No natural privilege under heaven can entitle us to the kingdom of
grace or glory. It is not our carnal traduction from the best man. It is
no natural birth, with the choicest privileges, gives us a right to either of
them. Not the honour of having the law from God's own mouth, the glory
of an outward covenant, the treasure of the oracles of God, the seal of cir-
cumcision borne in the body, that can instate this Nicodemus into this feli-
city. It is a birth of a higher strain, from an higher principle, a change of
nature, and a removal from the old stock.
See how strangely Nicodemus replied upon this discourse of our Saviour.
How strangely astonished is this great ruler in Israel at the doctrine which
is absolutely necessary to an entrance into the kingdom of heaven ! ver. 4,
1 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old ? can
he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born ? ' What a
childish conception hath he of this most heavenly doctrine ! Can such
an ancient man as I return to my first principles, dig a way into my
mother's womb ? It is strange that Nicodemus, being a pharisee, and so
well versed in Scripture, should be so ignorant, or at least guilty of so much
inadvertenc}7, as not to think of that place, Ezek. xxxvi., and other places,
which speak of ' a new heart,' and • an heart of flesh.' He might have
considered the design of the legal purifications, which were to represent the
inward holiness which ought to be in the persons so purified. Yet he hears
him discourse, but doth not comprehend him. His carnal notion bears sway
against spiritual truths.
Observe,
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 11
1. A man may have great knowledge in the letter of the Scripture, and
yet not understand the necessary and saving doctrines in it. The doctrine
of regeneration was laid down in the whole Old Testament, though not in
that term. Let us take heed how we read the Scriptures ; not to trouble
our heads with needless and curious questions, but with the main mysteries
of religion. What could all Nicodemus his knowledge profit him, if it had
been ten thousand times more, without the knowledge of this doctrine, and
the experience of it !
2. Nothing is more an enemy to the saving knowledge of gospel mysteries
than a priding ourselves in head knowledge. Nicodemus his coming by
night was not only from fear, but pride, that he might not be thought
ignorant by the people. Humble men have the soundest knowledge : ' The
meek will he teach his way,' Ps. xxv. 9.
3. How low was the interest of God in the world at that time ! How
had ignorance and error thrust the knowledge of God out of other parts of
the world, when it languished so much in the church ! How simple must
the poor people be when the students in Scripture were no wiser ! It
is a thing to be bewailed amongst us, that wrangling knowledge hath almost
thrust out spiritual. And when Christians meet, their discourses are more
about unnecessary disputes than these saving mysteries of Christianity,
which might produce elevations of heart to heaven.
To this exception of Nicodemus Christ makes his reply ; where observe,
1. A fresh assertion of it, with an explanation : ver. 5, ' Jesus answered,
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water, and of the
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' In the third verse,
Christ lays down the necessity of the new birth ; in ver. 5, the necessity of
the cause, ' Except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit.' In the first
speecb, he lays down the doctrine ; in this, he explains the principle and man-
ner of it, to remove his false apprehensions, wherein he might mean the
transmigration of souls, which seems to be an opinion amongst the Jews.
2. A reason to back it : ver. 6, ' That which is born of the flesh is flesh ;
and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.' That which is born of the
flesh is flesh, and can be no more by that principle, for the effect cannot be
better than the cause ; but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit, i.e. hath
a spiritual nature.
Flesh is taken for man corrupted : Gen. vi. 3, 'For he also is flesh,' de-
generate into flesh, grown a mere sensual creature by the loss of original
righteousness. For upon the parting of original righteousness, the soul of
man was as a body without life ; a spiritual carcase, as the body is without
a soul.
Flesh signifies the whole nature, as in that place, Mat. xvi. 17, ' Flesh and
blood hath not revealed it unto thee,' &c. The incarnation of the Son of
God, which is the foundation of all evangelical administrations, is above the
sphere of nature to discover. Man in his natural generation is but mere
nature, and cannot apprehend, cannot enjoy that which is only apprehensible
and enjoyable by a spiritual nature ; but man regenerated by the Spirit is
spiritual, and is advanced above mere flesh, for he is made partaker of the
divine nature. So that Christ's argument runs thus : No flesh can enter into
the kingdom of God ; but every man naturally is flesh, unless bom again of
the Spirit; therefore no man, unless born again of the Spirit, can enter into
the kingdom of God. If you could enter into your mother's womb, and be
born again, the matter would not be mended with you ; you would still be
but flesh, and rather worse than better ; therefore that is not the birth that
I mean, for the impediment would be as strong in you as before.
12 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
These two verses are an answer to Nicodemus his objection. Nicodemus
understands it of a carnal birth. No, no, saith Christ, it is a spiritual birth
I intend ; one that is wholly divine and heavenly. That which you mean
brings a man into the light of the world ; that which I mean, brings a man
out of the world, into the light of grace. That forms the flesh to an earthly
life ; this forms the soul to an heavenly. That makes you the son of man ;
this the son of God.*
All the difficulty lies in ver. 5, in that expression of water, &c. Some, as
the papists, understand it of the elementary water of baptism, and from this
place exclude all children dying without baptism from salvation. Others
understand it of a metaphorical water, whereof Christ speaks, John iv. 14,
• The water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water, springing
up into everlasting life.'
Let us first see why by water cannot be meant the baptismal water.
Regeneration is the mystery and sense of that sacred ceremony. It is in-
deed signified, represented, and sealed in baptism ; how, and in what sense,
is not my present work.
1. It is strange, that when all agree that the birth here spoken of is spiri-
tual and metaphorical, that the water here should be natural.
2. None could be saved, unless baptized, if this were meant of baptism.
As if these words, John vi. 53, ' Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man,
and drink his blood, ye have no life in you,' were meant of the supper, none
could be saved unless they did partake of it. Whereas Christ lays not the
stress upon baptism, but upon faith : Mark xvi. 16, ' He that believeth, and
is baptized, shall be saved ; but he that believeth not, shall be damned.'
He doth not say, He that is not baptized shall be damned, but he lays dam-
nation wholly upon the want of faith. Many have been saved without bap-
tism, none without faith. It is true to say, He that doth not believe shall
be damned ; but it is not true to say, He that is not baptized shall be
damned. Christ saith the first, but not the second, though his discourse had
obliged him to say so, had it been true, or had he meant this speech to
Nicodemus of baptismal water. The Spirit is not tied to baptism, but he
may act out of the sacraments as well as in them. Understand this of the
bare want of baptism, not of the contempt or wilful neglect of it. If it were
meant of baptism, it was true then, that none could be saved without it.
How did the thief upon the cross enter into paradise, which Christ promised
him ? So that one may enter into heaven without baptism by water, though
not without the baptism of the Spirit.
3. Baptism was not then instituted as a standing sacrament in the Chris-
tian church. The institution of it we find not till after Christ's resurrection :
Mat. xxviii. 19, ' Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them.'
And it is not likely Christ would discourse to Nicodemus of the necessity of
an institution that was not yet expressly appointed by him, and which he
did not appoint till after his resurrection ; for he discourseth of that which
was of present necessity. And if this were meant of baptism, and of that
absolute necessity the papists would lay upon it from these words, then all
that died before the institution of baptism by our Saviour, unbaptized, could
not enter into the kingdom of heaven, though believing. Can anything be
necessary before the precept for it be given ? It could not be necessary be-
fore, as a means, because it is not a natural, but an instituted means. It
must be therefore necessary by virtue of a command ; therefore not abso-
lutely necessary before the command, and at the time Christ spoke these
words. Some say that Christ meant it, not of an absolute necessity at that
* Daille, Sermon en ce lieu.
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 13
time, butThaHt-should be so after his death.* That is to give our Saviour
the lie, for he spake it of the present time, some years before his death.
Besides, it 'wrongs the goodness of our Saviour (if he had meant it of bap-
tism), to* defer the institution of it so long after, when it was at present
necessary for Nicodemus his salvation. It wrongs his wisdom, too, to speak
of that to be at present necessary, which was not in being, nor would be till
after his death.
4. It is strange that our Saviour should speak to Nicodemus of the neces-
sity of baptism before he had informed him of the mysteries of the gospel,
whereof it is a seal. To speak of the seal before he speaks of that which is
to be sealed by it, is not congruous. For the sacraments being founded upon
the doctrine on which they depend, to begin by a sacrament the instruction
of a man, is to begin a building by the tiles and rafters, before you lay a
foundation ; and against the order expressed by our Saviour to the apostles,
which puts teaching before baptizing, and was always practised in the primi-
tive times, and is to this day in all Christian churches, to the adult and
grown up. As circumcision was, amongst the Jews, not administered to any
proselyte before his turning proselyte, and instruction in those laws he
was to observe, and then, and not till then, his children had a right to cir-
cumcision.
5. Those that understand it of the baptismal water, and so make that of
absolute necessity, do by another assertion accuse their own exposition of a
falsity ; for they say that the baptism of blood supplies the want of that of
water, and that if either infants or adult persons be hurried away to a stake
or gibbet, or killed for the Christian cause, they are certainly saved ; which
cannot be, if the baptism of water were to be understood in this place, and
so absolutely necessary. It is water that is expressed, and blood is not water.
One of these assertions must be false. A martyr dying unbaptized must be
damned, and cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven, if this place be meant
of the water of baptism.
6. It may also be observed that Christ, in the progress of his discourse,
makes no more mention of water, but of the Spirit : ' That which is born of
the Spirit is spirit ;' not born of water and the Spirit, which had been very
necessary, if water had been of an equal necessity with the Spirit to the new
birth. And since Christ mentions it positively, that he that is born of the
Spirit is spirit, will it be said, that if any be born of the Spirit, without
water, he is still but flesh ?
Water then here is to be taken mystically. Some by water understand
the whole doctrine of the gospel ; as the waters mentioned through the whole
47th of Ezekiel signify the doctrine of the gospel. To drop, in Scripture,
signifies to teach, Amos vii. 16 ; Ezek. xx. 46, ' Drop thy word toward the
south.' Others, by water, understand the grace of regeneration as the prin-
ciple, the Spirit as the cause, as Titus iii. 5, 6, • He hath saved us by the
washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.' What wash-
ing he means is expressed in the renewing of the Holy Ghost ; that is, that
renewing which is wholly spiritual, as proceeding from the Spirit of God,
whence this grace doth flow.
By water and the Spirit are signified one and the same thing, the
similitude of water shewing the cleansing and generating virtue of the
Spirit; as fire and the Spirit are put together, Mat. iii. 11, to signify the
refining quality the Spirit hath (as fire hath to separate the dross from the
good metal). Fire and the Spirit, i. e. a spirit of fire, of the force and
efficacy of fire.
* Bellarm. de Sacram. Baptism, lib. i. cap 5, 6.
14 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
This water is the same which God had promised : Tsa. xliv. 3, ' I will pom-
water upon him that is thirsty ;' and Ezek. xxxvi. 25, ' Then will I sprinkle
clean water upon you;' and ver. 27, ' I will put my Spifit within you.' He
there explains water to be the Spirit : ' I will pour my Spirit uponihy seed.'
And in Ezekiel he joins water and the Spirit ; i. e. the water of my Spirit,
or my spiritual water, my gospel grace. And Isa. xli. 18, 19, God speaks
of the admirable fruitfulness of this water. This shall renew you, and make
you fructify in the kingdom of my Son, where none shall be received who is
not born of this divine principle.
Now our Saviour having to do with a pharisee, who was acquainted with
those oracles, to make him understand this truth, uses those words which
the prophets had used, and ranks them in the same order ; first water,
then the Spirit, that the latter might clear the sense and nature of the
former, to hinder Nicodemus from imagining that to be a natural water
which was spiritual and mystical. Water and the Spirit signifies the water
of the Spirit, or a spiritual water, as 1 Thes. i. 5, ' Our gospel came not
unto you in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost ;' that is, in the
power of the Holy Ghost.
The Spirit is compared to water in respect of its generative virtue. No
fruitful plant but is produced by moisture. Water contains in it the seeds
of all things. It was from water and the earth that all things in the lower
world were in the first creation produced. Water is put here as exegetical
of the effect of the Spirit ; water being the cause of generation by its moisture,
uniting the parts together.
Our Saviour in both places useth an asseveration, Verily, verily, which is
spoken,
1. To shew the infallible necessity of it, the certainty of the proposition.
2. To urge a special attention. Men press those things in discourse which
they would have retained.
It is to be believed because of its necessity ; it is to be considered because
of its excellency.
Born again. " Avudsv signifies properly from above ; but sometimes it is
taken for again.* Nicodemus understands it so by his reply, of entering
a^ain into his mother's womb, and not of a heavenly birth.
° Man was born in nature ; he must be born in grace. He was born of the
first Adam ; he must be born of the second Adam. It is expressed in
Scripture by various terms : a resurrection to life, a quickening, a new
creation, the new man, the inward man, a dying to the world. It is indeed
a putting off the old man, the principles and passions, the corrupt notions
and affections which we derive from Adam, to devote ourselves to God, to
live to Christ, to walk in newness of life.
The kingdom of God, which is sometimes taken, (1) for the kingdom of
dory, (2) it is sometimes taken for the gospel state. And the same thing
is signified by the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of heaven. What is
called by Matthew ' the kingdom of heaven,' Mat. iv. 17, is called by Mark,
relating the same story, ' the kingdom of God,' Mark i. 15. And the gospel
is called ' the gospel of the kingdom of God,' Mark i. 14. It is called the
kingdom of God ; —
1. Because it sets up the rule and government of God in the world above
the devil's. The devil had been so long the God of the world, that the
interest of God seemed to be overmatched by a multitude of unclean spirits,
and abominable idols ; and the true God was not known to be the governor
* Grotius in loc.
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 15
of it. The gospel discovers the true governor of the world, and sets up his
rule and authority.
2. It sets up the righteousness of God,* above a legal and fleshly right-
eousness, much in vogue among Jews and Gentiles ; but they were wholly
ignorant of the righteousness of God, Horn. x. 3.
3. This kingdom is framed and set up by the Son of God ; the other
kingdom, under the law, was settled by God, but by the hand of Moses, a
man. This is administered by him through his Spirit, his vicegerent. His
royalty did not so eminently appear as in the times of the gospel.
The Father appoints the gospel state in his wisdom, the Son lays the
foundation of it in his blood, the Spirit carries it on in the world by his power.
4. In respect of the service, it is high and heavenly ; a serving God in
spirit. The service under the legal administration was carnal ; the service
under the gospel administration is more spiritual, and so more suitable to
the perfections of God.
5. In the end and issue of it. It is a translating us into the kingdom of
Christ, Col. i. 13. The legal ceremonies could not fit men of themselves
for glory ; they could not make the comers thereunto perfect. But this
kingdom of grace prepares us for the kingdom of glory.
Cannot see the kingdom of God. In ver. 5, he cannot enter into the kingdom
of God. He cannot,
1. By reason of God's appointment.
2. In the nature of the thing itself; he hath no fitness for heaven or
heavenly mysteries.
See. Seeing is taken sometimes for enjoying ; not a bare sight, but
fruition : John hi. 36, ' He that believes not the Son shall not see life ;' that
is, shall not enjoy life. And Heb. xii. 14, ' Without holiness, no man shall
see the Lord ;' they may see him in his pronouncing the sentence, but shall
not see him in a way of glorious enjoyment of him.
To have a communion with Christ in a gospel state, to have an enjoy-
ment of Christ in eternal glory, it is necessary we be stripped of the cor-
ruption of our first nature, and be clothed with another by the Spirit of God.
Observe in the verse,
1. The infallibility of the proposition : Verily, verily.
2. The necessity of regeneration : except.
3. The extension of it in regard of the subject.
(1.) Suhjectum quod recipit : man, i.e. every man.
(2.) Subjectum in qvo recipitur : man, i.e. the whole man, every faculty.
4. The excellency of it implied : they cannot see the kingdom of God. J.f
he be born again, he shall enjoy the kingdom of God.
Doct. Regeneration of the soul is of absolute necessity to a gospel and
glorious state.
By regeneration, I mean not a relative, but a real change of the subject,
wrought in the complexion and inclinations of the soul, as in the restoring
of health there is a change made in the temper and humours of the body.
As mankind was changed in Adam from what they were by a state of
creation, so men must be changed in Christ from what they were in a state
of corruption. As that change was not only relative but real, and the
relative first introduced by the real, so must this. The relation of a child
of wrath was founded upon the sin committed. Without a real change there
can be no relative. Being in Christ, as freed from condemnation, is always
attended with a walking in the Spirit ; and walking is not before living.
For the better understanding this point, I shall lay down,
t Mat. vi. 33, the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, are put together.
16 charnock's works. [John III. 8, 5.
I. Propositions concerning the necessity of it.
II. I shall shew that it is necessary,
1. To a gospel state.
(1.) To the performance of gospel duties.
' (2.) To the enjoyment of gospel privileges.
2. To a state of glory.
I. Propositions concerning the necessity of it.
Prop. 1. There are but two states, one saving, the other damning; a
state of sin and a state of righteousness ; and all men are included in one of
them. All men are divided into two ranks. In regard of their principle,
some are in the flesh, some in the Spirit, Rom. viii. 8, 9 ; in regard of their
obedience, some walk after the flesh, some after the Spirit, Rom. viii. 1 ;
some are slaves to the flesh, others are led by the Spirit ; some live only to
self, some live to God. In regard of the exercise of their minds, their nobler
faculty, some mind the things of the flesh, others the things of the Spirit,
Rom. viii. 5 ; some swinishly wallow in sin, others place the delights of
their spirits upon better and higher objects.
The Scripture mentions no other. A state of enmity, wherein men have
their inclinations contrary to God ; a state of friendship and fellowship,
wherein men walk before God unto all well-pleasing, and would not willingly
have an inward motion swerve from his will. One is called light, the other
darkness : Eph. v. 8, ' You were sometimes darkness, but now are you light;'
one the children of wrath, the other the children of God. There is no
medium between them, every man is in one of these states. All believers,
from the bruised reed to the tallest cedar, from the smoking flax on earth
to the flaming lamp in heaven, from Thomas, that would not believe without
seeing, to Abraham, who would believe without staggering, all are in a state
of life ; and all, from the most beautiful moralist to the most venomous toad
in nature's field, from the young man in the gospel, who was not far from
the kingdom of heaven, to Judas, who was in the very bottom of hell, all are
in a state of death. Mere nature, though never so curiously garnished, can
place a man no higner ; faith, though with many infirmities, puts us in a
state of amity ; unbelief, though with many moralities, continues us in a
state of enmity. All men are either the object of God's delight or of his
abomination. The highest endowments of men remaining in corrupted
nature cannot please him. The delight of God then supposeth some
real change in the object which is the ground of that delight, for God is wise
in his delight, and could not be pleased with anything which were not fit for
his complacency. Since original nature in a man cannot displease God un-
less it be changed by some fault, because it was his own work, so our
present nature cannot please God unless it be changed by some grace,
though it be otherwise never so highly dignified. Whatsoever grows up
from the old Adam is the fruit of the flesh, whatsoever grows up by the new
Adam in us is the offspring of the Spirit ; and upon one of these two stocks
all men in the world are set. Since, therefore, one is utterly destructive,
and cannot please God (Rom viii. 8, Sb'then they that are in the flesh can-
not please God), though never so well garnished (for being utterly contrary
to him it cannot be approved by him), the other is absolutely necessary to
salvation.
Prop. 2. It is necessary upon the account of the fall of man and the
consequents of it. In Adam we died : 1 Cor. xv. 22, ' As in Adam all died ;'
therefore in Adam we sinned : Rom. v. 19, ' By one man's disobedience
many were made sinners.' Man cannot be supposed to sin in Adam unless
John III. 3, 5. J the necessity of regeneration. 17
some covenant had intervened between God and Adam,* whence there did
arise in the whole human nature a debt of having righteousness transfused
from the first parent to all his posterity. The want of this grace wherein
his posterity are conceived is a privation, and a crime which was voluntary
in the root and head. This privation of righteousness must be removed.
The institution of God stands firm, that Adam and his posterity should have
a pure righteousness. It is not for the honour of God to enjoin it so
strictly at first, and to have no regard to it afterwards. Now this privation
of righteousness, and the unrigbteousness which hath taken place in the sons
of Adam, cannot be removed without the infusion of grace ; for without this
grace he would alway want righteousness, and yet be alway under an obliga-
tion to have it ; he would be under desires of happiness, but without it
under an impossibility of attaining it.
Were there an indifferency in the soul of man, were it an abrasa tabula,
the writing of moral precepts upon it by good education would sway it to
walk in the paths of virtue, as an ill education doth cast it into the ways of
[vice]. This is not so ; for take two, let them have the same ways of educa-
tion, the same precepts instilled into them, as Esau and Jacob had by their
father, who were equally taught, yet how different were their lives ! Esau's
bad, Jacob's not without flaws. Education had not the power to root cor-
ruption out of both, no, nor out of any man in the world without a higher
principle. There is some powerful principle in the soul, which leads it into
by-paths contrary to those wholesome rules instilled into it. Hence
ariseth a necessity of some other principle to be put into the heart to over-
sway this corrupt bias. Man goes astray from the womb, as it is in Ps.
lviii. 3, ' The wicked are estranged from the womb ; tbey go astray as soon
as they be born.' There must be something to rectify him, and expel this
wandering humour.
By the fall of man there was contracted,
(1.) An unfitness to any thing tbat is good. Man is so immersed in
wrong notions of things, that he cannot judge fully of what is good : Titus
i. 16, ' To every good work reprobate.' The state of nature, or the old
man, is described, Eph. iv. 22, to be ' corrupt, according to deceitful lusts ;'
deceitful, seducing us from God, drawing us into perdition, by representing
evil under the notion of good, which evidenceth our understandings to be
unfit to judge without a new illumination; inward and spiritual lusts, which
are most deceitful, being accounted brave and generous motions ; lusts or
desires, which shew the corruption of the will by ill habits. Lust and sin is
the mere composition of corrupted nature ; the whole man is stuffed with
polluting principles and filthy appetites.
What was preternatural to man in a state of innocency became natural to
him after his depraved state. He is ' carnal, sold under sin,' Rom. vii. 14.
The spring being already out of order, cannot make the motion otherwise
than depraved, as when a clock is out of order, it is natural to that present
condition of it to give false intelligence of the hour of the day, and it cannot
do otherwise till the wheels and weights be rectified. Our end was actively
to glorify God in the service of him and obedience to him ; but since man
is fallen into this universal decay of his faculties, and made unfit to answer
this end, there is a necessity he should be made over again, and created
upon a better foundation, that some principle should be in him to oppose
this universal depravation, enlighten his understanding, mollify his heart,
and reduce his affections to their due order and object.
* Suarez, 2 Tom. ii. De Grat. lib. ii. cap. 13, num. ?, 4.
VOL. III. B
18 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
(2.) Not only an unfitness, but unwillingness to that which is good.
"We have not those affections to virtue as we have to vice. Are not our
lives for the most part voluntarily ridiculous ? Had we a full use of reason,
we should judge them so. We think little of God ; and when we do think
of him, it is with reluctancy. This cannot be our original state, for surely,
God being infinitely good, never let man come out of his hands with this
actual unwillingness to acknowledge and serve him ; as the apostle saith, in
the case of the Galatians' errors, Gal. v. 8, ' This persuasion comes not of
him which calls you,' this unwillingness comes not from him that created
you. How much, therefore, do we need a restoring principle in us ! We
naturally fulfil the desires, or 6t\fifiaru * of the flesh,' Eph. ii. 3. There is
then a necessity of some other principle in us to make us fulfil the will of
God, since we were created for God, not for the flesh. We can no more be
voluntarily serviceable to God while that serpentine nature and devilish
habit remains in us, than we can suppose the devil can be willing to glorify
God, while the nature he contracted by his fall abides powerful in him. It
is as much as to say that a man can be willing against his will. Nature and
will must be changed, or we for ever remain in this state.
Man is born a wild ass' colt, Job xi. 12. No beast more wild and
brutish than man in his natural birth, and like to remain in his wild and wil-
ful nature without grace ; a new birth can only put off the wildness of the first.
(3.) Not only unfitness and unwillingness, but inability to good. A
strange force there is in a natural man, which hurries him, even against some
touches of his will, to evil.
How early do men discover an affection to vice ! How greedily do they
embrace it, notwithstanding rebukes from superiors, good exhortations from
friends, with the concurrence of the vote of conscience, giving its amen to
those dissuasions ! and yet carried against those arguments, deceived by sin,
slain by sin, sold, under it, Kom. vii. 11, 14. This is the miserable state
of every son of nature.
Do we not find that men sometime wrapt up in retirement, in considera-
tion of the excellency of virtue, are so wrought upon by their solitary medi-
tations, that they think themselves able to withstand the strongest invasion
of any temptation ! Yet'we see oftentimes that when a pleasing temptation
offers itself, though there be a conflict between reason and appetite, at length
all the considerations and dictates of reason are laid aside, the former ideas
laid asleep, and that committed which their own reason told them was base
and sordid ; so that there is something necessary, beside consideration and
resolution, to the full cure of man.
No privation can be removed but by the introduction of another form ; as
when a man is blind, that blindness, which is a privation of sight, cannot be
removed without bringing in a power of seeing again. Original sin is a
privation of original righteousness, and an introduction of corrupt principles,
which cannot be removed but by some powerful principle contrary to it.
Since the inability upon the earth, by reason of the curse, to bring forth
its fruits in such a manner as it did when man was in a state of innocency,
the nature of it must be changed to reduce it to its original fruitfulness ; so
must man, since a general defilement from Adam hath seized upon him, be
altered before he can ' bring forth fruit to God,' Rom. vii. 4. We must be
united to Christ, engrafted upon another stock, and partake of the power of
his resurrection ; without this we may bring forth fruit, but not fruit to God.
There is as utter an impossibility in a man to answer the end of his creation,
without righteousness, as for a man to act without life, or act strongly with-
out health and strength. It is a contradiction to think a man can act
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of kegeneeation. 19
righteously without righteousness, for without it he hath not the being of a
man ; that is, man in such a capacity, for those ends for which his creation
intended him.
Well, then, since there is an unfitness, unwillingness, inability in a man to
answer his end, there is a necessity of a new life, a new nature, a new
righteousness. There is a necessity for his happiness that he should be
brought back to God, live to God, be a son of God, and this cannot be with-
out regeneration ; for how can he be brought back to God without a prin-
ciple of spiritual motion ? How can he live to God that hath no spiritual
life ? How can he be fit to be a son of God who is of a brutish and dia-
bolical nature ?
Prop. 3. Hence it follows, that it is universally necessary. Necessary for
all men. Our Saviour knows none without this mark. There must be a
change in the soul : 2 Cor. v. 17, ' Therefore if any man be in Christ,, he-
is a new creature.' There must be the habitation of the Spirit : Rom.
viii. 9, ' If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.' There-
must be a crucifixion, not only of the corrupt affections of the flesh, but of
the flesh itself : Gal. v. 24, ' They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh,
with the affections and lusts.'
The old nature must be killed, with all its attendants. There is no son-
ship to God without likeness, no relation of a child of God without a child-
like nature. Let a man be of whatsoever quality in the world, never so
high, never so low, of whatsoever age, of whatsoever moral endowments,
' except a man,' every man, &c.
And simply necessary. Our Saviour doth not say he is in danger not to
see the kingdom of God, or he may come short of it ; but he shall not, he
cannot. Tbere is no possible way but this for any man, no other door to
creep in at but by that of a new birth ; salvation cannot be attained without it,
and damnation will certainly be the issue of the want of it. As there is no
other name under heaven by which we can be saved but by the name of
Jesus Christ, so there is no other way under heaven wherein we can be saved
but by the birth of the Spirit.
It is necessary, therefore, in all places, in all professions. It is not neces-
sary only in Europe, and not in Africa. Let a man be what he will, in any
place under heaven, he must have a Jesus to save him, and an Holy Ghost
to change him ; it is one and the same Spirit acts in all, and produceth the
same qualities in all. Let men's religion and professions be what they will
(men are apt to please themselves with this and that profession and opinion,
but), there is no salvation in any profession, or any kind of opinion, but by
regeneration. It is not necessary our understandings should be all of one
size, that our opinions should all meet in uniformity, but it is necessary we
should all have one spiritual nature. It is as necessary to the being of a
good man that he should be spiritual, as to the being of a man that he should
be rational, though there is a great latitude and variety in the degrees of
men in grace, as well as their reasons. Some are of little faith, some of
great faith ; some babes in Christ, some strong men. It is not necessary
all should be as strong as Abraham, but it is simply necessary all should be
new born, as Abraham ; no age, no time excludes it.
(1.) Righteousness was necessary before the fall. The new birth is but
the beginning of our restoration to that state we had before the fall. Adam
could not have been happy without being innocent. The holiness of God
could not create an impure creature. Without it God could take no plea-
sure in his work.
(2.) After the fall it was necessary, continually necessary from the first
20 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
moment of the fall. This work of regeneration is included in the first
promise : Gen. iii. 15, 'I will put enmity between thee and the woman,
between thy seed and her seed.' Naturally we have a mighty friendship to
Satan, a friendship to his works, though not to his person. But if any
man had interest in that promise, he must exchange that friendship for an
enmity.
If Jesus Christ, who is principally meant by the seed of the woman, had
an enmity to Satan, then all Christ's seed must be possessed with the same
spirit. For when the seed of the woman was to break the serpent's head,
it was necessary that those that would enjoy the fruit of that conquest should
be enemies to the nature of the devil, and the works of the devil, otherwise
they could not join with that interest which overthrows him. It is unreason-
able to think the head should have an enmity, and the members an amity ;
and we cannot have an enmity to that which is the same with our nature,
without a change of disposition. It is not a verbal enmity that is here
meant. While we pretend to hate him we may do his pleasure, and Satan
is never troubled to be pretendedly hated and really obeyed. As wicked
men do the will of God's purpose, while they oppose the will of his precept,
so they do the devil's will many times while they think they cross it ; there
must be a contrary nature to Satan before there can be an enmity. That
foolish appetite, affected sensuality, indulgence to the flesh, the cause of our
first friendship with Satan, must be changed into divine desires, affection to
heavenly things, a mortification of the flesh, before a man can part with this
friendship. There must be a change in the conformity of the soul to the
nature of the devil before an enmity against him can be raised. We are
never enemies to those that encourage us in what we affect. His nature
can never be altered, by reason of the curse of God upon him ; therefore
ours must, if ever the league be broken. In Isa. lxv. 25 it is said, ' The
wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like an
ox : and dust shall be the serpent's meat.' The nature of men may
be changed by the gospel, but dust shall always be the serpent's meat.
The saving some by water in the deluge was a figure of this inward baptism,
which is the ' answer of a good conscience towards God,' 1 Peter iii. 20, 21.
As the old world was so corrupt that all must be washed away before it
could be restored, so is the little world of man. The cloud and sea through
which the Israelites passed signified this, as the apostle informs us : 1 Cor.
x. 2, ' And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and the sea.' Where-
upon some think there were some sprinklings of the water upon them, as
they stood like two walls, to favour their passage.
(3.) Necessary in the time of the law. By the moral law this renewing was
implied in the first command, of not having any other gods before him,
Exod. xx. 3. We cannot suppose that command only limited to a not
serving an outward image. Is not the setting up self, our own reasons, our
own wills, and bowing down to them, and serving them, as much a wrong
to God as the bowing down to a senseless image ? nay, worse than the
adoring of an image, since that is senseless ; but our wills corrupt, and are
no more fit to be our God than an image is fit to be a representation of him.
So that in the spiritual part of the command this must be included, to
acknowledge nothing as the rule of perfection, but God ; to set ourselves no
other patterns of conformity but God, which the apostle phraseth a being
new crpated after God, Eph. iv. 24.
If all idolatry were forbidden, then that which is inward as well as that
which is outward. If we were to have no other gods before him, then we
were to prefer nothing inwardly before him ; we were to make him our pat-
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 21
tern, and be conformed to him ; which we cannot, without another nature
than that we had by corruption.
Upon this are those scriptures founded which speak of covetousness to be
idolatry, Col. iii. 5 ; that ' if any man love the world, the love of the Father
is not in him,' 1 John ii. 15 ; he doth not love God.
Now the preferring self before God is the essential part of the corrupt
nature. Therefore all men, by the law of nature (which is the same with
the moral law), and the Jews, to whom this law was given, were bound to
have another nature than that which was derived from Adam, which essen-
tially consisted in the making ourselves our god. Self-esteem, self-depend-
ence, self-willedness, is denying affection and subjection to God.
By the ceremonial law more plainly. Their duty was not terminated in
an external observance of the types and shadows under the law, but a heart-
work God intended to signify to them in all those legal ceremonies. As
sacrifices signified a necessity of expiation of sin, so their legal washings
represented to them a necessity of regeneration.
Therefore God is said not to require the sacrifices of beasts : Ps. xl. 6,
' Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire ' (that is, sacrifices of beasts),
' burnt-offerings and sin-offerings hast thou not required ; ' viz. as the ulti-
mate object of his pleasure, but as representations of Christ, the great sacri-
fice. So neither did he command circumcision, and other legal purifications,
for anything in themselves, or anything they could work, further than upon
the body, but to signify unto them an inward work upon the heart. Hence
they are said not to be commanded by God : Jer. vii. 22, 23, ' For I
spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought
them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt- offerings or sacrifices ; but
this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice.' That is, God did
not principally require these as the things which did terminate his will and
pleasure, but an obedience to him, and walking with him, which cannot be
without an agreement of nature : ' For how can two walk together, unless
they be agreed ?' Amos iii. 3. Hence God speaks so often to them of the
circumcision of the heart, Deut. x. 16, and promises this circumcision of the
heart : Deut. xxxvi. 6, ' And the Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart,
and the heart of thy seed,' &c. And Paul expressly saith, Rom. ii. 28, 29,
that ' he was not a Jew ;' that is, a spiritual Jew, one of the spiritual seed
of Abraham, who had the ' circumcision that was outward in the flesh,' but
he that had ' that of the heart.'
So among us many confide in baptism, which signifieth nothing to men
grown up, without an inward renewal and baptism of the heart, no more
tban outward circumcision did to them.
(4.) The obligation upon us is still the same.* The covenant made with
Adam was made perpetually with him for all his posterity, therefore all his
posterity, by that covenant, were perpetually obliged to a perfect righteous-
ness. If God had made this covenant with Adam, that he should transfuse
this original righteousness to his posterity only for such a time, then indeed,
after the expiration of the term, the obligation had ceased, and none had been
bound to have it as a debt required by God. The fault of wanting it had
been removed without any infusion of grace, because the time being expired,
and so the obligation ceasing, it had not been a fault to want it ; neither
could Adam's posterity have been charged with his sin, because the want of
righteousness, after the expiration of the time fixed, had not been a sin.
But because there was no time fixed, but that it was perpetually of force as
* Suarez dc grat., torn. 2, lib. 7, cap. 23, numb. 3, 4.
22 " charnock's works. [John III. 8, 5.
to righteousness, which was the main intent of it, we still remain under the
obligation of having a righteous nature.
Now God, seeing the impossibility of answering this obligation in our own
persons, by our own strength, appoints a way whereby we may answer it in
a second head, not nulling the former covenant as to the essential part of
it, which was a righteous nature, but mitigating it, as the Chancery nulls not
the common law, but sweetens the severity of it.
This latter covenant is called ' an everlasting covenant.' Not that the
obligation of the other to righteousness is ceased, but transmitted to another
head; which head cannot possibly fail, as our former did, who hath both a
perfect righteousness in himself, and hath undertook for a perfect righteous-
ness in his people, which he is able to accomplish, and to that purpose begins
it here, and perfects it hereafter. To this purpose the Scripture speaks of
the everlastingness of the covenant: Ps. lxxxix. 28, 'My covenant shall
stand fast with him ;' that is, with Christ. And if his people sin, as he ex-
pressed it afterwards, yet ' my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from
him.' In this respect Christ is called the covenant of the people : Isa. xlii.
6, ' I will give thee for a covenant of the people.' And the end of placing
David his servant over his people, is not to give way to licentiousness and
unrighteousness, and maintain men in an hostile nature against God, but
that they might ' walk in his judgments, and observe his statutes,' Jer.
xxxvii. 24 ; and that everlasting covenant of peace he would make with them
is in order to sanctify them, Jer. xxxvii. 26, 28, compared together. When
God would make a covenant of peace with them, an everlasting covenant, it
was to set his sanctuary among them, and to let the heathen know that the
Lord did sanctify Israel. And the end of the covenant is to ' put his law
into the inward parts,' Jer. xxxi. 33.
Christ undertook to keep up the honour of God, which was violated by
the breach of that covenant, to * make reconciliation for iniquity, and to
bring in everlasting righteousness,' Dan. ix. 24. This obligation our second
head entered into for us, and in him we are complete, even as our head, and
as the ' head of all principality and power,' Col. ii. 10, who hath undertaken
for our perfect righteousness ; of our persons, by his own righteousness ; of
our nature, by inherent righteousness, as it follows, ver. 11, &c, ' In whom
you are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting
off the body of the sins of the flesh,' &c. This obligation still remains
upon our head, and upon us in him, and to him we are to have recourse
for a full answering of it. And this cannot be answered without a new
birth here, which ends in a perfection hereafter. And Christ, by a plain
precept, hath made it absolutely necessary now to all under the gospel
administration.
So that no age, no time, no administration excludes it. It was as neces-
sary to Adam, the first man, as to the last that shall be born. For being
by nature spiritually dead, there must be a restoration to a spiritual life, if
ever any be happy. « God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the
living.' "What was alway necessary is absolutely necessary, and admits of
no exception ; and therefore the removal of the diabolical nature is indis-
pensable to him and to us, since we are all the posterity of Adam, and the
inheritors of his corruption. How can any, in any age, enjoy an infinite
holy God, without being changed from their impurity ?
Prop. 4. Hence it follows, that it is so necessary, that it is not conceiv-
able by any man in his right wits how God can make any man happy without
it. It is not for us, poor shallow creatures, to dispute what God can, and
what God cannot do ; what God may do by his absolute power. But yet it
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 23
seems a contradiction, and it is not intelligible by us how God can make a
man happy without regeneration.
"What semblance of reason can be given that any one who is a slave of
Satan, a cbild of wrath by nature, can be made the son and friend of God,
without an expulsion of that nature which rendered him criminal, and restor-
ing that in some degree which renders him innocent ?
Without habitual grace, sin is not taken away ; and as long as a man
remains under sin, how he can be capable of any communion with God I
understand not; for he cannot be at one and the same time under God's
greatest wrath and his highest love. How is it possible that one can have
an enjoyment of eternal life, who hath nothing in him but a relation to eternal
death ?
God made man's nature fit for his communion ; man made himself unfit by
guilt and filth. This unfitness must be removed by regeneration before this
privilege man had by creation can be restored. Not that this restored right-
eousness is the cause of our communion with God in happiness, but a neces-
sary requisite to it. No doubt but God might have restored this righteousness
without admitting man to a converse with him, if there had been no covenant
made to that purpose. That God may give grace without glory, is intelli-
gible ; but to admit a man to communion with him in glory, without grace,
is not intelligible.
(1.) It is not agreeable to God's holiness to make any an inhabitant of
heaven, and converse freely with him in away of intimate love, without such
a qualification of grace : Ps. xi. 7, ' The righteous Lord loves righteousness ;
his countenance doth behold the upright.' He must, therefore, hate iniquity,
and cannot love an unrighteous nature because of his love to righteousness ;
' his countenance beholds the upright,' he looks upon him with a smiling
eye, and therefore he cannot favourably look upon an unrighteous person,
so that this necessity is not founded only in the command of God that we
should be renewed, but in the very nature of the thing, because God, in regard
of his holiness, cannot converse with an impure creature. God must change
his nature, or the sinner's nature must be changed. There can be no friendly
communion between two of different natures without the change of one of
them into the likeness of the other. Wolves and sheep, darkness and light,
can never agree. God cannot love a sinner as a sinner, because he hates
impurity by a necessity of nature as well as a choice of will. It is as impos-
sible for him to love it as to cease to be holy.
This change cannot be then on God's part ; it must therefore be on
man's part. It must therefore be by grace, whereby the sinner may be
made fit for converse with God, since God cannot embrace a sinner in his
dearest affections without a quality in the sinner suitable to himself. All
converse is founded upon a likeness in nature and disposition ; it is by grace
only that the sinner is made capable of converse with God.
(2.) It is not agreeable to God's wisdom. Is it congruous to the wisdom
of God to let a man be his child and the child of the devil at the same time ?
Is it fit to admit him to the relation of a son of God, who retains the enmity
of his nature against God, to make any man happy with the dishonour of
his laws, since he is not subject to the law of God, neither will be : one that
cannot bear him, but abhors his honour and the apprehensions of his holiness ?
Man naturally hath risings of heart against God, looks upon him under
some dreadful notion, hath an utter aversion from him; alienation and enmity
are inseparable : Col. i. 21, 'You who were sometimes alienated, and enemies
in your minds.' It doth not consist with the wisdom of God to make any
man happy against his will ; God therefore first changeth the temper of the
24 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
will by his powerful grace, thereby making him willing, and by degrees
fitting him for happiness with him.
It is not fit corruption should inherit incorruption, or impurity be admitted
to an undefiled inheritance, and therefore God brings none thither which are
not first begotten by him to a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead : 1 Peter i. 3, 4, ' Which according to his mercy hath be-
gotten us again to a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away,
reserved in heaven for you.' It cannot be honourable for the wisdom of
God to give a right to eternal life to one that continues a child of the
devil, and bestow his love upon one that resolves to give his own heart to
sin and Satan.
This which I have now discoursed is founded upon men's natural notions
in their right reason. But if we look into the Scripture it is certain there
is no other way but this : a man without a new birth can have no right to
happiness by any covenant of God, by any truth of God, by any purchase
of Christ. God never promised happiness without it ; Christ never pur-
chased it for any one without a new nature. No example is there extant of
any person God hath made happy without this alteration, nor in the strictest
inquiries can we conceive any other way possible ; therefore if there be any
one present that hath hopes to enjoy everlasting happiness without regenera-
tion, he expects that which God never yet bestowed upon any, and which,
according to our understanding, God cannot, without wrong to his holiness
and wisdom, confer upon any person. I beseech you, therefore, let none of
you build your hopes upon such vain foundations ; you must be holy, or you
shall never see God to your comfort.
Prop. 5. It is so necessary, that the coming and sufferings of our Lord
and Saviour would seem insignificant without it. That this regeneration
was a main end of his coming, is evident by his making this one of the main
doctrines he was, as a prophet and teacher, sent from God to make known
to the world, it being the first he taught Nicodemus. Jesus Christ came to
glorify God, and to glorify himself in redeeming a people. And what glory
can we conceive God hath, what glory can Christ have, if there be no
characteristical difference between his people and the world? And what
difference can there be but in a change of nature and temper, as the founda-
tion whence all other differences do result ? Sheep and goats differ in nature.
The righteousness which is given through our Mediator is the same, in
the essentials and respects it bears to God, as we had, at first. And his
threefold office of king, priest, and prophet, is in order to it : his priestly, to
reconcile and bring us to God ; his prophetical, to teach us the way ; and
his. kingly, to work in us those qualifications, and bestow that comely garb
upon us that was necessary to fit us for our former converse. Our second
Adam would not be like the first, if he failed in this great work of conveying
his righteous nature to us, as Adam was to convey his original righteousness to
his posterity. As that was to be conveyed by carnal generation, so the right-
eous nature of the second Adam is to be transmitted to us by spiritual regenera-
tion. In this respect renewed men are called his seed, and counted to him for
a generation, as Ps. xxii. 30, ' A seed shall serve him ; it shall be accounted
to the Lord (MINT) for a generation,' to Christ ; it shall be accounted as much
the generation of Christ as the rest are the generation of Adam, as if they
had proceeded out of his loins, as mankind did out of Adam's. As God
looks upon believers as righteous through the righteousness of Christ as if it
were their own, so he accounts them as if they were the generation of Jesus
Christ himself.
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 25
(1.) Christ came to save from sin. Salvation from sin was more his work
than barely salvation from hell : Mat. i. 21, ' He shall save his people from
their sins.' From sin as the cause, from hell as the consequent. If from
sin, was it only from the guilt of sin, and to leave the sinful nature un-
changed ? Was it only to take off punishment, and not to prepare for
glory ? It would have been then but the moiety of redemption, and not
honourable for so great a Saviour. Can you imagine that the death of Jesus
Christ, being necessary for the recovery of a sinner, was appointed for an
incomplete work, to remit man's sin and continue the insolency of his
nature against God ? It was not his end only to save us from wrath to
come, but to save us from the procuring-cause of that wrath ; not forcibly
and violently to save us, but in methods congruous to the honour of God's
wisdom and holiness, and therefore to purify us : Tit. ii. 14, ' To redeem us
from all iniquity,' all parts of it, ' by purifying unto himself a peculiar
people, zealous of good works,' that we might have a holy nature, whereby
we might perform holy actions, and be as zealous of good works and the
honour of God, as we had been of bad works and to bring dishonour to
him.
It was also the end of dais resurrection to • quicken us to a newness of life,'
Col. ii. 12, 13, Eph. ii. 5, 6. If any man without a new nature could set
foot into heaven, a great intendment of the death and resurrection of Christ
would be insignificant.
Christ came to take away sin, the guilt by his death, the filth by his Spirit,
given us as the purchase of that death. In taking away sin he takes away
also the sinful nature.
(2.) Christ came to destroy the works of the devil : 1 John iii. 8, ' For
this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works
of the devil.' These works are two, sin, and the misery consequent upon it.
Upon the destruction of sin necessarily follows the dissolution of the other
which was knit with it. If the sinful nature were not taken away, the devil's
works would not wholly be destroyed ; or if the sinful nature were taken
away, and a righteous nature not planted in the stead of it, he would still
have his ends against God in depriving God of the glory he ought to have
from the creature. And the creature could not give God the glory he was
designed by his creation to return, unless some nature were implanted in
him whereby he might be enabled to do it.
Would it, then, be for the honour of this great Kedeemer to come short
of his end against Satan, to let all the trophies of Satan remain, in the errors
of the understanding, perversity of the will, disorder of the affections, and
confusion of the whole soul ? Or if our Saviour had only removed these,
how had the works of the devil been destroyed if we had lain open to his
assaults, and been liable the next moment to be brought into the same con-
dition, which surely would have been, were not a righteous and divine nature
bestowed upon the creature.
(3.) Christ came to bring us to God : 1 Peter iii. 18, ' For Christ also
hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to
God.' Was it to bring us to God with all our pollutions, which were the
cause God cast us off? No ; but to bring us in such a garb as that we
might be fit to converse with him. Can we be so without a new nature and
a spiritual likeness to God ? Would that man who would bring another to
a prince to introduce him into favour, bring him into his presence in a
slovenly and sordid habit, such a garb which he knew was hateful to the
prince ? Neither will our Saviour, nor can he bring sinners in such a plight
to God, because it is more contrary to the nature of God's holiness to have
26 chaknock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
communion with such, than it is contrary to the nature of light to have com-
munion with darkness, 1 John i. 5-7. Can it be thought that Christ should
come to set human nature right with God, without a change of that principle
which caused the first revolt from God ? Besides, since the coming of
Christ was to please God, and to glorify him in all his attributes, as well as
to save us, how can God be pleased with the effects of Christ's death, if he
brought the creature to him without any change of nature, but with its for-
mer enmity and pollution ? Will you say his mercy would be glorified ?
How can that be without a wrong to his purity, and a provocation to his jus-
tice ? Suppose such a dispute were in God, would not holiness, wisdom,
justice, joined together, over- vote mercy ?
But since there can be no such dispute, how can we conceive that mercy,
an infinite perfection in God, can desire anything to the prejudice of the
honour of his holiness, justice, and wisdom ?
Well, then, if we expect happiness without a renewed nature, we would
make Christ a minister of sin as well as of righteousness, Gal. ii. 17, &c.
As there is a justification by him, so his intent was to plant a living principle
in us, whereby we might be enabled to live to him. It is in vain, then, to
think to find any benefit by the death of Christ without a new nature, any
more than from God without it.
Prop. 6. The end of the Spirit's coming manifests it to be necessary. We
are said therefore to be ' saved by the washing of regeneration, and renew-
ing of the Holy Ghost,' Titus hi*. 5, 2 Thes. ii. 13. As God by his Spirit,
moving upon the face of the waters, created the world, so God by his Spirit,
moving upon the face of the soul, new creates all the faculties of it. Can
the coming of Christ, and the coming of the Spirit, the most signal favours
of God to mankind, be intended for no other end than to convey to us the
mercy of God, with the dishonour of his holiness, to change our misery with-
out changing our nature, and putting us in a capacity both to glorify God and
enjoy him ? To what purpose doth the Spirit come, if not to renew ? What-
soever was the office of the Spirit, cannot be supposed to be exercised with-
out this foundation. Can there be any seal of the Spirit without some im-
pression made upon the soul like to the Spirit, which is the seal whereby
we are sealed ? Can he witness to us that we are the children of God, if
there be no principle in us suitable to God as a father, no child-like frame ?
Is the Spirit only to bring things to remembrance for a bare speculation,
without any operative effect ? Is he to help us in prayer ? How can that
be, without giving us first a sense of what we need, and a praying heart ?
And how can we have a praying heart till our natures, so averse from God
and his worship, be changed? He is a 'quickening Spirit,' 2 Cor. hi. 6,
1 the Spirit gives life.' How can that be while we lie rotting in our former
death ? It is a ' Spirit of holiness.' Can he dwell in a soul that hath an
unholy nature ? Though he find men so at his first coming, would he not
quickly be weary of his house if it continued so ? He comes to change our
old nature, not to encourage it. What fruits of the Spirit could appear with-
out the change of the nature of the soil ?
Prop. 7. From all this it follows that this new birth is necessary in every
part of the soul. There is not a faculty but is corrupted, and therefore not
a faculty but must be restored. Not a wheel, not a pin in all this clock of
the heart but is out of frame ; not one part wherein sin and Satan have not
left the marks of their feet: Titus i. 15, 'Their mind and conscience is
defiled.' It is clearer to a regenerate soul that it is so, since by the light of
grace he discerns a filth in every faculty. The more knowledge of God he
hath, the more he discovers his ignorance ; the more love to God, the more
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 27
he finds and is ashamed of his enmity. And though in our imperfect re-
generation here, grace and sin are in every part of the soul, as wine and
water mingled together are in every part of the vessel, yet every faculty is in
part renewed ; and grace and sin lie not so huddled together but that the
soul can distinguish them, and be able to say, this is grace, this is part of
the new Adam, and this is sin, and part of the old Adam in me.
Because there was an universal depravation by the fall, regeneration must
answer it in its exteosiveness in every faculty. Otherwise it is not the birth
of the man, but of one part only. It is but a new piece, not a new creature.
This or that faculty may be said to be new, not the soul, not the man. We
are all over bemired by the puddle of sin, and we must be all over washed
by the water of grace. A whole sanctification is the proper fruit of recon-
ciliation : 2 Thes. v. 23, ' The God of peace sanctify you wholly.' Recon-^
ciliation was of the whole man, so must regeneration. Sin hath rooted itself
in every part ; ignorance and error in our understandings ; pride, and self-
love, and enmity in our wills ; all must be unrooted by a new grace, and the
triumphs of sin spoiled by a new birth.
Prop. 8. It is so necessary, that even the dim eye of natural reason has
been apprehensive of some need of it. Aud, therefore, it is a wonder that
there should be a need of pressing it upon men under the light of the gospel.
Those doctrines that are purely intellectual and supernatural, are not so
easily apprehended by men, as having no footing in reason, whereby reason
is rendered unpliable to consent to them. But those doctrines that tend to
the reformation of man carry a greater conviction, as having some notion of
a depravation, which gives them some countenance in the minds of men,
though not in their affection. Men cannot conceive any notion of God's
greatness, majesty, and holiness, but they must also conceive something
necessary to an enjoyment of him (wherein their felicity consists), besides
those natural principles which they find in themselves. Natural reason must
needs assent to this, that there must be some other complexion of the soul
to fit us for a converse with so pure a majesty. The wiser sort of heathens
did see themselves out of frame ; the tumult and disorder in their faculties
could not but be sensible to them. They found the flights of their souls too
weak for their vast desires. They acknowledged the wings of it to be clipped,
and that they never came so out of the hands of God. That therefore there
was a necessity of some restorative above the art of man to complete the
work. And I think I have read of one of them that should say, That there
could not be a reformation unless God would take flesh. They had ' the
work of the law written in their hearts,' Rom. ii. 15. They knew such works
were to be done ; they found themselves unable to do them. Whence would
follow that there must be some other principle to enable them than what
they had by nature. To this purpose they invented their purgative^ vir-
tues ; and by those and other means hoped to arrive to an opoiojeig ra 9eu,
which they much talked of as necessary to a converse with God. As they
were sensible of their guilt, and therefore had sacrifices for the expiation of
that, so they were sensible of their filth, and had their purifications and
washings for the cleansing of that. Hence it was that they admired those
men that acted in a higher sphere of moral virtue and moderation than
others. Some of them have acknowledged the malady, but despaired of a
remedy, judging it above the power of nature to cure. Certainly that which
the wisest heathens, in the darkness of nature, without knowledge either of
law or gospel, have counted necessary ; and since it is seconded by so plain
a declaration of our Saviour, must be indisputably necessary.* Plato in
* Ficinus in Dionys. de divin. nom. cap. xii.
28 chaenock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
several places saith, That there was a certain divine principle in our minds
at first, but that it was abolished, and God would again renew and form the
soul with a kind of divinity.
How vain then are men, how inexcusably foolish, to neglect both the light
of the gospel and that of reason too ; that spend not one hour, one minute,
in a serious consideration of it and enquiry after it ; in slighting their own
reason as well as the express declaration of Jesus Christ. Oh that men
were sensible of this, which is of so great concernment to them.
II. I come to shew that regeneration is necessary.
1. It is necesary to a gospel state.
(1.) Nothing can exist in any state of being without a proper form. That
which hath not the form of a thing is not a thing of the same species. He
cannot be a man that wants a rational form of a man, a soul. And how can
any man be a Christian without that which doth essentially constitute a
Christian ? We can no more be Christians without a Christian nature, than
a man can be a man without human nature. Grace only gives being to a
Christian, and constitutes him so : 1 Cor. xv. 10, ' By the grace of God I
am what I am : and his grace which was bestowed on me was not in vain,
but I laboured more abundantly than they all.' Grace there is meant of
habitual grace, because he speaks of his labour as the fruit of it. In bodily
life brutes go beyond us, in the vigour of senses, greatness of strength,
temperance, natural affection. In reason and moral virtues many heathens
have excelled us. There is something else, then, necessary for the con-
stitution of a Christian, and that is, Christ's living in him by a new forming
of his soul by his Spirit. As the body lives by the soul, which distributes
natural, vital, and animal spirits to every part of the body, for the perform-
ance of its several functions ; so the soul lives by grace, which diffuseth its
vigour to every part, the understanding, will, and affections.
(2.) There is no suitableness to a gospel state and government without it.
In all changes of government in the world there is a change in the whole
state of affairs, in those that are the instruments of government, in the
principles of those that submit to the government. After the fall of man
God set up a new mode of government. All judgment was committed to
the Son : John v. 22, ' For the Father judges no man, but hath committed
all judgment to the Son.' Ver. 27, ' And hath given him authority to exe-
cute judgment.' The whole administration of affairs is put into his hand ;
not excluding the Father, who still gave out his orders in the government,
wherefore he saith, ver. 30, 'I can of myself do nothing; as I hear, I judge.'
There must be, therefore, some agreement between the frame of this govern-
ment and the subjects of it. As there is a new Adam, a new covenant, a
new priesthood, a new spirit ; so there must be a new heart, new compacts,
new offerings, new resolutions. New administrations and old services can
no more be pieced together than new cloth and old garments. The gospel
state of the church is called a new heaven and a new earth. Man is by the
inclinations of his corrupt nature obedient to the law of sin. There must be
a cure and change of those inclinations, to make them tend to an observance
of the orders of this new government, and an hearty observation of it, 2 Cor.
v. 17, ' Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new, and
all things are of God ' (so they were before), but now in a new manner and
frame ; and this is the reason rendered why every man in Christ must be a
new creature.
(3.) All the subjects of this government have been brought in this way,
not one excepted. Though God hath chosen some that he would bless for
ever under this evangelical government, yet notwithstanding the purpose of
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of eegeneeation. 29
God they are in as great unfitness for this state as the worst of men, till God
exerting his power fashions them to be vessels of honour to himself. It is
not God's choice of any man which puts any man into a gospel state, without
the operation of the Spirit, renewing the mind and fitting him for it. All
that were designed by God's eternal purpose were to be brought in by this
way of the new birth, as 2 Thess. ii. 13, ' God hath from the beginning
chosen you to salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the
truth.' And by this they were fortified against all those workings of the
mystery of iniquity, against the government of Christ and the state of the
gospel, which would be damnable and destructive to many ; for he had spoken
of that before, upon which occasion he brings this in. ' A chosen genera-
tion, a holy nation, a peculiar people,' are joined together, 1 Peter ii. 9.
Peculiar they could not be, unless they had something of an intrinsic value
in them above others, and a peculiar fitness for special service, and to offer
spiritual sacrifices, therefore called also a royal priesthood.
(4.) The end of the particular institutions, of initiation or admission,
under the two different administrations of this government, was to signify
this — of circumcision under the law, and baptism under the gospel. Both
signified the corruption and filthiness of nature, and the necessity of the cir-
cumcision of the heart and the purification of nature. Hence baptism is
called ' the laver of regeneration,' Titus iii. 5,* many understanding it of
baptism. Not that these did confer this new nature in a physical way, or
that it was alway conferred in the administration of them, but the necessity
of having this was alway signified by them. Therefore one of the Jews,f
against the opinion of his countrymen, saith absolutely, it is a madness to
think that those ceremonies, under their administration, were appointed only
for the purification of the body without that of the soul. And Rom. ii. 29,
saith the apostle, ' He is a Jew which is one inwardly, and circumcision is
that of the heart in the spirit.' So that partaking of baptism, and being
intrusted with the oracles' of God, make a man no more a Christian than
circumcision, &c, did make a man a Jew. He is only a Christian that hath
a Christian nature. The necessity of this nature was evidenced and signified
both by the one and by the other.
In every state there are duties to be performed and privileges to be en-
joyed. So likewise in the gospel state. Without a new birth we cannot
perform the one or be capable of the other.
2. It is necessary to the performance of gospel duties.
(1.) There can be no preparation to any service without it. Man's soul
at first could make a spiritual music to God, till the flesh disordered the
strings, and no music can be made till the Spirit puts the instrument in tune
again. In Jesus Christ we are ' created to good works,' Eph. ii. 10. There-
fore no preparation can be before the new creation, no more than there was
a preparation in the matter without form and void to become a world.
What evangelical duties can be performed without an evangelical impression,
without the forming of Christ and the doctrine of Christ in the heart, not
only in the notion, but the operative and penetrating power of it ? The
heart must be first moulded, and cast into the frame of the doctrine of the
gospel, before it can obey it, as R,om. vi. 17, ' But ye have obeyed from the
heart that form of doctrine which was delivered unto you,' or, ' unto which
you were delivered.' The mould wherein a thing is cast makes it fit for
the operation for which it is intended. The ship that wants any material
* Rom. vi. 4, Baptism signifies our burial with Christ and our resurrection to walk
in newness of life.
f Maimonid. More Nevoch., part ii. chap. 33.
30 chabnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
thing in its make cannot sail well, will not obey the directions of the pilot ;
and he that wants grace will be carried away with the breath of every sin
and temptation. All the motions and rollings naturally in ways of duty by
other principles, cannot make an aptitude to divine services, no more than
a thousand times flinging up a stone into the air can produce any natural
fitness in it for such an elevation any more than it had at first, which was
none at all. Where should we have any preparation ? It cannot be from
Adam ; he died a spiritual death by his sin, and had no natural fitness for
any spiritual service, and therefore cannot convey by nature more to his
posterity than what he had by nature ; what grace he had afterwards was
bestowed upon his person, not upon the nature which was to be transmitted
to his posterity.
(2.) Therefore we cannot act any evangelical service without a new nature.
If we have no natural preparation, we can have no natural action. The law
must be written in our hearts before it be formed into the life, Jer.
xxxi. 33, 34, ' I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their
hearts.' It is then, and then only, that we have a practical and affectionate
knowledge of God, 'And they shall know me from the least unto the greatest.'
Eestoration to a supernatural life must be before there can be supernatural
actions, a just nature before a just walk, as Hosea xiv. 9, ' The just shall
walk in them,' that is, in the ways of God. The motion of the creature is
not the cause but the effect of life. The evangelical service is not the cause
of righteousness but the effect. We cannot walk in one commandment of
God till the law be written in our inward parts, Ezek. xxxvi. 14. Those
that have not a new heart cannot walk in God's statutes. We can never
answer the terms of the covenant without a new nature. For,
[1.] No act can transcend the principle of it. There is a certainty in this
rule ; that the elevation of an inferior nature to the acts of a superior nature
cannot be without some inward participation of that superior nature. The
operation of everything follows the nature of the thing. A beast cannot act
like a man without partaking of the nature of a man, nor a man act like an
angel without partaking of the angelical nature. How then can a man act
divinely without a participation of the divine nature ? Duties of a super-
natural strain, as evangelic duties are, require a supernatural frame of spirit.
Nothing can exceed the bounds of its nature, for then it should exceed itself
in acting. Whatsoever service, therefore, doth proceed from mere nature,
cannot amount to a gospel-service, because it comes not from a gospel-prin-
ciple. We cannot believe without a habit of faith, nor love without a habit
of love ; for this only renders us able to perform such acts. Justification is
necessary to our state as well as regeneration ; but regeneration seems to be
more necessary to our duties than the former ; this principally to the per-
formance of them, the other to the acceptance of them.
[2.] The nature doth always tincture the fruit of it. Our Saviour, by his
interrogation, implies an impossibility that those that are evil should
speak good things : Mat. xii. 34, ' 0 generation of vipers, how can you,
being evil, speak good things ? for out of the abundance of the heart the
mouth speaks.' The very hissings of a viper proceed from the malice of its
nature. As the root is, so is all the fruit. From one seed many grains
arise, yet all partake of the nature of that seed. Streams partake of the
quality of the fountain. If the seed, root, and fountain be good, so is what-
soever springs from them. There is not one righteous man by nature,
neither Jew nor Gentle, all are concluded under sin : Rom. iii. 10, ' There
is none righteous, no, not one;' none that 'understands and seeks God,' &c.
He adds not one twice ; he exempts none, not one righteous by nature, not
John III. 3, 5.] thk necessity of regeneration. 31
one righteous action by nature : ' none that doth good, no, not one.' He
applies it to all mankind. A poisonous nature can produce nothing but
poisonous fruit. Our actions smell as rank as nature itself. Whatsoever
riseth from thence, though never so spacious and well-coloured, is evil and
unprofitable. If, therefore, we would produce good fruit, we must have a
new root, seed, and spring. Our sour nature must be changed into a sweet-
ness and purity. If the vine be empty, the fruit will be so too : Hosea x. 1,
' Ephraim is an empty vine, he brings forth fruit to himself,' or, ' equal to
himself,' mttf\ Unless the tree be good, the fruit can never be generous :
Mat. vii. 17, 18, 'Neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.' We
must have the Spirit before we can bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. All
good services are related to this, as effects to their cause ; so that what a
man doth by an act of reason, and natural conscience, and good education,
if his understanding and conscience remain wholly under their natural pol-
lution, the service is not good, because the soul is corrupt ; much less are
those services good which are the fruit only of humour. How the soul can
be habitually sinful, and yet the acts flowing from it be good, is not easily
conceivable ; it is against the stream of natural observation. It is true, in-
deed, that a man that is habituated to one kind of sin may do an action that
receives no tincture from that particular habit, because it doth not proceed
from it ; as a drunkard gives an alms, his giving alms hath no infection
inherent from that particular habit of drunkenness, but from the nature,
which is wholly corrupt, it hath. ' Who can bring a clean thing out of an
unclean ? not one,' Job xiv. 4. Who can bring a clean service out of a
miry heart ? Not one man in the world. We cannot, therefore, perform
any evangelical service if those foundations be considered.
Not spiritually, because we are flesh. God must be ' worshipped in spirit,'
John iv. 44 ; in a spiritual manner, with spiritual frames. The apostle
speaks of ' walking in the spirit,' Phil. iii. 3, and ' praying in the Holy
Ghost,' Jude 20. None can act spiritualty but those that are ' born of the
Spirit ; ' and no action is spiritual but what proceeds from a renewed prin-
ciple. The most glittering and refined flesh is but flesh in a higher sphere
of flesh, therefore whatsoever springs up from that principle is fleshly, upon
the former foundation, that nothing can rise higher than its nature. You
may as well expect to gather grapes of thorns as spiritual duties from carnal
hearts : Mat. vii. 16, ' Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? '
If a natural man ' cannot receive,' and ' cannot know the things of God,
because they are spiritually discerned,' 1 Cor. ii. 14, how should he perform
the duties belonging to God, since they are spiritually to be performed ? We
are naturally more averse to motions upon our wills than to the illumina-
tions of our minds. An appetite for knowledge, and a flight from God being
both the fruits of Adam's fall, who was both curious to know, as God, and
fearing to approach to God after his fall. There may be some services in
natural men which may look like spiritual, but in the principle they are not
so. Many acts are done by irrational creatures which look like rational acts.
As the order among bees, like the acts of statesmen regulating a common-
wealth ; their carrying gravel in their fangs to poise them in a storm, and
hinder them from being carried away by the violence of the wind ; yet these
are not rational acts, because they proceed not from reason, but from a
natural instinct put into them by God, the supreme governor. So that as
no action of an ape, though like the action of a man, can be said to be a
human act, so no action of an unregenerate man, though like a spiritual
action, can be called spiritual, because it proceeds not from a spiritual
principle, but from a contrary one paramount in him. And all actions have
32 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
their true denomination from the principle whence they flow. They may
be fruits of morality, and fruits of conscience, but not spiritual fruits, which
God requires.
Well, then, we must be first built up ' a spiritual house,' we must be a
1 priesthood ' before we can ' offer spiritual sacrifice,' 1 Peter ii. 5. We
must have the powerful operation of the Holy Ghost in us before we can
have a tincture of the Holy Ghost upon our services. In all human acts,
we should act as rational creatures ; in all religious acts, as spiritual crea-
tures. Now, as a man cannot act rationally without reason, so neither can
we act spiritually without a divine spirit in us. We are indeed to serve
God, and worship him as men ; therefore rational acts are due to God in
worship, and we are constituted in the rank of rational beings to that pur-
pose. But since our minds are defiled, they must be purified ; since our
understandings are darkened, they must be enlightened. There must be a
grace infused, a lamp set up, a spiritual awakening, and invigorating our
reasons and wills, before we can worship God as God in a spiritual
manner.
We cannot perform any evangelical service, vitally, because we are dead.
Our services must be living services, if in any wise they be suitable to a liv-
ing God. The apostle wishes us, Rom. xii. 1, to ' present our bodies a
living sacrifice.' He doth not mean only our bodies, consisting of flesh and
bones, or a natural life ; but he names the body as being the instrument of
motion and service, or it may be synecdoche partis pro toto, a part for the
whole. Present yourselves as a sacrifice consecrated to God, and living to
him, and as living by him.
Upon the loss of original righteousness, another form or principle was
introduced, called in Scripture flesh, and a body of death. Hence by nature
we are said to be dead, Eph. ii. 1, and all our works before repentance are
dead works, Heb. vi. 1. And these works have no true beauty in them,
with whatsoever gloss they may appear to a natural eye. A dead body may
have something of the features and beauty of a living, but it is but the beauty
of a carcase, not of a man. A statue, by the stone-cutter's art, and the
painter's skill, may be made very comely, yet it is but a statue still ; where
is the life ? Such services are but the works of art, as flowers painted on
the wall with curious colours, but where is the vegetative principle ? Since
man, therefore, is spiritually dead, he cannot perform a living service. As a
natural death doth incapacitate for natural actions, so a spiritual death must
incapacitate for spiritual actions. Otherwise, in what sense can it be called
a death, if a man in a state of nature were as capable of performing spiritual
actions as one in a state of grace ? No vital act can be exercised without a
vital principle. As Adam could not stir to perform any action, though his
body was framed and perfected, till God breathed into him a living soul, so
neither can we stir spiritually till God breathe into us a living grace.
Spiritual motions can no more be without a spiritual. life than bodily motions
can be without an enlivening soul. ' The living, the living, they shall praise
thee ; ' and Ps. lxxx. 18, ' Quicken us, and we will call upon thy name.'
There can be no living praise, nor no living prayer, without a renewed heart.
If it be one effect of the blood of Christ to ' purge our consciences from dead
works, to serve the living God,' as Heb. ix. 14, then it is clear that till our
consciences are purged from dead works we cannot serve the living God ; for
what suitableness can there be between a living God and dead services ? Is
a putrefied rank carcase a fit present for a king ? or a man full of running
sores and boils over his whole body fit to serve in a prince's chamber ? Our
best services, without a new nature, though they may appear varnished and
John III. 3, 5.J the necessity of kegeneration. 33
glittering to man, yet in the sight of God they have no life, no substance, but
stinking rotten dust, because coming from a dead and rotten heart.
Well, then, we must be born again ; it is not a dead nature, nor a dead
faith, can produce living fruit for God. We may as well read without eyes,
walk without legs, act without life, as perform any service to God without a
new nature ; no, we cannot perform the least : a dead man can no more
move his finger than his whole body.
Not graciously, because we are corrupt. By the same reason that we are
to speak with grace, Col. iv. 6, and to sing with grace in our hearts to the
Lord, Col. iii. 16, we are to do every other duty with an exercise of grace
to God : and without grace, our praises are but hollowings, our prayers
but howlings, as the Scripture terms them : Hosea vii. 14, ' They have not
cried to me with their hearts, when they howled upon their beds.' How can
there be an exercise of that which is not ? The skill of the musician cannot
discover itself till the instrument be made tuneable. The heart must be strung
with grace by the Spirit, before that Spirit can touch the strings to make
harmony to God in a gospel service. Our tempers must be changed, our
hearts fitted, before we can make melody to God. The principal beauty and
glory of a duty lies in the internal workings of the heart ; and how can that
heart work graciously, that hath nothing of God and his grace in it ? It is
said, ' Folly is bound up in the heart of a child,' Prov. xxii. 15. So is cor-
ruption in the heart of a man, like poison in a bundle of stuff; it is entered
into the very composition of us. A law of sin is predominant in a natural
man, Rom. vii. 23, which doth influence all his actions. Strong habits will
interest themselves in all we go about, and all a man's services are regulated
by it, for he hath no other law in his mind to check the motions of it, and
to scent his duties, whereby they may carry a pleasing savour to God. The
gift of prophecy, the understanding of mysteries, the depth of knowledge,
the removing mountains, bestowing alms, dying for religion, are brave and
noble acts ; but without charity, love to God, without which, no other grace
can work, all these profit nothing, 1 Cor. xiii. 2, 3. There is a moral goodness
in feeding the poor, but no gracious goodness without charity. A little of
this would make those, as a diamond doth gold wherein it is set, more valu-
able. If all those profit nothing without this grace of charity, they would
profit much with it. How doth grace alter the very nature of services ?
Those acts which are sensitive in a brute, were he transformed into a man,
and endued with reason, would become rational. Those actions which are
but moral in a mere man, when changed into Christian, become evangelical ;
they would be of another nature and another value.
Well, then, look after the new birth, since it is so necessary. There
cannot be gracious practices without gracious principles. Can anything fly
to heaven without wings ? We are to walk as Christ walked ; how can we
do it without a principle of kin to that which Christ had ? We are bound
to act from a principle of righteousness ; Adam was, and his posterity are ;
and should we not look after that which is so necessary a perfection, re-
quisite for our services ? No doubt but the devil could find matter enough
for prayer, and from the excellency of his knowledge, frame some rare
strains, as some word it ; but would it be a service which came from such a
nature ? As long as we are allied to him in our nature, our services will be
of as little value. He transforms himself into an angel of light, but is still
a devil ; and many men do so in their religious acts, yet still remain un-
regenerate.
Not freely and voluntarily, because we are at enmity. A natural man's
vol. hi. c
34 chaenock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
services are forced, not free. The aversion of our natures from God is as strong
as their inclination to evil. We have no fervent desires to love God, and there-
fore no desires to do anything out of affection to him. When sensual habits
are planted in the soul, there is an enmity to God in the mind : it will not
be ' subject to the law of God,' Rom. viii., and whilst that habit sways, it
cannot. This inclination to sin, and consequently aversion to good, is incor-
porated in nature, like blackness in a negro, or spots in a leopard ; they are
accustomed to sin, and cannot do good, Jer. xiii. 23. There is no agree-
ableness between God and man's soul, whilst there is a friendship between
the heart and sin ; he affects the one, and is disgusted with the other : one
is his pleasure, the other his trouble ; he hath no will, no heart to come to
God in any service, and when he doth, he is rather dragged, than sweetly
drawn. The things of God are against the bent of a natural heart ; there is
nothing so irksome as the most spiritual service ; when men engage in them,
they row against the stream of nature itself. There must, therefore, be
something of a contrary efficacy to overpower this violent tide, a law of
grace to renew the mind and turn the motions of the will, to another
channel. Restraining grace may for a while stop the current, but not turn
and change the natural course. A carnal mind conceits the things of God
and his spiritual service to be foolishness, and therefore contemns them,
1 Cor. i. 23, 24. The eye of the mind must be opened to discern the wis-
dom of God in them, before he can affect them. The heart should be lifted
up in the evangelical ways of God. Can mere flesh be thus ? Force can
never change nature. You may hurl lead up into the air, but it will never
ascend of itself while it is lead, unless it be rarified into air or fire. Keep
up iron many years in the air by the force of a loadstone, it will retain its
tendency to fall to the earth if the obstacle be removed ; the natural gravity is
suspended, not altered. Till the nature of the will be altered, it can never
move freely to any duty ; there must be a power to will, before there is a
will to do, as Philip, ii. 13, ' It is God which works in you both to will and to
do.' A supernatural renewing grace must expel corrupt habits from the will,
and reduce it to its true object. When faith is planted, it brings love to
work by ; when the soul is renewed, there is an harmony between God and
the heart, between the mind and the word, between the will and the duty ;
when the appetite and true taste of the soul is restored in regeneration, then
spring up strong desires to apply itself to every holy service : 1 Peter ii. 2, 3,
' The sincere milk of the word ' is fervently desired, after it is spiritually
tasted.
Well, then, there must be a change in us, or in the law. The law is
spiritual, man is carnal, Rom. vii. 14. The law can have no friendship for
man, nor man no friendship for the law in this state, since their natures are
so contrary. What the law commands is disgustful to the flesh, what the
flesh desires is displeasing to the law. There must then be a change ; the
law must become carnal, or man become spiritual, before any agreement can
be between them. Where do you think this change must light ? It can
never be in the law, therefore it must be in man. The wound in our wills
must be cured ; the tide of nature, that never carries us to God, must be
turned, and altered by a stream of grace, to move us to him and his service.
Man hath been a slave to his lust by the loss of grace, and is never like to
be restored to his liberty in the service of God, till he be repossessed of that
grace, the loss of which brought him into slavery. The gospel is a ' law of
liberty,' James i. 25 ; a servile spirit doth not suit a free law, neither is it a
fit frame for an evangelical service.
Nor delightfully. We can never perform spiritual services with delight,
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 35
because we are alienated. This we are to do. Paul ' delighted in the law
of God,' Rom. vii. 22 ; and the law was the ' delights ' of David, Ps. cxix. 92 ;
his whole pleasure ran in this channel. Now, because of that aversion to
God, there is no will and freedom in his service, much less can there be a
delight. A corrupt nature can have no divine strains ; a diseased man hath
no delight in his own acts, his distemper makes his very motion unpleasant
to him. Things that are not natural can never be delightful. There is a
mighty distance between spiritual duties and a carnal heart. Things out of
their place can never be an rest. Sin is as much a natural man's element
as water to a fish or air to a bird ; if he be stopped in the ways of the flesh,
he is restless till he return. He may indeed have some delight sometimes
in a service — not as it respects God as the object, or God as the end, there
is no such friendship in a natural man's heart to him — but there is an agree-
ment between a service and some carnal end he performs it for. His delight
is not terminated in the service, but in self-love, self-interest, or some ex-
ternal reward, anchored in it by some hopes of carnal advantage, not
springing from a living love or a gracious affection to God. He hath no
knowledge of God, and therefore can have no delight in God or in his ser-
vice. It is impossible we can come before him without pleasure and delight,
if we know how amiable he is in his person, and how gracious in his nature ;
but we naturally think God a hard master, and man having no delight in
God, he can have none in those means which lead him to God, and as they
are appointed to bring God and his soul together. He hath wrong notions
of duties, looks upon them as drudgeries, not as advantages : Mai. i. 13,
' Ye said, Behold, what a weariness it is,' &c. Without a change of nature,
we cannot desire communion with God, and therefore cannot delight in the
means of it. We can no more do any service cheerfully than the saints
without it could ' receive joyfully the spoiling of their goods,' Heb. x. 34.
We can never be in a holy ecstasy without this inward principle, to make
the gospel services connatural to us. This only makes high impressions
upon the soul. It is the law within our hearts, which only makes us delight
to do his will : Ps. xl. 8, ' Thy law is within my heart,' in my bowels. He
had a natural affection to it, and then a high delight in it. It made our
Saviour delight to do his work ; and it was the inward man of the heart,
wherein the apostle's delight in the law was placed. Unless we have a
divine impression of God upon us, we cannot hear his word with any joy in
it; as our Saviour saith, John viii. 47, 'Ye therefore hear them not,' that
is, the words of God, ' because you are not of God.' Unless we have God's
light and his truth sent forth into us, we can never make God our exceeding
joy, or go to his altar with such a frame, Ps. xliii. 3, 4.
Well, then, there is a necessity of the new nature, to have a warm frame
of heart in evangelical duties. What is connatural to us is only delightful.
So much of weariness and bondage we have in any holy service, so much of
a legal frame ; so much of love and delight, so much we have of a new cove-
nant grace. A spirit of adoption and regeneration only can make us delight
to come to our father, and to cry Abba to him.
Without regene/ation we cannot perform evangelical duties sincerely,
because we are a lie, and in our best estate vanity. We must worship God
' in truth ' as well as ' spirit,' John iv. 24. God is a Spirit, and therefore
must be worshipped in spirit. God is truth, and therefore must be worshipped
in truth. Without a new nature we cannot worship God in truth. The old
nature is in itself a He, a mere falsity, something contrary to that nature
God created. It was first introduced by a lie of the devil (' ye shall be as
gods, knowing good and evil,' Gen. iii. 5), and thereupon a fancy that God
36 chaknock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
lied in his command. How can we serve God with this nature, which had
nothing but a lie for its foundation, — a lie of the devil, a lie in our fancy ?
Therefore our old nature is no better than a lie. How can we serve God
with that nature which is quite another thing to that of his framing ? Man
in his fall is a liar : Rom. iii. 4, ' Let God be true, and every man a liar,' a
covenant-breaker, that kept not his faith with God. God, in respect of truth,
and man, in respect of lying, are set in opposition by the apostle there. No
man but would slight and scorn that service from another, which he knew to
be a lying service in the very frame of it. There is no truth can be in any
service which is founded only upon an old nature, and performed by one that
is acted by the father of lies; and so is every unregenerate man, every 'child
of disobedience,' Eph. ii. 2.
Now, sincerity cannot be without a new nature,
(1.) Because there are no divine motives which should sway the soul.
Most services of natural men have such dirty springs, so unsuitable to that
raised temper men should have in dealing with God, that they produce sacri-
fices not fit to be offered to an earthly governor : Mai. i. 8, ' If you offer
the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil?' &c, 'offer it now unto thy governor,
will he be pleased with thee ?' Had they had divine motives, they had never
brought such sickly services. What was not fit for themselves, they thought
fit for God. Did but princes know what motives many had in their services,
they would with as much scorn reject them as they do ignorantly receive
them with affection. But it is otherwise with God, who knows all the springs
and wards in that lock of the heart of his own framing. Do not most ser-
vices take their rise from custom, or from an outward religious education
barely, or at best from natural conscience, which though it be all in a man,
which takes God's part, yet it is flesh, and defiled ? And what pure vapours
can be expected from a lake of Sodom? Titus i. 15, ' To them that are
defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure ; but even their mind and conscience
is defiled.' The mind, which is the repository of natural light, and the con-
science, which is the advocate of natural light, and applies it upon particular
occasion, are defiled, and that in every unbelieving person. Can the motives
which conscience takes from a dark and defiled principle, as the mind is, be
divine ? It is fear of death, wrath, and judgment which it mostly applies.
These are the motives of defilement. Fear is the natural consequence of
pollution; without sin and corruption we never had had any fear of hell.
That cannot be gracious which springs naturally from the commission of sin,
and can this be divine ? Were there no punishment feared, there should be
no duty performed. Conscience hath naturally no basis to stand upon but
this. What is the principle of his fear ? Self. It is not therefore obedience
to God, but self-preservation, sways a man. Fear is but a servile disposi-
tion, and therefore cannot make a service good. All such extrinsic motives
which arise not from a new life, are no more divine than the weights of a
clock may be said to have life because they set the wheels on running. The
same action may be done by several persons upon different principles and
motives, for which one may be rewarded, the other not ; as Mat. x. 41, 42,
' He that receives a righteous man, in the name of a righteous man, shall
receive a righteous man's reward. And whosoever shall give unto one of
these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, he shall
in no wise lose his reward.' One may receive a member of Christ out of
respect to Christ and the relation the person hath to him, another may re-
ceive the same person out of a common principle of humanity ; the action
is the same, the good redounding to the object is the same ; nay, it may be
greater in him that acts from a commiseration of him, as a man, than a cup
John III. 3, 5.J the necessity of regeneration. 37
of cold water from the other, because his ability is greater ; but the inward
respect to the object is different. One respects him as a man of the same
nature with himself in misery, the other respects him as a member of Christ
in misery ; one respects him as a man, the other as a righteous man. The
principle is different : one relieves him out of a natural compassion, common
to a heathen with him, the other out of a Christian affection to his Head.
The actions are therefore different, because of their motives : one is reward-
able, and promised to be rewarded, the other not ; one may be from grace —
I do not say it always is, unless there be a constant tenor of such motives in
our actions ; for a natural man, under the preaching of the gospel, may do
such a thing out of a present and transient respect to Christ, whom he hears
so often of, and hath some presumption to be saved by, but it is not his con-
stant frame — I say, one may be from grace, the other from nature.
Therefore from hence results a necessity of the alteration of the frame of
our souls, to furnish us with divine and heavenly motives for our actions. A
man may do a thing by nature from a good principle, a principle of common
honesty, good in its kind (brass is good in its kind, but not so good as silver),
but not evangelically good, without a renewed affection to God : John xiv.
15, ' If you love me, keep my commandments ;' keep what I command you,
out of affection to me. Where ' the imagination of the heart is evil, and
only evil, and that continually,' Gen. vi. 5, all the service a man in that state
performs riseth from this spring, and hath some infectious imagination in it,
highly abominable to God ; either wrong notions of God in it, or wrong notions
of the duty, or corrupt motives, something or other of the evil imagination
of the heart, mixes itself with it.
(2.) Without a renewed nature, as there are no divine motives, so there
can be no divine ends. We are bound to refer our natural actions, much
more our religious services, to the glory of God. The end is the moral prin-
ciple of every action. It is that which confers a goodness or badness upon
the service : Luke xi. 34, ' If the eye be evil, the whole body is full of dark-
ness ' (this is commonly understood of a man's aim). If the intention be
evil, there is nothing but darkness in the whole service. The perfection of
everything consists in answering the end for which it was framed. That
which was the first end of our framing, ought to be the end of our acting,
viz. the glory of God. But man hath taken himself off from this end, and
hath been fond of making himself his chief good and ultimate end. Men
naturally have corrupt ends in good duties. Pride is the cause of some
men's virtue. And they are spiritually vicious in avoiding crimes, because
they intrench too much upon their reputation. The pharisees made their
devotion contribute to their ambition : Mat. vi. 5, « They pray to be seen of
men,' and Mat. xxiii. 5, 'But all their works they do to be seen of men.'
Not one work wherein they had not respect to this. Their works might well
be called the works of the devil, whose main business it was to set up pride
and self. All their pretences of devotion to God, were but the adoration of
some golden image. Have not many in their more splendid actions, the
same end with brutes : the satisfaction of the sensitive part, covetousness,
pride, emulation, sense of honour, qualities perceivable in the very brutes,
as the end of some of their actions ? The acting for a sensitive end is not
suitable to a rational, much less can it be the end of a gracious creature.
Have not men sinful ends in their religious services ? in their prayers to God,
in their acknowledgments of God ? The devil could intreat our Saviour's
leave to go into the herd of swine. Was this a prayer, though directed to
Christ, when his end was to destroy and satisfy his malice in it? At best,
a man without grace is like a picture in a room which eyes all, and hath no
38 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
more respect to a prince than his attendants. A natural man's respect to
God is but equal to a respect to all his other worldly concerns. Indeed it
were well if it were so. He parcels out one part for God, one part for him-
self, and one part for the world ; but God hath the least share, or at best,
no more than the rest. And truly, as a picture cannot give a greater re-
spect, to fix its eyes more upon a prince than a peasant, because it hath no
life ; so neither can a natural man pay a supreme respect to God in his ser-
vice, without a spiritual life. There is a necessity then of removing those
depraved ends, that man may answer the true end of his creation. The
principles then upon which such ends do grow, contrary to the will of God,
must be rooted out, that the soul may move purely to God in every service.
We are come short of the glory of God : Rom. iii. 23, ' All have sinned and
come short of the glory of God ;' short of aiming at it, short of his approba-
tion of our acts. Being thus come short, our ends cannot rise higher than
the frame of our soul. Grace, grace only can advance our wills to those
supernatural ends for which they were first framed. We can never aim at
the glory of God till we have an affection to him. We can never honour
him supremely, whom we do not supremely love. An affection to God can
never be had, till the nature, wherein the aversion is placed, be changed into
another frame. We are to glorify God, as God. How can we do this with-
out the knowledge of him ? How c?n we know him but by the gospel,
wherein he discovers himself? How can we have right conceptions of the
gospel, till gospel impressions be made upon us ? How can we act for the
glory of God, to whom naturally we are enemies ? There is none of us born
with a spiritual love to God. There must be an alteration of the end and aim
in us ; our actions cannot else be good, though ordered by God himself.
God employs Satan in some things, as in afflicting Job ; but is his perform-
ance good ? No, because his end is not the same with God's. He acts out
of malice what God commands out of sovereignty, and for gracious designs.
Our end without it, is not the same with the end of the action ; for moral acts
tend to God's glory, though the agent hath no such intention. So the action
may be good in itself, but not good in the actor, because he wants a due end.
Well then, those actions only can be said to be evangelical, when the great
end of God's glory, which was his end both in creation and redemption, hath
a moral influence upon every service ; when we have the same end in our re-
deemed services, as God had in his redeeming love.
Not humbly. We cannot without regeneration perform gospel duties
humbly, because of natural stoutness and hardness. Evangelical duties
must be performed with humility. Self-denial is the chief gospel lesson,
and is to run through the veins of every service. Therefore God speaks of
giving 'a heart of flesh,' in gospel times: Ezek. si. 19, 'I will take the
stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may
walk in my statutes, and keep my ordinances, and do them.' Gospel duties
require a pliableness and tenderness of heart. Adam's over-valuing himself,
and swelling with designs of being like God, brought an incapacity upon him-
self of serving his creator. And man ever since, is too much aspiring and
too well opinioned of himself, to perform duties in an evangelical strain, with
that meltingness, that nothingness in himself, which the gospel requires.
Our swelling and admiring thoughts of our own natural righteousness, hinders
Christ from saving us, and ourselves from serving him. There must then be
an humble, and melting, and self-denying frame. The angels are said to
cover their faces before God, Isa. vi. 2, as having nothing to glory in of their
own. And the chief design of the gospel is to beat down all glorying in our-
selves : 1 Cor. i. 29, 31, ' That no flesh should glory in his presence ; let him
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 39
that glorieth, glory in the Lord.' And indeed it humbles us no more than
what, upon due consideration, will appear very necessary. Nature then must
be changed before this pride be rooted out. Old things must pass away,
that God may be all in all in the creature. We cannot without a new nature
make a true estimate of ourselves, and lie as vile and base in the presence of
God. A stone, with all the hammering, cannot be made soft. Beat it into
several pieces, you may sever the continuity of its parts, but not master its
hardness ; every little piece of it will retain the hardness of its nature. So
it is with a heart of stone. The nature must be changed before it be fit for
those services which require melting, humble, and admiring frames. There
is a necessity of a residing grace, like fire, to keep the soul in a meltiug
temper.
Not constantly. Without a new nature, we cannot perform gospel services
constantly, because of our natural levity. Where the nature is flesh, the
heart ' minds the things of the flesh,' Rom. viii. 5. The mind thus habitu-
ated, will not be long employed about the things of the Spirit. There is a
natural levity in man's nature. Do not many seem to begin in the Spirit
and end in the flesh ? seem to arise to heaven, and quickly fall down to
earth ? Do not our very promises vanish with the next wind of temptation,
and like sparks, expire as soon as they be born, unless grace be in the heart
to keep them alive. The Israelites are accused of not having a heart sted-
fast with God: Ps. lxxviii. 37, ' Their heart was not right with him, neither
were they stedfast in his covenant.' Are our natures better than theirs ?
Do we not all lie under the same charge ; so uncertain naturally, about divine
things, as if there were nothing but wind in our composition ? Nothing can
be kept up in motion against its nature, but by force. A top hath no in-
ward principle of motion, but is moved by some outward force. When that
is removed, the motion languisheth. Any motion that depends only upon
outward wires, expires upon the breaking of them. When external motives,
which spurred men on to this or that service, cease, the service dies of course,
because the spring of the motion falls. If fear of hell, terrors of death, some
pressing calamity, be the spring of any duty ; when these are removed, there
will be no more regard to the duty they engendered. But what is natural, is
constant, because the spring always remains. Interest changeth, conscience
is various ; and therefore the operations arising from thence, will partake of
the uncertainty of them. Stony ground may bring forth blades ; but for
want of root, they will quickly wither : Mat. xiii. 5, 20. A man may mount
high in religion, by the mixture of some religious passion, as meteors in the
air ; but by reason of the gross and earthy parts in them, will not continue
their station. There is no being without, stable, but God ; and no principle
stable within, but grace : Heb. xiii. 9, ' It is a good thing that the heart be
established with grace.' Whatsoever service is undertaken upon changeable
motives, is as changeable as the bottom upon which it stands. If credit,
slavish fear of God, worldly interest, inspire us with some seeming holy
resolutions, they will all fly away upon the first removal of those props.
There is therefore a necessity of a change of nature and disposition. Where
there is no approbation of things that are excellent, there can be no constant
operation about them. All action about an object, continues according to
the affection to it, and delight in it. We shall then be filled with the fruits
of righteousness, to the glory of God, when we have a sincere approbation
of the excellency of them: Philip i. 10, 11, first, 'approve things that are
excellent ; and then follows, ' without offence, till the day of Christ.' A
stately profession can no more hold out against the floods of temptation, than
a beautiful building can stand against the winds without a good foundation
40 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
under ground. It is the Spirit of the Lord within, as well as without, can
only maintain the standard against temptation, Isa. lix. 19.
Well then, upon the whole, there is a necessity of regeneration for the
performance of gospel duties. We cannot else perform them spiritually,
because we are flesh ; nor vitally, because we are dead ; nor graciously,
because we are corrupt ; nor voluntarily, because we are enmity ; nor
delightfully, because we are alienated ; nor sincerely, because we are falsity ;
nor humbly, because of our stoutness ; nor constantly, because of our levity.
Our natures must be changed in all these respects, before we can be fit for
any gospel service.
(2.) Eegeneration is necessary for the enjoyment of gospel privileges.
[1.] For the favour of God, and his complacency with us. We are not
fit for God's delight, without it. That person who hath his love, must have
his image. If ever God could love an old nature, which he once hated,
and delight in that which he once loathed, he must divest himself of his
immutability. He never hated the person of any of his creatures, but for
unrighteousness. And upon the removal of this cloud of separation between
him and them, the beams of his love break out in their former vigour.
God's love is not straitened, nor his kindness exhausted, no more than his
hand is shortened, or his ear grown heavy, that he cannot hear : Isa. lix.
1, 2, ' But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and
your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.'
For, first, what did make the first separation, was it not sin ? God told
Adam before, what the issue would be, upon his eating the forbidden fruit :
Gen. ii. 17, • In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.'
It is not a temporal death there only meant ; for he should then have died
that day wherein he fell, the word surely importing so much. And the
punishment of a temporal death was pronounced afterwards : Gen. iii. 19,
' Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.' Thou shalt surely die ;
thy integrity and righteousness will expire that very moment, and thou shalt
die in my just displeasure. It is a spiritual death that is most properly
meant. The punishment of sin is death ; the chief part of this death is an
' alienation from the life of God,' Eph. iv. 18; that is, not to have God,
and the righteousness of God's image living in him ; but to be impure, cor-
rupt, a hater of God, and servant of sin. Now from this punishment no
man can be freed, but by a contrary regeneration, the proper effect whereof
is to love God, to know his name, to partake of his holiness, to imitate his
virtues.* Man forfeited all God's favour upon his fall, and can challenge
nothing of it.
Secondly, What then can restore man to God's favour ? Can that which
first deprived us of it ? The cause of our destruction can never be the
means of our restoration. Did the loss of Adam's integrity make him unfit
for paradise, the garden of God, from whence he was expelled, as a token
of God's disfavour ? And can the continuance of that loss be a means to
regain that love which cashiered us ? It was a spiritual death ; and is the
carcase of a soul fit for God's complacency ? There must be not only a
satisfaction to his justice for the re-instating man into his favour (this is done
by Jesus Christ) ; but a restoring of his image, this is done by the Holy
Ghost. It is as impossible the soul can be beautiful without life, and with-
out holiness, as for a body to be beautiful without a good colour and pro-
portion of parts. Take away this, beauty must cease, and deformity succeed
in the place. It is impossible, therefore, that where sin remains in its full
vigour, where there is nothing of an original integrity residing, but that the
* Cocceius; More Nevoch, p. 65.
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 41
soul must be monstrous, vile, and deformed in the eyes of God. To make
it therefore a fit object for God's favour, it is necessary it be beautified with
a holy nature, and adorned with its due proportions and vigour. The
righteousness of Israel must go forth as brightness ; he must be called by
a new name, that is, a new nature ; for what is a name without a nature ?
And then it should be Hephzibah, ' the Lord delights in thee.' Isa. lxii.
1-4, ' The righteousness thereof shall go forth as brightness, and the glory
thereof as a lamp that burns.' Righteousness is the glory of a soul, as well
as of a church : ' Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy
glory : thou shalt be called by a new name ;' a new nature wrought by the
word of God; ' which the mouth of the Lord shall name.' Then she should
be in favour with God, ' a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a
royal diadem in the hand of her God.' Righteousness is the glory of a soul,
and God's delight and complacency is the consequent of a righteous nature.
Thirdly, The elect themselves have no interest in God's favour of delight
without it. This follows upon the former ; God cannot love the very top of
mankind, his own choice, with a love of complacency, without regeneration,
without a righteous nature. There is a favour of intention and purpose
before it ; there is also an executive love in the very infusing the habits of
grace, which is a supernatural favour, because there is both a purpose and
then an actual conferring a supernatural good. God is free, and may will
to give his gifts how, and to whom he pleases. But an elect person, whilst
he continues in a state of nature, is not simply beloved, though there be a
purpose of love, because there is no gracious quality in him, which is the
object of God's special favour. It is regeneration only which is the object
of God's delight in us.
Fourthly, Hence will follow, that no privilege under heaven, without it,
can bring us into God's favour ; no, not if any man were related to Christ
according to the flesh. The apostle Paul would not think the better of
himself for a fleshly relation to Christ, for being of the same country,
descended of the Jewish nation : 2 Cor. v. 16, * Though we have known
Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if
any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.' Though it be an honour to be
of the same descent with Christ, according to the flesh, to be of the same
nation and country, yet this doth not make a man any more beloved of
God. Nothing avails in Christ, but a new creature ; and our Saviour him-
self pronounceth it so. It was the highest privilege to be the mother of
our Saviour, according to the flesh ; yet this had been nothing, without her
being born again of the Spirit : ' "Who is my mother ? and who are my
brethren ? Behold my mother and my brethren,' pointing to his disciples,
Mat. xii. 48, 49. ' My mother and my brethren are those which hear the
word of God, and do it,' Luke viii. 21. Those that hear the word, that
have the gracious effect of the word wrought in them by the Spirit, are
equal to my mother, and my brethren, and superior to any of my fleshly
relations, if they be without it. There is a necessity of regeneration upon
this account.
[2.] As there is no favour, so there is no union with God and Christ with-
out it. Man hath some kind of natural union with all things in the world ;
he hath being with all creatures, rational faculties with angels, sense with
animals, vegetation with plants ; he wants cnly that with God which would
beautify all the rest. And this can only be by partaking of the image of
God's holiness by a new birth. There must be a capability for this union
on man's part. A superior and inferior nature may be united together, but
never contrary natures. There must be some proportion between the sub-
42 chaenock's woeks. [John III. 3, 5.
jects to be united, which proportion consists in a commensuration of one
thing to another. What proportion is there between God and our souls ?
There can be none without a supernatural grace infusing a pure nature. As
we come out of the quarry of nature, rough and unpolished, we are not fit to
be cemented with the corner-stone in the heavenly building ; we must be first
smoothed and altered by grace.
First, How can things be united to one another which are already united
to their contraries ? Separation from one body must make way for union to an-
other. Naturally we are united to the devil as the head of the wicked world.
We are by nature his members. Our understandings and wills were united
with his in Adam, when Adam gave up his understanding and will to him ;
and ever since he ' works in the children of disobedience :' Eph. ii. 2, 'Who
now works in the children of disobedience,' mpyovvrog h lioTg. Working and
working in, as a united nature to him, and principle in him. It is necessary
this union should be broken before we can partake of the influence of another
head. The diabolical nature and principle, therefore, which we have got by
sin must be removed, and another nature, which is divine, put in the place
first (in order of nature), before we can be united to Christ, and enjoy the
benefits of union with him.
Secondly, How can things of a contrary nature be united together ? Can
fire and water be united, a good angel, and an impure devil ? can heaven
and hell ever meet friendly and compose one body ? We are united
to the first Adam by a likeness of nature ; how can we be united to the
second, without a likeness to him from a new principle ? We were united to
the first by a living soul ; we must be united to the other by a quickening
Spirit. We have nothing to do with the heavenly Adam, without bearing
an heavenly image, 1 Cor. xv. 48, 49. We are earthly as in the first Adam ;
we must be heavenly to be in the second, because his nature is so. If we
are his members, we must have the same nature which was communicated
to him by the Spirit of God, which is holiness. This nature must flow from
the same principle, otherwise it is not the same nature ; an old nature can-
not be joined to a new Adam. There must be one spirit in both ; as 1 Cor.
vi. 17, ' He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit ;' and if it were an union
barely of affections, as some would only make it, it is not conceivable how
it can be without a change of disposition. But since it is an union by in-
dwelling of the same Spirit in both (Rom. viii. 9, ' If any man hath not the
Spirit of Christ, he is none of his '), it is less intelligible, how it can be with-
out an assimilation of our nature to the nature of Christ. It can never be
supposed the Spirit should unite a pure head, and impure members. Such
an union would make our blessed Saviour like Nebuchadnezzar's image ; an
head of gold, arms of silver, and feet of clay. Shall we loathe to have nasty
things about us, and will the holy Jesus endure a loathesome putrefying soul
to be joined to him ?
Thirdly, How can anything be vitally united to another without life ? It
is a vital union, by virtue of which believers are called Christ (1 Cor. xi. 12,
' As all the members of that one body, being many, are one body ; so also is
Christ') ; and it is compared to the union of the members of a natural body,
Rom. xii. 4, 5. Members have not only life in their head, but in themselves,
because the soul, which is the life of the body, is not only in the head, but
in all the parts of the body, and exerciseth in every part its vital operations.
The Spirit therefore, which is the band of this union, communicates life to
every member wherein he resides, as well as in the head. What man would
endure a dead body to be joined to him, though it were the carcase of one he
never so dearly loved ? If a man were united to Christ, without regenera-
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 43
tion, Christ's body would be partly alive, partly dead, if any one member of it
had not a spiritual life. A dead body and a living head, a member of
Christ with a nature contrary to him, is an unconceivable paradox. Did
God ever design such a monstrous union for his Son ?
Upon these accounts doth result the necessity of regeneration ; without
it, no union with Christ.
(3.) There can be no justification without it. We are not justified by an
inherent righteousness ; yet we are not justified without it. We cannot be
justified by it, because it is not commensurate to the law by reason of its im-
perfection ; we cannot be justified without it, for it is not congruous to
the wisdom and holiness of God, to count a person righteous, who hath no-
thing of righteousness in him, and whose nature is as corrupt as the worst
of men. With what respect to God's honour, can it be expected that God
should pardon that man's sins, whose will is not changed, who still hath the
same habitualness in his will to commit sin. though he doth not at present
act it. It is very congruous in a moral way, that the person offending should
retract his sin, and return to his former affection. There is a distinction
between justification and regeneration, though they never are asunder.
Justification is relative; regeneration internally real. Union with Christ is
the ground of both ; Christ is the meritorious cause of both. The Father
pronounceth the one, the Spirit works the other ; it is the Father's sentence,
and the Spirit's work. The relative and the real change are both at the
same time : 1 Cor. vi. 7, ' But you are sanctified, but you are justified ;'
both go together. We are not justified before faith, because we are justified
by it, Rom. v. 1 ; arid faith is the vital principle whereby we live : Gal. ii.
20, ' The life which I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God.' It is
the root-grace, and contains the seeds of all other graces in it; it is habitu-
ally and seminally all other grace ; so that unless we be new born, no justi-
fication can be expected ; no justification can be evidenced. God never
pardons sin, but he subdues iniquity: Micah vii. 18, 19, 'Who is a God
like unto thee, that pardons iniquity ?' He will subdue our iniquities. Tbe
conquest cannot be made, while the nature, the root of the rebellion, remains.
When he turns his compassion to us, he will turn away our hearts from ini-
quity. If a man were justified before he were regenerate, then he was right-
eous before he was alive ; being • in Christ,' as free from condemnation, is
alway attended with a ' walking after the Spirit ;' and walking is not before
living, Rom. viii. 1. Pardon would be unprofitable, unless he that were
pardoned were made righteous inchoatively here, and had a right to, and
hope of, a perfect righteousness hereafter. If righteousness hereafter were
not imparted in this manner, it would be an argument a man were still under
the law, which saith, ' He that doth them shall live in them ' (which is im-
possible in a man that hath once sinned, though his sins are remitted). But
it is clear that righteousness is imparted, since there is no man in the world
whose sins are pardoned, but finds some principle in him whereby he is en-
abled to contest with sin more than before he was. Therefore do not deceive
yourselves ; there is no pardon without a righteous nature, though pardon
be not given for it.
(4.) There is no adoption without regeneration. We can no more be God's
sons, without spiritual regeneration, than we can be the sons and daughters
of men, without natural generation. Adoption is not a mere relation without
an inward form. The privilege, and the image of the sons of God, go both
together. A state of adoption is never without a separation from defilement :
2 Cor. vi. 17, 18, ' Come you out from among them, be you separate, and
will be a father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters.' The new
44 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
name in adoption is never given till the new creature be framed. * As many as
are led by the Spirit, they are the sons of God,' Rom. viii. 14, gutoi, those very
persons ; that is the signal mark, that they are led by the Spirit; therefore first
enlivened by the Spirit. A child-like relation is never without a child-like
nature. The same method God observes in declaring the members his sons,
as he did in declaring the head his Son, which was ' according to the Spirit of
holiness, by the resurrection from the dead,' Rom. i. 4. So he declares be-
lievers to be bis sons, by giving them a spirit of holiness, and by a resur-
rection from sin, and spiritual death. The devils may as well be adopted
sons of God, as we, without a change of nature. To be the sons of the
living God, was the great promise of the gospel prophesied of: Hos. i. 10,
' Ye are the sons of the living God.' How well will it suit, a living God
and a dead son ? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Our
Saviour's argument from* the immortality of the soul will evidence not only
a resurrection, but a necessity of spiritual life. What advantage is there in
being sons of the living God, if we had no more life in us than his greatest
enemies ? Regeneration, as a physical act, gives us a likeness to God in our
nature. Adoption, as a legal act, gives us a right to an inheritance ; both
the great intendments of the gospel, both accompanying one another. No
sonship without a new nature.
(5). There is no acceptation of our services without it. We are not fit to
perform any duty without it, and God will never accept any duty from us
without it. In the 1st of Ephesians, 1. election, 2. regeneration, expressed
by being holy, 3. adoption, 4. acceptation, are linked together : ver. 4-6, ' He
hath chosen us that we should be holy, and without blame before him in
love, having predestinated us to the adoption of children ;' after follows grace
' wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.' Our acceptation is only
upon the account of Christ ; but the acceptability is upon the account of
grace. Faith makes our persons and our duties acceptable, and Christ
makes them both accepted. Acceptability ariseth from grace, as damnability
ariseth from sin. God damns none, unless they be damnable ; neither doth
God accept any in Christ, unless they be acceptable.! The papists that
plead for merit, acknowledge nothing of it before grace, but after grace, be-
cause then the services have a greater proportion to God, from the dignity of
the person, they being acts of God's children, and wrought by his Spirit.
God can love nothing but himself, and what he finds of himself in the crea-
ture. All services, without something of God's image and Spirit in them, are
nothing. As the product of a million of cyphers, though you still add to
them, signifies nothing ; but add one figure, an unit, the Spirit, grace, it will
make the product to be many millions, of high account with God. All the
significancy depends upon the figure, which, if absent, the rest would be no-
thing. All moral perfections, without a new nature, are but cyphers in God's
account: Heb. xi. 6, ' Without faith it is impossible to please God.' Grace
is only a good work : Philip, i. 6, ' He which hath begun a good work in you,
■will perform it till the da}' of Christ ;' intimating that their morality and their
natural wisdom, before their regeneration, were not good works in the sight
of God. They were good in their kind ; as a crab may be said to be a
good crab, but not a good pippin. It is not good, unless it be fruit brought
forth in Christ ; neither is it ordained as good to the day of Christ, to appear
glorious at the time of his triumph. God looks into our services, whether
the Spirit frames them, and Christ presents them ; all that we do must go
through their hands before they can reach God's heart. Acceptation can
never be without a renewed nature. The services of the flesh cannot please
* Qu. 'for'? — Ed. f Lessius de Perfect. Divin. p. 56.
John III. 3, 5. J the necessity of regeneration. 45
God : Rom. viii. 8, ' They that are in the flesh cannot please God.' Their
persons cannot, therefore their actions cannot, because they are the products
of a nature at variance with him, a nature that is not, nor cannot be sub-
ject to his law ; so that God must be displeased with his own spiritual law ;
yea, with his own holy nature, and change his judgment, and change his
nature, before he can be pleased with fleshly services, for at the best, thoy
are but refined brutishness. The image of the devil can never be grateful to
God. Services flowing from nature, may seem in the outward form of them,
to be as acceptable as the duties of a good man ; but considering what a
dunghill of filthiness the heart is, from whence they proceed, they cannot be
so. Good water is sweetest, and bad water corruptest, nearest the spring or
fountain ; the streams may lose some of their corruption in their passage.
A gracious man's duties are most pleasant to God nearest the heart ; a
natural man's services are most distasteful nearest the spring. When the
heart is a good treasure, what comes from it is regarded as a rich gift, be-
cause it comes from a valuable treasure, Luke vi. 45 ; hence it is that a less
work, coming from a pure and holy principle in a renewed man, is more ac-
ceptable to God, than a greater work (in respect of the external glorification
of him in the good of mankind), coming from an impure principle in a natural
man ; as a cup of cold water given to a disciple is more valuable than the
gift of a prince from another principle. In the one, God sees a conformity
of affection with his holiness ; in the other, only a conformity with his pro-
vidence. One intends God's glory, and the other only acts it, proposing
some other end to himself; and we use to value gifts, rather by the affec-
tion of the friend, than the quantity of the gift. Well then, consider it ;
without a new nature, all our services, though they should amount to many
millions in number, have no intrinsic value in them with God. For where
the nature is displeasing, the actions flowing from that nature can never
please him : ' He that turns away his ear from hearing the law,' that is, from
a spiritual obedience to the law, ' even his prayer is an abomination,' Prov.
xxviii. 9 ; it is formed by a noisome soul.
(6.) There is no communion with God without a renewed soul. God is
uncapable on his part, with the honour of his law and holiness, to have com-
munion with such a creature. Man is uncapable on his part, because of the
aversion rooted in his nature. What way can there be to bring God and man
together without this change of nature ? what communion can there be be-
tween a living God and a dead heart ? God loathes sin, man loves it ; God
loves holiness, man loathes it. How can these contrary affections meet to-
gether in an amicable friendship ? what communion with so much disagree-
ment in affections ? In all friendship there must be similitude of disposition.
Justification cannot bring us into communion with God without regeneration ;
it may free us from punishment, discharge our sins, but not prepare us for
a converse, wherein our chief happiness lies. There must be some agreement
before there can be a communion. Beasts and men agree not in a life of
reason, and therefore cannot converse together. God and man agree not in
a life of holiness, and therefore can have no communion together. We are
by sin alienated from the life of God, and therefore from his fellowship,
Eph. iv. 18 ; we must have his life restored to us before we can be instated
in communion with him.
[1.] God can have no pleasure in it. God took a delight in the creation,
and did rejoice in his work. Sin despoiled God of his rest. It can give God
no content, no satisfaction ; for to be in the flesh, is to be in that nature which
was derived from Adam, which brought the displeasure of God upon all man-
kind. Regeneration by the Spirit restores the creature to such a state
46 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
wherein God may take pleasure in him, and strips him by degrees of that
sin which spoiled his delight in the work of his hands ; as it grows, com-
munion is enlarged. God made man at first after his own image, that he
might have communion with him. Since the loss of that, what fitness can
there be for communion, till the restoration of that which God thought fit
for his delight ? Suppose that some one work of a natural man may be good
and pleasing to God, it will not argue a communion of God with the person :
he may be pleased with the work, but not with the man ; for all the good-
ness he hath being in the act, and the act being transient, when that is past,
his goodness is as the morning dew, vanished. He cannot be the object of
God's delight, because he hath no habitual goodness in him. If a man be
abominable and filthy naturally, he cannot have a converse with God with-
out a nature suitable to God, and a nature so animated, as that God may
put some trust in it, and not be at uncertainty : Job xv. 14-16, * What is
man, that he should be clean ; he which is born of a woman, that he should
be righteous ? Behold, he puts no trust in his saints,' &c. No man is clean,
but those that delight in sin are much more abominable, that ' drink up
iniquity like water.' Now God being infinitely holy, can have no com-
munion with that which he doth abominate ; and he cannot have a fixed and
a delightful communion with that which he cannot confide in. It must be
therefore such a nature as is produced and preserved by his own Spirit.
If the heavens are not clean in his sight, we must have a nature purer and
cleaner than the heavens, before God can delightfully behold us, and pleas-
ingly converse with us.
[2. J As God can have no pleasure in it, so man is contrary to it. Man,
as he is by corruption, is at variance with God, and cannot but be at vari-
ance with him. An uncircumcised heart will not love God, or at least, will
not pay him such a proportion of love, and love of such a quality, as is due
to him ; for if the end of the circumcision of the heart be to love the Lord
with all our hearts, as Deut. xxx. 6, ' And the Lord thy God will circumcise
thy heart, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,' then it will neces-
sarily infer, that he whose heart is not circumcised, doth not love God with
all his heart. Holiness and iniquity are so contrary, that no agreement can
be made between them. God must deny his nature before he can deny his
hatred of sin, and man must be stripped of his' nature before he can leave his
affection to sin. It is equally impossible for wickedness to love holiness, and
for purity to love pollution. There can be no fellowship with God, whilst we
walk in darkness, and he is light, 1 John i. 6, 7.
[3.] Nay, thirdly, man naturally resists all means for it. It is the Spirit
only which is the bond of union, and consequently the cause of communion.
The Spirit can only bring God and us together. Walking in the Spirit hin-
ders us from fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, which make us uncapable of
communion : Gal. v. 16, « Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfil the
lusts of the flesh.' But every man by nature (as well as the Jews) ' resists
the Holy Ghost,' Acts vii. 51. And while this resistance of the great medium
of it remains, this communion can never be. This resistance, therefore,
must be removed, and there must be a divine stamp and impression upon
our very nature, to make it pliable. You see more and more the necessity
of regeneration.
(7.) As there is no communion with God without it, so no communica-
tions of Christ to our souls can be relished and improved without it. All
the communications of Christ relish of that fulness of grace which was in his
person, and therefore cannot be relished by any principle but that of the
same nature. Whenever Jesus Christ comes to bless us with the great
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 47
blessings of his purchase, he turns away our hearts from iniquity, Acts
iii. 26.
[1.] Ordinances cannot be improved. The word hath no place in them,
John viii. 37. There is no footing naturally for any divine and spiritual
truth. The nature of the soil must be changed before this heavenly plant
will thrive. Plants grow not upon stones, nor this heavenly plant in a stony
heart. The vine and the weed draw the same moisture of the eartb, wbich
in the vine is transmuted, by tbe nature of the plant, into a nobler substance
than that in the weed. The new nature of a good man turns the juice of
the word into a nobler spirit in him ; and according as the nature of a good
man is enriched with grace, the more doth he concoct the word, and improve
it, to the bringing forth fruit, and fruit of a diviner nature than another.
The juice it affords to all is the same, but the nature of the creature turns
it in the concoction. Nature must be changed then, to make any profitable
improvement of the word and other institutions. A stone receives the water
upon it, not into it ; it falls off, or dries up as soon as ever it falls : but a
new heart, a heart of flesh, sucks in the dew of the word, and grows thereby
The new birth and nature makes us suck in the milk, and grow thereby
1 Peter ii. 2.
[2.] There can be no communication of comfort. The Spirit comforts by
exciting grace, and by discovering grace, not by flashes and enthusiasms.
What comfort can there be when grace, the foundation, is wanting ? Can
the Holy Ghost ever speak a lie, and give any man comfort, and tell him he
is a child of God, when he hath the nature of the devil, so contrary to him ?
This were to witness not with our spirits, but against the frame and habit of
them, which is not the Spirit's work, Rom. viii. 16. Jesus Christ will not
trifle away his comforts upon such as have no conformity to him. This were
to put a jewel in a swine's snout, a crown upon a beast's head. Those that
are not heirs by a new nature to heaven, cannot claim any title to the first-
fruits and clusters of it, the comforts of the gospel. As there is a necessity
of a likeness to Christ, to make us capable of communications from him in
a state of glory, so it is as certainly necessary to the lower degrees of it in
this world. Vessels of wrath must be changed into vessels of honour before
they are capable of being filled with spiritual comforts. Our blessed Saviour
keeps his choicest flowers and richest beams for his dressed garden, not for
the wild desert.
(8.) We cannot be in covenant without it. This should have been first,
as the foundation of all. Had not Adam had an habitual righteousness in
his nature, he had not been a fit person for God to have entered into cove-
nant with. There must therefore be a restored righteousness, that we may
come into the bond of the new covenant for eternal life. The very terms of
it are, a new heart, a heart of flesh, a new spirit, the law written in the
heart. Without this new nature, we cannot depend on him by faith, which
is the condition of the covenant. For we cannot confide in him to whom
we have an enmity, and of whom we have a jealousy. We cannot have God
to be our God unless we be his people, have the nature and disposition of
his people, turn to him, act towards him as our God ; whereas in our first
defection we made the devil our God. God requires righteousness still to
our being in covenant, but dispenseth with the strictness of the first cove-
nant, and gives our Saviour a power to that end, in committing all judgment
to the Son. As the covenant is spiritual, so there must be a spiritual life
to answer the terms of it. Without it, we cannot walk in the way wherein
we engage by covenant to walk, neither can we have any right to the pro-
mises and benefits of the covenant. Doth God promise to be our God ? It
48 charnock's works. [John III. 8, 5.
is upon the condition we be his people. Doth he promise never to leave us
nor forsake us ? It is upon condition we continue not in our original apos-
tasy. Doth he promise to be present with us ? It is more than his holiness
will endure, while we continue in our filthy nature.
2. The second general. As regeneration is necessary to a gospel state,
so it is necessary to a state of glory. It seems to be typified by the strength
and freshness of the Israelites when they entered into Canaan.* Not a
decrepit and infirm person set foot in the promised land : none of those that
came out of Egypt with an Egyptian nature, and desires for the garlick and
onions thereof, with a suffering their old bondage, but dropped their carcasses
in the wilderness ; only the two spies, who had encouraged them against the
seeming difficulties. None that retain only the old man, born in the house
of bondage, but only a new regenerate creature, shall enter into the heavenly
Canaan. Heaven is the inheritance of the sanctified, not of the filthy :
Acts xxvi. 18, ' That they may receive an inheritance among them which are
sanctified, through faith that is in me.' So our Saviour himself phraseth it
in his discourse to Paul upon his conversion by faith, the great renewing
principle. Upon Adam's expulsion from paradise, a flaming sword was set
to stop his re-entry into that place of happiness. As Adam, in his forlorn
state, could not possess it, we also, by what we have received from Adam,
cannot expect a greater privilege than our root. Had Adam retained the
righteousness of his nature, he had been fit for that place, and that place for
him ; but poor decrepit Adam could have no leave to enter. The priest
under the law could not enter into the sanctuary till he were purified, nor
the people into tbe congregation ; neither can any man have access into the
holy of holies till that be consecrated for him by the blood of Jesus, and he
sprinkled by the same blood for it, Heb. x. 19, 22. It is by the blood of
Jesus sprinkled upon our hearts that we enter into the holiest by a way
which he hath consecrated ; ' for there shall in nowise enter into it anything
that defileth, neither whatsoever works abomination or a lie,' Rev. xxi. ] 7,
as every unclean thing was prohibited entrance into the temple. Whosoever
shall enter into the rest of God, must cease from his own works of darkness
and corruption, as God did from his works of creation, Heb. iv. 10. If man
fell the sixth day, the day of his creation, the rest of God in his lower works was
disturbed by the entrance of sin upon them, as well as it had been disturbed by
the sin of the angels in heaven. God rested from his works of creation, but not
in them, but in Christ, the covenant of redemption, and restoration by him.
We must therefore cease from our own works, to enter into his rest. This
entrance we cannot have in an unbelieving, unregenerate state, because by
unbelief we approve not of that for our rest, wherein God settled his own
repose ; and by unregeneracy we oppose the great intendment of it, the
restoration of the creature to be a fit object for God's rest and complacency.
It is necessary to a state of glory.
(1.) Not that there is a natural connection between a regenerate state and
glory, that in its own nature gives a right to heaven, but a gracious connec-
tion by the will of God.f Though it be morally impossible in nature that a
man can have communion with God without a renewed state, yet when he
hath a new nature, it is not absolutely necessary that God should love him
so intensely' as to give him an eternal reward, but conditionally necessary,
upon the account of the covenant wherein God hath so promised. Though
it be absolutely unavoidable to God to love goodness (for, because he is per-
fectly good, he cannot hate it), yet it is not absolutely necessary he should
* Fuller Pisgah, book \v. chap, xxxvi. 9, p. 45.
t Suarez de grat., lib. 7, c. 1, numer. 12.
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of kegenebation. 49
instate it in so unconceivable a glory. A new nature, indeed, makes a man
capable of eternal glory, without which it is not possible for him to have it;
but it gives him not a right to it, nor instates him in it in its own nature,
but by the gracious indulgence of God. For, as I have said before, in the
general foundation of this doctrine, that God may give grace without glory,
is intelligible ; but how he can admit a man to glory without grace is uncon-
ceivable. The very having of grace is a reward in itself. It is an ennobling
of our nature, a setting us in our right station (the purity of the body is a
pleasure, though a man hath no hopes upon it to be preferred to a better
condition), which may appear to us upon the banishment of Adam from
paradise. Had there been any natural connection, he had not been dispos-
sessed, supposing him to have faith infused into him at the time of the pro-
mulgation of the promise ; or if afterwards, he would have had a re-entry,
had there been a natural connection between a new nature and a state of
glory.
(2.) Nor is there any meritorious connection between a regenerate state
and glory, because there is no exact proportion between a new nature and
eternal glory. The papists say, that before habitual grace a man cannot
merit, but after it is infused by the Spirit of God into the soul, a merit doth
result from the dignity of the person brought into a state of grace. No such
thing. Glory indeed is merited, but the merit results, not from the new
nature, but from the new head, our Lord Jesus Christ. That righteousness
whereby God is engaged to give us a crown of glory for a garland of grace,
is not a commutative justice ; as if grace were of equal value to glory, and
heaven no more than a due compensation : 2 Tim. iv. 8, ' There is laid up
for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall
give me at that day.' But it is the veracity and faithfulness of God which
is meant by righteousness there, and otherwhere in Scripture. It is a justice
due to the promise, not to the nature of the grace, and due to the covenant
made with Christ, which was, that he should have a seed to serve him ;
upon which compact our Saviour so peremptorily demands his people's being
with him in glory : John xvii. 24, ' Father, I will that they also whom thou
hast given me be with me where I am.' As much as to say, Father, I will
not remit a tittle of that article, which is part of the covenant between thee
and me ; I will have that performed to the full. And it is observable,
though he mentions their faith, and their keeping his word, in other parts
of the chapter, as arguments for God to take notice of them, and preserve
them, yet his desire of the state of glory he founds upon his will, which must
be grounded upon some antecedent agreement, whereby he had a right to
plead for it. So that it is from the faithfulness of God to his promise, and
the full merit of Christ, and thereupon his fixed resolution to have it per-
formed, not from any meritorious dignity in the new nature itself. Grace
only fits for glory, but doth not merit it.
(3.) It is necessary by a fixed determination of God. Supposing that
God could in his own nature, congruously admit of an unregenerate dead
creature to a fruition of him in heaven; yet since he hath decreed otherwise,
and appointed other methods, God is now by his own free resolution under
an immutable necessity not to admit him. As God having by a determinate
counsel ordained the death of Christ as the medium to redemption, could
not in our apprehensions afterwards appoint another way, because his counsel
had pitched, not only upon the redemption of man, as the end, but the
death of Christ as the means ; and had there been a change, it must either
be in the end or in the means. If in the end, and he would not have nun
50 charnock's works. [John III. 8, 5.
redeemed, there had been an alteration in his love and kindness ; if in the
means, it must be either a worse or a better means ; if a worse, and not so
fit to effect redemption, it had still implied a change in his kindness ; if a
better means, it would argue a defect of wisdom in his first choice, that he
did not foresee the best. By the like counsel and wisdom he hath settled
this of regeneration as the way to glory : ' Without holiness no man shall
6ee the Lord,' Heb. xii. 14. Without a fixed and permanent holiness,
which must be an holiness of nature, not only of action. Supposing any
holiness in an action, without a new nature, it is yet but a transient holiness,
and though it may make the action acceptable to God, yet it can never make
the person that did it acceptable to him.
(4.) Regeneration is necessary in a way of aptitude and fitness for this
state. A fitness in both subjects is necessary to the enjoyment of one
another. Since therefore our happiness consists in an eternal fruition of
God, and that naturally we are a mass and dunghill of putrefied corruption,
there must be such a change as to make an agreement with that God whom
to enjoy is our happiness ; for all aptitude is a certain connection of the
two terms whereby they may touch and receive each other. We cannot
enjoy God in his ordinances without an holy nature, much less in heaven.
As we are under the condemnation of the law by reason of our guilt, so we
are under an unfitness for heaven by reason of our filth. We have a remote
natural capacity for it, as we are creatures endued with rational faculties.
But we have a moral unfitness, while we want a divine impression to make
us suitable to it. Justification and adoption give us a right to the inherit-
ance, but regeneration gives us a ' meetness to be partakers of the inheritance
of the saints in light,' Col. i. 12. We are not meet for it while we are
unholy, and while we are darkness, because it is an inheritance of saints,
and an inheritance in light. As the body cannot be made glorious without
a resurrection from a natural death, so neither can the soul, which is
immortal, be made glorious without a resurrection from a spiritual death.
Our corruptible bodies, 1 Cor. xv. 50, cannot possess an incorruptible king-
dom unless made like to the glorious body of Christ, much less our souls,
which are the chief subjects of communion with him in heaven. A depraved
soul is as much unfit for a purified heaven as a corruptible body is for an
incorruptible glory. Our Saviour ascended not into heaven to take posses-
sion of his glory till after his resurrection from death, neither can we enter
into heaven till a resurrection from sin. As Jesus Christ became like unto
us, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest for us, Heb. ii. 17,
' It behoved him to be made like unto his brethren ; ' so it behoves us to be
made like unto him, that we may be fit offerings in the hand of our high
priest, to present to God, for him to take pleasure in. The father of the
prodigal forgave him at the first meeting after his return, but before he
admitted him into the pleasure of his house he took away his garments
that smelt of draff, and put other robes upon him. God is said there-
fore ' to work us to this thing,' xungyd^ifdai, polish, that we may be fit
to be clothed upon with our heavenly house, 2 Cor. v. 5. If God be
happy in his nature, man cannot be happy in a nature contrary to him ;
for we can never expect to enjoy a felicity in such a nature, which if God
himself had, he could never be happy in himself. It is holiness in God
which fits him to fill heaven and earth with the beams of his glory, and it
is an holy nature in us, which makes us fit to receive him. As without
holiness God could not be glorious in himself : Isa. vi. 3, ' Holy, holy, is
the Lord of hosts : the whole earth is full of his glory ; ' so without holiness
in our natures we could not be glorious with God. We are no more fit for
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 51
heaven in a state of nature than a piece of putrefied flesh is fit to become a
star. In heaven there are duties to be done, and privileges to be enjoyed.
The work cannot be done, the reward cannot be received, without a new
nature. The glorifying God, and enjoying him, is the glory of heaven. How
can we do the one or receive the other without the change of our affections ?
Can God have a voluntary glory from his enemy, or can his enemy delight
in the enjoyment of him ?
[l.J Regeneration and the new nature is necessary to the duty of heaven.
Eternity cannot free us from duty. Some duties are essential to the relation
of a creature; some result only from this or that state of the creature. The
alteration in the state changeth the duty proper to that state ; but no place,
no state, can exempt a creature from those duties which are essential to him
as a creature. It is impossible to conceive any relation, without some new
debt or service. From every change in relations in the world there doth
arise some new duty which was not incumbent upon a man before. The
relation which a regenerate man hath to God here is the same which it is in
heaven, but it is manifest there in an higher degree, and a choicer fruition.
Thence therefore will arise, though not any new duty that we can conceive,
yet fresher obligations to those services which are proper for that place.
Without a change of nature it is not possible for any man (were he admitted
thither) to perform the duties of heaven. Holy work is troublesome to a
natural man here ; and the more heavenly it was in itself, the more disgust-
ful to corrupt nature. What was in a little measure holy was a drudgery
upon earth ; and what is in a greater measure holy cannot be a satisfaction
in heaven to an old frame. There are some natural motives to some duties
here, and our indigency takes part with them (as in that of prayer) ; but
those of a more elevated strain, as love, and praise, and admirations of God,
our natures are more averse to. What duty can be performed without a will ?
It is concluded by most, that the happiness of heaven consists as much, if not
more, in the frame of the will, than in that of the understanding. If the
will be not new framed, what capacity is there to perform the service requi-
site to that happy state ? We must first be made just here before we can
be made perfect above : Heb. xii. 23, ' Spirits of just men made perfect.'
Just by an imputed righteousness, holy by an inherent righteousness, before
they were transplanted to a state of perfection. Without a perfect frame
none can perform the choice duties of heaven, and without righteousness
here, we cannot be made perfect there.
Quest. What are the duties of heaven, that cannot be performed without a
new nature ?
Ans. First. Attendance on God. Some kind of service which we cannot
understand in the state here below. The angels stand before God, and wait
his commands ; there is a pleasure of God which they do : Ps. ciii. 21, ' Ye
ministers of his that do his pleasure.' There is a will of God done in heaven,
as well as upon earth. There are acts of adoration performed by them ;
they cover their faces, Isa. vi. ; they are commanded to worship the Lord
Christ, Heb. i. 6. Their holiness fits them for their attendance ; therefore
called ' the holy angels.' It is against the nature of devils to perform such
acts as those which the holiness of angels fits them for. Glorified souls
shall be as the angels of God in heaven : Mat. xxii. 30, ' But are as the
angels of God in heaven.' Equal to angels in their state, as they are angels
in heaven ; equal to angels in their work, as they are angels of God, attend-
ing on God, and ministering unto him, Dan. vii. 10 ; though what that
ministry shall be is not easily known in the extent of it. Is it usual in this
world to take up a person from under an hedge, and bring him to an imme-
52 chaknock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
diate attendance on a prince, without cleansing him, and begetting other
dispositions and behaviour in him by some choice education ? God picks
some out for an immediate attendance on him in heaven ; but he sends his
Spirit to be their tutor, to breed them up, and grace their deformed souls
with beautiful features, and their ulcerous and cancerous spirits, with a sound
complexion, that they may be meet to stand before him. When God calls
any to do him service in a particular station in the word, he gives them an-
other heart ; so he did to Saul for the kingdom, 1 Sam. x. 9. Is there not
much more necessity of it for an immediate service of God in heaven ? A
malefactor, by pardon, is in a capacity to come into the presence of a prince,
and serve him at his table ; but he is not in a fitness till his noisome gar-
ments, full of his prison vermin, be taken off. Can one that is neither par-
doned nor purified, one with the guilt of rebellion upon him, and a nature
of rebellion in him, be fit to stand before God ?
Secondly, Contemplation of God is a work in heaven. There shall be a
perfect knowledge ; therefore a delightful speculation. The angels behold
his face, Mat. xviii. 10, and that alway. The saints shall see him as he is,
1 John iii. 2. It is not a stupid sight, but a gazing upon the face of this sun,
with a refined and ravishing delight. For this work there must be,
First, A change of judgment. The eye must be restored. It is as pos-
sible for a blind eye to behold the sun, or a blear eye to stare in the face of
it, without watering, as for a blind understanding to behold God ; for it is
not a being in the place of heaven, but having a faculty disposed, which doth
elevate us to the knowledge of him. Things that are corporal cannot know
things that are spiritual. We cannot in this sensitive body view the face of
an angel, and understand his nature ; much less with a body of a total death,
see the face of God, which is above all created beings, more than any spi-
ritual creature is above sense. ' In heaven the saints shall know him, as
they are known of him,' 1 Cor. xiii. 12, perfectly, as far as the capacity of
a creature can extend. Has God any scales upon his eyes ? Doth he not
know perfectly what he knows ? So shall the glorified saints. But if a
natural man were admitted into heaven, what prospect could he have with a
blind understanding ? As men under the gospel administrations cannot see
the kingdom of God, even in the midst of it, without a new birth, so neither
*ould they see the kingdom of God in the midst of heaven itself without a
new frame ; if not see it, much less enjoy it.
Secondly, There must be a change of will. Men like not to retain God
in their knowledge, when he is represented to them in the dark, yet pleasant
glass of nature, Rom. i. 28. The apostle there speaks it of the heathens,
and the wisest of them, their philosophers, who, though pleased with the
contemplation of nature, yet were not pleased with the contemplation of God
in nature ; much less will they like him, when he discovers himself clothed
with the light of holiness as a garment. Tbat vicious eye, which is too
weak to behold with any delight the image of the sun in a glass, or a pail
of water, will be much more too weak to gaze upon it in its brightness in
the firmament. If there be no delight to know God here, what pleasure,
what fitness can there be in the same frame to contemplate him above '?
Let me ask you, Have you any pleasure in the study of God ? What is the'
reason, then, that in your retirements, when you have nothing to do, your
thoughts are no more upon him ? What is the reason that if any motion
doth offer to advise you to fix your thoughts upon him, you so soon shift it
off as a troublesome companion, and some slight jolly thought is admitted
with gladness into those embraces which the other courted ? Can such a
temper be fit for heaven, where nothing but thoughts of God run through
John III. 3, 5. J the necessity of regeneration. 53
the veins of glorified souls ? If the discovery of God's glory in the gospel
is accounted no better than folly by natural men, and therefore not received,
1 Cor. ii. 14, the manifestation of it above would meet with no better valua-
tion of it, unless the temper both of judgment and will were changed. They
are spiritually to be discerned here, and no less spiritually to be discerned
above. The weak and waterish eye must be cured by some powerful me-
dicine before it can stare upon the light of the sun, or delight itself in its
glory.
Thirdly, Love is a duty in heaven. Love is a grace that shoots the gulf
with us, and attends us not only to the suburbs, but into the very heart of
heaven, when other graces conduct us only to the gates, and then take their leave
of us, as having no business there. ' Charity never faileth,' 1 Cor. xiii. 8. And,
indeed, it is so essentially our duty in every place, that it is concluded that God
cannot free us from the obligation of it, whilst we remain his creatures ; be-
cause God being infinitely good, and therefore infinitely amiable and infi-
nitely gracious to them, it would seem unrighteous, and inconsistent with
supreme goodness, to forbid the creature an affection to that which is infi-
nitely excellent, and a gratitude to its benefactor which can be paid only in
love. Now, though we are bound to love God in the highest degree, yet
every new mercy adds a fresh obligation to return our affection to him. So
when we shall have the clearest beams of God's love darting upon us from
heaven, we shall also have higher obligations to love him, both for his excel-
lency, which shall be more visible, and his love, which shall be more sen-
sible. Now, can the heart of a natural man cling about God ? Can it forget
its father's house, and be wholly taken up with the Creator's excellency ?
Can he that loved pleasures more than God in the world, 2 Tim. iii. 4, love
God more than pleasures in heaven, without an alteration of his soul ? No.
The heart must be first circumcised by God, before we can love God with all
our heart, Deut. xxx. 6. If we will not be subject to the law of God here,
how can we be subject to the love of God, which is the law of heaven ? How
can we cleave to God without love, or relish him without delight ? No man
in a natural estate could stay in heaven, because he doth not love the per-
son whose presence only makes it heaven. How can there be a conformity
to God in affection, without a conformity to his holiness ? A choiceness of
love, with a perverseness of will ; a supremacy of delight, without a recti-
tude of heart ; a love of God, without a loathing of sin ; a fervency of love,
with a violence of lust : all these are contradictions. He that hath a hatred
of God, cannot perform the main duty of heaven ; and therefore what should
he do there ?
Fourthly, Praise is a service in heaven. If a pure angel be not sufficient
for so elevated a duty, how unfit then is a drossy soul ? What is the angels'
note, ' Holy, holy, holy, Lord God,' Isa. vi. 3, can never be a natural man's ;
for how can he possibly praise that which he hates ? What is the note of
glorified saints ? It is Hallelujah, Rev. xix. 1, ' Salvation, and glory, and
honour, and power unto the Lord our God.' And again they said, Hallelu-
jah, ver. 3. ' Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth,' ver. 6.
Nothing but hallelujah four times, ver. 1, 3, 4, 6. How can that heart
frame an hallelujah, that is stuffed with jealousies of him ? How can he
exalt the honour of God, who was always pleased with the violations of it ?
How can he rejoice at the Lord's reigning, that would not have one lust sub-
dued by his power ? How can a natural man, as natural, ever be wound up
to a height fit for such strains, since ' out of the abundance of the heart, the
mouth speaks' ? The tongue can never be framed to praise while the heart
is evil. Our blessed Saviour must be glorified in us, before he can be glo-
54 chaenock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
rifled by us, 2 Thes. i. 10, 12. If a man in a mere natural state be unfit
for this heavenly work, how unfit are then their tongues to sound his praise,
which are always filled with reproaches of God ? And how can their ears
endure to hear it from others, which were never offended with the blasphe-
mies of him ? They could never rejoice in this heavenly concert were they
admitted. Nay, their enmity to the work would not permit their stay. The
smoke of pure incense is fitter rather to drive a swine out of the room than
to invite his continuance.
[2.] The new birth is necessary, as to the duty, so to the reward of heaven.
As the reward is exceeding glorious, the preparation thereto must be exceed-
ing gracious. The rewards of heaven are something incorporated with us,
inlaid in the very frame of our souls, and cannot be conceived enjoyable
without a change in the nature of the subject. Man was first formed before
he was brought into the garden of Eden, or pleasure : Gen. ii. 8, There he
' put the man whom he had formed.' Man must be new-formed before he
be brought into that place, which is the antitype of Eden, the place of eternal
and spiritual pleasure. A natural man can no more relish the rewards of
heaven, than a dead carcase can esteem a crown and a purple robe ; or be de-
lighted with the true pleasure of heaven, than a swine, that loves to wallow
in the mire, can be delighted with a bed of roses. A disorder in nature is a
prohibition to all happiness belonging to that nature ; a distempered body,
under the fury of a disease, can find no delight in the pleasures of the
healthful ; a wicked man, with a troubled and foaming sea of sin and lust
in his mind, Isa. lvii. 20, would find no more rest in heaven than a man
with his disjointed members upon a rack can in the beauty of a picture.
We must be spiritually-minded before we can have either life or peace, Kom.
viii. 6. Righteousness in the soul is the necessary qualification for the
peace and joy in the kingdom of God : Rom. xiv. 17, ' The kingdom of God
is not meat and drink ; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy
Ghost.' While malice remains in the devil's nature, were he admitted into
heaven he would receive a torment instead of a content. A wicked man
would meet with hell in the midst of heaven as long as he carries his own
rack within him, boiling and raging lusts in his heart, which can receive no
contentment without objects suitable to them, let the place be what it will.
Heaven, indeed, is not only a place, but a nature ; and it is a contradiction
to think that any can be happy with a nature contrary to the very essence
of happiness.
The pleasure and reward of heaven is,
First, A perfect likeness to God and Christ. This is the great privilege
of heaven, which the apostle, in the midst of his ignorance of other particu-
lars, resolves upon as certain as that which results from regeneration, and
being the sons of God, and is the full preparation for the beatific vision :
1 John iii. 2, ' Now we are the sons of God ; and it doth not yet appear
what we shall be : but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like
him ; for we shall see him as he is.' He seems to intimate this, that we
can never be like him when he doth appear, unless we be now, while we
are here, the sons of God, nor ever be admitted to a sight of him. As
Christ presented himself without spot to God, when he laid the foundation
of our redemption, so he presents his people ' without blemish to God,' when
he lays the top-stone of it in our glorification, Eph. v. 27. Now as we can-
not be like to Christ in our walk here without a new birth, neither can we
without it be like to Christ in glory hereafter. It is not the place makes us
like to God, but there must be a likeness to God to make the place pleasant
to us. When once the angels had corrupted their nature, the short stay they
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 55
made in heaven did neither please them nor reform them. And when Satan
appeared before God, among the angels, Jobi. 6, neither God's presence nor
his speaking to him did anywise better him ; he came a devil, and he
went away so, without any pleasure in the place or presence, but by the
permission of God, to wreak his malice on holy Job. An uulikeness to God
is the misery of the creature. It is therefore impossible, whilst the soul
remains in that state, that it can arrive at blessedness, because it is a con-
tradiction to think a felicity can be enjoyed in a contrariety to and separation
from the fountain of it : Ps. lxxiii. 27, ' Lo, they that are far from thee
shall perish.' It is by faith, beholding the glory of the Lord in the glass of
the gospel here, that we must be 'transformed into his image,' before we
can be ' changed into his glory,' 2 Cor. iv. 18. And we cannot be like God
by holy actions only, though we had performed as many of them as all the
holy men in the world ever did as to the matter of them, abstracted from
the principle and end ; and tne reason is, because God is not only holy in
his actions, but holy in his nature ; and, therefore, we must not only have
actions materially good, but a holy nature suitable to the holiness of God,
otherwise we neither are, nor never can, be like him.
Secondly, The fruition of God is a privilege of heaven, which necessarily
follows this likeness. God is the eternal portion of glorified souls, upon
which they live. He is the strength of their hearts, Ps. lxxiii. 25, 26.
There is none but God in heaven is the chief object of their love and de-
light. The presence of God makes ' the fulness of joy,' Ps. xvi. 11. His
favour and the light of his glorious countenance constitutes heaven and hap-
piness ; not the place, but the countenance. God's frown kindles hell, and
his smile renders any place an heaven. Now an old nature cannot have a
good look from God ; for since he is infinitely holy, he must hate unholi-
ness ; infinitely true, he must hate falsity. As it is impossible a man can
love truth and falsity, righteousness and unrighteousness, as such, at one
and the same time, in an intense degree, therefore an impure nature cannot
be happy unless God be mutable. God cannot smile on the old Adam un-
less he hate himself. What satisfaction can such an one possibly have in
God's presence ? How can he savour the society of God that never loved
it ? Do we naturally love any warm mention of God ? Have we not a
stony deadness to any heavenly motion that falls upon us ? A mighty
quickness to receive sinful motions in that which we love ? Do not our
countenances fall, and our delight take wings to itself and fly away, at any
lively appearance of God ? If we have such an enmity to his law, which is
but a transcript of his holiness, much greater must our enmity be to the
original copy. Hence in Scripture men are said to ' refuse his law,' Ps.
lxxviii. 10 ; to ' forsake his law,' Ps. cxix. 53 ; to be ' far from his law,' Ps.
cxix. 1 50. Darkness doth not more naturally vanish at the appearance of the
sun, than an old nature will fly away from the glory and brightness of God.
A mass of black darkness and an immense sphere of light may as soon be
espoused together, as a friendly amity be struck up between God and an un-
renewed man. God is light without darkness, 1 John i. 5 ; man is darkness
itself, as if nothing else entered into the composition of his corrupt nature,
Eph. v. 8., If there be therefore a disagreement, contrariety, and unwill-
ingness on both sides, how can any pleasing correspondence be effected ?
If God should bring a man with his corrupt nature into local heaven, God
could not please himself in it, nor such an one delight himself in God, no
more than a swine can be pleased with the presence of an angel, or a mole
sport itself with the beauty of flowers, or a vitiated eye rejoice at the bright-
ness of light. We must really make God such an one as we shape him in
56 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
our Datural fancy, and like to us, before we can take any pleasure in con-
verse with him. Our nature, therefore, must be changed before we can
please him, or be satisfied in him. His presence else will cause fear, while
our sinful state remains, an affection inconsistent with happiness.
Thirdly, The company of the saints is an adjunct of that happiness in
heaven. A sitting down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom
of heaven, Mat. viii. 11, in a festival converse, is a part of that felicity.
The coming to be with an ' innumerable company of angels, with the general
assembly, and church of the first-born,' is not the least thing in the com-
position of this happiness, Heb. xii. 22, 23. "What joy is that man capable
of which should be surrounded with company he hath the greatest disaffec-
tion to, where he could not meet with any one person without the holy
quality he hath an antipathy against ? A natural man never loved holiness,
as holiness, here. The more beautiful the image of God was in any, the
more burdensome was their company ; the more degrees any good man
wanted of perfection in righteousness, the more tolerable was a familiarity
with him. If holiness in others, in a lower degree, were disaffected by you,
how can you bear the perfection of it ? If the mixed and dark goodness in
renewed men, which was but a weak flash of the glory of heaven, were un-
welcome, how will you be able to endure the lustre of it ? Again, glorified
saints could not have the least converse with such an one ? If carnal nature
were a trouble to them here, when they had many relics of corruption, much
more must it be above, if they were admitted into that place of glory, because
the more holy any creature is, the more it hates that which is contrary to
that holiness ; the more settled we are in anything, the more we loathe that
which is opposite to it ; all the folly in their hearts here done away, and the
disagreeing principle perfected in the blessed. There must, therefore, be a
change in them, to take pleasure in you ; or a change in you, to take plea-
sure in them. They must return to the frame of old Adam, and put off the
renewed image of God, before they can delight in you ; or you must come
up to the frame of the new Adam, and be new created after the same image,
before you can delight in them. The truth is, supposing a man admitted
into the heavenly place with an old nature, he could not continue there ; for
the saints must either leave heaven, or he must. Light and darkness can-
not agree ; what makes the one happy, cannot beatify the other. Saints
shall not leave it, because it is their inheritance, it was prepared for them,
and they for it ; a natural man must, because it was never prepared for him,
nor he fitted for it.
Fourthly, Spiritual delights unconceivable are in that state, which, without
a new and heavenly nature, it is impossible to relish. • In the light of God
they see light,' and they ' drink of the rivers of God's pleasures,' and are
' satisfied with the fatness of his house,' Ps. xxxvi. 8, 9. Now, is it a fleshly
fatness ? Are the pleasures of God carnal or spiritual ? What is God's
pleasure shall be the pleasure of glorified souls. How can the sordid old
temper be fit for spiritual delights ? Flesh can never savour but the things
of the flesh ; another palate is necessary to relish the things of the spirit :
Rom. viii. 5, ' They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh,
but they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit ;' ipgovoveiv signifies
to savour or relish. There must be a transformation by the renewing of the
mind, Rom. xii. 2, which is the palate of the soul, before we can know what
the will of God is, or taste what the pleasures of God are ; without it we
can no more relish the pleasures of God than we can know his will. All
satisfaction doth not result from the intrinsic excellency of the object, or the
beauty of a place, or a power in anything to afl'ect us, but from a faculty
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 57
rightly disposed to the object, and a congruity and agreement between that
and the understanding, and between that and the will. Brutes cannot be
delighted with intellectual pleasures, because they want a faculty, nor fools,
because they want a right disposition of that faculty. Purity of heart only
gives us a relish of the purity of pleasure: Tit. i. 15, 'To the pure all things
are pure ; but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving, is nothing pure.'
An ill humour on the palate tinctures the meat, and embitters that which
was sweet in itself. It must be freed from that vicious juice before it can
relish the sweetness of food. Natural men, because of the impurity of their
natures, savour not those spiritual delights which the word, and prayer, and
other holy duties afford in themselves. What fitness, then, is there in this
state for the delights of heaven, which are as much superior to those delights
in duties as the sun doth surmount a star in brightness ? The best unre-
generate man is sunk in sense, swallowed up in sense ; and what suitableness
can there be between a spiritual delight and a sensual frame ? True plea-
sures and contrary desires can never abide together. A carnal man hath no
apprehensions of spiritual delights but by the measures of animal pleasures.
And if there be no conception of them in the understanding, what motion to
them can there be in the will, or what fitness for them in the affection ?
Without a new nature, a new frame, we are no more able to understand or
enjoy the pleasures of heaven, than a bat is to take pleasure in a mathe-
matician's lines or a philosopher's books. It is not conceivable how God
can make any man happy against his will, because all pleasure consists in
the agreeableness of the will to the object. The whole scheme of heaven
must be changed to make such men happy that have not tempers suited to
its present state. The bright hangings of heaven must be taken down and
others put in their place to please a vicious nature.
Use. If regeneration be absolutely necessary to a gospel state, and the
enjoyment of eternal glory in heaven, then it informs us,
1. How much the nature of man is depraved ; for otherwise there were
no need of his being born again, and no reason could be imagined why our
blessed Saviour should so pressingly urge the necessity of it, If man's
nature were according to his original frame, it would please God, because it
was of his own creation. But we are flesh by our natural birth, and there-
fore to be happy we must be spiritual by a second birth. It is not a new
mending, a new repairing and patching, but a new birth. We are by sin as
distant from God and grace, as death from life, as nothing from being. It
is not a death in appearance, but a certain death. God foretold it to Adam :
Gen. ii. 17, ' But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt
not eat of it ; for in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,' niO
niDJI. I suppose there is nothing here of a corporal death meant (as I have
said before), but a death of his integrity and righteous nature, upon this act
of disobedience ; and the reason is because a temporal death did not ensue
presently. And God uses to be punctual when he fixed a time to any threat-
ening, as here he did, in the day, at that very time thou shalt die. Had it
been meant of a temporal death, he had died at that instant. When God
threatened Pharaoh, to-morrow such and such a plague shall come, it was
certainly so. The destruction of Nineveh in forty days had been too, had
they not repented. When he promised any mercy or deliverance at such a
time, it was certainly performed : the very day, at the end of the time ap-
pointed, the Israelites came out of Egypt, Exod. xii. 41. And though God
threatened Hezekiah with death, and bids him set his house in order, yet he
fixed no time, Isa. xxxviii. 1. Besides, a temporal death was not necessary
to his punishment ; God might have flung both body and soul away together
58 chaenock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
into hell. Besides, a temporal death, or death of the body, was fixed after
the promise of the seed, Gen. m. 12, as a punishment superadded upon his
sin, as well as the rest, of his eating his bread in the sweat of his brows, and
the pain of women's conception and travail, which were to put him in mind
of his sin in his redeemed state ; therefore I question whether a temporal
death, or an obnoxiousness to it, were at all meant there, but a spiritual death,
the death of his righteous nature. It is a certain death, a mighty depriva-
tion, a loss of a noble frame, a beautiful rectitude. How may we cry, as
the prophet in another case : Isa. xiv. 12, ' How art thou fallen from heaven,
0 Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground!'
How is our beauty not only defaced, but changed into deformity ? How
dreadfully are we fallen, not only to lame ourselves, but dead ourselves, that
we cannot rise again, as a man fallen may ! We are so unconceivably changed
from what we were, that we cannot be recovered without a new make, with-
out a new birth. Oh that we had a true and sensible prospect of this ! Give
me leave to say that though the fall be the cause of all our misery, yet the
true consideration and sense of it is the first step to all our happiness. And
we cannot take so full a view of it in the extent of the nature of it, as in the
consideration of this doctrine, viz. The necessity of regeneration.
2. If regeneration be so necessary, then how much to be lamented is the
ignorance of this doctrine in the world ? And strange and sad it is that it
should be so little considered. The common talk is of serving God and re-
forming the life, but who of a thousand speaks of the necessity of a new nature '?
It is a sad case that, when a doctrine is so clear, men should be so stupid and
deludingly damn themselves ; that they should be so sottishly ignorant of this
who have Bibles in their hands and houses, yet not understand this, which is the
great purpose for which God even sent the Scripture among the sons of men. It
is a shame not to have the knowledge of this great and necessary truth. As the
apostle in another case: 1 Cor. xv. 24, ' Some have not the knowledge of God,
1 speak it to your shame.' How strange and uncouth doth this doctrine sound
in the ears of the carnal world, which wonder at it, as Xicodemus did at our
Saviour's proposal, and think all our discourses of it an heap of enthusiastic
nonsense ! It is as if we should speak parables, as if you should talk of
astronomy to the natural fool, or read diviDity in Arabic to a man who
understands only his native language. How little sensible is the world of
the necessity of this work ! They expect Christ should change their misery
into glory, without changing their hearts and fitting their spirits for it, which
will never be. They think it enough for them that Christ was conceived in
the womb of the virgin, without being formed again in their souls, as the poor
Jews at this day expect a Messiah, not to alter the frame of their souls, but
the frame of the world ; not to subdue their spirits, but to conquer the nations
to be their vassals. How should this stupidity of men be a matter of lamen-
tation to us !
3. If regeneration be so absolutely necessary, how should Christian parents
endeavour all they can to have their children regenerate ? There is no
necessity they should have great estates, and live bravely in the world ; but
there is a necessity, a great necessity, they should be new creatures, and
live spiritually. In leaving the one to your children, you leave them but
earth ; in leaving the other, you convey heaven to them. There is an
obligation upon you, their old polluted nature was derived from you by
carnal generation ; make them amends by endeavouring to derive grace to
them by spiritual instruction ; you made them children of wrath, why will
you not- endeavour to make them children of God and heirs of heaven '?
Education of itself will not produce this noble work, nor the bare hearing of
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 59
the word, or any outward means whatsoever, by their own strength ; yet the
Spirit doth often bless them, and very much, and I doubt not but a great
number that are regenerate had the first seeds sown in them by a religious
education. And I have made this observation in many. Timothy had a
religious education both by his mother and grandmother, though this did
not renew him, for Paul, by the preaching of the gospel, was the instrument
of that, he calls him ' his own son in the faith,' 1 Tim. i. 2, yet no question
his religious instructions from his parents did much facilitate this work.
Use all endeavour, therefore, to convince them of the necessity of a new
birth, be earnest with them till you see it produced, that they may not curse
you for being the instruments of their beings, but bless you for being the
instruments of their spiritual life.
4. This doctrine acquaints us with the insufficiency of everything else
without this to enable us to enter into the kingdom of God.
(1.) Great knowledge is not sufficient. Natural knowledge is not. All
the wisdom of Solomon in a man, though it may enable him to take an exact
measure of nature from the highest star to the meanest insect, doth no more
fit him for heaven than the stone in the head of a toad expels his venomous
nature. We have more relics of Adam's nature in knowledge than we have
in righteousness. To be a philosopher, physician, or statesman, is not
essential to happiness in this world, much less can it prepare a man for the
happiness of another. But grace is as essential to it as natural heat and
radical moisture are to the life of a man. Jesus Christ came not to make
us scholars in naturals, but to endue us with such a knowledge as is in order
to eternal happiness, and with such a renewing principle as might make us
capable of heaven. Knowledge and wisdom are some of the choicest flowers
in nature's garden ; but it will be a small advantage to descend to hell with
our brains full of wit and sophistry. One saving cry from a new born infant
soul is of more value than the knowledge of all philosophers. Spiritual
knowledge is not, that is, the knowledge of spiritual doctrines, the knowledge
of Scripture itself. Nicodemus had a good stock of this ; he understood
the letter of the Scripture, was well read in all the parts of the law ; he was
thought fit to be one of the great Sanhedrim. Something else was requisite
besides this ; a new birth was still wanting. What if we understood the
mind of the Spirit of God in every verse in the Bible ; were able to discourse
profoundly of the great mysteries of the gospel ; had the gift of prophecy,
and knowledge of things to come ; had the interpretation of the whole book
of the Revelation writ in our minds ; what will all this avail us ? An evan-
gelical head will be but drier fuel for eternal burning, without an evangelical
impression upon the heart and the badge of a new nature. Men may pro-
phesy in Christ's name, in his name cast devils out of bodies, and devils of
errors out of men's brains, yet not be regarded by Christ ; but he says to
them, ' I never knew you, depart from me ye that work iniquity,' Mat.
vii. 22, 23. If they had had this mark and gospel impression, our Lord
would have known them. Christ in heaven would have owned himself
formed in the heart ; he could not have been ignorant of his own nature and
offspring.
Well then, a man may have all the learning of Christians and heathens
stored up in his head, and not the least stamp of it in his heart ; he may be
wise in knowledge, and a fool in improvement. A heap and pack of know-
ledge is not wisdom among men, without an application of that knowledge
to particular exigencies and usefulness.
(2.) Outward reformation is not sufficient. Regeneration is never without
reformation of life ; but this may be without that. We may be outward
60 chaenock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
Christians without an inward principle, though we can never be inward
Christians without an outward holiness. The new birth is properly an in-
ternal work, and shews itself externally ; as the heat of the heart and vital
parts will evidence itself in outward motions. • The king's daughter is all
glorious within ' as well as without, Ps. xlv. 13. What a vanity would it be
to boast of freedom from other diseases, if thou hast the plague upon thee ?
What a poor comfort is it to brag of thy being without gross immoralities,
whilst the plague of thy nature remains uncured ? Outward reformation only
(though of excellent use) is but a new appearance, not a new creature, a
change of life, not of the heart ; whereas this work we discourse of is a new
birth in the understanding and will ; it begins at the spirit and descends
from thence to the body, 1 Thes. v. 23 ; it is a sanctification in spirit, soul,
and then body. Can that which can be no evidence to us in self-examina-
tion, be of itself sufficient to waft us to heaven ? If you retire to take a
view of yourselves whether you belong to God, will you judge by your out-
ward actions or inward frame ? There is no characteristical difference in
any external action between a true Christian and an hypocrite. That,
therefore, which is not a sufficient evidence to us of a right to happiness,
cannot be a sufficient preparation of ourselves for it.
This reformation may proceed either,
[1.1 From force and fear. Such a reformation is from impediments, not
from inclination. The cutting a bird's wings takes not away its propensity
to fly, but its ability ; the cutting the claws of a lion, or pulling out his
teeth, changes not his lionish nature. Fear restrained Herod from putting
John to death, when his will was inclined to the act, Mat. xiv. 5. Fear
may pare the nails of sin, grace only can hinder the growth and take away
its life. This doth but only stop the streams, not choke the fountain.
Or, [2. J from sense of outward interest. It may be a rational abstinence
from those sordid pleasures which debase a man's esteem and prey upon his
reputation ; and in the mean time his inward lusts may triumph, while out-
ward appearances are stopped. Such a splendid life may consist with those
inward vermin, more contrary to the pure nature of God, and as inconsistent
with a man's happiness. The river which ran in open view, may sink and
run as fiercely through subterranean caverns. Men may cast out one gross
devil to make way for seven more spiritual ones. The interest which
restrains outward acts will not restrain inward lusts.
Well then, an outward reformation without an inward grace, can no more
rectify nature, than an abstinence from luxury can cure a disease a man hath
contracted through intemperance, without some other physic to pluck up the
root of the distemper. Outward applications of salves and ointments will
do little good in a fever, unless the spring of the disease be altered, and a
new crasis wrought in the blood. All outward acts are but ' bodily exercise,
which profit little,' 1 Tim. iv. 3. Outward reformation doth but sweeten
the conversation, but doth not purge the man. He only is a vessel unto
honour who hath purged himself from these things : 2 Tim. ii. 21, ' If a man
therefore purge himself from those, he shall be a vessel unto honour.' Out-
ward reformation only, it is a cleansing of our life, but not ourselves. Self-
nature must be purged.
(3.) Morality is not sufficient. By morality, I mean not only an outward
reformation, but some love to moral virtue, as the heathens had, raised upon
the thoughts of the excellency of it. Nicodemus was a moral man ; he had
some affection to Christ upon the consideration of his miracles ; he had never
else ventured to come to him so much as by night. He had no blot upon
his conversation, he had desires to be instructed. This was more than a
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 61
bare abstinence from sin ; yet notwithstanding, besides those moral qualifi-
cations, he must have a new birth before he can see the kingdom of God.
Men may do much good, be very useful to others in their generation, yet
be in the very bottom of unregeneracy. A healing witch, as well as a hurt-
ing one, is the devil's client, and in covenant with him.* There is not so
great a difference between the highest degree of glory in heaven and the
lowest degree of grace on earth, as there is between the lowest degree of
saving grace and the highest degree of natural excellency, because the differ-
ence between these is specifical, as between a rational and irrational crea
ture; the difference between the other is only in degree, as between an infant
and a man. It is one thing to have a love to moral virtue, another thing
to have a love to God in it ; one thing to move for self, and another thing
to move for the glory of the Creator ; one thing to be animated by reason,
and another thing to be inspired by the Holy Ghost. What can a moral
honesty profit that man who values the world's dung above the Creator's
glory ? What though he be honest and useful to his neighbours, must his
affection to God be measured by his honesty among men ? The great busi-
ness is from what principle it flows. What if he doth good to others,
whilst he doth his Creator wrong by fostering any one thing in his heart
above him ? Can his goodness to others make a compensation for his dis-
esteem of God ? The bravest man in the whole world, who hath no other
descent than from Adam, must have a new quality put into his heart before
he can be happy ; for if a new birth be necessary, all endowments below
it are to no purpose for the attainment of that state for which it is in-
tended. Whatsoever is of the old Adam in us, though it be a beautiful
flower, must wither and die : 1 Peter i. 23, 24, ' For all flesh is as grass,
and the glory of man as the flower of grass ; the grass withers, and the
flower thereof fadeth away.' The apostle sets in opposition the incor-
ruptible seed whereby they were born, and the fairer flowers in nature's
garden. The best thing which a man glories in is a flower, but withering ;
it is a glory, but the glory of the flesh ; it hath no lustre in the sight of
God ; it is not a flower to be set in heaven. It is only the word of God,
and the impressions made on us by that word, which endure for ever. As
herbs cannot grow without partaking of the natural influence and beams of
the sun, so nothing stands and flourishes but what partakes of the nature
and spirit of Christ. Nay, it is so far from being sufficient, that it is a
great hindrance of regeneration, without the overpowering grace of God,
because it is the glory of a man ; that is, that wherein a man glories. Men
are apt to rest upon their morals without reflecting upon their naturals.
They see no spots in their lives, and therefore will not believe there are any
in their hearts. They are so taken up, with the pharisee, their proud
thoughts of their being above others, that they never think how much they
have inwardly of the publican in coming short of the glory of God. Un-
regenerate morality, therefore, is not sufficient. The heart must be changed
before moral virtues can commence graces. When this is once done, what
were moral before become divine, as having a new principle to quicken them,
and a new end to direct them.
(4.) Religious professions are not sufficient. Can you, upon a serious
consideration, conclude that this only is the import of all those scriptures
which speak of being born of God, raised from a death in sin, quickened and
led by the Spirit, created in righteousness and true holiness ? Are not these
things, in the very manner of speaking them, elevated above any mere pro-
fession, which may be declared to the world without any such work, which
* Burrough's Biases' Choice, p. 711.
62 chaenock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
is the evident intendment of those scriptures ? It is not the naming the
name of Christ, but the departing from iniquity ; a departing from it in our
nature as well as in our actions, that is the badge whereby the Lord knows
who are his : 2 Tim. ii. 19, ' The Lord knows who are his : and let every
one that names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.' Religious profes-
sion only is but a form, a figure, a shape of godliness : a picture made by
art, without life and power, and an enlivened faculty, and a divine principle
whence it should proceed ; it is but a name of life at best under a state of
death : Rev. iii. 1, ' Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.' Pro-
fessions without a new nature, are no more the things God requires of us,
than sacrifices under the law without a broken heart. It is not a following
our Saviour in profession, but in regeneration, which gives the apostles a
title to that promise of sitting upon his throne in glory : Mat. xix. 28, ' Ye
that have followed me in regeneration, ye shall sit upon twelve thrones,
judging the twelve tribes of Israel.' Judas had followed Christ till that
time, and after, in a profession, but not in the regeneration, not from a re-
generated principle.
(5.) Multitudes of external religious duties and privileges are not suffi-
cient. Men are very apt to place their security here. It was the great
labour of the prophet Isaiah to bring the Jews, in his time, off from them.
God doth not require attendance on ordinances as the ultimate end, but as
means to the beginning and promoting a new birth : Isa. xi. 16, 'To what
purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me ? Wash ye, make ye clean.'
The resting in these is the manifest destruction of men's souls, when thou-
sands of sacrifices to God cannot be acceptable without a new nature. We
naturally affect an easy religion; and outward acts of worship, especially under
the gospel, have no great difficulty in them. Men would rather be at
great expense of sacrificing, than crucify one beloved sin ; and cringe a thou-
sand times before the cross of Christ, than nail one corruption to it. How
easy a work were it to get to heaven, if nothing else were required but to be
a member of the Christian visible church ? Circumcision was a privilege,
but it availed nothing without a new creature, Gal. v. 6. There was another
circumcision made without hands, the work of God, that was required, Col.
ii. 11 ; a new creature, without which outward circumcision signified no-
thing. The practice of some duties may stand with an inward hatred of
them, as the abstinence from some sins may stand with an inward love to
them. Outward worship is but a carcase, when the soul is not conformed
to God, the object of worship, and doth not attain an union to, and commu-
nion with God, which is the end of worship. What are all acts of worship
without a nature suitable to the God we approach unto in them ? Judge
not, therefore, of your state by any external actions ; no outward act, but
unregenerated persons may do, yea, they may express much zeal in them.
They may have their bodies as martyrs consumed by flames, without having
their corruption consumed by grace ; a stinking breath may make as good
music to the ear in a pipe as a sound one. There is something more neces-
sary than a bare performance of duties.
(6.) Nay, more, convictions are not sufficient. Nicodemus was startled by
our Saviour's miracles, believes him to be a prophet sent by God, acknow-
ledged that God was with him, John iii. 2, yet still the necessary qualifica-
tion of a new birth was wanting. Your spirits may be torn in pieces by terror,
the heart of stone may be rent asunder, and yet no heart of flesh appear ;
the ground may be ploughed, yet not sown. Sensuality and lust may be
kept under by a spirit of bondage, when it is not cast out by a spirit of adop-
tion ; the sun may scorch you, and not enliven you ; the knowledge of the
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 63
foulness of sin, and the fierceness of wrath, is the work of the Spirit in the
law ; the new birth is the work of the Spirit in the gospel ; the stone may
be cut and hewed by the law, and yet never polished by the gospel, never
brought into covenant : Hosea vi. 5,7, 'I have hewed them by my prophets,
but they like men have transgressed the covenant.' It is not then great
knowledge, fair-coloured fruit, oil in the lamp of life, loud professions, glit-
tering services, or tearing convictions, which are this badge whereby Christ
knows his own from all the world besides ; all these will be answered, ' I
know you not.' Is it not, then, a worthy work, and high time to get that
new nature, whereby God will know thee to belong to him ? Professions
may be false, outward reformation may be but as a painted sepulchre :
knowledge only elevates the understanding ; but as our communion lies in
the acts of the will, there must be some work upon that to fit us for our
great happiness. If these things are not sufficient, then profane men can-
not expect heaven by the way of hell.
C7.se 2. If regeneration be so absolutely necessary to salvation, how miser-
able is the condition of every unregeherate man ! What a miserable case is
it, that sinners should dream on in their delusions till everlasting burnings
confute their fancies, and turn their hopes into dreadful despair. Oh, how
do most men live as if this doctrine were a mere falsity, and act as if they
would take heaven by the violence of their lusts, not by the industry of
grace ? Know you not that an unrighteous nature shall not inherit the king-
dom of God ? 1 Cor. vi. 9, ' Know you not that the unrighteous shall not
inherit the kingdom of God ? be not deceived,' &c. Is it possible you
should be ignorant of that which stares you in the face in every page in the
Bible ? If you know not this you know nothing. Be not deceived.
Nothing is no natural as heart- deceit and presumptuous confidence. The
apostle else would not have spoken of it with such an emphasis, but that he
knew how apt men are to delude themselves with hopes of mercy in a state
of sin. Self-flattery is one of the strongest branches which grows upon the
pride of nature. How vain is it to fancy to yourselves a fitness for heaven,
while there are only preparations for hell ? Whence should such imagina-
tions arise ? Not from God ; it is contrary to all his professed declarations.
Is it from yourselves ? What reason have you to believe your fancies in
spiritual things, who are so often mistaken in temporal ? Is it from the
devil ? What reason have you to believe your greatest enemy ? If this
work be wrought, he hath for ever lost you. It is he that cherishes such
notions, for he hath no pleasure to undo his kingdom, and lose his subjects.
Never did any man use so much diligence to get a new nature as the devil
doth to hinder him.
Will you seriously consider,
1. It is highly irrational to expect security and glory in an unregenerate
state. Is it for us to separate those things which God hath joined, flesh
and destruction, a new birth and a kingdom ? That which doth naturally
tend to hell can never conduct us to heaven. Can the old nature, which
frames a fit subject for eternal vengeance, ever fashion it to be a vessel of
eternal glory ? There is as great a tendency in the old nature to hell as
there is of a stone or lead to the earth. If men may be saved in their un-
regeneracy,
(1.) God must be false to himself. False he must be to his truth, false
to holiness, false to his Son, false to the whole tenor of the gospel. God
must change the covenant of grace, blot out all his threatenings in Scripture,
give the lie to all his declarations in the word, proclaim himself unwise in all
his administrations, if ever such a man be happy ; and is it not a damnable
64 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
conceit, and a provoking wish, to desire that God should belie himself to
befriend us ? There mast be a new gospel before any can be saved without
a new nature. This cannot be. Must God change his law, or we our lusts ?
God hath settled and declared a decree, that none that are not born again
shall enter into the kingdom of God. His decree stands irreversible, the
change must necessarily therefore be on our side.
(2.) As far as I can understand, God must put himself out of heaven be-
fore that such a man can come thither. There can be no pleasure on either
side with unsuitableness. If God be absent from heaven, as to his glorious
presence, how can there be happiness ? He loves his own righteousness
better than to endure such men's presence, and they love their unrighteous-
ness so much as not to bear his. No man cares for coming into a place
which is possessed by one that he hates ; they can have no pleasure to be in
a heaven with God, who were delighted to be in a world without him, Eph.
ii. 12.
(3.) Jesus Christ must be a liar, and the gospel false, if ever there be a
heaven enjoyed by an old nature. He hath asserted it, that is truth itself;
and is it not a madness to imagine a possibility of coming thither in spite of
him ? You may upon better grounds hope to be crowned monarch of the
whole world to-morrow, than to enter into heaven without being born again.
Christ values his truth, though he did not his life, above our souls, and his
word will stand firm against all presumptuous confidence whatsoever.
(4.) Suppose God should reverse his gospel (which cannot be), and declare
another, 1 cannot see how the case would be mended, for what gospel can
God frame, with a salvo to his own honour, without the creatures being
righteous to enjoy the benefit of it ? Must God conform himself to the will
of our lusts ? Must he cast his holiness into the depths of the sea ? Must
he paint himself black to agree with our hue ? as the negroes picture him of
their own colour. In a word, must God cease to be God that you may cease
to be miserable ? To desire happiness without a new nature shews a con-
tempt of God, since it is to desire it on terms on which it is dishonourable
for God to give it.
Well then, this doctrine is so certainly true, that if an angel from heaven
should declare the contrary he ought not to be believed : Gal. i. 8, ' Let
him be accursed ;' that is, he would be more a devil than an angel, and it
would be an accursed doctrine. He must found his doctrine upon another
gospel, and a gospel printed in hell, but impossible to have an imprimatur from
heaven. Is it possible, then, for any man, after such an assertion of our
Saviour, to live under the hearing of the Christian doctrine, and fancy a
heavenly glory belonging to him without a heavenly nature ?
2. As it is highly irrational, so it is highly sinful to lie in an unrenewed
state. To continue in it after the declaration of God's holiness, in so emi-
nent a manner, in the death of his Son, is a high approbation of unrighteous-
ness, and a contempt of his infinite purity ; for since he hath shewn himself
a hater of sin, and the old nature of Adam in the death of the Redeemer,
more than he could any other ; the fostering the old nature in us is a valu-
ing that which God hath manifested his hatred of, and a slighting all the
expressions of bis love. It draws a greater guilt upon our persons than
Adam did by his fall upon our natures : John xv. 22, • If I had not come and
spoken to them, they had not had sin.' If 1 had not told them those things,
and preach heavenly doctrine to them, their sin had been as it were a petty
larceny, in comparison of what it is now, a treason against my Father's crown
and dignity ; ' but now they have hated me and my Father.'
3. Hence it follows that such a man's condition must be exceeding miser-
John III. 3, 5. J the necessity of regeneration. 65
able. Those that • have a part in the first resurrection,' on them it is said
' the second death shall have no power,' Rev. xx. 6 ; whether he means
the resurrection of Christ, or the spiritual resurrection of the soul. The second
death then shall have power over them that have no part in the first resur-
rection.
(1.) Such axe peculiarly miserable. Such a man had better have been any
other creature, — a toad, a serpent, a beetle, liable to be trod to death by the
next comer, — than have been a man, and live and die with a serpentine na-
ture, and without renewing grace, would be glad one day to change states
with them ; and it had been better to have been born in the darkest part of
America than in England, and better to have lived in the blindest corner in
England than in London, where he hath heard so much and so often of the
necessity of the new birth, and yet cherished an old nature. It is an aston-
ishing madness this. Better never to have been born a man than not be a
real Christian, which he cannot be without this new birth, this necessary
regeneration ; better never to have entered by the door of baptism into the
Christian society, than not have a nature answerable to the baptismal in-
tendment. There is not the meanest beggar that creeps in the street, the
most ulcerous Lazarus that lies at the door, but if renewed is infinitely hap-
pier than any one unrenewed can be with all worldly felicity.
(2.) Such are unavoidably miserable. The mercy of God can never make
you happy against his truth, the righteousness of God can never do it with-
out the necessary qualification. Is it just with God to give his worst ene-
mies the same reward of glory with his choicest friends ; to those that
never endeavoured to reform their lives according to the methods of the
gospel, as to those who have had the holy image of his Son drawn and
wrought in their hearts? In 2 Tim. iv. 8 he is said to be a ' righteous judge,'
which could not be if he gave the same rewards to both the contrary qualifi-
cations. The devil may as soon be saved, as any man without a new birth.
Though there be enough written against the salvation of devils, yet there is
more written in the book of God against the salvation of men living and dying
in an unregenerate state than against the salvation of devils. Do any expect
to see the kingdom of God without it ? Why, that form on which you sit,
that dust under your feet, far cleaner than ourselves by nature, are fitter to
be brought into that place of glory. The holiness of God can better endure
them than an unrenewed man. He pronounced their kind good at the crea-
tion, but never was an unrenewed nature pronounced good by God. You
can no more shun an eternal misery without it, than you can a temporal
death with it ; you can no more fly from hell than from yourselves. Our
blessed Saviour, the redeemer of the world, will know none for admission
into happiness without his badge upon them : Mat. vii. 23, ' I never knew
you :' you had nothing in you worthy my knowledge and affection. Where
is the evangelical impression upon your soul ? will be the only question then
asked.
Well, then, I wish every unregenerate man would put the question to his
soul, Can I dwell with everlasting burnings ? Can I, with a cheerful secu-
rity, meet the wrath of God in its march against me ? Is eternal darkness
a delightful state ? Is an eternal separation from the blessed God to be
desired ? Is a present sensual life to be preferred before a joyful eternity?
Is there any one Scripture in the whole book of God can give me comfort in
this state ? What, then, dost thou, 0 my soul, spend thy thoughts about,
since there is nothing to procure thy felicity, but this new birth ?
Use 3. Is of comfort. Is it so, that without regeneration there is no sal-
6b' charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
vation ? Then how great is the comfort of that person, who hath attained
this necessary thing ! What a foundation is here for the composition of
new songs for spiritual exultings ! What a diffusion may there be of pleasure
through the whole soul ! That little regenerating principle within you is
more necessary than the wisdom of Solomon, the power of Nebuchadnezzar,
the glory of Ahasuerus, the reaching heads of the most knowing men in the
world, and shall make you happy, when others in their unrenewed wisdom
and unsanctified wealth shall descend to destruction.
1. The least true grace hath comfort from hence. ' Except a man be
born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God ;' therefore if he be born
again, he shall see it. Our Saviour doth not say, except a man hath been
born so long, arrived to such a stature, but simply born again ; it lies upon
the essence, not upon the degree. A child that cries the first minute it is
born, is in a state of life, as well as the man in the prime of his strength ;
a child hath the nature of a man, though attended with some strong disease
and great infirmities ; though every true Christian hath not the same growth,
yet he hath the same birth, the same renewing Spirit. ' If a man be in Christ,
he is a new creature ;' the apostle doth not say, he is a strong creature, or
a tall creature. St John reckons three different states of Christians, 1 John
ii. 13, 14, children, young men, and fathers, and all in a state of the know-
ledge of God.
2. Here is comfort in the ignorance of the time of the new birth. ' Except a
man be born again,' not except he know the time of his being born again; the
want of the knowledge of the time hath troubled some, but it is no matter for
the time, if we find the essential properties ; our happiness is secured by the
essence, not by the circumstance. It is the glory of those that were born in
Sion, that they 'were born there,' Ps. lxxxvii. 5, though the time of their
birth were not exactly known by them. Many may tell the first prepara-
tions to it, the first strong conviction, the first time they found their hearts
affected ; this is more easy than to tell the very time when spiritual life was
infused, any more than to tell the punctual time when the child was quick-
ened in the womb ; this is no more known, than that particular minute when
this or that addition was made to our stature and growth, though the growth
itself be discernible.
3. Such ai-e new born to the enjoyment of God in glory. If none shall
see God without it, then those shall certainly see God who have it ; it is for
the undefiled inheritance that God did first beget you : 1 Peter i. 3, ' He
hath begotten us to a lively hope, to an inheritance undefiled, incorruptible,
that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you.' Had not God intended
you for an everlasting converse with himself, he would not have taken such
pains, but have let you lie in your blood, and run down the stream of nature
into the ocean of a miserable eternity with the common mass of the world.
What comfort will this be, when you see the old house of your bodies full of
gaps, ready to fall, that your reborn souls are ready to take possession of
their eternal inheritance ! Paul was one of the highest rank in Christianity,
both in grace and office, yet the ' crown of righteousness ' was not only laid
up for him, and to be given to him, but to ' all that love the appearing ' of
Christ, 2 Tim. iv. 8, that is, to all those that, from the principles of the new
nature, aspire to that perfection, which shall be at the appearance of Christ.
There is as certain a tendency, by the ordination of God, of a renewed soul
to heaven, as of flame into the air. Grace and glory are in nature the same
thing as a seed and a plant.
4. It is comfort upon this account, If new-born to heaven, then to all
things which may further your passage thither and assist you in it. To God,
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 67
as your God and king to protect you, as your Father to cherish you ; to the
promises as your promises, as assurauces and deeds for heaven ; to a sanc-
tification of all states for a furtherance of you in your travel to and fitness
for this kingdom ; to a sight of God in his ordinances, and in his provi-
dences ; he will not deny a beam here in his institutions to those for whom
he reserves his full face hereafter ; to a fellowship with God in duties of
worship, as a foretaste of a perpetual communion with him ; to an improve-
ment of all graces ; to the perfectest dress at last of all beautiful grace,
which may completely fit you for an everlasting sight of God in heaven.
Use. 4. If without the new birth there is no entering into heaven,
then it stands upon you to clear up your evidences for the new birtb.
If the existence of it be necessary for our felicity, the knowledge of it is
necessary for our comfort. This is the great distinguishing evangelical sign ;
without an inward principle of life, we have not reached the intendment of
the gospel : John vi. 63, ' The words of Christ are spirit and life.' John
x. 10, ' I am come that you might have life.' He hath no interest in the
gospel that hath not this in his heart. Every man in Christ must be a new
creature.
To encourage you in this work, consider,
1. It is by this you must know your justification. Justification is our
blessedness : Horn. iv. 8, ' Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not
impute sin.' And this is the way to know our blessedness : forgiveness of
sin precedes the inheritance, and both this and that are received only by the
sanctified through faith in Christ : Acts xxvi. 18, ' That they may receive
forgiveness of sin, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith
which is in me.' The alteration of our frame is notius, more discernible to
us, than that of our relative states ; the new dispositions discover what rela-
tion we stand in to God. This is a certain truth, he that doth not find the
draught of God's image in him, hath no reason to conclude he hath any
saving interest in the propitiatory sacrifice of the Redeemer. As the blood
and water were not separated in the effusion upon the cross, neither are
they in their application to the soul ; water to renew us, and blood to justify
us. The ' washing of regeneration ' evidenceth our being justified by grace,
Titus iii. 5-7 ; the apostle infers the one from the other.
2. Therefore, by the knowledge of this only you can gain comfort. The
great desire is, Oh that I were assured ! Let it be your great business to
clear up the new birth. It is the office of the Spirit not only to comfort but
renew, and to comfort by renewing. The hope of eternal life is founded
upon the renewing of the Holy Ghost, as well as on justification by grace,
Titus i. 5-7 ; the Spirit as a comforter is to guide into all truth, John xvi.
13, into that truth which is sanctifying, John xvii. 17. The property of
the Spirit is to guide us into sanctifying truth, and sanctify us by that truth ;
the Spirit doth witness wTith our spirits that we are the children of God ; its
witness is by something within us, not without us. There must be
something in our hearts as a foundation of this testimony ; what witness
can there be in an old nature? Look after, therefore, those essential pro-
perties of the new nature. Christ preached duty and comfort together ; his
first sermon, Mat. v., is made up of both. The clear evidence of a new life
seated in the centre of the soul, will be a surer testimony of our right to, and
fitness for glory, than if an angel from heaven should assure us in the name
of God, that we are some of his heirs ; the testimony of an angel is but that
of a creature, lower then the verbal testimony of the Son of God. The evi-
dences of the beginnings of glory, by the operations of grace and a Godlike
nature, are more uncontrollable than the highest assurances all the angels
68 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
in heaven can give us. Clear up this, therefore. There are many coun-
terfeits ; men may take morality, outward reformation, heaps of religious
duties, to be this work, but tbese are all insufficient, and men without good
examination may cheat themselves, and take copper for gold, and tin for
silver. There is a natural or moral integrity, and an evangelical integrity;
the natural integrity God owns in Abimelech : Gen. xx. 6, ' Yea, I know
that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart.' He was king of the place
where Abraham thought there was no fear of God, ver. 12. And it is likely
there was not. God puts none of them upon prayer for themselves, but
Abraham upon praying for them.
Then ask yourselves these two or three questions.
1. How stand your hearts to God and sin ? Is there a bias in the will,
which doth naturally carry it to God ? What light is there in your minds ?
what flexibleness and tenderness in the will and conscience ? what sprightli-
ness in your affections to the things of God ? what readiness to meet him in
his motions to you ? what closing with Christ ? Are there strong cries,
struggling, wrestling, Jacob-like prayers ? A new-born babe not to cry ; a
child not to call to his father, and follow him, and press to him : it is incon-
sistent with such a nature, since it is the first fruit of the ' spirit of adop-
tion ' received by us, to cause us to cry, Abba, Father, Rom. viii. 15.
How stand your hearts to sin ? Are there deep humiliations for it, utter
detestation of it ? Are your affections dead to the flesh and the world, and
alive and quick to the things of God ? Rom. viii. 10, ' The body is dead
because of sin, and the spirit is life because of righteousness.' What hum-
bling of inward pride, what striving against inward sins, what loathing of
inward corruptions ?
2. What delight have yon in spiritual duties ? Do your souls spring up
in a service ? Are your hearts in heaven before the words are out of your
mouth ? What is agreeable to nature is not burdensome. Spiritual services
are as pleasant to a new nature, as sin is to an old, as sweet wines and
delicious food is to a gluttonous disposition : Ps. cxix. 103, ' How sweet are
thy words unto my taste ! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth ! ' Honey,
one of the staple excellencies of Canaan, which is described to be a land
flowing with milk and honey. Doth your delight in the law of God spring
up from the inner man ? There is a delight in doing some things of the law
(the Gentiles did by nature the things contained in the law, Rom. ii. 14), by
a moral nature, not a new nature ; if by nature, they had then a delight in
them, and it was as all delight is, inward in the soul and heart, no doubt
but many of them had pleasure in their morality. That is not the meaning
of the apostle ; but he doth distinguish his delights from theirs by the object
of it, and by the subject or spring of it. It was the law of God, as it was the
law of God, that he did delight in ; and it was not only an inward delight,
but a delight arising from an inner nature, a man distinct from that man
composed of soul and body ; it did arise from a spirit possessed with nobler
principles and higher ends.
Well, then, is it your meat and drink to do his will ? Has the glory of
God been dearer to you than the dearest worldly concerns you have ? Are
your converses with him very delightful to you ? Do the thoughts of God,
and delights in him, frequently return upon you ? What bears the most
grateful relish in your souls ? holy thoughts and duties, or sinful and foolish
vanities ?
3. How do you live ? Have you another life 'by the faith of the Son of
God ? ' Gal. ii. 20 ; another faith beside the common faith, not resting in
assent, but ' working by love,' Gal. v. 6. Do you live to yourselves ? That
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 69
is proper to a state of nature. Or do you live to God ? 2 Cor. v. 13. That
is proper to a state of grace : Gal. ii. 19, ' I am dead to the law, that I might
live unto God.' Is there a closing with Christ, not only as your Saviour, but
as the principle and end of your lives ? Is there a living the life of God, the
life of Christ ? Can Christ be formed in the heart, and there be nothing of
the qualities of Christ, nothing of the spirit of Christ ? Is Christ formed in
the heart, a hard, low, dead, cold, dark, lifeless Christ ? This frame is a
quite contrary thing to Christ. If we are born of the will of God, we are
born to answer the will of God. Is it the will of God that we should be
loose in our hearts, and vain in our lives ? That is the will of the flesh,
not the will of God. According as our hearts are, so is our birth ; sin or
grace must have dominion in the soul ; they cannot live amicably together ;
a man cannot be a sinner and a saint with the same will, cannot equally love
holiness and iniquity. We may as well say that a man may be in heaven
and hell at the same time ; not but that a renewed man may in a sudden fit
do a thing against his nature, as Moses, one of a mild disposition, was trans-
ported with a strain of passion against his nature. If sin reigns in the
heart, though it doth not in outward acts ; if we yield ourselves servants, to
obey it in the lusts thereof, though not in the outward fruit of those lusts,
this new-creature principle was never settled in the heart: Rom. vi. 12, ' Let
not sin reign therefore in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the
lusts thereof : neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteous-
ness unto sin.' He makes a manifest difference between the inward lust
obeyed, and the outward commission of it in the members, and places the
reign of sin in one as well as the other ; and, ver. 16, concludes them in a
state of nature or a state of grace, according as they yield themselves ser-
vants to this or that. A regenerate practical atheist is just as true as to say
a regenerate devil.
(1.) Be diligent observers, therefore, of what solid alterations you find in
your spirits ; what motions, starts, principles, ends you can perceive there ;
and if you find you have this excellent and necessary new birth, admire God's
grace in you, that he should pass by so many thousands in the world and
renew you ; that he should leave many soaking in their sins, and swimming
to destruction in their old nature, and bestow this heavenly plant upon your
souls. And prize it too. Aquinas hath an excellent saying, The good ot'
one grace is greater than the good of all nature ; which words Cajetan com-
mends as fit to be writ upon our minds, and constantly reviewed by us, to
raise our admirations of God and his grace.
I speak now but little of these things, because the next discourse will lead
me to speak more of them.
(2.) Seek it. If it be necessary to be had, it is necessary to be sought.
We are all at this present before God in an old or new nature ; and if we die
in the nature we have received from old Adam, without another from the
new, it is as certain that every one of us shall be excluded out of the king-
dom of God, as it is certain we live and breathe in the places where we stand
or sit. We are born of the earth, we must be born from heaven ; we must
have a spiritual as well as an animal life. Oh that every man and woman
had the same thoughts of the necessity of it as they have who are past hope
in hell of ever attaining it ! Riches are not necessary, honours are not ne-
cessary ; this is of absolute necessity. Were you like Solomon in all his
glory, you could not have the privilege of entering into God's kingdom with-
out a new nature ; but a new nature without the glory of Solomon, nay,
without a rag to your backs, will admit you. If those that are already
renewed must be every day putting off the old and putting on the new
70 CHARNOCK S WORKS. [JOHN III. 3, 5.
man,* Eph. iv. 22, 24, how much more need have you who have not dropped
one scale, or sweat out one spirit of the old man, nor have a grain of the new
man in you ? As original corruption stood up in the place of original
righteousness, so a gracious regenerate frame must rise up in the place of
original corruption, for God will never befriend corrupt nature so much as
to give a happiness to that which he hates. Men do not choose weeds but
flowers to plant in their delightful gardens. God indeed doth choose weeds,
but they are turned into the nature of flowers hefore he transplants them to
glory. We must have a wedding garment to fit us for his feast, and oil in
our vessels to prepare us for his nuptials.
Seek it, for,
(1.) It is an indispensable duty. God hath resolved that only ' the pure
in heart shall see God,' Mat. v. 8. It is a duty incumbent on us to love
God. Since we are bound to love God, we are bound to love whatsoever
hath any relation to him. Therefore we must love ourselves, not with a
sordid, carnal love, but as we are the image of God. Hence we are bound
to do what we can to brighten and clear this image, and restore' it to its
primitive perfection in our souls. We are answerable to God for the pre-
senting this image of God in the same state wherein it was when he conferred
it upon Adam, and upon us in his loins. Since the Kedeemer hath under-
taken to restore it, it is our duty to seek to this Redeemer for the restoration
of it, for he came ' that we might have life,' John x. 16 ; a vital principle
in us to fit us for eternal life, and to ' have it more abundantly,' in a more
glorious and fixed manner than Adam had.
(2.) Seek it, for something of this nature, or equivalent to it, seems ne-
cessary to all rational and intellectual creatures. The first nature of man
was sown in mutability, and there was a necessity of something equivalent
to this regeneration to fix and establish his nature ; as the confirmation of
angels under the head Christ is in some sort a regeneration of them, for it
is an alteration of their state, from mutable to immutable, not by nature, for
so God only is immutable, but by grace : Eph. i. 10, • He hath gathered to-
gether in one all things in Christ.' There is need now of it to change our
nature, and afterwards to fix us in it. Most think that Adam, had he stood
some time, had been confirmed in the state of innocency, and advanced to a
more excellent state than that of paradise, which would have been an altera-
tion of his state. If, then, an alteration of state was necessary for the fixing
bis happiness, an alteration of state is much more necessary for us for
regaining the happiness we fell from.
(3.) Seek it, because in not seeking it you act against your own reason and
natural experience. You have by the light of nature, improved by the light
of the gospel, so much knowledge as to perceive that you are not as God
first made you. You cannot but acknowledge it impossible that so filthy
and disorderly a piece can come out of his hands ; that there is something
wanting to you. And are those relics of nature left only to shew us our
indigence, and not also to spur us on to seek a remedy ? Melancthon saith,
I have seen many epicures who, being in some grief for their sins, have
argued, How can I expect to be received by God, when I find not a new light
and new virtues infused into me ? When you are stilled after the rage of
carnal affections or glut of pleasures, and you do in silence turn in upon
yourselves, and make inquiry after your future state, if your conscience do
not lie and flatter, will they not tell you to your faces that you are men of
death, prepared against the day of slaughter ? Besides, will not every man
confess in his most raised retirements that he cannot find any real satisfac-
* Eurgess.
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 71
tion in things below ? And are there not sometimes some natural aspirings
to something above these ? Do not all men one time or other inquire, Ps.
iv. 6, ' Who will shew us any good ?' Have you ever a more delightful
pleasure than when you find yourselves inflamed with some desires for it ?
But, alas ! do you not feel yourselves in a depraved state, and that these
motions are but weak flutterings, and that the soul is quickly wearied in
them ? Is not this an evidence that there must be a more vigorous nature
infused both to attain and enjoy them ? Is it not then an acting against
your own sentiments not to seek it ? Do you not offer violence to that little
reason in you to cut the wings of such motions ? Let me add this too, you
act in a way contrary to the nature of every thing, not to seek that state
which was designed for the perfection of human nature. Is it not natural
for everything to endeavour its recovery to its primitive purity, and struggle
under that which is preternatural to it ? A fountain will not rest till it hath
wrought out the filth which hath been cast into it ; so neither should man
be quiet till he recover himself from the dominion of sin in his nature, and
his pollution by it. Are you contented with a nasty, impure, and diseased
body ? are you not restless till it be cleansed and cured ? and is it no trouble
to you to have your souls in a dirty and foul condition ? Do you not hereby
act against your own nature in other things ?
(4.) Not to seek it is to despise the general mercy of God, and the general
kindness of the Mediator to human nature. There are in man desires for
and inclinations to happiness, and some knowledge that this happiness lies
in God. These desires were left in man by the mercy of God upon the
interposition of the Mediator ; therefore some call them not relics of nature,
but restored principles, as a foundation to work upon ; for upon the fall man
did forfeit all, and sin despoiled himself of all tie jure, but by the mediation
of Christ, those were left (Col. i. 17, ' By him all things consist'), other-
wise there had been no stock to work upon. These are left as founda-
tions upon which God grafts this grace of regeneration,* as they that spin
do not spin out the whole thread, but leave some end, that they may add
to it another thread ; so God, having a purpose to do good on man in
renewing him, did not suffer the stock of nature to be wholly rooted out,
but left that as a root to graft upon, to make him the better capable of
happiness. Had not man had a natural desire to happiness, there were no
ground to work upon him to induce him to such a thing ; therefore in not
seeking it you reproach God for leaving this stump in you, and seem to be
so well pleased with corrupt nature as if you would not have any remainder
of the former. It is a striving against the relic of original nature left in us.
(5.) Seek it, for it is as necessary as justification. You should therefore
seek it with as high an esteem of it as you have of pardon ; none but would
desire pardon of sin. You must be as desirous of the regeneration of your
nature ; they are equally necessary. Those who will not have an inherent
righteousness can never expect an imputed righteousness from Christ ; he
never came to that end. Two things happened to us by the fall : another
state and another nature; the regaining of the former must be equally sought
with the latter, a being in another covenant by justification (for naturally we
are in the covenant with Adam), and a being beautified with another image,
because naturally we are deformed by the image of Adam. As long as we
are only in a state of descent from, and union with, the first Adam, we are
under the strictness of his covenant and the deformity of his image ; when
we are united to the second Adam, and spiritually descend from him, we
are in his covenant of grace, and are adorned with his image. Both, there-
* Stoughton's Righteous Man's Pica, ser. i. p. 30.
72 charnock's works. [John III. 8, 5.
fore, must be looked after as equally necessary: Rom. v. 21, 'That as
sin hath reigned unto death, so might grace reign through righteousness
unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.' Let us, then, look after this
reign of grace ; let not that be the last which should be first in our thoughts.
Since our natural descent from Adam, we are born God's enemies : we must
be spiritually new-born before our enmity can expire.
(6.) The advantages that accrue by regeneration are high. When we are
renewed, we part with impurity for purity, with dross for gold, with corrup-
tion for holiness, with flesh for spirit, with nature for grace, with sin for
God, and the enjoyment of him for ever. Our present nature is a nature of
death and bondage ; a new nature is like the new law, a law of life and
liberty, James i. 25. It will put our souls in order, and set the Israelite
free from the Egyptian taskmaster ; it will quell the rage of sin, and diffuse
a serenity in our souls. Grace and peace are not unfitly joined together by
the apostle, in respect of peace in ourselves, wbich cannot be without habitual
grace, as well as peace with God, which cannot be without his favour. It
will enable us to perform spiritual services. As all natural actions flow
from a natural form in the creature, so all spiritual actions flow from a
spiritual nature in the soul, and without it a carnal heart can no more do
any spiritual work than a rock can perform the work of a balsam-tree. It
is but highly reasonable and just we should endeavour to regain that state
wherein we were created, as the best for us, since the estate wherein God
created us was certainly the best. It is unconceivably better to be a righteous
man than to be a man.
(7.) Seek it ; you will never repent your labour, because it is necessary.
Necessity makes us contend with the greatest difficulties ; men will do more
at a pinch than they can do at other times, when no necessity is upon them.
Never did any repent of it, never any will ; it hath been a comfort upon a
deathbed to all that had it : it never was any man's sorrow. The universal
consent of all who have found it wrought should quicken our desires and
endeavours for it. Ask a renewed man whether ever it troubled him that he
was regenerate ? whether he would be without that state rather than undergo
the same pains again ? "Would not his answer be, No, not for all the world ?
When the blessed apostle Paul considered his late regeneration, he expresseth
it with some regret, 1 Cor. xv. 8, ' as one born out of due time.' It implies
a sorrow that he was not born sooner ; and Austin cries out, Sero te amavi,
Domine, I have loved thee too late, Lord. So doth every renewed man
repent that he was not regenerate sooner. A regenerate man come under
the yoke of Christ finds such a pleasure in it, such a suitableness, such an
advantage to his interest, that he would not be free from those delightful
engagements, and the sweetness of that yoke, for all the delights and commo-
dities of the world.
Exhortation 3. Seek it presently ; let not a minute pass without some
ejaculation to God for the new birth ; and when you come home, fall upon
your knees, and rise not till you find a change of resolutions and disposi-
tions. If you did well understand the necessity of it, you would not be
one hour without begging it. You have heard the necessity of it now,
are you sure you shall ever hear the doctrine preached on again ? Are
you sure you may not be past the hope as well as the happiness of the
new birth before many days be run, if the present opportunity be neglected ?
When God commanded Abraham to circumcise himself and his family, it
is said he did it that very day wherein God commanded him, Gen.
xvii. 23. Why should you not imitate Abraham in the ready and speedy
circumcision of the heart ? Though God doth wait long, it cannot be
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 73
thought he should alway be courting dead souls. It must be now ; there
is no hope of such a change after death : ' The redemption of their soul
ceaseth for ever,' Ps. xlix. 8; no more under the offers of a redeeming
Saviour, no more under the motions of a renewing Spirit. Christ breaks the
nations like a potter's vessel, Ps. ii. 9. A vessel before it be burned may be
macerated in water, and formed anew ; but when it hath been burned in the
furnace, it cannot be changed. Well, if thou wilt be new born this day, God
will bless the memory of this day, for he will gain a son ; Jesus Christ will
by his blood put this day in red letters in his calendar, for he will gain a
brother ; the Spirit will rejoice, for he will gain a temple ; angels will
rejoice, for they will gain a fellow-servant ; you will gain a fitness for an
everlasting inheritance. Let me, therefore, press young men and women to
this necessary and important concern ; I know not when I may have so fit
an opportunity or subject for it. It is not said, except an old man be bora
again, but except a man ; therefore be not careless, as if you were not con-
cerned in it, nor put it off to a longer day from the probability of the length
of your life in a course of nature. Consider,
1. An early regeneration makes for God's honour.
(1.) In preventing much sin. How ripe are young ones, yea, even chil-
dren when they are scarce green in age, as though iniquity had been
their tutor in the womb ! Youthful blood is the devil's tinder. Job knew
it ; therefore when his sons feasted he sacrificed, chap. i. 5. He was
jealous of their inbred corruption, from the sense of the sins of his own
youth, which we find him complaining of, Job xiii. 26 ; therefore he feared
his children, having the same temptations, might fall into the same trans-
gressions. Now, by an early regeneration, many diseases of the soul are
prevented, as well as the great crack of nature cured, as the distempers of the
body are prevented by altering the habit of it in the spring. Though by a
late regeneration, that of an old man, the soul is fitted for heaven, yet it will
be grievous to him to think that his former dishonouring of God in his
natural state was not prevented. It is otherwise with the early regenerate ;
they cannot complain, as Paul did, Oh, how have I persecuted the church
of God ! how have I breathed out threatenings against Christ and his people !
how have I wallowed in all kind of sin ! They have indeed as much reason
to complain of the stock of the old nature within them, but not of so many
bitter fruits of the flesh as others. How doth the devil hang the wing when
he is deprived of an active servant ! As nothing makes heaven so glad, so
nothing makes hell so sad, as to be frustrated of the full crop of sin it
expected from such an instrument.
(2.) In doing much service for God. Young men are usually of active
spirits and vigorous affections, whereas age doth freeze all youthful warmth.
Such, like Peter, can • gird themselves, and go whither they please,' John
xxi. 18, and travel about for God ; but age damps the spirits. We are not
so fit for service when the vigour of our youth is spent. And would you be
saved, and God have no more glory from you ? Now what parts, or strength,
or mettle, a young man hath, grace will bias, put into a right channel, and
direct to an useful end. The early regenerate will be eminent in piety ; for
in a course of nature, they have a longer time to grow in. Their faith and
love, by a larger exercise, will be the stronger ; and the stronger the grace,
the more glory will be brought to God, Rom. iv. 20. Abraham, it is said,
was • strong in faith, giving glory to God.' He that rises betimes in the,
morning, will do more work than he that lies in bed till noon, or loiters till
the sun declines.
(3.) In manifesting the power of the grace of God. An early regenera-
74 chaexock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
tion is the great ornament of the gospel. It evidenceth the dignity and
strength of habitual grace, in quenching youthful heats and powerful tempta-
tions, in making such to deny themselves, and prefer God's precepts before
their own pleasures. It magnifies grace, when the devil is beat upon his
own dunghill, where he had so great an interest, by reason of the corrup-
tions such are subject to. What an elogy is it to the beauty and power of
grace, to see a young flourishing plant in God's garden ! It shews the
power of his grace upon such to salvation, that they are strong in the power
of the might of God, to wrestle against principalities and powers, as well as
against flesh and blood. It manifests the power of God's grace in the work
of faith, and that there is a spirit of power residing in them.
2. As an early regeneration makes for God's honour, so it makes for
your own interest.
(1.) Your new birth will be the gentler. The work of conscience will be
more kindly, without the horrors they have, who have lain many years soak-
ing in the old nature. More of hell must be flashed in an old sinner's face, to
awaken him from his dead sleep. Paul, who had sinned some years with an
high hand, was struck to the earth. Christ, as it were, took him by the throat,
and shook him : Acts ix. 6, « He trembling, and astonished, said,' &c. There
will be more amazing aggravations of sin to rack the conscience, and conse-
quently more anguish. Putrefied wounds require more lancing ; and there-
fore are more painful in the cure than those which are but newly made. The
more we are alienated from the life of God, the harder it will be to return
to live that life again. The further a man is gone out of his road, the
longer he must travel to come in again ; and the more pains he must take
in running or riding, than he that wandered but a little from it.
(2.) Your new birth will be the gratefuller to God. God loves the first
fruits. He would not have the gleanings, but the first crop of everything
under the law, which was laid upon the altar as God's portion. The kind-
ness of the youth is most respected by God. He cherished Israel because
they were ' the first fruits of his increase,' Jer. ii. 2, 3. 'I remember the
kindness of thy youth, the love of thy espousals, when thou wentest after me
in the wilderness,' under many discouragements. God writes down the
time of the new birth, and it runs in his mind a long time after. ' Epenetus,
the first fruits of Achaia,' is saluted by Paul, just after the salutation of the
whole church, with the title of ivell-beloved : Rom. xvi. 5, ' Greet the church that
is in their house ; salute my well-beloved Epenetus, who is the [first] fruits of
Achaia unto Christ.' And surely more beloved by the Lord than by the ser-
vant. God bath most affection for such as come in at the first sound of the
gospel. Daniel was a young man, yet the holiest man of his age ; and God
hath so great an affection to him that he joins him with Noah, that famous
preacher of righteousness, and Job, that mirror of patience, — Ezek. xiv. 14,
' Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should but
deliver their own souls by their righteousness,' — as those that had the greatest
power with him, to keep off judgments from the place where they were.
(3.) Comfort will be the greater by an early new birth. What a long time
will such an one have to enjoy the comforts of the Spirit! whereas those that
are renewed later, have fewer comforts, because their grieving the Spirit hath
been the longer. You will be always ready, and fit for the kingdom of God,
let God call when he will. Your foretastes of heaven greater, and much
acquaintance with the life of it, before you arrive at the place of full enjoy-
ment. John, the youngest disciple, lay in Christ's bosom; he had afterwards
the most spiritual illuminations, and the discoveries of the state of the church
in after days revealed to him. When our sluggishness makes God wait for
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of eegeneeation. 75
our return, his justice will make us wait long for his comforts. The earlier
your new birth, the sweeter will be your death, as being more stored with
experiences of God's grace, and goodness, and trutb, wherewith to answer all
the devil's affrighting charges in your departing hence. No doubt can arise,
but there will be a treasure of experience whence to draw an answer. The
longer acquaintance you have with God, and the longer likeness to him in
your natures, the more joyful will be your passage to him, and the more con-
fidence against the fear of death.
(4.) The earlier your new birth, the sincerer and stronger will be your grace.
To row against the strong stream and tide of nature, temptations of a youth-
ful age, the inconstancy and lightness of your humour, and the inconsiderate-
ness of your temper, are arguments of sincerity. To seek God, when a man
hath fair and frequent invitations to sin, is not so liable to suspicion, as
when a man can live no longer. The latter proceeds rather from a fear of
wrath than love to their Creator, or affection to his glory. Grace will be
the stronger, the more full of juice. He that is new-born betimes, when he
is young, will grow to a greater stature and a mighty strength in his age ; for it
is not with grace as it is with our bodies, the older the weaker ; but as the
outward man decays, the inward man grows, and is renewed day by day,
2 Cor. iv. 16. A young plant in the house of God will be fat and flourish-
ing, and full of fruit in old age, Ps. xcii. 13, 14. The weakness of the body
in such is the youthfulness of grace.
(5.) The earlier the new birth, the weightier will be your glory in the king-
dom of God. God rewards according to our works : Rev. ii. 23, ' I will give
to every one of you according to your works.' Not only to the wicked, the
children of the woman Jezebel, according to their works, but to them whose
charity, service, faith, patience, he knew, ver. 19. The longer you are with-
out a new life, a vital principle, the fewer will your works be, and the shorter
your wages. Though God in regeneration works as a sovereign, and hath
mercy on whom he will have mercy, yet, in rewarding, he acts as a righteous
judge, according to the rules of justice: 2 Tim. iv. 8, ' The crown which the
Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me ;' and so doth proportion the glory to
every man's service. Young ones regenerate, that bear head against the
temptations of their violent nature, shall have crowns set with more jewels.
They shall not only have an entrance, but ' an abundant entrance into the ever-
lasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,' 2 Peter i. 11. They
shall enter into the port with a full gale. The more violent storms they
bear up against, the brighter will be their glory. For if he that endures
temptation, but one temptation, shall have a crown, by proportion, he that
endures many shall have a greater : James i. 12, * Blessed is the man that
.endures temptation; for when he is tried, he shall have a crown of life.' How
comfortable will it be to feel the weight of your crown and the richness of
your robes, according to your years of service. If there be any sorrow in
heaven, it is because they were not sooner new-born, that they might more
have glorified God on earth, who bestows so much honour upon them in
heaven. If any of you were sure to be regenerate after you had spent so
many years after the course of the world and fulfilling the lusts of the flesh,
yet how great would your loss be, both of the comforts of the Spirit in this
life, and of degrees of glory in the other !
3. Deferring the seeking after this new birth till more years grow upon you
is a mighty folly. It is a matter of the highest concern, the greatest neces-
sity, in comparison of which all other things are but toys and superfluities.
Is it not folly to prefer superfluous things before necessary ? Is it not a mad-
ness for a man to be mending the mud-wall about his garden, and neglect
76 chaknock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
to quench the fire which hath got hold of his house ? You are poisoned in
your nature, you have plague-spots upon your hearts. Would it not be ridi-
culous for a man that hath drunk poison, and spilt some upon his clothes,
to be more careful to have tbe stains fetched out of his garments than the
poison out of his stomach ? You are careful about the concerns of the body
and flesh, oh be not such fools as to let the poison within get the greater head,
and the plague continue in the heart.
Folly it is,
(1.) Because of the uncertainty of life. You are not lords and keepers of
your own times, they are in God's hands: Ps. xxxi. 15, ' My times are in
thy hands.' What if he should fling that time out of his hand to-morrow,
what would your condition be ? Those that are in a dead state now, as they
ai*e here, if judgment find them so, are irrecoverable. Because thou art a
child of wrath, if he take thee thus away with his stroke, as Job speaks,
chap, xxxvi. 18, then a ' great ransom cannot deliver thee.' Hell followed
death close at the back, Rev. vi. 8. Shall sin reign in a body ? That is
base. But in a mortal body, a body that may drop into the grave every
hour ? That is folly in the highest degree. It is the apostle's exhortation :
Rom. vi. 12, ' Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies.' Many a
candle hath been put out before half burnt ; how often hath a clear sun in
the morning been overcast before noon ! Were none of you the last week at
the funeral of some strong and vigorous person ? Perhaps there is no more
time left you than just what will serve for to seek this new birth. God seizeth
upon some suddenly, that they have not time so much as to cry out what
aileth them : Job xxxvi. 13, 14, ' They cry not when he bindeth them. They
die in youth, and their life is among the unclean.' It is better to be new-born
many years too soon (if it can be supposed to be too soon), than to defer it
one minute too late. He that defers the new birth to-day, may not have a
morrow to be new born in. And to be surprised by death before you are
new born, better for you you had never been born at all.
(2.) It is folly, because if you neglect the present time, though you may
live, yet your return to God by a new birth may be very uncertain. There
is such a thing as a day of grace, shorter than the days of a man's life : Luke
xix. 42, ' The things of their peace' were then ' hid from their eyes,' though
their destruction was deferred forty years. There is such a resolve in heaven
sometimes, that ' the Spirit shall strive no longer ' with this or that man :
Gen. vi. 3, ' My Spirit shall not always strive with man,' or ' in man,' with
this or that man ; ' for that he also is flesh.' It is a threatening to those
in the church, in opposition to the profane world, ver. 2. The church began
then to be corrupted. My Spirit shall not strive with them ; though they
make a profession of me, and attend upon me in worship, yet they are flesh,
degenerated into mere flesh, and flesh they shall be. And sometimes it is
confirmed by a solemn oath. Rev. x. 5, 6, The angel swears in a most
solemn manner, ' By him that lives for ever, who created heaven and earth,'
&c, ' that there should be time no longer ;' that is, no time of repentance, as
appears if you refer it to Rev. ix. 20, 21. It is not therefore without great
reason that the apostle doth double both the notes of attention, behold, and
the time too, now, now, when he exhorts them not to receive the grace of
God in vain ; that is, sit under the gospel administration to no purpose,
without having a gospel impression and signature upon their hearts :
' Behold, noiv is the accepted time ; behold, now is the day of salvation,'
2 Cor. vi. 2.
4. As it is a folly to neglect it, so if it be not presently sought, and endea-
voured for, the more difficult it will be every day to attain it.
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 77
(1.) In regard of the increase of moral indisposition and unfitness. It is
true indeed there is in every man a moral indisposition to a spiritual reno-
vation, but the indisposition is greater when the habits of sin are more than
ordinarily strengthened. The more the soul is frozen, the harder it will be
to melt. A body dead some few hours is a subject more capable of having
life breathed into it than when it is putrefied and partly mouldered to dust.
A young tree may more easily be taken up and transplanted than a strong old
oak, which hath spread its roots deep into the earth. The more rooted the
habit of sin, the harder the alteration of the soul. Every sin in an unre-
generate man is an adding a new stone to the former heap upon the grave
to hinder his resurrection. It is a fetter and bond — Acts viii. 23, ' bond of
iniquity' — and the more new chains are put upon thee, the more unable wilt
thou be to stir. The habits of sin will become more connatural to the soul,
and fortify themselves with new recruits.
(2.) In regard of the industry of the devil. If you remain in a state of
nature till you are old, that devil which blinds you now will have increased
your blindness- by that time ; he will bestir himself in your age, that he may
not lose that which he hath possessed so long. It is a shame for Satan, as
well as for a man, deficere in ultimo actu. He that struck the first fatal blow
to us, and occasioned this degenerate nature, will not want watchfulness and
care to strengthen it in you. He will be diligent to keep up his own work ;
the longer his possession, the more difficult his departure. Judas was a devil
in our Saviour's judgment all his time — John vi. 70, ' One of you is a devil,'
— but when he had withstood the force of our Saviour's discourses, and
nourished his covetousness against his Master's frequent conviction, the devil
1 entered into his heart,' John xiii. 27. Perhaps there had been before some
strugglings of natural conscience in Judas, as there may be in some of you ;
but when he had, against the sight of our Saviour's miracles, the hearing of
his sermons, the checks of his own conscience, continued in a natural state,
Satan enters into him in a more peculiar manner, in a way of more special
efficacy ; and, by an uncontrollable power, breaks the bridle of conscience,
which had held him in so long, and runs furiously with him to what wicked-
ness he pleased. Satan reigned in him before ; but as the regenerate, being
by degrees filled with spiritual gifts, and having additions of grace, are said
to be ' filled with the Spirit,' so natural men, as they increase in sin by degrees,
are said to have a new entrance of Satan into them, because there is an in-
crease of his efficacy in them, and power over them, binding them in stronger
chains and fetters of iron.
(3.) In regard of spiritual judgments, which will make it impossible. Such
judgments upon men that sit under the gospel, and admit not the influence
of it, are more frequent than is usually imagined, though they are not so
visible. Open sins God punishes many times by visible judgments, but
wilful unregeneracy by spiritual. Though a man may sit under the same
means of grace which God doth bless to regenerate others, they may be an
accidental means to harden him : ' The miry places shall not he healed, but
be given to salt,' as it is Ezek. xlvii. 47, when others shall grow like trees
on both sides the river, and bear a never-fading leaf. If once your neglects
and provocations put God to his oath, and make him swear, as he once did,
that you shall not enter into his rest, Heb. iii. 11, his oath will be irrever-
sible, he will blow up heaven and earth before he will break it. And that
it may not be evaded that this was an oath against the Israelites, it is inti-
mated by the apostle that even in the times of the gospel this oath is of
force, ver. 12. He from thence exhorts them at that time to take heed of
• an evil heart of unbelief.' What need of this exhortation to them, if this
78 charnock's works. [John III. 3, 5.
oath did only concern the Israelites murmuring in the wilderness, and were
not valid against unbelievers and unregenerate men in the time of the gospel ?
It is a terrible place that in Isa. vi. 9, ' Make the heart of this people fat,
and make their ears heavy, and shut tbeir eyes, lest they see with their eyes,
and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed ;' which dreadful
place is no less than six times quoted in the New Testament, as though it
belonged only to them that sit under evangelical light with a wilful unrege-
neracy. Certainly as the mercies of the gospel are most spiritual, so the
judgments inflicted upon the neglecters of it are the most spiritual judgments.
Then a man is made the centre of divine fury, and his heart sealed up from
any seizure by sanctifying grace: Ezek. xxiv. 13, 'Because I have purged
thee,' that is, offered thee purging grace, ' and thou wast not purged, thou
shalt not be purged from thy filthiness any more, till I have caused my fury
to rest upon thee.' "When God passes such a secret sentence, if all the men
in the world, and all the angels in heaven, should, with their most affectionate
strains of reason, attempt the persuading of you, they were not able to
open an heart which God hath judicially locked up and sealed. It is observed
by some, that the work of the gospel, for conversion, is usually done in those
places where it comes, in the space of seven years, as to those who have sat
under it so long ; and they ground it upon Dan. ix. 27, ' And he shall con-
firm the covenant with many for one week,' that is, one week of years. And
that our Saviour preached three years and an half among the Jews, and the
apostles three years and an half or thereabouts before the Jews were dis-
covenanted. I will not affirm it positively, but offer it as worthy considera-
tion to those that have sat under the gospel more than seven years without
any renewing work on their souls.
Well then, let me beseech you, resolve upon this work presently. We are
not to bid a poor man ' go away, and come again to-morrow,' Prov. iii. 27, 28 ;
and shall we bid the Spirit, knocking at our hearts in the gospel, go away,
and come again another time ? Our blessed Saviour did not defer his death
for us till he was old, and shall not we live to him till we are old ? As his
death is an argument used by the apostle, to move us to live to him, 2 Cor.
v. 14, 15, so the time of his death should be an argument to us to live to
him betimes. How many hath this foolish to-morrow deceived ! and many
have perished to-day before the dawning of to-morrow. Defer it not there-
fore a night longer ; reflect upon yourselves, and say, Have I lived so long,
pleased with my old nature ? 0 Lord, what had become of me without
thy wonderful patience ? Let your motion be as the lightning, as the pro-
phet Ezekiel speaks of the motion of four beasts, chap. i. 14. God may make
up the match between himself and you before midnight : there was less time
in God's working upon the jailer.
Quest. What shall we do to get this new birth ?
Ans. 1. Begin with prayer ; seek it from that Saviour that first made so
plain a declaration of it. 'A man cannot receive anything, unless it be given
him from heaven,' John iii. 27. Then from heaven beg it ; let God hear of
you as soon as ever you come home. God usually lets in renewing grace
at the same gate at which honest prayer goes out.* Prayer is a compli-
ance with God's grace ; he never refuseth it to them that heartily desire
it. Go therefore to God, give him no rest ; if you do so, it may not be long
before you will hear that joyful word drop from his gracious lips : ' My grace
will be sufficient for you,' sufficient to renew you, sufficient to cure you.
Let the fervency of your prayers be proportioned according to the necessity
of the thing, and the greatness of your misery without it. Plead, therefore,
* Jackson, vol. iii. chap, xxviii. p, 496, 497.
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 79
with God for it ; Lord, is it not better to make me thy friend than to let me
continue thy enemy ? Is it not more thy glory to raise a soul from sin than
a Lazarus from the grave ? Thy power and mercy are more illustrious in
turning a dry stock into a fruitful and flourishing tree. Overcome, therefore,
my base nature by thy merciful power ; change me from a venomous to a
dove-like nature. Oh how fain would I glorify tbee, by answering the end
of my creation ! Glorify thyself by new-creating my heart, that I may glorify
thee in a newness of life. I cannot get a new heart by my own strength ; but
it is a work not too hard for thy power, and suitable to thy promise. Plead
the promise : Ezek. xi. 19, ' I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and
I will give them an heart of flesh ;' and Ezek. xxxvi. 26, ' A new heart will
I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you ;' but he ' will be inquired
of, to do it for them,' ver. 37. Breathe and aspire after it ; beg for it as
earnestly as you would in extreme hunger for food for the satisfaction of your
natural appetite ; God will not deny it for such as breathe after it, Mat. v. 6,
Hunger and thirst after righteousness, and you shall be filled ; beg the opera-
tion of the Spirit. Our Saviour provided the plaster, but left the Spirit to
apply it ; he provided the colours, his blood, to draw his image, but none but
the Spirit can lay them on. Ask therefore the Spirit of the Father in the
name of Christ ; the Father sends him into the world, and sends him into
the heart, but in the name of Christ. It is called a holy Spirit, because
without it there can be no holy nature.
2. Be deeply sensible of the corruption of nature. The more we are
sensible of our inherent depravation, the more we shall breathe after a real
change. Can he ever imagine the necessity of a cure, who understands not
the greatness of his disease ? Be fully convinced, as Paul was, that in you,
that is, ' in your flesh, dwells no good thing,' Piom. vii. 18. I know ; I am
experimentally sensible of it. Did we but truly see the defilement of our nature,
and the monstrous alteration of it from that of our creation, as we can the
deformity of some monster in the world, we should loathe ourselves, we should
fly, if we could, from our own nature, and send forth nothing but groans for
a deliverance from the body of death, and have no rest till wre were stripped
of so abominable a frame. Let us, therefore, turn in upon ourselves, take
a view of our condition, see if there be any suitableness between our depraved
natures, and the glory of another world. There is not, unless we conceit
heaven a place filled only with carnal pleasures. But reason will tell us
the contrary, and a carnal soul can never, in that state, be fit for a spiritual
glory.
3. View often the perfection of the law of God. This will make us sen-
sible of the contrariety of our nature to God's holiness, and consequently make
us look about^for a remedy. See whether your nature answers the exact-
ness of the law ; for although you were alive without the law, yet, when the
commandment and your hearts come to look upon one another, you will see
sin in its life and power, and all the conceits of your own excellency will die :
Rom. vii. 9, ' For I was alive without the law once, but when the command-
ment came, sin revived, and I died.' Paul thought himself a righteous per-
son, till he came to measure himself by the exact and spiritual image of the
law. He had been instructed in the literal knowledge of the law, for he was
brought up a Pharisee ; his head and the law were acquainted, and then he
thought himself a living person ; but when his heart and the law came to be
acquainted, then he found himself dead, and his high opinion of himself fell
to the ground. Consider, then, how the law requires a perfect righteousness,
an inward principle. All duties it commands are not only to be done
materially, but formally ; for they are so commanded in such a manner, from
80 chaknock's works. [John III. 8, 5.
such a principle, to such an end. Then reflect, have I such a righteous-
ness ? can 1 answer the law ? do I come up to the measures of it in any one
action ? Surely I do not. Then consider further, Doth not this law stand ?
will God lay it in the dust ? has he thrown it out of doors ? Surely it is
holy, just, and good, and therefore a standing rule. I must have a principle
suitable to that which Jesus Christ came not to destroy, but establish. How
shall I do it with this corrupt nature, wherein I do not one action that doth
sincerely respect it, as the law of God, that is, accompanied with a delight in
it ? Certainly this temper, so contrary to the law, must be changed. I
must have an inner man to delight in this law, a principle that must in
some measure, though imperfectly, suit it. This orderly consideration
would put you upon the seeking out for such a righteousness as may in part
answer it.
4. Observe the motions of the Spirit. There is an assisting work of the
Spirit, and an informing work. There is not a man but hath, or once had,
the strivings of this Spirit with him. There are the knockings of Christ by
his Spirit at the door ; there are calls, ' Zaccheus, come down ; this day is
salvation come to thy house.' Did you never hear a voice from heaven, say-
ing, ' Come to me that you may have life ' ? Did you never hear a groan from
heaven, ' When shall it once be ? ' Did you never see a tear trickling down
the cheek of Christ, as when he wept over Jerusalem ? Did you never hear
a sigh of a grieved Spirit waiting upon you ? Can you see, and hear, and
hear again, yet no compliance, when that is of absolute necessity you are
exhorted to ? Smother not these motions ; answer them with suitable
affections. If Christ looks upon you, as he did upon Peter, think of what
you are, and weep, Mark xiv. 72. If the Spirit calls, answer presently, ' Th)r
face, Lord, will I seek.' The neglect of the time of the Spirit's breathing is
the cause of a continuance in unregeneracy. Repel not those sweet motions
that strike upon your hearts.
5. Attend diligently upon all means of grace. They are the pipes through
which the Spirit breathes, the lungs of the Spirit, the instruments whereby
our natures are altered : ' Faith comes by hearing.' It is by the hearing of
faith that the Spirit is ministered : Gal. iii. 5, ' He therefore that ministers
to you the Spirit, doth he it by the works of the law, or the hearing of faith ?'
None can expect it who will not use the means to have it, no more than men
can expect to live without eating and drinking. Would we be warm ? we
must approach to the fire. Would we be clean ? we must wash in the water.
Would we be renewed ? we must attend upon the breathings of the Spirit in
the institutions of God. This we may do, though we cannot renew ourselves ;
we may read the word as well as a piece of news ; we may hear the word,
and attend to it, as well as to any worldly concern ; we may meditate upon
it, and consider it, as well as a story. This we have power to do, and it is
by the word that this great work is done. By a powerful word Christ called
Lazarus out of the grave, and by his word spoken by his Spirit, his great
deputy he sent after him, he calls us out of our state of death. Beg of the
Spirit to breathe upon you before you come to attend upon his institutions.
We profit little by the word, and our old nature attends us, because we take
no notice of the Spirit of God, who is appointed the principal officer in this
business. It is he that is to guide us into truth, John xvi. 13. Though
men may speak truth to us, yet the Spirit can only guide the truth into our
hearts, and guide us into the heart, and bowels, and inwards of truth, to taste
the marrow of it.
6. I might add, Study the gospel. Look upon Jesus Christ in that glass ;
this transforms us into his image ; as the beholding the light of the sun in a
John III. 3, 5.] the necessity of regeneration. 81
glass, paints an image of that light in our faces ; so doth the beholding Christ
in the gospel : 2 Cor. iii. 18, ' But ye all, with open face, beholding as in a
glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image.' The gospel
is the cause of our first change, and of our growth in it, ' from glory to glory,'
but by the Spirit of God in the gospel, ' as by the Spirit of the Lord.' Study
the promises of the gospel, and the end of the blood of Christ, which was to
purge our conscience from dead works. It is by believing the promises of
pardon in the blood of Christ that ' the conscience is purged from dead works,'
Heb. ix. 14.
A DISCOURSE OF THE NATURE OF
REGENERATION.
Therefore if any man he in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed
away; behold, all things are become new. — 2 Cor. V. 17.
The apostle in those words, ver. 13, ' For whether we be besides ourselves,
it is to God ; or whether we be sober, it is for your cause,' defends his
speaking so much of his integrity ; though some men would count him out
of his wits for it, yet he regards not their judgment ; for if he were in an
ecstasy, or ' beside himself,' his purpose was to serve God and his church,
and therefore he did not regard the opinion of men, whether he were ac-
counted mad or sober, so he might perform the end of his apostleship. The
sense therefore of it, as Calvin renders it, is this : Let men take it as they
will, that I speak so much of my integrity, I do it not upon my own ac-
count, but have respect to God and the church in speaking of it, for I
am as ready to be silent as to speak, when my silence may glorify God
and advantage the church as much as my speech ; ' for the love of Christ
constrains me,' ver. 14, for whom I am bound to live ; and so he passes on
to inculcate the duty of every man that hath an interest in the death of
Christ. The love of Christ constrains us actively ; the love wherewith Christ
hath loved us is a powerful attractive to make us live to him. It is the
highest equity and justice that we should live to him who died for us.
Whence observe,
The true consideration and sense of the love of Christ in his death, hath a
pleasing force, and is a delightful bond and ooligation upon us to devote our-
selves wholly to his service and glory. There is a moral constraint upon
the soul to this end : ' if one died for all, then were all dead,' then all were
obnoxious to eternal death. Others * dislike this interpretation, and under-
stand it not of the death to God brought in by the first Adam, but a death
to sin and the flesh, procured by the second Adam, which death is spoken of
Rom. vi. 2, ' How shall we, being dead to sin,' &c, and called ' a suffering
in the flesh, and a ceasing from sin,' 1 Peter iv. 1. If one died for all, then
all for whom he died are dead, jure et obligatione, dead to themselves, that
they might not be under their own power, but the power of him that died
fur them, and rose again. Since, therefore, we are dead to sin, we should
* Vorstiut-', Calvin.
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 83
take no care to maintain the life of it. And this seems, by the following
verse, to be the true meaning of it : ver. 15, ' And that he died for all, that
they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him
which died for them, and rose again.' He hath redeemed us by the price of
his blood, that he might have us in his own power, as his own property, so
that we are no longer our own masters, and have no longer right to our-
selves.* They ought to die to themselves, that they may live to Christ ; it
being fit they should live not to their own wills, or own honour, but to the
glory and will of their Redeemer. It was to this end that Christ died, that
he might have a seed to serve him, and live to him. It is ingratitude and
injustice to deny him our service, since thereby we endeavour to frustrate
the design of his coming, and the end of his death. Observe,
1. Self is the chief end of every natural man. ' That they which live,
should not henceforth live unto themselves.' Implying that all men living,
who are not under the actual benefit and efficacy of our Saviour's death,
do live to themselves. The greatest distinction between a regenerate and
a natural man is this, self is the end of one, and Christ the end of the
other. The life of a natural man, and all the dependencies of it, is to gra-
tify corrupt self, with the greatest detriment to his natural and moral self,
the happiness and good of his soul ; but the life of a new creature, with all
the dependencies of it, is for the glory of God and the Redeemer. This
self-dependence, and a desire of independency on God, which was the great
sin of Adam, whereby he would make himself his own chief end, hath run
in the veins of all his posterity, and is the bitter root upon which all the
fruits of gall and wormwood grow.
2. The end of our Saviour's dying and rising again was to change the
corrupt end of the creature. The end of redemption, and consequently the
end of the Redeemer, must be contrary to the end of corruption and the end
of the first Adam. As Adam dispossessed God of his dominion to set up
self, so doth Christ pull down self to advance God to his right of being our
chief end. It is called, therefore, a redemption of us to God : Rev. v. 9,
• For thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood ;' redeemed
us from a slavery under sordid lusts, to God as our end.
3. Therefore we must be taken off from ourselves, as our end, and be fixed
upon another, even upon Christ, else we answer not the end of Christ's
death and resurrection : ' He bore our sins in his own body on the tree,
that we being dead to sin, should live unto righteousness,' 1 Peter ii. 24.
And if the ends of our Saviour's death and resurrection be not accomplished
upon us, the fruits of it shall not be enjoyed by us. The whole work of
regeneration, and conversion, and sanctifica*ion, and the efficacy of the death
of Christ in the soul, consists in these two things : a taking us off from self,
and pitching us upon God and Christ as our end. The terminus a quo is
self, the terminus ad quern is Christ. We are 'redeemed by the precious
blood of Christ from our vain conversation received by tradition from our
fathers,' 1 Peter i. 18, even from our first father Adam. This is properly to
set up no other gods before him, and to abhor the grossest idolatry.
4. It is highly equitable, that if Christ died for us, and was raised for us
as our happiness, we should live to his glory, and make him our end in all
our actions, and the whole course of our lives. The apostle uses this con-
sideration as an argument, and as a copy and exemplar. As Christ died not
for himself, nor rose again for himself, but he died for God's glory and our
redemption, to vindicate God's righteousness, and justify us in his sight, and
rose again to make it appear that he had done our business in redeeming us,
* Calvin.
84 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
and went to heaven to manage our cause for us, so we are to live to keep up
the honour of God's righteousness and holiness, and to justify Christ in our
professions of him, and conformity to him in the design of his death and
resurrection. It is a high disesteem of ourselves not to live to Christ, which
is both a more rightful and a more satisfying object of our affections, who
returns our living to him with a happiness to ourselves. By his dying he
purchased a dominion over us ; by his resurrection his dominion over us
was confirmed, and thereby our obligation of love and service increased. He
died as our surety to satisfy our debts, and rose as our Saviour to justify
our persons; so the apostle, Rom. iv. 25, ' He was delivered for our offences,
and rose again for our justification.' Therefore, as he rose to justify us,
we must rise to glorify him. And indeed it is a great sign of a spiritual
growth when we grow in our ends and aims for God.
5. The resurrection of Christ, as well as his death, was for us. He rose
again, it must be understood, for them for whom he died ; he died as a public
person, bearing our sins, and rose again as a public person, and head of the
believing world, acquitted from our sins : Heb. ix. 24, ' He is entered into
heaven, to appear in the presence of God for us.' And in a conformity to
these two public acts of Christ doth our regeneration and communion with
Christ consist ; in a mortification of the body of sin in conformity to his
death ; in newness of life, by quickening grace, in conformity to his resur-
rection, Col. ii. 12.
The apostle proceeds on, and makes his inference in the 16th verse,
' Henceforth know we no man after the flesh ; yea, though we have known
Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.' To know
is used in Scripture for love and delight, both on God's part, — Ps. i. G,
' The Lord knows the way of the righteous,' that is, loves and delights in
the way of the righteous, — and on man's part: Hosea iv. 1, ' No knowledge
of God in the land,' that is, no love of God. Not to know men after the
flesh then, is either not to judge of men according to the endowments, though
never so glittering, which arise only from fleshy principles ; to esteem no
man according to his greatness, his knowledge, and worth, in the account of
the world ; or, not to love men for our secular interest ; or, not to regard
men according to those fleshly privileges of circumcision and carnal cere-
monies. Not ourselves, which is included in no man ; not to esteem of our-
selves by our knowledge, wealth, credit, honour, or any other excellency
which falls under the praise of men, but by inward grace, living to God,
fruitfulness to him, which falls under the praise of God. Men esteem not
their fields for the gay wild flowers in them, but for the corn and fruit ; ' yea,
though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we
him no more.' We do not glory in him because he was of kin to us, and
our countryman according to the flesh ; we look upon him no more only
as a miraculous man, but we have more noble thoughts of him ; we know
him as the great Redeemer of the world ; we consider him in those excel-
lent things he hath done, those excellent graces which he hath communicated,
those excellent offices he doth exercise ; we know him after a spiritual
manner, as the author of all grace, appointed by God for such ends, accepted
by God upon such works, glorified by God for such purposes; we regard him
as transacting our great affairs in heaven, where he is entered as a fore-
runner for us, Heb. vi. 20, and as such we serve and honour him ; we de-
sire not his company in the flesh, but in the spirit, in his heavenly appear-
ance and glory. Observe,
1. Natural men have no delight in anything but secular concerns ; love
nothing, but for their own advantage ; admire not any true spiritual worth;
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 85
they know and love men ; yea, what love they pretend to Christ is only a
fleshly love, a love from education, a customary love.
2. An evidence of being taken off from ourselves and living to Christ, is
our valuation either of ourselves or others, according to holiness. Though
a civil respect be due to men according to their station in the world, — such a
respect the writer of this epistle gave to Agrippa ; — yet our inward valuations
of men ought to be upon the account of the image of God in them. God,
who loves righteousness, knows no man after the flesh, but as he finds the
image of his own righteousness in him ; and as a new creature is framed
after the image of God, so his affections and valuations of men or things are
according to God's affections to them, or esteem of them.
3. Our professions of Christ, serving him and loving him barely for our-
selves and for fleshly ends, doth not consist with regeneration. Such a love
is a love to ourselves, not to Christ, a making him only subservient to us, not
ourselves subservient to Christ.
4. We should eye Christ, and arise to the knowledge of him, as he is
advanced and exalted by God. Look upon him as our head, delight to come
under his wing, and have our whole dependence on him, know him in his
righteousness to justify us, know him not only as a Saviour risen, but in
the power of his resurrection in our souls, and the fellowship of his suffer-
ings, and to be made conformable to his death ; such a knowledge the apostle
aims at, Philip, iii. 8-10 ; the other knowledge is a knowledge of him in
the head, this a knowledge of him in the heart ; the other is a knowledge of
him after the flesh, this a knowledge of him after the spirit, in the draught
of Christ in our hearts by the Spirit, an inward conception of him in the
womb of our hearts.
The text is another inference made from that position, ver. 15. If there
be such an obligation upon us to live to Christ, because he hath died and
rose again for us ; then certainly whosoever hath an interest in the death
and resurrection of Christ, as to the fruits of it, must be a new creature, a
changed person ; old things have passed away, all things are become new
in him. Whosoever is in the kingdom of Christ, engrafted into him, under
the participation of his death and resurrection, is a new creature ; all other
excellencies are defective, though they may be useful to the world ; it is a
4 new creation ' only makes a man excellent and worthy of the kingdom.
' Old things are passed away,' old affections, old dispositions of Adam ;
those things, the ag^aTa, things that are very near of as old a standing as
the world. Adam would be his own rule and ruler ; he would be the rule
of good and evil to himself; he would be his own end. These things must
pass away ; we must come to a fiduciary reliance upon God, under the new
head of his appointment, and make him our highest good, our chief end, our
exact rule; and therefore what is called the 'new creature,' Gal. vi. 15, is
called ' faith working by love,' Gal. v. 6. Adam's great failures were un-
belief and self-love ; he would not believe God's precept and threatening ;
he would not depend upon God. To this is opposed faith, which is a grace
that empties us of ourselves, and fixes us in our dependence on another.
He would also advance himself, and be his own rule and end, to know as
God ; to this is opposed love, which is an acting for God and his glory.
And these two are the essential parts of the new creature. Some of late
would understand, by the new creature, only a conversion from idolatry to the
profession of Christianity. But there must be a greater import in the words
than so. The apostle makes it a qualification necessary both to Jew and
Gentile, that neither the circumcision of the one did avail without it, nor the
uncircumcision of the other prejudice them that possess it. Besides, men
80 ohaknock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
may turn from one profession to another without living to God, and direct-
ing all their actions to the glory of Christ. Some translate it, ' Let him be
a new creature ;' others, ' He is a new oreature.' One notes his state, the
other his obligation. ' Old things are passed away.' It is a reason ren-
dered ; there is a change in the whole frame of things. If you understand
it of the old economy, the old legal state, then it is an argument shewing the
necessity of the new creature. Old things are withered ; there is a new
frame in the church, in the kingdom, therefore there ought to be so in the
subjects of it ; for the prophets use to speak of the state of the gospel under
the names of a ' new heaven and new earth,' Isa. lxv. 17. As old rites in
the church are removed, so the old principles and the old frames of Adam
should pass away. The old rubbish must be thrown out when the house is
new built. And they are passed away in a regenerate man, jure, obligatione,
potestate, though not wholly in actu. ' All things are become new,' but not
of ourselves, but by the grace of God, ver. 18, ' and all things are of God.'
It is likely the apostle expresseth himself thus, to pull down the swelling
thoughts of the Corinthians which they had of themselves. They were proud
of their gifts, wherein, by the apostle's own confession, they came behind no
church in the world, 1 Cor. i. 7 ; and he discourseth to them much of the
excellency of charity above knowledge, and adviseth them to ' covet the best
gifts,' 2 Cor. xiii. He depresseth their confidence in knowledge without
grace, which doth but puff up, not edify to eternal life. He wisheth them,
therefore, to look more to the new creature in them, to try themselves
whether they be in Christ or no, by the change they found in their hearts.
• If any man be in Christ,' that is, be a member of Christ, engrafted into
him.
In the words observe,
1. The character of a true Christian by his state, a new creature.
2. The necessity of this new creation, if any man; if he be not a new
creature, he is not in Christ ; he hath nothing at present to do with him, he
is no true member of his body.
3. The universality, any man ; not a man can be in Christ by any other
way, without this new creation pass upon him.
4. The advantage of it : if he be a new creature, he is certainly in
Christ, it is an infallible token that the Redeemer did die and rise again
for him.
5. The nature of it.
(1.) Removal of the old form : old things are passed (may.
(2.) Introduction of a new : all things are become new, as without in the
church, so within in the soul.
6. The note of attention : behold, more particularly set to this passage, of
all things becoming new, to remove the deceit that men are liable to. Old
things in some measure may pass away, but look to that, whether new
things come in the place contrary to those old, whether there be new affec-
tions, new dispositions ; old things may pass away, when old sins are left,
and no new frames be set up in the stead of them. The doctrine I shall in-
sist upon is this :
^ Boot. Every man in Christ hath a real and mighty change wrought in
him, and becomes a new creature.
I pitch upon these words to shew the nature of regeneration, the neces-
sity of which I have already discoursed of.
It is difficult to describe exactly the nature of regeneration.
1. Because of the disputes about the nature of it; whether it be quality,
or a spiritual substance ; whether, if a quality, it be a habit or a power, or
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 87
whether it be the Holy. Ghost personally.* Many controversies the wits of
men have obscured it with. The Scripture discovers it to us under the
terms of the new creature, a new heart, a law put into us, the image of
God, a divine nature ; these, though Scripture terms, are difficult to explain.
2. It is difficult, because it is visible, not in itself, but in its effects. We
know seed doth propagate itself, and produce its like, but the generative part
in the seed lies covered with husks and skin, so that it is hard to tell in what
atom or point the generative particle doth lie. We know we have a soul,
yet it is hard to tell what the soul is, and in what part it doth principally
reside. We know there are angels, yet what mortal can give a description
of that glorious nature ? It is much like the wind, as our Saviour describes
it : John iii. 8, ' The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the
sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it comes, nor whither it goes : so is
every one that is born of the Spirit.' The wind, we feel it, we see the effects
of it, yet cannot tell how it ariseth, where it doth repose itself, and how it
is allayed ; and all the notions of philosophy about it will not satisfy a
curious inquirer. So likewise it is in this business of regeneration ; the
effects of it are known, there are certain characters whereby to discern it ;
but to give a description of the nature of it is not so easy.
3. It is difficult, because of the natural ignorance which is still in the
minds of the best. A man cannot understand all iniquity, for there is a
• mystery of iniquity ;' neither can he fully understand this work, for there
is a ' mystery of godliness,' 1 Tim. iii. 16 ; not only in the whole scheme of
it without, but in the whole frame of it in the heart. It is called the • hid-
den man of the heart,' 1 Peter iii. 4 ; hidden from the world, hidden from
reason, hidden from the sight sometimes of them that have it ; a man can
hardly sometimes see it in his own heart, by reason of the steams of cor-
ruption ; as a beautiful picture is not visible in a cloud of smoke. The
blindness the god of this world hath wrapt us in, that we might not
know God, or the things of God, is not wholly taken off. And even what we
know of the truths of God, suffers an eclipse by our carnal conceptions of
them ; for all the notions we frame of them have a tincture of sense and fancy.
4. It is hard for those to conceive it who have no experience of it. If we
speak of the motions of natural corruption, as wrath, passion, distrust of
God, and enormous sins, men can easily understand this, because we have
all sad experiments of an inward corruption ; but the methods and motions
of the Spirit of God in this work are not comprehended, but by those who
have felt the power of it. The motions of sin are more sensible, the motions
of the Spirit more secret and inward, and men want as much the experience
of the one, as they have too much of the other. Hence it is that many car-
nal men love to have the nature of sin ripped up and discovered ; partly,
perhaps, for this reason among others, that they can better understand that
by the daily evidence of it in their own practices ; whereas other things, out
of the reach of their experience, are out of the grasp of their understanding ;
and therefore seem to them paradoxes and incredible things : the spiritual
man is not judged or discerned by any but them that are spiritual, 1 Cor.
ii. 15. It is certainly true, that as a painter can better decipher a stormy
and cloudy air than the serenity of a clear day, and the spectator conceive
it with more pleasure : so it is more easy to represent the agitations and
affections of natural corruption, than the inward frame of a soul wrought by
the Spirit of God.f I shall therefore describe it consonantly to the Scrip-
ture thus : Regeneration is a mighty and powerful change, wrought in the
* Baxt. "Rest, part i. chap. iii. pp. 3, 6, 7.
t Moulin. Serm. Decad. 1 Serm. vii. p. 180, 181.
88 charnock's works. [2 Cok. V. 17.
soul by the efficacious working of the Holy Spirit, wherein a vital principle,
a new habit, the law of God, and a divine nature, are put into, and framed
in the heart, enabling it to act holily and pleasingly to God, and to grow up
therein to eternal glory. This is included in the term of a new creature in
the text. There is a change, a creation, that which was not is brought into
a state of being. If a new creature, and in Christ, then surely not a dead
but a living creature, havirjg a principle of life ; and if a living creature, then
possessed of some power to act, and habits to make those actions easy ; and
if a power to act, and a habit to facilitate that act, then a law in their nature
as the rule of their acting ; every creature hath so. In this respect the
heavens are said to have ordinances : ' knowest thou the ordinances of
heaven ?' Job xxxviii. 33 ; and they seem to act in the way of a covenant,
Jer. xxxiii. 25, according to such articles as God hath pitched upon. And,
lastly, as in all creatures thus endued, there is a likeness to some other
things in the rank of beings ; so in this new creature there is a likeness to
God, whence it is called ' the image of God in holiness and righteousness,'
and a ' divine nature.' So that you see the divers expressions whereby the
Scripture declares this work of regeneration are included in this term of the
new creature, or the new creation, as the word is, xaivn xricig. It is a certain
spiritual and supernatural principle, or permanent form, per modum actus
primi, infused by God, whereby it is made partaker of the divine nature, and
enabled to act for God.
Let us therefore see,
1. How it is differenced from other states of a Christian.
2. What it is not.
3. What it is.
1. First, How it is differenced from the other states of a Christian.
(1.) It differs from conversion. Regeneration is a spiritual change, con-
version is a spiritual motion. In regeneration there is a power conferred ;
conversion is the exercise of this power. In regeneration there is given us
a principle to turn ; conversion is our actual turning ; that is the principle
whereby we are brought out of a state of nature into a state of grace ; and
conversion the actual fixing^ on God, as the terminus ad quern. One give8
posse agere, the other actu agere.
[1.] Conversion is related to regeneration, as the effect to the cause. Life
precedes motion, and is the cause of motion. In the covenant, the new
heart, the new spirit, and God's putting his Spirit into them, is distinguished
from their walking in his statutes, Ezek. xxxvi. 27, from the first step we
take in the way of God, and is set down as the cause of our motion : • I
will cause you to walk in my statutes.' In renewing us, God gives us a
power ; in converting us, he excites that power. Men are naturally dead,
and have a stone upon them ; regeneration is a rolling away the stone from
the heart, and a raising to newness of life ; and then conversion is as natural
to a regenerate man as motion is to a living body. A principle of activity
will produce action.
[2. J In regeneration, man is wholly passive ; in conversion, he is active :
as a child in its first formation in the womb, contributes nothing to the first
infusion of life ; but after it hath life, it is active, and its motions natural.
The first reviving of us is wholly the act of God, without any concurrence of
the creature ; but after we are revived, we do actively and voluntarily live
in his sight : Hosea vi. 2, ' He will revive us, he will raise us up, and then
we shall live in his sight ;' then we shall walk before him, then shall we
• follow on to know the Lord.' Regeneration is the motion of God in the
creature ; conversion is the motion of the creature to God, by virtue of that
COE. Y. 17.] THE NATURE OF REGENERATION. 89
first principle ; from this principle all the acts of believing, repenting, mor-
tifying, quickening, do spring. In all these a man is active ; in the other
merely passive ; all these are the acts of the will, by the assisting grace of
God, after the infasion of the first grace. Conversion is a giving ourselves
to the Lord, 2 Cor. viii. 5 ; giving our own selves to the Lord is a volun-
tary act, but the power whereby we are enabled thus to give ourselves, is
wholly and purely, in every part of it, from the Lord himself. A renewed
man is said to be led by the Spirit, Rom. viii. 14,* not dragged, not forced ;
the putting a bias and aptitude in the will, is the work of the Spirit quicken-
ing it ; but the moving the will to God by the strength of this bias, is volun-
tary, and the act of the creature. The Spirit leads, as a father doth a child
by the hand ; the father gave him that principle of life, and conducts him
and hands him in his motion ; but the child hath a principle of motion in
himself, and a will to move. The day of regeneration is solely the day of
God's power, wherein he makes men willing to turn to him, Ps. ex. 3 ; so
that, though in actual conversion the creature be active, it is not from the
power of man, though it be from a power in man, not growing up from the
impotent root in nature, but settled there by the Spirit of God.
(2.) It differs from justification. They agree in the term to which, that
is God : by justification we are reconciled to God ; by regeneration we are
assimilated, made like to God. They alway go together. As our Saviour's
resurrection, which was the justification of him from that guilt whicb he
had taken upon himself, and a public pronouncing him to be his righteous
servant, is called a new begetting him : Acts xiii. 33, ' God hath raised up
Jesus again, as it is also written in the second Psalm : Thou art my Son, this
day have I begotten thee ;' because it was a manifestation of him to be
the Son of God, who before, being covered with our infirmities, did not ap-
pear so to the world : so our justification from guilt, and new begetting us,
and manifesting us to the angels to be the sons of God, are at one and the
same time, and both are by grace ; ' by grace you are justified,' Piom. v. 1,
the quickening and raising us together with Christ is by grace, Eph. ii. 5, 6.
The blessing of Abraham, which is the application of redemption from the
curse of the law, and the receiving the promise of the Spirit by faith, are
both together, Gal. iii. 14.
But [1.] it differs from justification in the nature of the change.
Justification is a relative change, whereby a man is brought from a state
of guilt to a state of righteousness ; from a state of slavery to a state of
liberty ; from the obligation of the covenant of works to the privilege of the
covenant of grace ; from being a child of wrath to be an heir of promise.
Regeneration is a physical change, and real, as when a dead man is raised
from death to life; it is a filling the soul with another nature, Eph. ii. 1,
' And jou hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.' The
translators have inserted those words, ' hath he quickened,' because those
words are put in the 5th verse ; but methinks the words refer better to the
23d verse of the first chapter, speaking of Christ, ' who fills all in all,' and
fills you too with a spiritual life ; or he passes from the power of God in
raising Christ, to his power in raising us. It is a change of nature, and of
that nature whereby we are children of wrath, not only by the first sin, but
by a conversation according to the course of the world. And this quickening
respects the change of that nature which was prone to a worldly conversation,
and a fulfilling the desires of the flesh. The first is a change of a man's
condition, this a change in a man's disposition. "When a man is made a
* That place may be reduced to conversion, though the proper meaning is not of
conversion.
90 chaenock's wobks. [2 Cob. V. 17.
magistrate there is a change in his relation ; when a servant or slave is made
a freeman there is an alteration of his condition ; but neither the one's magi-
stracy nor the other's liberty, fills their hearts with new principles, or plants
a new frame in their nature. Relation and nature are two distinct things.
In creation there is a relation of a creature to God, which results from the
mere being of the creature ; but there is also the nature of the creature in
such a rank of being, which is added over and above to its mere being. The
apostle in the verses following the text, speaks of reconciliation, or non-im-
putation of our trespasses, as distinct from that change wrought in us in the
new creation. In justification we are freed from the guilt of sin, and so
have a title to life ; in regeneration we are freed from the filth of sin, and
have the purity of God's image in part restored to us.*
[2.J They differ in the cause, and other ways. Justification is the imme-
diate fruttof the blood of Christ: ' Being justified by his blood,' Rom. v. 9.
Regeneration is by the immediate operation of the" Spirit, therefore called
' the sanctification of the Spirit;' the matter of that is without us, the right-
eousness of Christ ; the matter of the other within us, a gracious habit.
The form of the one is imputing, the form of the other is infusing or putting
into us ; they differ in the end, one is from condemnation to absolution, the
other from pollution to communion. In the immediate effect, one gives us a
right, the other a fitness. In their qualities, the righteousness of one is per-
fect in our head, and imputed to us. The righteousness by regeneration is
actively in us, and aspires to perfection.
(3.) It differs from adoption. Adoption follows upon justification as a
dignity flowing from union to Christ, and doth suppose reconciliation.
Adoption gives us the privilege of sons, regeneration the nature of sons.
Adoption relates us to God as a father, regeneration engraves upon us the
lineaments of a father. That makes us relatively his sons by conferring a
power, John i. 12. This makes us formally his sons by conveying a prin-
ciple, 1 Peter i. 23. By that we are instated in the divine affection ; by this
we are partakers of the divine nature. Adoption doth not constitute us the
children of God by an intrinsic form, but by an extrinsic acceptation ; but
this gives us an intrinsic right ; or adoption gives us a title, and the Spirit
gives us an earnest ; grace is the pledge of glory. Redemption being applied
m justification, makes way for adoption. Adoption makes way for regenera-
tion, and is the foundation of it : Gal. iv. 5, 6, ' God sent forth his Son to
redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of
sons. And because you are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son
into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.' Because you are thus adopted, God
will make you like his Son, by sending forth the Spirit of his Son, to intimate
the likeness it shall produce in the hearts of men to Christ, that you may
cry, Abba, Father, behave yourselves like sons, and have recourse to God
with a childlike nature. The relation to Christ as brethren is founded upon
this new creature : Heb. ii. 11, 'For both he that sanctifies and they who
are sanctified, are all of one ;' they are all of one nature, not the divine na-
ture which Christ had by eternal generation, but that divine nature Christ had
by the Spirit's unction. And being of one nature, he is not ashamed, though
glorious in heaven, to call them brethren ; and being Christ's brethren by a
divine nature, thence result also the relation of the sons of God.
(4.) It differs from sanctification. Habitual sanctification, indeed, is the
same thing with this new creature, as habitual rectitude was the spiritual life
of Adam ; but actual sanctification, and the gradual progress of it, grows
from this principle as from a root. Faith purifies the heart, Acts xv. 9,
* Ames.
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 91
1 purifying their hearts by faith,' and is the cause of this gradual sanctifica-
tion ; but faith is part of this new creature, and that which is a part cannot
be the cause of the whole, for then it would be the cause of itself. We are
not regenerated by faith, though we are sanctified by faitb ; but we are new
created by the Spirit of God, infusing faith into us. Faith produceth the
acts of grace, but not the habit of grace, because it is of itself a part of this
habit ; for all graces are but one in the habit or new creature ; charity, and
likewise every other grace is but the bubbling up of a pure heart and good
conscience, 1 Tim. i. 5. Eegeneration seems to be the life of this gradual
sanctification, the health and liveliness of the soul.
2. The second thing proposed is, what it is not.
(1.) It is not a removal or taking away of the old substance or faculties of
the soul. Some thought that the substance of Adam's soul was corrupted
when he sinned, therefore suppose the substance of his soul to be altered
when he is renewed. Sin took not away the essence, but the rectitude ; the
new creation therefore gives not a new faculty, but a new quality. The cure
of the leprosy is not a destroying of the fabric of the body, but the disease ;
yet in regard of the greatness of man's corruption, the soul is so much
changed by these new habits, that it is as it were a new soul, a new under-
standing, a new will. It is not the destroying the metal, but the old stamp
upon it, to imprint a new. Human nature is preserved, but the corruption
in it expelled. The substance of gold is not destroyed in the fire, though
the metal and the flame mix together, and fire seems to be incorporated with
every part of it ; but it is made more pliable to what shape the artist will
cast it into, but remains gold still. It is not the breaking the candlestick,
but setting up a new light in it ; not a destroying the will, but putting a new
bias into it. It is a new stringing the instrument to make a new harmony.
It is an humbling the loftiness, and bowing down the haughtiness of the
spirit, to exalt the Lord alone in the soul, Isa. ii. 11, speaking of the times
of the gospel. The essential nature of man, his reason and understanding,
are not taken away, but rectified. As a carver takes not away the knobs and
grain in the wood, but planes and smooths it, and carves the image of a man
upon it, the substance of the wood remains still ; so God pares away the
rugged pieces in man's understanding and will, and engraves his own image
upon it ; but the change is so great that the soul seems to be of another
species and kind, because it is acted by that grace, which is another species
from that principle which acted it before. New creation is called a
resurrection. Our Saviour in his resurrection had the same body,^ but
endued with a new quality. As in Christ's transfiguration, Mat. xvii. 2,
neither his deity nor humanity were altered, both natures remained the same.
But there was a metamorphosis (fizrsftogipdjdri). and a glorious brightness con-
ferred by the deity upon the humanity which it did not partake of before.
So though the essence of the soul and faculties remain the same, yet another
kind of light is darted in, and other qualities implanted. It was the same
Paul when he complied with the body of death, and when he complained of
it, but he had not the same disposition. As Adam in a state of corruption
had the same faculties for substance which he had in the state of innocency ;
but the power, virtue, and form in those faculties, whereby he was acceptable
to God, and in a capacity to please him, was wholly abolished. We lose not
our substantial form, as Moses his rod did, when it was turned into a serpent;
or the water at Cana was turned into wine.* Our nature is ennobled, not
destroyed ; enriched, not ruined ; reformed, not annihilated.
(2.) It is not a change of the essential acts of the soul, as acts. The pas-
* Daille, Sermons.
92 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
sions and affections are the same, as to the substance and nature of the acts,
but the difference lies in the object. And acts, though for substance the
same, yet are specifically distinguished by the diversity of objects about which
they are conversant. Whatsoever is a commendable quality in nature, and
left in man by the interposition of the mediator, is not taken away ; but the
principle, end, and objects of those acts, arising from those restored qualities,
are altered. The acts of a renewed man, and the acts of a natural man, are
the same in the nature of acts, as when a man loves God and fears God, or
loves man or fears man ; it is the same act of love, and the same act of fear ;
there are the same motions of the soul, the same substantial acts simply
considered ; the soul stands in the same posture in the one as in the other,
but the difference lies in the objects ; the object of the one is supernatural,
the object of the other natural.* As when a man walks to the east or west,
it is the same motion in body and joints, the same manner of going ; yet
they are contrary motions, because the terms to which they tend are con-
trary one to the other : or, as when we bless God and bless man, it is with
one and the same tongue that we do both, yet these are acts specifically
different, in regard of the difference of their objects. The nature of the affec-
tions still remain, though not the corruption of them, and the objects to
which they are directed are different. If a man be given to thoughtfulness,
grace removes not this temper, but turns his meditations to God. The soli-
tariness of his temper is not altered, but something new offered him as the
object of his meditation. If a man be hot and earnest in his temper, grace
takes not away his heat, but turns it into zeal to serve the interest of God.
Paul was a man of active disposition ; this natural activity of his disposition
and temper was not dammed up by grace, but reduced to a right channel, and
pitched upon a right object ; as he laboured more than any in persecuting,
so afterwards he ' laboured more than any' in edifying, 1 Cor. xv. 9, 10.
His labour was the same, and proceeded from the same temper, but another
principle in that temper, and directed to another term. As it is the same
horse, and the same mettle in the beast, which carries a man to his proper
stage that carried him before in a wrong way, but it is turned in respect of
the term. David's poetical fancy is not abolished by this new principle in
him, but employed in descanting upon the praises of God, which otherwise
might have been lavished out in vanity, and foolish love-songs, and descrip-
tions of new mistresses. So that the substance and nature of the affections
and acts of a man remain ; but anger is turned into zeal by virtue of a new
principle, grief into repentance, fear into the fear of God, carnal love into
the love of the creator, by another principle which doth bias those acts.
(8.) It is not an excitation, or awakening of some gracious principle which
lay hid before in nature, under the oppression of ill habits, as corn lay hid
under the chaff, but was corn still. Not a beating up something that lay
sculking in nature, not an awakening as of a man from sleep ; but a resur-
rection as of a man from death ; a new creation, as of a man from nothing.
It is not a stirring up old principles and new kindling of them ; as a candle
put out lately may be blown in again by the fire remaining in the snuff, and
burn upon the old stock ; or as the life which retired into the more secret
parts of the body in those creatures that seem dead in winter, which is ex-
cited and called out to the extreme parts by the spring sun. Indeed, there
are some sparks of moral virtues in nature, which want blowing up by a good
education ; the foundation of these is in nature, the exciting of them from
instruction, the perfection of them from use and exercise. But there is not
in man the seed of one grace, but the seeds of all sin : Rom. vii. 18, ' I know
* J. Goodwin.
2 Cor. V. 17. J the nature of regeneration. 93
that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing.' Some good thing
may be in me, bnt it ariseth not from my flesh ; it is not from any seed sown
by nature, but it is another principle put into me, which doth seminally con-
tain in it all grace ; it is a putting a new seed into the soil, and exciting it to
grow, ' an incorruptible seed,' 1 Peter i. 23. Therefore the Scripture doth not
represent men in a trance, or sleep, but dead ; and so it is not only an awaken-
ing, but a quickening, a resurrection, Eph. ii. 5; Col. ii. 12; Eph. i. 19, 20.
We are just in this work as our Saviour was when the devil came against
him : John xiv. 30, ' The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in
me.' He had nothing to work upon in Christ ; but he rakes in the ashes
of our nature, and finds sparks enough to blow upon ; but the Spirit finds
nothing in us but a stump, some confused desires for happiness ; he brings all
the fire from heaven, wherewith our hearts are kindled. This work, there-
fore, is not an awakening of good habits which lay before oppressed, but a
taking off those ill habits which were so far from oppressing nature that they
were connatural to it, and by incorporation with it, had quite altered it from
that original rectitude and simplicity wherein God at first created it.
(4.) Nor is it an addition to nature. Christ was not an addition to Adam,
but a new head by himself, called Adam, in regard of the agreement with him
in the notion of an head and common person : so neither is the new crea-
ture, or Christ formed in the soul, an addition to nature. Grace grows not
upon the old stock. It is not a piece of cloth sewed to an old garment, but
the one is cast aside, the other wholly taken on ; not one garment put upon
another : but a taking off one, and a putting on another, Col. iii. 9, 10,
' putting off the old man, putting on the new man.' It is a taking away
what was before, ' old things are passed away,' and bestowing something that
had no footing before. It is not a new varnish, nor do old things remain
under a new paint, nor new plaster laid upon old ; a new creature, not a
wended creature. It is called light, which is not a quality added to dark-
ness, but a quality that expels it ; it is a taking away the stony heart and
putting an heart of flesh in the room, Ezek. xxxvi. 26. The old nature re-
mains, not in its strength with this addition, but is crucified, and taken away
in part with its attendants : Gal. v. 24, ' They that are Christ's have crucified
the flesh, with the affections and lusts.' As in the cure of a man, health is
not added to the disease ; or in resurrection, life added to death ; but the
disease is expelled, death removed, and another form and habit set in the
place. Add what you will without introducing another form, it will be of
no more efficacy, than flowers and perfumes strewed upon a dead carcase,
can restore it to life, and remove the rottenness. Nothing is the terminus a
quo, in creation ; it supposeth nothing before as a subject capable ; nothing
in a natural man is a subject morally capable to have grace, without the ex-
pulsion of the old corrupt nature. It is called a new creature, a new man ;
not an improved creature, or a new-dressed man.
(5.) It is not external baptism. Many men take their baptism for regene-
ration. The ancients usually give it this term. One calls our Saviour's
baptism his regeneration.* This confers not grace, but engageth to it : out-
ward water cannot convey inward life. How can water, a material thing,
work upon the soul in a physical manner ? Neither can it be proved that
ever the Spirit of God is tied by any promise, to apply himself to the soul
in a gracious operation, when water is applied to the body. If it were so
that all that were baptized were regenerate, then all that were baptized would
1/ saved, or else the doctrine of perseverance falls to the ground. Baptism
is a means of conveying this grace, when the Spirit is pleased to operate with
* Clem. Alex. Peclagog. lib. iii. cap. vi. p. 68.
94 chaenock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
it. But it doth not work as a physical cause upon the soul, as a purge doth
upon the humours of the body ; for it is the sacrament of regeneration, as
the Lord's Supper is of nourishment. As a man cannot be said to be nourished
without faith, so he cannot be said to be a new creature without faith. Put
the most delicious meat into the mouth of a dead man, you do not nourish
him, because he wants a principle of life to concoct and digest it. Faith
only is the principle of spiritual life, and the principle which draws nourish-
ment from the means of God's appointment. Some indeed say that regene-
ration is conferred in baptism upon the elect, and exerts itself afterwards in
conversion. But how so active a principle as a spiritual life should lie dead,
and asleep so long, even many years which intervene between baptism and
conversion, is not easily conceivable.
3. Let us see what it is positively.
(1.) It is a change ; and, as to the kind of it is,
[1.] A real change, real from nature to grace, as well as by grace. The
term of creation is real ; the form introduced in the new creature is as real
as the form introduced by creation into any being. Scripture terms manifest
it so. A 'divine nature,' the ' image of God,' a ' law put into the heart,'
they are not nominal and notional ; it is a reality the soul partakes of ; it
gives a real denomination, ' a new man,' ' a new heart,' ' a new spirit,' ' a new
creature,'*' something of a real existence ; it is called a resurrection : Jobn
v. 25, ' The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice
of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.' If Christ had said only
that the hour shall come, it had been meant of the last resurrection ; but
saying that it was already come, it must be meant of a resurrection in this
life. There is as real a resurrection of the soul by the trumpet of the gospel,
accompanied with the vigorous efficacy of the Holy Ghost, as there shall be
of bodies by the voice of the Son of God at the sound of the trumpet of the
archangel. All real operations suppose some real form whence they flow,
as vision supposeth a power whereby a man sees, and also a nature wherein
that power is rooted. The operations of a new creature are real, and there-
fore suppose a real power to act, and a real habit as the spring of them. It
is such a being that enables them to produce real spiritual actions, for the
1 spirit of power ' is conveyed to them, 2 Tim. i. 7, whereby as when they
were out of Christ they were able to do nothing, so now being in him they
are able to do all things, Philip, iv. 13.
[2.] It is a common change to all the children of God. ' If any man be
in Christ, he is a new creature ;' every man in Christ is so. It is peculiar
to them, and common to all of them. The new creation gives being to all
Christians. It is a new being settled in them, a new impress and signature
set upon them, whereby they are distinguished from all men barely con-
sidered in their naturals. As all of the same species have the same nature,
as all men have the nature of men, all lions the nature of lions, so all
saints agree in one nature. The life of God is communicated to all whose
names are written in the book of life. All believers, those in Africa, as
well as those in Europe, those in heaven as well as those on earth, have the
same essential nature and change. As they are all of one family, all acted
by one spirit, the heart of one answers to the heart of another, as face
to face in a glass. What is a spirit of adoption in them below is a spirit of
glory in them above ; what in the renewed man below is a spirit crying,
Abba Father, that is in them above, a spirit rejoicing in Abba Father. The
impress and change is essentially the same, though not the same in degree.
[3. J It is a change quite contrary to the former frame. What more con-
* Moulin.
2 Cob. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 95
trary to light than darkness ? Such a change it is, Eph. v. 8 ; instead of a
black darkness there is a bright light. As contrary as flesh and spirit, John
iii. 6, • that which is born of the flesh is flesh ; that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit.' Where both are put in the abstract, one is the composition
of flesh, the other of spirit : as contrary as east to west, as the seed of the
woman to the seed of the serpent, as the spirit of the world and the Spirit
of God. The frame of the heart before the new creation, and the frame of
the heart after, bear as great a distance from one another as heaven from
earth. As God and sin are the most contrary to one another, so an affec-
tion to God and an affection to sin are the most contrary affections. It is
quite another bent of heart, as if a man turn from north to south. It is a
position quite contrary to what it was. The heart touched by grace stands
full to God, as before to sin ; it is stripped of its perverse inclinations to
sin, clothed with holy affections to God. He abhors what before he loved
and loves what before he abhorred. He was alienated from the life of God,
but now alienated from the life of his lusts ; nothing would before serve
him but God's departure from htm ; nothing will now please him but God's
rays upon him. He was before tired with God's service, now tired with his
own sin. Before, crucifying the motions of the Spirit, now crucifying the
affections and lusts. That which was before his life and happiness is°now
his death and misery ; he disaffects his foolish pastimes and sinful pleasures
as much as a man doth the follies of his childhood, and is as cheerful in
loathing them as before he was jolly in committing them. It is a transla-
tion from one kingdom to another: Col. i. 13, a translation 'from the power
of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son.' Mereartitfe, a word taken from
the transplanting of colonies : they are in a contrary soil and climate ; they
have other works, other laws, other privileges, other natures. As Christ's
resurrection was a state quite contrary to the former, at the time of his death
he was in a state of guilt by reason of our sin ; at his resurrection he is
freed from it. He was before made under the law ; he is then freed from
the curse of it. He was before in a state of death, after his resurrection in
a state of life, and lives for ever. God pulls out the heart of stone, that
inflexibleness to him and his service, and plants a heart of flesh in the room,
a pliableness to him and his will, Ezek. xxxvi. 26. It is as great a change
as when a wolf is made a lamb ; that wolfish nature is lost, and the lamb-
like nature introduced. By corruption man was carnal and brutish ; by the
new creation he is spiritual and divine. By corruption he hath the ima^e
of the devil ; by this he is restored to the image of God. By that he had
the seeds of all villanies ; by this the roots of all graces. That made us fly
from God ; this makes us return to him. That made us enemies to his
authority ; this subjects us to his government. That made us contemn his
law ; .this makes us prize and obey it :* " Instead of the thorn there shall
come up the fir-tree ; instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle-tree,'
and God will preserve it from being cut off, Isa. lv. 13, speaking of the time
of redemption.
[4. J It is a universal change of the whole man. It is a new creature,
not only a new power or new faculty. This, as well as creation, extends
to every part ; understanding, will, conscience, affections, all were corrupted
by sin, all are renewed by grace. Grace sets up its ensigns in all parts
of the soul, surveys every corner, and triumphs over every lurking enemy ;
it is as large in renewing as sin was in defacing. The whole soul shall
be glorified in heaven ; therefore the whole soul shall be beautified by
grace. The beauty of the church is described in every part, Cant. 1-4, &c.
* Sabunde, tit. 275, p. 585.
9G charnook's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
First, This new creation bears resemblance to creation and generation.
God in creation creates all parts of the creature entire. When nature
forms a child in the womb, it doth not only fashion one part, leaving the
other imperfect, but labours about all, to form an entire man. The Spirit
is busy about every part in the formation of the new creature. Generation
gives the whole shape to the child, unless it be monstrous. God doth not
produce monsters in grace ; there is the whole shape of the new man. You
mistake much if you rest in a reformation of one part only ; God will say,
Such a work was none of my creation. He doth not do things by halves.
Secondly, It bears proportion to corruption. As sin expelled the whole
frame of original righteousness, so regenerating grace expels the whole frame
of original corruption. It was not only the head or only the heart, only the
understanding or only the will, that was overcast with the blackness of sin,
but every part of man did lose its original rectitude. Not a faculty could
boast itself like the Pharisee, and say, It was not like this or that publican;
the waves of sin had gone over the heads of every one of them. Sin, like
leaven, had infected the whole mass ; grace overspreads every faculty to
drive out the contagion. Grace is compared to light, and light is more or
less in every part of the air above the horizon, for the expulsion of darkness
when the sun ariseth. The Spirit is compared to fire, and therefore
pierceth every part with its warmth, as heat diffuseth itself from the fire to
every part of water. The natural man is denominated from corruption,
not an old understanding or an old will, but the 'old man,' Eph. iv. 22.
So a regenerate man is not called a new understanding, or a new will, but
' a new man,' ver. 24.
Thirdly, The proper seat of grace is the substance of the soul, and there-
fore it influences every faculty. It is the form whence the perfection both
of understanding and will do flow ; it is not therefore placed in either of
them, but in the essence of the soul.* It is by this the union is made
between God and the soul ; but the union is not of one particular faculty,
but of the whole soul. ' He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit ;' it is
not one particular faculty that is perfected by grace, but the substance of
the soul. Besides, that is the seat of grace which is the seat of the Spirit,
but this or that particular faculty is not the seat of the Holy Ghost, but the
soul itself, whence the Spirit rules every particular faculty by assisting
grace, like a monarch in the metropolis sending orders to all parts of his
dominions. The Spirit is said to dwell in a man, Gal. iv. 4, Rom. viii. 9 ;
in the whole man, as the soul doth in the body, in forming every part of it ;
if it dwelt only in one faculty there could be no spiritual motion of the
other. The principles in the will would contradict those in the understand-
ing ; the will would act blindly if there were no spiritual light in the under-
standing to guide it. The light of the understanding would be useless if
there were no inclination in the will to follow it, and grace in both those
faculties would signify little if there remained an opposing perversity in the
affections. The Spirit, therefore, is in the whole soul, like fire in the whole
piece of iron, quickening, warming, mollifying, making flexible, and con-
suming what is contrary, like Aaron's ointment, poured upon the heart, and
thence runs down to the skirts of the soul.
Fourthly, Therefore there is a gracious harmony in the whole man. As
in generation two forms cannot remain in the same subject ; for in the
same instant wherein the new form is introduced the old is cast out ; so at
the first moment of infusing grace, the body of death hath its deadly wound
in every facult}7, understanding, will, conscience, affection. The rectitude
* Suarez de Gra, 1. vi. c 12 ; Num. x. 13, 14.
2 COE. V. 17.] THE NATUBE OF EEGENEBATIOX. 97
reaches every part; and all the powers of the soul, by a strong combination,
by one common principle of grace acting them, conspire together to be sub-
ject to the law of God, and advance in the ways of holiness : Pa. cxix. 10, it
is with ' the whole heart ' that God is sought. In the understanding there
is light instead of darkness, whereby it yields to the wisdom of God, and
searches into the will of God: the spirit of the mind is renewed, Eph. iv. 23.
In the will there is softness instead of hardness, humility instead of pride,
whereby it yields to the will of God, and closes with the law of God. In the
heart and conscience there is purity instead of filth (whereby it is purged
from dead works, Heb. ix. 14, settled against the approbation of sin), and a
resolution to be void of offence, Acts xxiv. 16. In the affections there is
love instead of enmity, delight instead of weariness, whereby they yield to
the pleasure of God, have flights into the bosom of God : • Oh how love I
thy law ! it is my delight day and night.' The memory is a repository for
the precepts and promises of God as the choicest treasure. It is a likeness
to Christ ; the whole human nature of Christ was holy, every faculty of his
soul, every member of his body, his nature holy, his heart holy. If we are
not formed, Christ is not formed in us ; look therefore whether your refor-
mation you rest in be in the whole, and in every part of the soul.
Fifthly, It is principally an inward change. It is as inward as the soul
itself. Not only a cleansing the outside of the cup and platter, a painting
over the sepulchre, but a casting out the dead bones and putrefied flesh ;
of a nature different from a pharisaical and hypocritical change, Mat.
xxiii.' 25-27. It is a clean heart David desires, not only clean hands, Ps.
li. 10. If it were not not so, there could be no outward rectified change.
The spring and wheels of the clock must be mended before the hand of the
dial will stand right. It may stand right two hours in the day, when the
time of the day comes to it, but not from any motion or rectitude in itself.
So a man may seem by one or two actions to be a changed man, but the
inward spring being amiss, it is but a deceit. Sometimes there may be a
change, not in the heart, but in the things which the heart was set upon,
when they are not what they were. As a man whose heart was set upon
uncleanness, change of beauty may change his affection ; the change is not
in the man, but in the object. But this change I speak of is a change in
the mind, when there is none in the object ; as the affection of a child to
his trifles changeth with the growth of his reason, though the things his heart
was set upon remain in the same condition as before.
First, It is a change of principle.
Secondly, A change of end.
First, A change of principle. The principle of a natural man in his
religious actions is artificial ; he is wound up to such a peg, like the spring
of an engine, by some outward respects which please him ; but as the
motion of the engine ceaseth, when the spring is down, so a natural man's
motion holds no longer than the delight those motions gave him, which first
engaged him in it. But the principle in a good man is spirit, an internal
principle, and the first motion of this principle is towards God, to act from
God, and to act for God. He fetches his fire from heaven to kindle his
service ; an heat and fervency of spirit precedes his serving the Lord, Rom.
xii. 11. There may be a serving God from an outward heat, conveying a
vigour and activity to a man, but the new creature serves God from inward
and heated affections. Examine therefore by what principles do I hear, and
pray, and live, and walk ? For all acts are good or evil, as they savour of a
good or bad root, or principle in the heart. The two principles of the new
VOL. III. G
98 chaenock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
creature are faith and love. "What is called the new creatnre, Gal. vi. 15,
is called ' faith working by love,' Gal. v. 6.
Faith. This is the first discovery of all spiritual life within us, and
therefore the immediate principle of all spiritual motion. A splendid action
without faith is but moral, whereas one of a less glittering is spiritual with
it. The new creature being begotten by the seed of the word, and having
thereby an evangelical frame, hath therefore that which is the prime evange-
lical grace, upon which all other graces grow ; and consequently all the acts
of the new creature spring from this principle immediately, viz., faith in the
precept, as a rule ; faith in the promise, as an encouragement ; faith in the
Mediator, as a ground of acceptation. Therefore if we have not faith in the
precept, though we may do a service not point-blank against the precept, yet
it is not a service according to a divine rule; if we have not faith in the pro-
mise, we do it not upon divine motives ; if we act not faith in the Redeemer,
we despise the way of God's ordaining the presentation of our service to
him. All those that you find, Heb. xi., acting from faith, had sometimes a
faith in the power of God, sometimes in the faithfulness of God ; but they
had not only a faith in the particular promise or precept, but it was ultimately
resolved into the promise of the Messiah to come : ver. 14, ' Those all died
in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off,'
&e. The performance of particular promises they had received, but not the
performance of this grand promise ; but that their faith respected. They, as
new creatures, did all in observance of God promising the Mediator ; and
we are to do all in observance of God sending the Mediator, being persuaded
of the agreeableness of our services to him, upon the account of the com-
mand, and of the acceptation of our services by him upon the account of the
Mediator. This put a difference between Paul's prayer, after the infusion of
grace into him, and before ; so that our Saviour sets a particular emphasis
upon it : Acts ix. 11, ' Behold he prays.' Paul, no doubt, had prayed
many times before his believing, but nothing of that kind was put upon the
file as a prayer ; before, they were prayers of a self-righteous pharisee, but
these of an evangelical convert ; these were prayers springing from a flexi-
bleness to Christ, a faith in him; from a Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?
Love. There are many principles of action, hope of heaven, fear of hell,
reputation, interest, force of natural conscience ; some of those are inward,
some outward, which are the bellows that blow up a man to some fervency
in action ; but the true fire, that contributes an heavenly frame to a service,
is the love of God. The desire of the heart is carried out to God; his heart
draws near to God, because his sole delight is in God, and his whole desire
for him : Ps. lxxiii. 25, ' Whom have I in heaven but thee ? ' Then, ver. 28,
' But it is good for me to draw near to God.' This choice affection in the
new creature spirits his services, makes his soul spring up with a wonderful
liveliness. The new creation is the restoration of the soul to God from its
apostasy ; a casting down those rebellious principles which contended with
him, and reducing his affections to the right centre ; and when all the lines
meet here in one centre, in God, all the returns to him flow from this affec-
tion. It is but one thing settled in the soul as the object of its earnest
desire ; and that should be the spring of all its inquiries and actions, the
beholding the beauty of the Lord, Ps. xxvii. 4. Things may be done out of
a common affection ; as when a man will raise a child fallen into the dirt,
out of a common tenderness ; but a father would raise him with more
natural affection, which is a sphere above that common compassion. Every
affection therefore is not the renewed principle, but a choice affection to
God. This is a mighty ingredient in this change, and doth difference the
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 99
new creature from all others. One acts out of affection to God, the other
out of affection to itself. Men may be offended with sin, because it disturbs
their ease, health, estate, &c. He may pray, and hear, merely out of a
respect to natural conscience ; but how can these be the acts of the new
creature, when there is no respect to God in all this ? But a new creature
would quench the fire of corrupt self-love, to burn only with a spiritual and
divine flame ; he depresseth the one to exalt the other, and would be dis-
engaged from the burdensome chains of self-love, that he might be moved
only by the spiritual charms of the other purer affection ; it is a death to
him to have any steams of self-love rise up to smoke and black a service.
Secondly, A change of end as well as principle, The glory of God is the
end of the new creature, self the end of the old man. Before this new
creation, a man's end was to please self; now his end is to please Gou.
A man that delights in knowledge, to pleasure his understanding, and for
self-improvement, when he becomes a new creature, though his desire for
knowledge is not removed, yet his end is changed, and he thirsts after know-
ledge, not merely to please his inquisitive disposition, but to admire and
praise God, and direct himself in ways agreeable to him. As the end of
the sensualist is to taste the sweetness in pleasure, so the end of a renewed
man is to know more of God, to taste a sweetness in him, and in every
religious duty. This is the distinguishing character of the new creature.
This design for the glory of God was not to be found among any of the
heathens, who were so great admirers of virtue. Most of them intended only
an acquiring a reputation among their countrymen ; and though some of them
might esteem virtue for its native dignity, yet this was to esteem it by the
moiety of it, when they referred it not to the honour of God , from whence it
flowed to the world. Man was not created for himself, and to be his own end ;
he therefore that doth chiefly aim at his own satisfaction in anything, is not a
new creature : he hath his old deformed end into which he sunk by the fall.
But grace carries a man higher, and reduceth all to God, and to his well-
pleasing. Col. i. 9, 10, the apostle desires they may be ' filled with the
knowledge of the will' of God, that they may « walk worthy of the Lord, unto
all well-pleasing.' The very first motion of this new principle is towards
God, to act for God ; as the first appearance of a living seed in the ground
is towards heaven ; thither it casts its look, from whence its life came. What
the new creature receives, is from God : 1 Thes. ii. 13, ' They received it
as the word of God,' and therefore what he doth is for God.
{First.) The principal intent of God in the new creation is for himself:
Hosea ii. 23, ' I will sow her to me,' speaking of the church in the time of
the gospel ; not to sin, not to the world, not for herself, but I will sow her to
me. Husbandmen sow the ground for themselves, for their own use, to reap
the harvest, and the corn grows up to the husbandman that sowed it. What
the seed doth naturally, the new creature doth intentionally, grow up for
God. Since the new creature is a divine infusion, it must needs carry the
soul to please God, and aim at his glory. God would never put a principle
into the creature, to drive it from himself, and conduct it to his own dis-
honour ; this consists not with God's righteousness, this would be a deceit
of the creature. It is impossible, but that which is from God in so peculiar
a manner, and with gracious intentions to restore the creature to his happi-
ness, must tend to the advancement of God. Where there are no aims at
the divine glory, there is no divine nature, nothing in the soul that can
claim kindred with God. Regeneration is a forming the soul for God's self,
and to shew forth his praise, Tsa. xliii. 21, hence they are said to be ' a
peculiar people,' in respect of their end, as well as their state. Certainly
100 chabnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
that man, who makes not God his pattern and his end, that doth not advance
the praise and glory of God, was never new formed by him. What comes
from God, must naturally tend to him. Is it possible that the living image
of God should disgrace the original ? that a divine impression should be
unconcerned in the divine author ?
(Secondly.) The new creation is an evangelical impression, and therefore
corresponds in its intention with the gospel. This is the instrument whereby
the new creature was wrought ; and this was appointed and published for the
glory of God : • Glory to God in the highest,' Luke ii. 14. It is to promote
holiness in the creature, which is the only way whereby we can honour God.
This is the prime lesson the grace or gospel of God teaches, to live godly,
Titus ii. 12, to live to God. What, therefore, is produced by the efficacy
of such an instrument, cannot but aim at the glory of God, which was
intended in it ; otherwise the gospel would work an effect contrary to itself,
which no instrument doth produce when managed by a wise agent ; and
contrary to the end of the agent too, viz., the Spirit of God, whose end is to
glorify Christ : John xvi. 14, ' He shall glorify me.' The frame and acts of
a renewed man are like the grain or seed of the word sown in the heart.
Nothing the gospel designs more than the laying self low, even as low as
dust and death. The first lesson is self-denial. It is in self that the
strength and heart of the body of sin and lust lies ; and it is the principal
end of the gospel to bring the creature to sacrifice self-love to righteousness,
self-interest, self-contentment, wholly to God, and his law, and his love,
that God may be all in all in the creature. Before the heart was touched with
the gospel, it had not the least impulse to bring forth the virtues and excel-
lencies of God into the world ; but when it is changed, it is filled to the brim
with zealous desires to have his name exalted upon a high throne among men.
(Thirdly.) A new creation is the bringing forth the soul in a likeness to
God. The end, therefore, of the new creature, is the glory of God. As
God is the cause, so he is the pattern of the new creature, according to
which he doth frame the soul ; it is ' after God created in righteousness,'
&c, Eph. iv. 24. There can be no likeness to God where the creature dis-
sents from him in the chief end. Without such an agreement, there can be
nothing but variance between God and the creature. All the commotions
and quarrels upon earth are founded upon the difference of ends. God aims
at his own glory, so doth the new creature, otherwise it were impossible he
should walk with God, or follow him as a dear child. It consists also in
likeness to Christ : his resurrection is the pattern and cause of our regene-
ration : ' Ye are risen with Christ,' Col. iii. 1. What, to contrary ends ?
Did Christ rise only to live to himself? No; but to live to God, as the great
end for which he was appointed Mediator. Did he design to glorify God on
earth, and doth he live to dishonour God in heaven ? No ; he lives to the
same end there for which he lived and died here. Our spiritual resurrec-
tion, is not only a restoring us to a spiritual life, but to the ends of this life ;
a living to God and Christ, and to the ends of his mediation. Surely the
new creature cannot be so brutish, as not to mind the honour of that nature
to which it is so near allied, the glory of that God unto whom it hath the
honour to bear a resemblance. A new creature hath a mighty sprightliness,
and a height of spirit in some measure, when anything in his hands con-
cerns God, more than when it concerns himself ; for his will being framed
according to the will of God, is filled with an ambition for the promoting the
excellency of his name.
(Fourthly.) The end of the new creation is to advance the soul. It can
never be advanced by an end lower than itself, or equal to itself. Any
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 101
interest lower than God would be a degrading of it, a disparagement to its
state, and too sordid for the soul to drive at ; for it is the excellency or
sordidness of the end which doth elevate or debase a man's spirit, and his
actions also : the one enlargeth, the other shrivels up the soul in its opera-
tion. All things below God are unworthy of the boundless nature of the
soul of man, much more unworthy of a soul rectified by a new creation. -
The soul is only perfected in a tendency to this end, and disgraced and lost
in the mud and dirt of lower aims. That grace that is most durable, and
doth most ennoble the spirit of a man, hath this property, that it ' seeks
not her own,' nor ' vaunts itself,' 1 Cor. xiii. 4, 5.
(Fifthly.) It is impossible the soul can have this new creation without a
change of end. It is not conceivable how anything can return to that,
which it doth not eye as its end. The soul, as deriving its original from
God, hath an obligation in all its motions to return to him as its chief end.
The new creature hath an higher obligation by grace. Doth that, therefore,
deserve the name of the new creature, that is so far from answering a gracious
tie, that it doth not so much as answer a natural one ? That is yet below
the sphere of inanimate creatures, who all run back to their fountain, and
one way or other declare the glory of God. He is no new creature, there-
fore, who is devotedly fawning upon himself, caressing himself ; he is one
that is yet bemired in his old nature, and hath not yet partaken of the fruit
of Christ's purchase, redeeming and renewing grace. Those that are under
the efficacious influence of it, and are the temple of the Holy Spirit, ' do
glorify God in their body and spirit ' too, inwardly as well as outwardly,
because they are God's, 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20. The understanding and will are
both elevated by grace. The more intelligent any creature is, the more
noble is his end, or ought to be, and the more he doth intend his end. The
aim of a man is higher than that of a child ; the aims of men in this or that
station, are still more noble than the ends of men in a lower rank. Since
the new creation, therefore, endues man with the most excellent nature he
is capable of, it must fix a man upon the most excellent end, which is God
and his glory; it were not else a new creature, or worthy of such a title.
(Sixthly.) This change of end doth only fit the soul for its proper service.
From this end doth arise a quickness and an heartiness in every service.
When God and his glory is not our end, our hearts flag, and we feel our
spirits tired at our entrance into any service for him. When the apostle had
made the glory of God his end in testifying the gospel of the grace of God,
then his life was not counted dear to him, that he might finish his course
with joy, Acts xx. 24. Where this end sits uppermost in the heart, all allure-
ments to the contrary are mightily despised. What a scornful eye doth the
apostle cast upon all other things ! and sets no higher value upon them than
he would upon dross and dung, when they were not conducing to his main
end, which was the knowledge of Christ, Philip, iii. 8, 10.
Well, then, this is one of the most essential properties of the new creature,
and that which is the clearest discovery of this state. A new creature is as
earnest in secret for the glory of God, and as industrious for God, as if the
eyes of all the world were upon him ; the bent of his heart alway stands this
way ; he glorifies God in his spirit as well as body, 1 Cor. vi. 20. When
men will be zealous in things that concern God before men, and negligent in
their spirits and inward part of the soul, then the glory of God was not their
end, but themselves. For what is a man's end, sets an edge upon his spirit
in private as well as public. But a new creature is of another frame. When
he finds that he hath missed of his full aim, and hath not had that single
respect as he ought, he is unsatisfied and troubled that God hath been no more
102 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
glorified by him. But he that is not renewed is well pleased if any concerns
of self have been advanced, though God be not glorified ; and his soul is at
rest in that act, as it hath lived to himself, and brought in something to in-
crease the treasure of his self-ends.
Thirdly, As it is an inward change in respect of principle and end, so,
thirdly, it is a change of thoughts. Being new, he is new in the choicest
faculty. As when he was after the flesh he minded the things of the flesh,
so now being after the spirit he minds the things of the spirit, Rom. viii. 5.
As a child hath not the thoughts of a man, so neither hath a natural man
the thoughts of a new creature. A principle is placed in his understanding
which doth emit other beams different from that smoky light which was iu
it before. Though a new creature cannot hinder the first motions, yet he
endeavours to suppress their proceeding any further, and excites others in
his heart to make head against them ; and would, as far as he could, hinder
the rising of any wTave, the least bubbling against right reason and the interest
of God. When David had an inclination in his heart to God's statutes, the
immediate effect of it is to ' hate vain thoughts :' Ps. cxix. 112, 113, 'I have
inclined my heart to perform thy statutes ;' and it follows, ' I hate vain
thoughts.' The vanity of his heart was a burden to him, and he loathed all
the inward excrescences, any buds from that bitter stump he still bore within
him. A new creature is as careful against wickedness in the head or heart,
as in the life. He would be purer in the sight of God than in the view of
men. He knows none but God can see the workings of his heart or the
thoughts of his head, yet he is as careful that they should not rise up as
that they should not break out. The soul is so changed that it is no longer
a stranger and ill-wilier to the motions of the Spirit ; k will welcome them
upon their entrance, conduct them into the innermost room, converse fami-
liarly with them, and delight in their company ; it invites their stay, pursues
them when they seem to depart, holds them fast, and will not let them go,
as the church doth to Christ. He turns much in upon himself, sets his eye
upon his own heart, keeps that with all diligence, to observe what issues of
a spiritual life are there ; as it is directed in Prov. iv. 23, '[Keep thy heart
with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.' If he perceives any
weeds to spring up there, or mushrooms (as they will in a night), he cuts
them up and throws them out. The understanding is more quick and sen-
sible to discern them in the first risings, to receive good ones or check bad
ones, than it was before ; the new creature is sensible of any touch contrary
to its interest. A corrupt mind draws to it the vilest things, and unpropor-
tionable to the true nature of the soul, as a corrupt stomach doth unwhole-
some food, till by a new creation it be set higher, and by a sanctified reason
becomes more choice about its objects ; and then, like David, the heart is
filled as with marrow and fatness, when he meditates on God in the night
watches, Ps. lxiii. 5, 6. The thoughts of God are an inward spring of
pleasure to him, more than the thoughts of sin can be to a deformed and
depraved soul.
Fourthly, Change of comforts follows upon this. Since there is a change
of nature, there is a change of his complacenc}'. The former nature is his
trouble, therefore all his delights which arise from it are its discontents and
burden. Every nature hath a peculiar pleasure belonging to it : the nature
of a dove will not acquiesce in that which pleases a swine, nor the new nature
in that which pleases the old. The comforts of manhood are of another make
than those of a child, and the comforts of a prince more elevated than those
of a peasant, because he hath another spirit. That Spirit who is appointed
to renew him is appointed an officer to comfort him ; as therefore he gives
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 103
him new principles, so he gives him new consolations. He is, as a com-
forter, to glorify Christ, to receive of his, and shew it unto the new creature.
They are Christ's own words — ' He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of
mine, and shall shew it unto you ' — heing described before under the title of
a Comfoi-ter, John xvi. 14. He shall receive of mine ; grace from me, suit-
able to the grace in me, wherewith to beautify ; and comforts from me, suit-
able to those comforts in me, wherewith to refresh you. As they are brought
to live the hie of God in holiness, so they are brought to live the life of God
in joy and comfort. Righteousness, peace, joy are the trinity which make
up the kingdom of God in the heart : Rom. xiv. 17, ' The kingdom of God
is not meat and drink ; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy
Ghost.' As the grace of God is their life, so the joy of the Lord is their
strength ; strangers to God intermeddle not with it, and have no share in
it. There is a joy put into the heart together with this new creature : • Thou
hast put gladness into my heart,' Ps. iv. 7 — a gladness not founded upon any
worldly consideration as the joy of men, not a joy of their own putting in ;
but the new creature's joy is a joy of God's putting in. Other men's com-
forts are in the creature, the new creature's comforts in the Creator. Others
cannot joy if worldly things be removed, because the foundation of their joy
is without them ; but these, by the loss of worldly things, have their comforts
rather increased than impaired, because the foundation of their joy is within
them. The comforts of a natural man are sucked from the dry breasts of
creatures ; the comforts of a new creature are derived from the full fountain
of life, which makes their very sufferings gloriously comfortable to them,
1 Peter iv. 13, 14. Ihe prodigal by his change of mind had a change of
refreshment : robes for rags, and a fatted calf for husks. It is as much his
comfort to loathe himself as derived from Adam, and to love the self im-
planted by God, as it was before the contrary. He can never look upon the
new creature in him but with delightful views, and a pleasure mingles itself
with every cast of his eye upon it. For certainly from making God our end,
and doing all things for his glory, flows the highest delight ; since God is
the only happiness of that soul that is in conjunction with him as his main
end, he must needs have a share in the happiness of God as well as his
nature. Felicity and consolation follow it, as the shadow doth the body ;
and every act of the new creature towards God is edged with comfort in the
very acting.
Fifthly, As it is an inward change, so it is also an outward change. I call
it outward in regard of objects, in regard of operations ; though it is princi-
pally inward in regard of the prime seat of it, in regard of the form, which
causeth the outward. The power of seeing is in the soul, though the vision
itself be in the eye. The change our Saviour made in those he cured was
in the organ, when he made the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the lame
to walk, which did necessarily infer a change of objects and a change of
actions. So a man by this new creation sees the things of God, hears the
voice of God, walks in the ways of God. All outward changes argue not an
inward, but an inward is alway attended with an outward.
First, In regard to objects. The world and sin was before the object of
his inquiries and endeavours. Now he seeks the face of God ; his soul fol-
lows hard after him. The world and God are so contrary, that the love of
the one is enmity to the other. From multitudes of objects which distracted
him, he is come to unity, which quiets and settles him : Ps. xxvii. 4, ' One
thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after ; that I may dwell in
the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of tbe
Lord, and to inquire in his temple.' It is no lower an object than this, that
104 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
the soul is coversant about, about God himself, to embrace him ; about what
hath most of God in it, to value and cherish it ; about the word of God, to
direct him in his ways, and to do his work. The understanding is conver-
sant about the things of God, in the apprehension of them ; the will in the
election, the affections in complacency in them. Spiritual objects are set up
by every faculty, as the delightful things which it heartily embraceth. Be-
fore, a man had no affection to God, you might as well have persuaded a
swine to love the music of a lute, as a natural man supremely to love God.
All his desires were set upon the dross of the world, the customs, coarse
corruptions, pleasures of the world ; but a truly regenerate man can as little
make the world his chief object of desire and affection, as a man used to
choice viands can feed upon chaff and husks. The intendment of the gospel
is to set forth God in Christ as an amiable object, as infinitely glorious. It
declaims against the world, to draw men from the affectionate considerations
of it. The renewed work then doth consist in fixing upon God in Christ, as
the main object of desire and affection. When the heart, therefore, complies
with the gospel, there must be a compliance with the chief subject of the
gospel, and in such a manner as may answer the intendment of the gospel.
"While Paul was in his natural and pharisaical state, Christ and his truth was
accounted as dung, trampled upon as dross, fit to be thrown out of the con-
verse of mankind ; but when his heart is changed, there is a change in the
object of his valuation : Christ is then his treasure, his all, and other things
but dross in comparison of him, Philip, iii. 8.
Secondly, In regard of operations. ' Old things are passed away,' old
actions as well as old affections. Operations are never constantly against
nature, operari sequilur esse. The heart and the actions do not alway con-
tradict one another. ' According to the abundance of the heart, the mouth
speaks,' Mat. xii. 24. According to the spring of grace in the heart will the
hand of the life stand. It will vent itself more or less, according to the
quantity of it. It is an inward baptism with fire, which will quickly break
out and shew itself in the members : Mat. vii. 20, « By their fruits you shall
know them.' New apprehensions infer new operations. An alteration of
judgment cannot be without an alteration of acting. As he hath 'received
Christ Jesus the Lord, so he walks in him,' Col. ii. 6. The very intend-
ment of God in the new creation was this : Eph. ii. 10, ' Created in Christ to
good works, which God hath before ordained, that we should walk in them.'
If there be not then new works, there is no new creation, for the chief inten-
tion and aim of God cannot be frustrated. Christ formed in a man is not a
sleepy and inactive being : actions will scent of him. Fruits bear the image
of the root whence they spring, and upon which they flourish. A new root
cannot bring forth old fruits. If the nature of a crab-tree be changed into
that of a vine, it will bear no longer crabs but grapes. Where holiness is
implanted in the nature, holiness will be imprinted in the life. A man that
bath reason superior to sense doth use his sense rationally ; a renewed man
that hath grace superior to reason useth his reason graciously. The opera-
tions were rational when bare reason held the sceptre, but they are spiritual
when grace ascends the throne ; for it cannot be that that person who is
acted by the Spirit, ' lives in the Spirit, walks in the Spirit ' (Gal. v. 18, 25),
should do anything without a spiritual tincture, in that wherein he is acted
by it. For it is impossible but every action must be dyed of the same colour
with the principle whence it flows, and by which it is directed. Actions of
sensitive nature are by reason of grace ordered by a new rule, directed to a
new end. He ate and drank to the flesh before, now to God, 1 Cor. x. 31.
He degraded his soul to invent ways to pamper his body. Now he puts his
2 Cob. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 105
body in its due posture to serve the soul, and both to exalt God. Yea, his
religious duties are changed, not as to the matter, but the manner. He
knew, them before, as he did Christ, after the flesh ; he now knows them and
performs them after the Spirit. There is zeal instead of coldness, liveliness
instead of deadness, brokenness instead of presumption, a spirit of liberty
instead of the whip of conscience, confidence in God instead of confidence in
duty, melting pleading of promises instead of a pharisaical pleading of works.
In a word, grace instead of nature, spirit instead of flesh. Paul, of a phari-
saical boaster, becomes a Christian suppliant ; ' behold he prays.' This
change is outward as well as inward. In a man of an exact morality it is
chiefly inward ; he walks in his old outward ways with a new heart. In a
loose man renewed it is apparently outward ; he hath left both his old ways
and his old nature ; but a man only outwardly reformed, without any inward
change, walks in new ways with an old spirit. ' He that lacks these things,'
saith the apostle, after an enumeration of several graces, ' hath forgotten that
he was purged from his old sins ;' for indeed he never was.
Thus have I considered this new creation in the nature of a change.
2. Let us consider it in the nature of a vital principle. This new crea-
tion is a translation from death to life : 1 John iii. 14, ' We know that we
have passed from death to life.' And we have not a spiritual life till we are
in Christ. « He that hath not the Son hath not life,' 1 John v. 12. When
our Saviour called Lazarus out of the grave, he gave him a principle of life
and motion. The same he doth when he calls men from a spiritual death in
sin. Whatsoever we had from the first Adam is mortal, whatsoever we have
from the second Adam is vital ; the one communicates a spiritual life, as the
other propagated a spiritual death. The new creature is a vital powerful
principle, naturally moving the soul to the service and obedience of God, and
doth animate the faculties in their several motions, as the soul doth quicken
the members of the body. It is called the hidden man, the inward man,
implying that it hath life and motion. As the life of the body is from the
soul, as the effect from the cause, so the life of the soul is from grace. Christ
is the meritorious cause of this life in his person, the efficient cause of it by
his Spirit ; but grace is the formal cause of this life, as God is the cause of
our bodily life efficiently, and the soul the cause of it formally. It is not,
then, a gilding, but a quickening ; not a carving, but an enlivening. What-
soever doth proceed from an external cause is not life or a living motion, A
piece of wood may be carved in the shape of a man, but remains wood still
in such a form and figure. But a Christian hath a spiritual life breathed
into him, as Adam had a natural. When Adam's body was formed of the
earth, it was no more than earth, till a heavenly spark was breathed into him
by God, to set him upon his feet, and enable that piece of earth to move. It
is distinguished therefore from hypocrisy, which is but the shadow of Chris-
tianity. This is a living principle ; that a form, this a power ; that a piece
of art, this a nature. A picture may have the lineaments of a man, but not
the life, understanding, and affections of a man.
3. Let us consider it as a habit, and then see what light the consideration
of it, as a vital principle and a habit, give us into the nature of this new
creation. By habit we must not understand, as we do in common speech,
a clothing, as when we say, Such a one was in such a habit ; but by habit
we mean an inward frame, enabling a man to act readily and easily, as when
an artificer hath the habit of a trade. Since this new creation is not a de-
struction of the substance of the soul,* but that there is the same physical
being and the same faculties in all men, and nothing is changed in its sub-
* Blanc. Thes.
106 chaknock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
stance as far as respects the nature of man, it is necessary, therefore, that
this new creation consist in gracious qualities and habits, which beautify and
dispose the soul to act righteously and holily. Corruption of nature is the
poison, the sickness, and deformity of our nature ; grace is the beauty, health,
ornament of it, and that which gives it worth and value. When a debauched
man is become virtuous, we say he is another man, a new man, though he
hath the same soul and body which he had before, but he hath quitted those
evil habits wherewith he was possessed. It is impossible to conceive a new
creature without new habits. Nothing can be changed from a state of cor-
ruption to a state of purity without them. The making darkness to become
light, in the very nature of it, implies the introducing a new quality, Eph.
v. 8. This is meant by the seed : 1 John hi. 9, ' His seed remains in him.'
As seed makes the earth capable to bring forth good fruit, which had a
nature before to bring forth, not corn, but weeds, till the grain was put into
it ; and it is expressed by ' a fountain of living water springing up into eternal
life,' John iv. 14 (irr\yri).
(1.) There is such a habit. God doth provide as much for those that he
loves, in order to a supernatural good, as for those creatures that he loves
in order to a natural good ; but God hath put into all creatures such forms
«nd qualities, whereby they may be inclined of themselves to motions agree-
able to their nature, in an easy and natural way.* Much more doth God
infuse into those that he moves to the obtaining a supernatural good, some
spiritual qualities, whereby they may be moved rationally, sweetly, and readily
to attain that good ; he puts into the soul a spirit of love, a spirit of grace,
whereby, as their understandings are possessed with a knowledge of the
excellency of his ways, so their wills are so seasoned by the power and sweet-
ness of this habit, that they cannot, because they will not, act contrary there-
unto. And this habit of grace hath the same spiritual force in a gracious
way, as those principles in other creatures in a natural way. As the habit
of sin is called flesh in regard of its nature, and death in regard of its con-
sequent, so the habit of grace is called the new creature and spirit, Gal.
v. 17, in regard of its term and consequent, life. This habitual grace is the
principle of all supernatural acts, as the soul concurs as an immanent prin-
ciple to all works by this or that faculty. As Christ had a body prepared
him to do the work of a mediator, so the soul hath a habit prepared it to do
the work of a new creature. To this purpose, there is a habit of truth or
sincerity in the will, and a ' hidden wisdom' in the understanding, Ps. li. 6.
As the corrupt nature is a habit of sin, so the new nature is a habit of grace ;
God doth not only call us to believe, love, and obey, but brings in the grace
of faith, and love, and obedience, bound up together, and plants it in the
soil of the heart, to grow up there unto eternal life ; he gives a willingness
and readiness to believe, love, and obey.
(2.) This habit is necessary. The acts of a Christian are supernatural,
which cannot be done without a supernatural principle ; we can no more do
a gracious action without it, than the apostles could do the works of their
office unless endued with power from above, which our Saviour bids them
tarry at Jerusalem for, Luke xxiv. 49. If there were not a gracious habit
in the soul, no act could be gracious ; or supposing it could, it could not be
natural, it would be only a force. New creation is not from the Spirit com-
pelling, but inclining ; not like the throwing a stone contrary to its nature,
but changing the nature, and planting other habits, whereby the actions be-
come natural. As sin was habitual in a man by nature, so grace must be
habitual in a new creature, otherwise a man is not brought into a contrary
* Aquin. 2aj. Q. 110. Art. 2.
2 Cob. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 107
state (though the acts should be contrary) if there be not a contrary habit ;
for it is necessary the soul should be inclined in the same manner towards
God as before it "was towards sin ; but the inclination to sin was habitual.
(3.) This habit is but one. For it is an entire rectitude in all the facul-
ties, and an universal principle of working righteously. As the corrupt
nature is called the ' old Adam', and a < body of death', the gracious nature
is called the ' new man,' Col. iii. 9, 10. As a man is but one man, a body one
body, though consisting of divers members, and several parts, all formed by
one spirit, and making up but one habit, so that as all sins are parts of that
body of death, so all graces are but strings of this one root. As from tbat
primogeneal light, kindled at the first creation by God, were framed _the stars
and lights of heaven, which have their several appearances and motions, and
are distinct from one another, though all arising from the womb of that first
light, so all particular graces, though they have their stated seasons of
action, and are distinct in themselves, yet all flow from, and are contained
in, this habit as in a root. They are so many grapes growing upon one stalk,
clusters proceeding from one root of the new nature. It is from the par-
ticipation of the divine nature that all those graces arise, the exercise of
which the apostle exhorts them to, 2 Peter i. 4, &c ; and indeed it being a
divine nature, must needs include all the perfections due to it. As the divine
essence of God is one, yet contains all perfections eminently ; and if there
were a deficiency of any, it could not be the divine essence ; so the grace
infused into the heart contains in it virtually all the perfections wherein it
may agree with the nature of God's holiness, otherwise it were not a divine
nature, if there were any defect in the nature of the habit, I say, in the
nature of the habit.* And it cannot be otherwise ; for though the Spirit
may give one gift to one man, another gift to another, 1 Cor. xii. 8, 9, yet
when he would make a new creature, there must be a nature or habit con-
taining all graces. It could not else be a divine nature ; for if the Spirit doth
purpose to make a new creature, he cannot but give all grace, which belongs
to the essence and constitution of that new creature, otherwise he would either
wilfully or weakly cross his intention.
(4.) This habit receives various denominations, either,
[1.] From the subject. It is subjectively in the essence of the soul, but
as it shews itself in the understanding, it is called the knowledge of God ;
as it is the will, it is a choice of God ; as it is in the affections, it is a motion
to God. As the body of death is in the understanding, ignorance ; in the
will, enmity ; in the conscience, deadness ; in the affections, disorder and
frowardness. As diseases receive several names, as they are centred in
several parts, yet are but the dyscrasy or distemper of the humours.
[2.] From the object it is diversified. As it closes with Christ dying, it
is faith ; as it rejoiceth in Christ living, it is love ; as it lies at the feet of
Christ, it is humility ; as it observes the will of Christ, it is obedience ; as
it submits to Christ's afflicting, it is patience ; as it regards Christ offended,
it is grief; yet all arising from one habit, and animated by faith, so that it
is the love of faith, the joy of faith, the humility of faith, the patience of
faith, they all spring from one habit, seated in one soul, conversant about
one object, God in Christ: such a unity there is in all these diversifications.
As the holy oil wherewith the vessels of the tabernacle were anointed was
but one ointment, though composed of many ingredients, Exod. xxx. 25, 26 ;
as all the perfections of creatures are eminently in one God, all the evil dis-
positions of the creatures seminally in man by nature : so all the beauties of
grace are eminently included in this habit.
* F. Goodwin.
108 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
Hence we may take a prospect of the nature of the new creature. It being
thus a vital principle, and a habit, therefore the motion to God, and for God,
must be,
1. Ready in respect of disposition. He stands ready and disposed to
every good work upon God's call. As the habit of sin disposeth the soul to
every evil work, so the habit of grace prepares it for every good work, and
makes it meet for its master's use : 2 Tim. ii. 21, ' If a man therefore purge
himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet
for bis Master's use, and prepared unto every good work.' It is just as it
was with Isaiah, chap. vi. 5, at the first sight of the vision he complains,
1 Woe is me, a man of unclean lips,' taken up with self- reflection, no offers to
act for God ; but when a live coal was taken from the altar and laid upon his
mouth, there is a ready answer to God's question, ver. 7, 8, ■ Whom shall I
send ? Here am I, send me.' No demurs ; it was a live coal from the altar
had quickened him into a new frame for God. David doth not say he had
performed the statutes of God, but he had ' inclined his heart' to perform
them, Ps. cxix.
That I may not grate upon any troubled spirit, consider,
(1.) This readiness is seminally in every renewed person, yet it does not
always actually appear. As the old nature contains in it seminally all sins,
yet every man is more prone to one than another, according to education,
temper of body, or a set of temptations ; so the heart of a renewed man hath
an habitual disposition to the exercise of all grace, because it hath the
seeds of all graces in it, yet it doth not act all alike for want of vigorous
occasions. As the attributes of God, though in the highest perfection, yet
in their exercise in the world, sometimes one appears more triumphant than
another, sometimes more of patience, sometimes mercy, sometimes justice,
sometimes wisdom, one is more eminently apparent than another ; so the
divine nature hath seminally in this habit all grace, and an agreeableness to
every duty enjoined, a principle to send forth the fruits of all when an object
is offered, and the grace excited by the Spirit of God ; yet sometimes one is
more visible than another, according to the call it hath to stand forth and
shew itself. This habitual disposition may be when there is not a present
actual fitness for some service of a higher strain, by reason of some parti-
cular commission of sin, which hath sullied the soul ; as a vessel of honour
in respect of its formation may be fit for use, but in respect of some foulness
contracted may not be immediately fit for some noble service, till a new
scouring had passed upon it. A grown Christian, who hath his senses exercised
in the ways of God, doth not alway actually exercise this habit, yet he is ready
upon the least motion actually to do it ; as a new creature having a change
of end doth habitually mind the glory of God, yet he doth not in every action
actually think of it, or will it as his end ; but he is ready to bring this
habitual aim into exercise upon the least motion, and reaches out his arm to
embrace and stand right to that point. David had an habitual repentance
in him while he lay asleep in his sin, and by virtue of this habit, he doth
without any resistance comply with the first touch God gave him by Nathan.
His repentance flowed, and never ceased till it had done its perfect work. It
was a sign of a heart of flesh ; a heart of stone could not have been so
flexible. Job was eminent for patience, but being a new creature, he had a
disposition to all the rest, and had acted them with as high a strain, had he
had the same occasions.
(2.) This readiness to every service doth not actually appear in persons
newly regenerate. I think the lowest degree of this habit in one newly re-
generate, is a purpose of heart to cleave unto the Lord : Acts xi. 23, ' When
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 109
he came, and had seen the grace of God, he was glad, and exhorted them,
that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord.' Certainly
when there is such a fixed and constant purpose, it is a token of the grace
of God ; yet to this purpose there may not alway be connexed an actual
readiness to every service. For at the first beginning of the new creature
there is a strong resistance ; it is in a strange soil, the armies of hell are in
array against it, it is like a Daniel in a lion's den, or a Lot in Sodom, only
God restrains the force of these enemies. As it is in a child derived from
Adam, there is a principle in the natural corruption to exert all kind of
wickedness ; yet it doth not presently rise to the utmost of its force, till
ripened by time and other intervening causes. So though the new creature
hath in it a readiness virtually to the most raised action, to be as believing
and laborious as Paul, as zealous as Elijah, as patient as Job, yet it mounts
not presently to this state ; a time must be allowed for growth. There is an
infancy in grace, as well as in manhood. And as a child, though his soul
be of the same nature with that of a man, yet he cannot exercise those acts
of understanding and reason, because of the predominancy of sense, and the
indisposition of the organs ; so neither can a young Christian : he may have
a disposition equal to the best Christians, but not an equal strength ; the
reluctancy of the corrupt habits is more vigorous, not being much mortified ;
he wants also that additional strength gained by exercise. There may be a
greater resistance to one grace more than to another, from the strength of
some corruption particularly opposite to that grace ; yet ' to will is present
with him,' though he 'cannot perform that which is good,' Rom. vii. 18.
The posture of the soul to God was as natural to him as the posture of the
heart was before to sin ; as a young boy first come to school may have as
strong a purpose to get learning as a man that hath taken all his degrees in
the university. The first graces which appear in a renewed soul are re-
pentance and faith ; because regeneration being a rooting up from the old
stock and setting up a new, as it relates to the old stock, it doth necessarily
produce repentance upon the sight of his misery, and for being upon the old
stock so long ; and faith, as a necessary grace for closing with the Redeemer
upon a sight of him, and for ingrafting him upon a new stock ; and then
love, admiration, and thankfulness, walk the stage, from a reflection upon
the greatness of the misery escaped, and the great deliverance attained.
Sprouts from a root grow up, some faster, some slower, yet all arising from
the same root. So some graces appear at the very first setting this habit in
the soul, other graces lie hid till new occasions draw them out. This dis-
position, inclination, will, readiness, purpose, is the first language of a habit.
2. A second thing wherein you have a prospect of the new creature is
this ; as it is ready in respect of disposition, so it is in activity of motion.
Since it is a life infused by infinite activity, since it is a habit bearing the
impression of God, and maintained by a union with him, it is impossible it
can be sleepy and dull in a constant way. All life hath motion proper to
the principle of it : rational life is attended with rational actions ; sensitive
life, with acts proper to sense. It is as impossible then that a spiritual life
should be without acts consonant to it, as that the sun should appear in the
firmament without darting forth its beams. All life is accompanied with
natural heat, which is the band of it, whereby the body is enabled to a vigor-
ous motion. The new creature is not a marble statue or a transparent piece
of crystal, which hath purity, but not life. It is a living spirit, and there-
fore active ; a pure spirit, and therefore purely active, according to the de-
gree of it. It is the same habit in part renewed, which Adam had by crea-
tion, which was not a sluggish and unwieldy principle ; it must therefore
110 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
have an activity, it could not else be a proper principle to contest with the
contrary principle, which is active like the sea, casting out mire and dirt.
Since the old Adam conveyed such a vigorous principle of corruption, the
new Adam is not wanting to endue the principle of his conveyance with a
suitable activity. Grace abounds in its vigour, as well as sin hath abounded
in its kind, Rom. v. 20. Upon Christ's call, Matthew left his receipt of
custom ; the other apostles their nets ; motion presently follows an enliven-
ing call of God. It is first a habit, then an act ; first a ' spirit of grace and
supplication,' then a ' looking upon him whom they havepierced,' by an act of
their understanding, and a 'mourning' by an act of the will, Zech. xii. 10, 11.
First a ' sanctification of the spirit,' then a 'belief of the truth,' to the ob-
taining of glory, 2 Thes. ii. 13. When anything ceaseth to act, there is
either an oppression, or a death of nature.
(1.) This principle of the new creature is naturally active. All vital
motions are natural ; sometimes in men there are natural actions without
any actual exercise of reason, as when the spirits flow out to any part for
the defence of it upon the motion of any passion, as blood starts to the face
upon shame, &c, which all the reason of a man cannot hinder. It is as
natural to this new habit to produce new actions, as for anything to engender
according to its own likeness and species, as for a living tree to spring out
in leaves and fruits. A renewed man, whose seed is within himself, brings
forth fruit after its kind, as well as the herbs and the trees, Gen. i. 12. All
living creatures move agreeably to their natures, with a spontaneity and free-
dom of nature. The bramble doth not more naturally bring forth thorns,
than a habit of sin doth steam out sinful actions ; nor a fountain more freely
bubble up its water, than a habit of grace springs up in holy actions. For
shall the workmanship of God be more unapt to the proper end of it, than
the workmanship of the devil, since good works are the end of God's new
creating us, that we should walk in them ? Walking is a natural motion :
Eph. ii. 10, ' We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works.'
A well dressed vine doth not more naturally bring forth grapes, than a soul
rooted in Christ doth the fruits of the spirit ; neither doth the sun more
naturally enlighten the world with its beams, than the new creature shoots
forth its desires and affections to God ; for it is impossible but this habit
should tend to him, since it is planted by him. The new creature's services
are his meat and drink, not his work ; it is as natural to him to do it, as
for a creature to desire and take its proper food ; you need not hire a child
to suck, by the promises of fine things, it will naturally, without imitation,
take the breast. The new creature having a righteous and just nature,
cannot but do righteous things ; nothing can act against its nature, while
nature is orderly, and not disturbed by some disease or frenzy. As God,
whose image a regenerate man bears, cannot but do good, because his nature
is goodness : Rom. vi. 2, ' How can you that are dead to sin, live any longer
therein ?' He can no more naturally do it than a dead man can walk. Not
but that there are some mistakes sometimes, which proceed not from nature,
but from some obstructing humour. Nature doth not err in its right course
unless hindered by some adversary ; the errors renewed men are subject to pro-
ceed not from the regenerate principle in them, but from that remainder of cor-
ruption which by degrees is weakened by the other, and at last wholly put off.
(2.) It is voluntarily active. There is a kind of natural necessity of
motion, from life and habit, yet also a voluntary choice; it is a power which
constrains and inclines the will : Ps. ex. 3. The apostle tells us there was
a ' necessity laid upon him to preach the gospel,' 1 Cor. ix. 16, yet it was
not a compulsion, but a voluntary act, after his will was changed. The new
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. Ill
creature is not constrained from without, but flows freely, is not forced ; the
chief work is upon the will, the proper effect of any work upon the will is
voluntariness. The Spirit works to make it willing; its motion then is not by
compulsion : there is a sweet necessity of the new nature, and a gracious choice
of will, which meet together and kiss each other ; a natural, not a coactive
necessity. How freely doth the soul, winged with grace, move to and for
God, as a bird in the air ! With what a free and ready spirit doth the new
creature go to prayer, reading, and hearing ! How freely doth it breathe in
the air of heaven ! Not spurred by outward interest, or dragged by the
threatenings of the law, nor chid to it by the clamours of conscience ; but
gently moved to it, and upheld by it, by a soft, and dove-like, and ' free
spirit,' Ps. li. 12. How great is the difference between the flowing of a
fountain and the dropping of a sponge ; one is free, the other squeezed :
between a statue drawn upon wheels, and a living motion ; one moves, the
other is moved. Our Saviour, by washing us from our sins in his own blood,
• hath made us kings and priests unto God,' Rev. i. 6. First kings, put-
ting into the new creature a royal and magnanimous frame, as he did into
Saul when he advanced him to the kingdom ; and then priests, to offer sacri-
fices to God with this royal and generous spirit. So that it is as trouble-
some to a soul, having this royal spirit, to omit things proper to this frame,
as it is for a legalist to do them. Therefore where there are frequent omis-
sions of duty, or a constant dulness in it, it shews the want of this kingly
frame, and consequently that we are not washed from our sins in the blood of
Christ. There is both such a nature and such a choice, that as the apostle
saith, 2 Cor. xiii. 8, ' We can do nothing against the truth, but for the
truth.' So the new creature cannot but do the things which are holy, just,
and good, so far as he is regenerate, were there no rule without to guide
him, because he hath a habit of holiness with him, a will set to the right
point. His former state made him have an aversion from holy services ;
this makes all spiritual duties connatural to him. So that it is as irksome
for him to live without God in the world, as before it was to live with him ;
he can as soon strip himself of his own soul, as act, from a renewed prin-
ciple, contrary to God and righteousness.
(3.) It is fervently active. The nobler the being of anything is, the greater
degree of activity it is attended with ; the more spiritual the quality, the more
vigorous the effect. Both the spirituality of the principle, excellency of the
object, and affection to the end, conspire together to increase this activity.
The principle is spiritually vital ; the operation therefore is vigorous : the
object is God as amiable ; the warmer therefore the zeal ; the acts are,
loving God, trusting in God, depending on God, promoting his kingdom in
the heart, acts delightful in themselves, delightful in their issue, the motion
in them more quick ; the end is the glory of God, the happiness of the
creature ; the higher the end, the more elevated the soul. There is an
innate principle in everything to preserve its happiness ; it is as natural as
life itself. Inanimate creatures are endued with this nature. The flame
aspires to heaven, and waves on this and that side greedily, to catch what may
supply a fuel ; much more will other creatues act vehemently for that which
preserves their being: the toad to its plantain, the swallow to its celandine,
the babe to the breast, and the Christian to the word. There is in the new
creature an impetus and force settled in the soul to do good. It is a baptism
of fire following that with water. The Spirit is first as water, washing us
f om our filth; then as fire, quickening us with grace : Mat. iii. 11, * I baptize
you with water, he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.'
In this respect it is likened to creatures of the greatest activity, fire, wind,
112 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
a spring of living water ; what more active in the rank of corporeal beings
than fire and wind, either above or in the bowels of the earth ? Witness the
many stately buildings speedily consumed by the one or overthrown by the other.
The new principle in the creature fills every part, dissolves the hard, melts
the lumpish leaden heart, and makes it moveable in the ways of God with a
glowing heat. But above this there is a higher denomination ; the new
creature is called spirit : John hi. 6, ' That which is born of the Spirit is
spirit ; ' that is, a spiritual creature. The activity of a spirit doth uncon-
ceivably surmount that of a body ; what vast strides can a spirit take in a
moment, from heaven to earth ! The habit of sin in respect of its vehemency
to evil is called a spirit, ' a spirit of whoredom,' Hosea iv. 12 ; as well as
the habit of grace, in respect of its vehemency to good, ' a spirit of love,'
2 Tim. i. 7. How active is the new creature in its motion to God ! It can
fly in a thought from earth to heaven, enter the bosom of God, clasp about
him, hold him fast, even till almightiness bids him let him alone. Where
there are rivers of living water in the belly, they will flow, John vii. 38 ;
-where there is a divine habit, the soul will have a paraoxysm of divine heat
for the glory [of] God, Acts xvii. 16. Paul's spirit was stirred in him upon
the sight of the Athenians' idolatry. If created to good works, then not to
a dull and sluggish motion in them ; this was not the intendment of the
Creator, and therefore not the disposition of the creature.
(4.) It is unboundedly active. This new creature's desires are as large as
his nature, he cannot be bound up in the narrow and contracted motions of
his former disposition. The natural activity of the soul overflows, like a
swelled river, ah natural bounds, since it is possessed by a spiritual habit.
A man without a habit in an art, doth but bungle at his work, is quickly
tired, desponds of attaining what he would ; but he that hath a habit, sup-
pose of mathematical knowledge, finds one proposition following upon
another, one deduction rising up from another, that he hath a largeness, he
knows not where to end ; so the new creature finds one affection coming
upon the neck of another many times in transports and out-goings to God,
which knows no limits. It is unboundedly active ; —
[1.] In affections to God. The new creature would be as unlimited in
its affections to God, as God is in his affection to him. It will not fix lower
than the object it hath pitched upon in heaven ; all its operations tend
thither ; nothing below can give them a cessation, though they may suffer an
interruption ; it flies up, and is pulled back ; it mounts again and again,
follows hard on after the Lord. His affections are larger than his ability.
' Whom have I in heaven but thee ? and there is none in earth that I desire
besides thee,' Ps. lxxiii. 25. He seems to scorn everything else in compari-
son of God, though it were an angel, like a man that makes haste to some
mark, turns the impediments on this side and that side. The new creature
puts by the temptations of the flesh and the world, to make its way into the
bosom of God, the centre of its rest, and the boundless limit of its soul.
The sun, so many thousand miles distant from us, sends its rays as far as
the lowest valley of the earth ; and the new creature, the dartings of his
soul to the highest heavens. ' Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty,' 2 Cor. iii. 16, 17, the veil is taken away, it ' beholds, as in a glass,
the glory of the Lord ; ' like an eagle, mounts up as near as it can to the
sun, peers upon it till its eyes be dazzled with its brightness ; he is never
glutted with the views of him ; his desires for him are never bounded but
bv him ; one breathing after another, that he may fill God, as it were, with
his affections, as he is filled by him with his Spirit. In his obedience, too,
he would have his ' heart enlarged,' that he may ' run,' not creep, in the
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 113
ways of God's commandments, Ps. cxix. 32 ; it is his grief that he cannot
keep pace with God's commandments ; it is his joy that God flies upon the
wings of the wind to him, and his sorrow that he cannot fly upon the wings
of the wind to God. He groans under his dulness, and his pleasure consists
much in a liberty in God's service.
[2.] In disaffection to sin. He hates that body of death which hinders
the accomplishment of the desires of his soul, and regards it at no other
rate than his fetter, disease, and torture. He is discomposed when he meets
with any check in his religious course ; it is a violence to his new nature,
and he cannot bear it without regret. His anger and impatience rises with
as much force against any obstacle to a free converse with God, as it did
before against any impediment in the way of his lust. Nature is restless
till it hath got the conquest of the disease and corrupt humours of the body.
Neither can a new creature be at quiet, till all that is against the interest of
the new nature be purged out ; and to that purpose he daily knocks at
heaven gates for new strength and recruits of power against sin in the
spiritual conflict. It is a trouble to him that he hath not as full a sense of
his own corruptions as he would, and therefore he goes frequently to God
to beg new discoveries of sin, that he may fetch his enemy out of his holds
and skulks, and beat it to death ; for by this habit the understanding is more
quick in discerning the first rising of any sinful motion, and sensible of the
least touch contrary to the new interest of it.
(5.) The new nature is powerfully active. There is not only an unbounded
affection, but there is a power inherent in this habit to enable the soul to
act ; all habits add strength to the faculty. It is therefore called ' might in
the inner man,' Eph. iii. 16 ; and a ' spirit of power,' 2 Tim. i. 7. It is
put as a stock into the heart, to maintain the acts of holiness ; as there is
a stock of sap in the root to produce branches and fruit. A power of acting
is alway united with a form, and rooted in it. In regard the new nature is
implanted by a higher cause than any moral habits, even by the Spirit of
God, it must be able to do more than any moral nature can ; and being
more excellent than moral nature, must produce more excellent operations,
otherwise it were not of a more excellent kind, if it had not a more excellent
power. Jesus Christ was appointed to be a quickening Spirit, to convey a
powerful life, to enable us to live to God. ' The kingdom of God ' in the
heart, as well as that in the world, ' is not in word, but in power,' 2 Cor.
iv. 20. Move steel as often as you will, you can never make it of itself move
towards the north ; but by the impression made on it by the loadstone, there
is a power derived to turn and stand that way of its own accord. By nature
we are 'without strength,' Rom. v. 6, because without life, Eph. ii. 1. But
in the renewing there is strength conveyed together with life ; an ability to walk
in God's statutes, conveyed with the new heart ; out of weakness the soul is
made strong ; and the grace within, in concurrence with the supplies of the
Spirit, is sufficient for it. It is not only an outward strength, as is from a
staff in a sick man's hand, but an inward might. But besides this inherent
strength there is an adherent ability ; for Christ, who is his life, Col. iii. 4,
is also his strength : Philip, iv. 13, ' I can do all things through Christ
which strengthens me.' So that whatsoever active power is wanting in itself
can be supplied by the head. And therefore the new creature hath a kind
of almighty power of activity, by the communication of another, which is called
a greatness of power, and a mighty power which works towards them, or, ug
jyi&e, in them that believe, Eph. i. 19. This power doth reside in the
heart, and this adherent power is ready for it, but neither of them is alway
VOL. III. H
114 chaknock's woeks. [2 Cor. V. 17.
perceptible, but upon some emergency, as a sound man hath a greater power
to act tban be puts fortb upon all occasions.
(6.) It is easily active. Since tbat motion to God, and for God, is con-
natural and voluntary, and a power and ability also in tbe new creature, it
must follow tbat tbe motion is very easy. Habits are to strengthen tbe
faculty, and facilitate tbe acting of it. Bubbling is no pain to a fountain ;
rivers of water flow out of tbe belly easily, because naturally. Tbe motion
of tbis babit is as easy as tbe motion of tbe lungs, or tbe pulse of tbe
artery ; tbougb constant, yet not troublesome or painful in itself, but by
reason of some imparted humour settled in them. This stock of grace is
called the unction : 1 John ii. 20, ' But you have an unction from the Holy
One ; ' the inward oiling the soul, as oil communicates agility to tbe body.
This unction some understand of habitual grace conveyed from the Holy One
by the Spirit. As this unction upon our Saviour was the cause of his activity
for God in doing good,- — Acts x. 38, ' God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with
the Holy Ghost and with power ; who went about doing good,'— so it being
the same in the new creature, will have the like effect upon him. Super-
natural motions are as easy, by the strength of a supernatural habit, as natural
motions are by the strength of natural habits. A bird doth with as much
ease fly upward as a beast walks upon the ground, and the seed doth with as
much ease spring up, and put its ear out of the ground, as a bitter root doth
its unwholesome fruits and flowers. So when the soul is filled with this new
habit, the walks in the ways of God are as easy by virtue of it as a course of
sin and folly was before. Tbe yoke of itself is easy, Mat. xi. 30, and the
motion under a light yoke cannot be grievous. The very yoke is not a
shackle and burden, but a privilege. There is indeed some reluctancy some-
times, which ariseth not from the will as renewed, but from some evil habits
resident in tbe soul, not yet fully conquered by renewing grace. You know
bow tbe apostle Paul doth distinguish between tbe posture of his will, and
the interruptions by that sin which dwelt in him, Bom. vii. 18-20.
(7.) It is pleasantly active. 'Udv fih to -/.ccra <pii6iv, saith the philosopher.
As all actions which flow from life are pleasant, so those which flow from a
divine life in the soul. It is a joy to a just man to do judgment, Prov.
xxi. 15. That is, the entire inclination of the soul stands right to such
actions; and as much a joy to him to do judgment, when enabled thereunto
by a gracious babit, as it is to a sinful man under tbe bonds of iniquity to
commit it. His soul leaps as much at an opportunity of pleasing God, as
John Baptist did in his mother's womb at tbe appearance of Christ, as
much as his heart sprang up before at the proposal of a sinful object. Never
did tbe sun naturally rejoice so much ' like a strong man to run its race' in
the heavens, Ps. xix. 5, as the new man doth spiritually rejoice to run his race
to heaven. It is a mighty pleasure to have our spiritual enemies under our
feet, to be estranged from them. It is the purest delight to comply with
God, and be embosomed in him. He is swallowed up in these choicer
pleasures, as a man that bath had his full draughts of learning is in bis
studies, whence his diseases cannot draw him, though in his childish time
he counted them his task and burden.* The delights of an heart seasoned
with habitual grace are more ravishing than all the pleasures of sense,
because they arise from an habit planted in the soul by that Spirit which is
a Spirit of joy as well as of grace. The fatness of God's house, the sacrifices
presented by him, are his delight, and he drinks of a river of pleasure in his
very acts of worship : Ps. xxxvi. 8, ' They shall be abundantly satisfied with
tbe fatness of thy house, and thou shalt make them drink of tbe rivers of
* Jacks, vol. iii. chap. 27, p. 474; &c.
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 115
thy pleasures.' ' In keeping thy commandments there is great reward,'
Ps. xix. He finds much sweetness in the very acts of worship. Ah, how
can the motions of the habits of sin, under the quarrels of conscience, yield
as much delight as the habits of grace under the breathings of the Spirit !
The very marks of Christ in his body are his delight and triumph. He
takes pleasure in distresses for Christ's sake : 2 Cor. xii. 10, saith the apostle,
' I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions,
in distresses for Christ's sake.' The motions of his soul to Christ are his
life and joy. He chides his soul that her flights to Christ are not so strong
as Christ's flights to him. He would have a delight in doing the will of
God's precept, as Christ had in doing the will of the mediatory command.
He rejoices in his breathings after God, though he wants him, and is glad
his soul can have any flights towards him though he cannot find him. The
tabernacles of God are amiable, when his ' heart and his flesh cries out for
the liviug God: ' Ps. lxxxiv. 1,2,' How amiable are thy tabernacles, 0 Lord!
my soul longs, yea, even faints for the courts of the Lord.' And when, by
reason of some distemper, he cannot move so readily, some disease fetters
him, some corruption hath cast a clog upon him, yet he delights in the
thoughts of what he had, as a man in the former converses with his friend,
though now at a distance, and cheers up his soul with the thoughts that he
will again return: Ps. xlii. 5, 11, 'Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul?
hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him.' He grieves because he at
present cannot do what he would, and hopes for another frame, and rejoices
in the faith that he shall repossess it : 'He will turn again,' &c, Micah
vii. 19. A natural man without an habit of grace may move in some ways
outwardly good, but with some reluctance, and without any pleasure in the
goodness of the thing enjoined, or the goodness of that God who enjoins it.
He may have a sudden inclination to do a good action, but he is nut pleased
with that inclination itself. Ahab's humiliation was good in itself, no doubt,
but Ahab was pleased with it, but not as it was a humiliation, or had a like-
ness to a gracious action, or a tendency to the pleasing God, but as it was
a means of removing the judgment threatened, so that his pleasure was only
in the issue of it ; but a gracious soul is pleased with the habit itself, for he
considers it as the perfection of his nature, regards it as an ancient inmate,
though separated from his nature by Adam's degeneracy, as friends long absent
rejoice in one another. When this rectitude is in part restored, and under-
stood to be of kin to it by creation, but lost and now returned, there must
needs be an high complacency in the soul, and a joyful compliance with it.
And the stronger and more vigorous this inward rectitude is in habit, the
more pleasure a man hath in the exercise of it. As God, who is infinitely
righteous in all his ways and in all his works, has an infinite pleasure in the
exercise of this righteousness, and an infinite loathing of what is contrary to
it, because it is his infinite nature, so the stronger the habit in a man, the
more contentment there is in the exercise of it, because his nature is more
elevated. And what is natural is delightful ; and the more natural, the more
delightful. Mercy is natural to God, therefore he delights in it; and because
infinitely natural, therefore he doth infinitely delight in it.
Well 'then, since all the motions of nature are pleasant, the new nature is
not inferior in the pleasure of acting to any other nature whatsoever. It
being the perfectest nature, must beget the most delightful operations.
What a pleasure is it to draw near to God, to melt before him, to pour out a
prayer to him, and dissolve itself into love and affection in any address to him !
(8.) It is a permanent activity. There is a spring of perpetual motion.
The fountain doth constantly bubble. The sun doth constantly move,
116 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
because naturally. Whatsoever is natural is constant in its posture ; * fire
perpetually burns, and water perpetually cools. What is the essential property
of a thing doth competere semper. A man is alway rational, and ready to act
reason ; if there be any indisposition, it is not in the soul, but in the organ
or ill habit of the body, which doth obstruct the motions of the soul, and is
an unfit instrument for it to act by. This habit is not a passion, but a prin-
ciple ; not a motion, but a spring of uniform motion ; it is wrought in the
nature, and like the heart is continually beating. The principle is per-
manent, it is an abiding anointing, 1 John ii. 27, it is settled by God, given
to us in Christ, backed and assured by the earnest of the Spirit in the heart,
where this habit is seated. All is expressed, 1 Cor. i. 21, 22, ' Now he
which establisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God, who
hath also (that is, beside this) sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit
in our hearts.' It is a life and habit more fixed than that in Adam : his
life depended upon the rectitude of his soul, but this depends principally
upon the power of the Spirit, and the everlasting life of Christ. It is a water
which quencheth all thirst, and never leaves springing till it mount up to
eternal life, John iv. 14 ; it is perpetually active and springing, till it be
swallowed up in glory, as rivers in the sea. Others may move by some
wires, and have some strains of a natural religion, by some sudden impulses
which touch the strings and faculties of the soul ; but the wires break, the
touch ceaseth, and the motion with it, it hath no living spring. Nay, some-
times those motions in natural men under the gospel may be more quick,
and warm, and violent for a time than the natural motion of this habit ; as
the motion of a stone out of a sling is quicker than that of life, but faints by
degrees, because it is from a force impressed, not implanted and inherent in
the nature. They are just like water heated by the fire, which hath a fit of
warmth, and may heat other things ; but though you should heat it a thou-
sand times, the quality, not being natural, will vanish, and the water return
to its former coldness. But the new heart being in the new creature, causeth
him to walk in the statutes of God, not by fits and starts, but with an uni-
form and harmonical motion, Ezek. xxxvi. 27, 'Ye shall keep my judgments
and do them ; ' you shall treasure them in your minds and act them in your
lives. Not but that there are in the new creature some faintings ; it is
sometimes more vigorous, sometimes more weak in its motion ; it hath its
sicknesses ; it meets with wounds, but none of them to death. Every one
that is born of the Spirit is like the wind, John iii. 8, it moves and blusters,
and when you think it is passed away, it returns, resumes its force, and you
feel as stiff a motion as you did before. A man is never weary of that
which is habitual to him. There may be a weariness in duty and service,
but not a weariness of it, so as to throw it off; but after he hath refreshed
and recruited himself, his habit will put him upon a delightful return to it.
Where the ways of God are in the heart habitually, such shall go from strength
to strength, till they appear in Sion, though there may be some rests and
intermissions by the way: Ps. lxxxiv. 5, 6, ' In whose heart are the ways of
them ; ' some read, ' the high way of God in their hearts,' more consonant
to the Hebrew.
(9.) It is an orderly motion and activity. Natural motions are orderly.
As affirmative precepts bind semper, but not ad semper, so this habit enables
the soul semper, but not ad semper ; I mean, not to this or that service at
all times. Natural things have their stated times, places, and measures.
As trees bring forth fruit in their season, so doth the new creature bring
* The philosopher saith of an habit, olx. ibxlwrov, obx ibu.ira.p,o\ov—Aristot. Categ.,
cap. 5.
2 COE. V. 17.] THE NATUEE OF EEGENEEATION. 117
forth fruit ' in his season,' Ps. i. 3, in a season proper for that fruit. It is
alway producing some fruit or other, according to the particular seasons,
sometimes love, sometimes humility, sometimes patience. This habit is
ready at hand, whence he draws out fruits new and old.* As God doth all
things in weight, and number, and measure, so doth this habit of his own
implanting. As God gives every creature meat in due season, so the new
creature renders God his fruit in due season. As a wicked man is always
acting sin, sometimes one, sometimes another, according to the seasons of
them, so doth this habit in the new creature act grace, sometimes one,
sometimes another.
From all these things put together there follows,
1. A predominancy of grace in the new creature. As a state of nature
consists in the prevalency of the corrupt habit which leavens the whole
man, so the state of grace in a predominancy of the gracious habit, which
spreads itself over the whole soul, striving with the powerful opposite, which
in part resides there still. It is a habit put in to mate and destroy that habit
of sin which was there before ; the soul by it is made alive from the dead :
Rom. vi. 13, ' Yield yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead.'
Life triumphs over death, grace over nature, whereby the members become
instruments of righteousness unto God, instead of being instruments of un-
righteousness unto sin. It is put in to guide reason and will, and therefore
is invested with the sovereign power. As sense was first in man, but that
veiled when reason stepped into the throne, as being a more excellent prin-
ciple than sense, so must reason descend and give place to grace when that
comes in, as being a more excellent principle than reason. It is reason it
should have the sovereignty, for it doth but regain its own right, and take
possession, which by the law of creation it ought to have kept till violently
ejected by man. He that hath this habit hath a spirit of might as well as
of the fear of the Lord ; the same spirit which was in Christ, which is a
' spirit of might,' Isa. xi. 2. ' They that are Christ's have crucified the
flesh, with the affections and lusts,' Gal. v. 24 : have, not shall. As soon
as ever they are Christ's, which they are by this principle, a deadly wound
is given to siu ; such a one scorns to have anything more to do with idols,
Hosea xiv. 8. He overcomes the world : 1 John v. 4, ' Whatsoever is born
of God overcomes the world.' He can do all things : enter the lists with
the strongest Goliath, repel the sharpest temptations, through Christ which
strengthens him, Philip, iv. 13, so that grace is predominant.
2. There follows from hence a difficulty to sin. No creature can easily
act against a rooted habit ; how hard is it to make a beast do that which is
different from and contrary to his nature ! To act contrary to nature is
burdensome and intolerable. What creature would willingly change its
element? Will a bird sink of its own accord into the water, or a fish
delight to leap upon the land, whose only element is the water ? ^ What
creature would court the destruction of its iife ? What man would willingly
deform and gash his own body ? Men never do so by nature, but when
frenzy hath dispossessed them of their reason. Sin must dispossess a Chris-
tian of his grace before it can be easy for him to run into ways destructive
to his nature and blessedness. That principle which is in all natures must
be more eminently in the highest nature, and proportionably in every nature
that is of nearest approach to it. Righteousness and holiness is the very
constitution of the new creature : Eph. iv. 24, ' That new man, which after
God is created in righteousness and true holiness.' It is as impossible for the
new creature to sin by the influence of habit, as for fire to moisten by the
* Dr Goodwin, Vanity of Thoughts, p. 14.
118 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
quality of heat, or water to burn by the quality of cold. It is as impossible
for that habit to bring forth the fruits of sin, as for the sun to be the cause
of darkness, or a sweet fig-tree to bring forth sour fruit. Yet as there is
darkness in the air, though the sun be up, by the interposition of thick clouds,
so is there darkness in the new creature from the habit of sin in the soul,
which is not only a lodger, but an unwelcome inhabitant : Rom. vii. 20,
' Sin that dwells in me' still, and acts according to its nature, though much
over-powered and weakened by degrees by that habit of grace. Therefore
it is a hard thing for him to sin : 1 John hi. 9, ' He cannot sin.' It is as
hard for him to contradict the new nature as before to cross the old : ' I
cannot do this wickedness,' saith Joseph ; it is against the frame and dispo-
sition of my soul.
(1.) It must be difficult to sin against 'purpose of heart,' which is the
lowest step of the new nature, Acts xi. 23, though it be not hard to sin
against a flashy resolve.
(2.) It is hard for a man to sin who hath cordially chosen God for his
portion, which every new nature doth, with a fixed resolution to keep his
word : Ps. cxix. 57, ' Thou art my portion, 0 Lord : I have said that I would
keep thy word.' When it is carried out with a free motion to God, it cannot
easily be diverted from that charming object ; he cannot but value any diver-
sion at no better a rate than that of punishment.
(3.) It is difficult for him to contradict the new habit, wherewith he is so
highly pleased, and which he is assured hath nothing but happiness in the
womb of it.
(4.) It must be difficult for him to act that which, by virtue of this habit,
he is daily in the mortification of.
(5.) It is difficult for the habit of sin in him to do the same acts after it
hath received a deadly wound, as for a wounded man to do that which he
could when he was sound.
(6.) This nature cannot be in a man without an universal enmity to sin,
though it may without an universal victory ; this belongs to the perfection
of it, but enmity to the very constitution of it: Gen. hi. 15, 'I will put
enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.' He
can at the best but half sin, and scarce that ; he could not commit sin very
freely before, because of the reluctancy of natural conscience ; he can less
freely do it now, since there is a habit of grace in him, which doth more
powerfully fly in the face of sin when it appears ; therefore there can be but
a partial will to it or delight in it. The new man in the heart can never do
it ; the old man remaining cannot fully do it, because of the contradiction it
receives from the new habit. If he doth at any time sin, this new nature
can no more be pleased with it than the nature of a man is with the poison
which he hath wilfully taken, which will contest with it, and endeavour to
expel it, whether a man will or no. So that if a new creature be catched at
a disadvantage, and be bemired by the remaining habit of sin in the heart,
his spirit is wounded, his soul bleeds, his conscience upbraids him, he is
displeased with himself and with his sin, runs to God, seareheth into him-
self, calls heaven and earth to his assistance, sharpens his spiritual weapons,
and by virtue of this habit in him is dissatisfied, and in little ease, till he
hath overcome this rebellion of lust, dispossessed it, removed the guilt, and
cast out the filth.
4. As we have considered this work as a change, a vital principle, a habit,
so we will consider it as a law put into the heart. Every creature hath a law
belonging to its nature, so hath the new creature. Man hath a law of reason,
beasts a law of sense and instinct, plants a law of vegetation, inanimate
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 119
creatures a law of motion. A new creature bath a law put into his heart :
Jer. xxxi. 23, ' I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their
hearts,' cited by the apostle, Heb. viii. 10. It is called the ' law of the
mind,' Kom. vii. 23, it beginning first in the illumination of that faculty.
As sin begun first in a false judgment made of the precept of God, ' You shall
be as gods, knowing good and evil.'
Now, as to this law put into the heart, you may know what is meant by
it in some popositions.
(1.) This law of the mind, or law written in the heart, is not wholly the
same with the law of nature. Some* indeed tell us that it is nothing but
the law of right reason. But certainly they are mistaken, — it is a law of
grace. The law of nature was the law of a covenant of works, this law of
the mind is the law of the covenant of grace. The law of nature is in all
men, this law of grace only in some ; the law of nature was in Paul before
his conversion, this law of the mind was in him upon his conversion. The
law of nature consists not of faith in a mediator, but faith is a main part of
the law of grace. The law of nature acquaints not a man with the know-
ledge of all sins, not with unbelief; this law of grace doth, for the conviction
of this is a work of the Spirit : John xvi. 8, 9, ' Of sin, because they believe
not in me.' The law of nature is the general work of the mediator in all
men, ' who enlightens every man that comes into the world,' John. i. 9.
This is the peculiar work of the Mediator, by his Spirit, in the hearts of
those that believe ; the law of nature doth not oppose sin as sin, this law of
grace doth ; the law of nature is no part of sanctification, for this is in men
that are born of the flesh, are flesh still ; but the law of the mind is a part of
sanctification, and wars against the law of the members ; there is indeed a
war and a contest from the law of nature against some gross sins, but not
against the law of sin in the members. As sin wars against the law of the
mind, as a law of direction, so the law of the mind, or the law of grace, wars
against sin, as it is a law which pretends to guide and order the ways of a man.
(2.) Yet it is the restoring of that law which was the law of nature origin-
ally. It is a renewing in the heart that law which was writ in the heart of
Adam : Eph. iv. 24, ' That new man, which after God is created in right-
eousness and true holiness ;' or after God was created -/.riGOhra, alluding to
that righteousness wherein Adam was created, lost by him, and restored by
Christ. This righteousness which Adam had was the righteousness of the
law : holiness towards God, which includes the duties of the first table ;
righteousness, including the duties of the second table ; and truth being
added (as it may be referred both to holiness and righteousness), shews the
sincerity of it in the manner and the end of being holy to God and right-
eous to man. This was the law written in the heart originally, which was
defaced by the fall ; and whatsoever relics there were of this law in man,
were only upon the account of the mediation of Christ ; it is this law which
is new engraven in the soul by regeneration. God doth not say, I will write
another law in their hearts, but ' my law,' Jer. xxxi. 33, — that which was
my standing law, my law to Adam, and to your fathers. The law written
in the heart is not substantially distinct from that in the nature of Adam.
Man by his fall did blot this law, lost his righteousness, had an enmity in
his heart to it, and to the very relics of it. He is not natun.lly subject to
the law, nor can be, as it is the law of God, because of his enmity to God,
Rom. viii. 7 ; the law of sin had taken place instead of it. Regeneration is
a taking down the law of sin, and fixing the law of God in its due place and
posture.
* Taylor's Excmp., preface, p. 39.
120 chaknock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
(3.) This law is written in the heart wholly. The whole law, every
command which hath the print of God upon it, is written there. As God
writ his whole law in tables of stone, so he writes the whole law in the
1 fleshly tables of the heart,' 2 Cor. hi. 3. It is true holiness and righteous-
ness ; true, as to its essential and integral parts. God doth not write one
part of the law upon the heart, and leave out another ; it is not a moiety
of it, the impression of one command, and the defect of another. If it were
not the whole law, something belonging to the essence of a new creature would
be wanting. It would not be a new creature, because it would be a monster,
wanting something necessarily requisite to the constitution of it, and would
not be a new creature according to the original copy. Where there is an
agreeableness in one nature to another, it is to the whole nature, the nature
of the soul to the nature of the law.
(4.) This law written in the heart doth not make the outward law useless,
for that is still a rule. This inward law written in the heart is a conformity
to the outward rule, and therefore is not a rule itself. The law in the heart
is imprinted by the external word in the hand of the Spirit ; and therefore
to tiy the truth of the law within, we must have recourse to the law written.
If a man hath any notions of any human law, he must consult the law
written, to know whether his notions of it be right, and whether his actions
be according to the letter and reason of the law or no. As the law of sin
within a man is not the rule of judging of sin, but the law of God, so
neither is the law of grace within the rule of judging good, but the word of
God. The law within, though it be commensurate to the law in its essential
parts, yet it is imperfect as yet ; but a rule ought to be perfect, Ps. xix. 7,
and so the written law is. It is this law written in the word that we are to
take heed to, for the cleansing of our ways : Ps. cxix. 9, ' Thy word have
I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.' When this writing
of the law in the heart was promised, ver. 11, there was also an inward
teaching promised : Jer. xxxi. 32, ' And they shall teach no more every
man his neighbour, saying, Know the Lord ;' which is spoken in regard of
the abundance of the knowledge which should be in the time of gospel light,
above what was in the twilight of Jewish ceremonies ; so that the weak-
est Christian under the gospel knows more of God and his attributes in
Christ, than the greatest Jewish doctor did before the coming of Christ.
This was not so understood by Christ, as if teaching others were utterly use-
less ; for then why should he institute apostles, pastors, teachers, &c, and
promise to be with them to the end of the world, if this promise of inward
teaching made outward teaching useless ? In like manner, neither doth the
writing the law in the heart make the outward written law useless, but rather
it doth establish and advance it, and the esteem of it. The outward law is
the rule, as the model of a house is the rule by which a carpenter is to make
a building, and to which he is to conform that idea he hath in his mind of
it ; but that idea or figure of it which he hath in his mind, is to be suited to
that rule which is prescribed to him in the outward pattern ; and therefore
that pattern is to be consulted with. The law of God is of eternal duration;
and as it is a law of holiness and love of God, doth oblige every reason-
able creature, in what condition soever he be, whether of nature, grace, or
glory.
Quest. Wherein doth this writing of the law in the heart consist ?
Avs. (1.) In an inward knowledge of the law, and approbation of it in the
understanding. The knowledge of righteousness and the being of the law in
the heart, are put together as the proper character of the people of God :
Isa. li. 5, ' Hearken to me, ye that, know righteousness, the people in whose
2 Cob. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 121
heart is my law.' Lest they should think a knowledge were enough, he adds,
' In whose heart is my law ;' not in the head, but in the heart. There is
in a renewed understanding, a principle teaching how to make use of the
law. It is like the inward skill of a pilot, who guides the ship by the
compass and rudder. The outward law is the compass by which we must
steer ; the inward law is the practical knowledge of this ; an inward skill to
make application of it to particular occasions. The word of God being a
seed, doth, as every seed, produce a being like itself, and like that plant
whose seed it is ; from the seed of corn ariseth a grain of the same nature.
This seed being sown first in the understanding, is there cherished, and
grows up in principles and thoughts agreeable to itself, whereby the mind
becomes the epistle of Christ, 2 Cor. iii. 3, and an ark to preserve the tables
of the law ; whence David speaks of his soul keeping God's testimonies,
Ps. cxix. 167, and not forgetting them, ver. 16. The new creature by its
new light sees an amiableness in the law, a holiness in the precepts, and
a filthiness in himself thereby.
(2.) It consists in an inward conformity of the heart to the law. The
soul hath a likeness to the word and doctrine of the gospel within it ; it is
delivered into that mould : Eom. vi. 17, ' You have obeyed from the heart
that form of doctrine, into which you were delivered.' He considers the
gospel as a mould, and the Romans as a metal poured into it, and putting
on the form of it. As melted metal poured into a mould loses its former
form, and puts on a new shape, the same figure with the mould into which
it is poured ; the soul, which before was a servant of sin, and had the
image of the law of sin, being melted by the Spirit, is cast into the figure
and form of the law. As when a seal hath made its impression upon wax,
the stamp in the one answers exactly to the stamp on the other, put the seal
on again, and they both will meet as close as if they were one body, the
wax will fill every cavity in the seal ; but put this seal to any impression
made by another seal, there will be an inequality, the stamp on the seal
and that on the wax will not close. The law of sin and the law of God,
being contrary impressions, cannot close together ; but the law of grace in
the heart and the law of God close, they being but one and the same
stamp. So that when any command of God appears, a new creature finds
something within it of kin to it ; as a natural man finds something ready
to close with sin upon the appearance of it. The heart answers to the
law as a lock to a key, ward for ward ; sometimes it may not answer but re-
sist, as a lock doth, because of some rust or some filth got up into it ; but
then it needs not a new making but a new cleansing, to answer exactly to
the key of the law. So that as the ' Gentiles, having not the law, are a
law to themselves,' Eom. ii. 14, having it writ upon their minds in those
notions common to mankind, so the new creature, if he had not the written
law, would be a law to himself. So natural is this conformity, that were
there no law without, the renewed soul would naturally be carried out in the
ways of holiness. ' The law,' saith the apostle, ' is not made for a right-
eous man,' 1 Tim. i. 9 ; it is not chiefly intended for the righteous, but for the
unrighteous, who would not stir one step in any good action without it, and
will hardly stir with it. There would be no need of any written law in a
commonwealth, if all men had an exact justice and righteousness in their
own minds, and did jointly conspire to the good of the community. But
when disturbers of the peace and common welfare start up, there is need
then of public laws to restrain them. But there is no need of a public enact-
ing of a law for them that are good, because what the law enjoins they do
by their own judgment and inclination. So that what a new creature dot
122 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
in observance of the law, is from natural freedom, choice, and judgment,
and not by the force of any threatenings annexed to it.
(3.) It consists in a strong propension to the obedience of it. As there
was a strong impetus in the old nature, inclining it to sin, so there is a strong
impulse in the new nature, biassing it to observe the commands of the
law. In this respect it is chiefly called a law written in the heart, in re-
gard of the efficacious virtue of this new nature, sweetly constraining and
directly conducting to the performance of it. The law without us com-
mands us, the law within constrains us. That enjoins a thing to be done,
this inclines us to the doing of it.* The first law is written in the
Scripture or in the conscience, whereby we judge those commands to be kept ;
the other consists in the propension of love, or faith working by love. As
the impulse of concupiscence is called ' the law of sin,' Rom. vii. 25, so the
impulse of grace is called the law in the heart ; not as a thing distinct from
the law without, but only a counterpart of it, an indenture answering to the
other. They are but two parts united between themselves, and compose one
perfect law ; one as the direction, the other as the practice. That lavs the
injunction, this embraceth it ; and as naturally from the disposition of the
new nature as he did embrace the law of sin from the disposition of the
old. It is a powerful operative law of the Spirit of life, which ' sets us free
from the law of sin and death,' Rom. viii. 2 ; not a dead letter, but an active
principle, quickening the heart to close with the law, and delivering it from
that which was the great hindrance to it. As the devil doth act in men's
hearts, Eph. ii. 2, not personally, but by a principle in the heart, the law of
sin, so doth the Spirit of life by the law of grace ; for being writ by a liv-
ing Spirit, it is a living law. This is the chief intent of the whole new
creation, to cause us to walk in God's statutes, Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 27. Ps.
xxxvii. 31, ' The law of God is in his heart, none of his steps shall slide.'
The soul being thus evangelised and spiritualised, may be said to do by
nature the things contained in the gospel, as the Gentiles are said to do by
nature the things contained in the law, Rom. ii. 14, because there was a law
of nature engraven in them.
(4.) It consists in a mighty affection to the law. What is in the word a
law of precept, is in the heart a law of love ; what is in the one a law of
command, is in the other a law of liberty. ' Love is the fulfilling of the
law,' Gal. v. 14. The law of love in the heart, is the fulfilling the law of
God in the Spirit. It may well be said to be written in the heart, when a
man cloth love it. As we say, a beloved thing is in our hearts, not physi-
cally, but morally, as Calais was said to be in Queen Mary's heart. They
might have looked long enough before they could have found there the map
of the town ; but grief for the loss of it killed her. It is a love that is inex-
pressible. David delights to mention it in two verses together : Ps. cxix.
47, 48, ' I will delight myself in thy commandments, which I have loved-:
my hands will I lift up to thy commandments, which I have loved ;' and
often in that psalm resumes the assertion. Before the new creation, there
was no affection to the law : it was not only a dead letter, but a devilish let-
ter in the esteem of a man : he wished it razed out of the world, and another
more pleasing to the flesh enacted. He would be a law to himself; but
when this is written within him, he is so pleased with the inscription, that
he would not for all the world be without that law, and the love of it :
whereas what obedience he paid to it before, was out of fear, now out of
affection ; not only because of the authority of the lawgiver, but of the purity
of the law itself. He would maintain it with all his might against the power
* Suarez de legib. lib. x. chap. iii. p. 4.
2 Cor. Y. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 123
of sin within, and the powers of darkness without him. He loves to view
this law ; regards every lineament of it, and dwells upon every feature with
delightful ravishments. If his eye be off, or his foot go away, how doth he
dissolve in tears, mourn and groan, till his former affection hath recovered
breath, and stands upon its feet ! If he finds not his heart answering the
law, he longs after the precepts, as the prophet saith : Ps. cxix. 40, ' I have
longed after thy precepts, quicken me in thy righteousness.' He longs to
join hands again with the holiness of them. As his heart is inclined to obey
it, so it is wounded upon any neglect of it, and never at ease, till he be re-
duced to his former delight in it. He hath no mind ever to part with it,
because of its intrinsic goodness, as well as conveniency for him. It is his
pleasure, not his confinement ; his ornament, not his fetter ; he hates every
thing that is contrary to it. How doth Paul grieve and groan under ' the
body of death,' when he considered what opposition ' the law in his mem-
bers made against the law of his mind' ? Rom. vii. 23, 24. The law in
his members ' brought him into captivity to the law of sin.' Then, ' Oh
wretched man that I am !' though he knew he was in part delivered from it.
How doth he long for a perfect redemption from his shackles, which hin-
dered him from following the law of his delight ! And he that never mur-
mured at his sufferings, but could glory in persecutions and death for Christ,
seems to be impatient till he could hear the last expiring groan of this
enemy : all which was the effect of his ' delight in the law of God after the
inward man,' ver. 22. And that this writing the law doth principally con-
sist in this affection, those two expressions, ' putting the law into the inward
parts,' and ' writing it in the heart,' intimate. The nature of man being
enmity against the law of God, the writing it argues, not a change of
the law, but a change of the frame of the heart to the law, that should
be so fashioned, that the law should reign there, and all his affections sub-
scribe to it. As the writing the law in the heart of Christ was nothing else
but the agreeableness of the mediatory law to him, and his delight in it, Ps.
xl. 8, so it is with a new creature.
(5.) It consists in an actual ability to obey. Writing the law in the heart
implies a putting a power and strength into the soul, enabling it to run the
ways of God's commandments, as well as to incline the heart and affections
to them ; the promise is made to the latter times : not but that the ancient
patriarchs were regenerate, but not by the law, not by any covenant of
works : this ability did not reside in the law, but was transferred to them
from the gospel. In this respect it is called ' a letter,' 2 Cor. iii. 6, because
it did only instruct the eye or ear, when read or heard : this teaches the
heart ; that a killing letter, this a quickening Spirit ; that exacted the ob-
servance of its precepts, but writ nothing in the heart to answer it, but con-
demned upon neglect; this commands the observance of the law, and gives
an ability evangelically to perform it. That was a ministration of condem-
nation, this of righteousness, 2 Cor. iii. 9 ; that could do no other but con-
demn, because it gave no intrinsic power to oberve it. It is through Jesus
Christ that we are enabled, by virtue of this inward writing, to serve with
our minds the law of God, though in our flesh we be captivated by the law
of sin. As an unregenerate man is dragged to any good, but willingly obe-
dient to the motions of sin, so a regenerate man is sometimes under the
rape of sin, but is willingly obedient to the motions of grace. So that the
Jaw is written in the heart, in respect of the assent of the understanding,
consent of the will, pleasure of the affections : in the understanding, by the
clearness of the light of faith ; in the will, by the heat of the fire of love.
In the understanding there is a judicious approbation of it ; in the will, a
124 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
motion to it, closing with it, and an affection to keep it ; and, according to
its ability, an endeavour to keep pace with it.
5. The fifth thing. As there is a vital principle, an habit, a law written
in the heart, so there is a likeness to God in the new creature. Every
creature hath a likeness to something or other in the rank of beings : the
new creature is framed according to the most exact pattern, even God him-
self. In this the form of regeneration doth consist. The new creature is
begotten ; begotten, then, in the likeness of the begetter, which is God. As
sin is tbe impression of Satan's image, which was drawn over all by the fall,
so renewing grace is tbe impression of the image of God ; for it is a quite
contrary thing to corruption. This likeness to God was man's original hap-
piness in creation, and is his restored happiness in redemption : Col. ii. 10,
' renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.' His
misery consisted in losing it ; our felicity, therefore, doth consist in recover-
ing it. Hence it is called a ' divine nature,' 2 Peter i. 4. Every thing
receives its denomination from the better part. A man is denominated
rational, though he hath both a sensitive principle common with beasts, and
a vegetative, or growing principle, common with plants ; so a new creature
is denominated divine, because grace, a divine principle, is superior in the
soul. Every perfection in the creature is supposed to be essentially some-
where. Every impression supposeth a seal that stamped it ; every stream
a fountain from whence it sprang ; every beam a sun from whence it is shot.
Grace being the highest perfection of the creature, must be somewhere
essentially. Where can that be but in God ? His womb and power is
the womb that bare it, and the breasts which gave it suck. It must then
have a resemblance to him, as a child to the father, the copy to the ori-
ginal. We are said to be ' born of God,' 1 John iii. 9. Now to be born
of any thing is to receive a form like that, which the generating person
hath. But,
(1.) It is not a likeness to God in essence : it is no participation of the
essence of God. It is a nature, not the essence ; a likeness in an inward
disposition, not in the infinite substance, which is communicated by gene-
ration only to the Son, and by procession to the Holy Ghost. The divine
essence is incommunicable to any creature. Infiniteness cannot be repre-
sented, much less communicated. Man is no more renewed according
to God's image, than he was at first created according to it, Gen. i. 27 ;
which was not a communication of the divine essence, but of a righteous-
ness resembling the righteousness of God, according to the capacity of
Adam's nature ; which image of God in Adam is by the apostle restrained
to that of ' righteousness and true holiness,' Eph. iv. 24. The likeness in
a state of glory is founded upon a sight of God as he is, 1 John iii. 2 ;
which may more properly be meant of the seeing of Christ as he is in glory ;
for the apostle goes on in the discourse without naming of Christ ; but
without question means him, ver. 5, when he saith, that ' he was manifested
to take away our sins.' We shall be like him, as we shall see him ; there-
fore not in essence. His essence is concluded by most to be invisible, even
in glory. How can finite creatures behold an infinite being ? He must be
God that knows God's essence. We shall understand him in his bowels, as
a father; in his wise acts, as a governor; in his judicial acts, as a justifier; in
his merciful acts, as a reconciler. We shall see him in all his relations to us.
Such a vision we shall have, whatsoever it is, which shall transform us into
as high a likeness to him as a finite creature is capable of. There can be
no participation of the substantial perfections of God, which are incommu-
nicable ; for then it would not be a participation but an identity, oneness,
2 CoR. V. 17. J THE NATURE OF REGENERATION. 125
or equality. God put in one letter, and the chiefest of his name, Jehovah,
H, which is twice repeated in it, into the names of Abraham and Sarai,
reckoned Nehem. ix. 7, as one of his favours to Abraham, but not the whole
name, that is incommunicable ; and Jacob's name is changed to that of
Israel, putting in ?N, a communicable name of God.
(2.) Yet it is a real participation. It is not a picture, but a nature : it
is divine. God doth not busy himself about apparitions. It is a likeness,
not only in actions, but in nature. God communicates to the creature a singu-
lar participation of the divine vision and divine love ; why may he not also give
some excellent participation of his nature ?* There is a nature ; for there
is something whereby we are constituted the children of God. A bare affec-
tion to God doth not seem to do this. Love constitutes a man a friend, not
a son and heir by generation. The apostle argues, ' If children, then heirs,'
Rom. viii. 17. He could not argue in a natural way, if friends, then heirs.
And the Scripture speaks of believers being the children of God, by a spi-
ritual generation as well as by adoption. So that grace, which doth consti-
tute one a child of God, is another form whereby a divine nature is commu-
nicated. Generation is the production of one living thing by another, in
the likeness of its nature, not only in the likeness of love ; so is regenera-
tion. Were not a real likeness attainable, why should those exhortations be,
of being '.holy as God is holy, pure as he is pure' ? 1 Pet. i. 15, 1 John
iii. 3. The new creature receives the image of God ; not as a glass receives
the image of a man, which is only an appearance, no real existence ; and
though it be like the person, yet hath no communion with its nature ; but as
wax receives the image of the seal, which though it receives nothing of the
substance, yet receives exactly the stamp, and answers it in every part. So
the Scriptures represents it: Eph. i. 13, 'You were sealed with that holy
Spirit of promise.' Something of God's perfections are in the new creature
by way of quality, which are in God by way of essence. In a word, it
is as real a likeness to God as the creature is capable of, laid in the first
draughts of it in regeneration, and completed in the highest measures in
glory.
(3.) It is the whole image of God which is drawn in the new creature.
It is ' the image of God,' Col. iii. 10, not a part : a foot or a finger is but
the image of those parts, not of a man. The members in a child answer to
those in a parent, that is but a chip from the body of his father,, though not
in so great a proportion. The image of a man hath not only the face, or
eyes, but the other members. Though a Christian may have one or two
parts of this image more beautiful than the rest, as a man may have a spark-
ling eye that hath not a proportionable lip, yet he hath all the members of a
man. The painter's skill appears in some lineaments more than in others.
So the Spirit's wisdom appears in making some eminent in one grace, some
in another, acording to his good pleasure ; yet the whole image of God is
imprinted there ; it would be else not a likeness, but a monstrous birth in
defect. ' The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth,'
Eph. v. 9 ; and therefore the immediate effect of the Spirit in the soul is
the engraving all goodness, righteousness, and truth in the essential parts of
it. As God's nature is holy, his perfections holy, his actions holy, so holi-
ness beautifies the nature, spirits the actions, and is writ upon all the endow-
ments of a renewed man. There is an impression of the wisdom of God in
the understanding, and of the holiness of God in the will.
(4.) It is more peculiarly a likeness to Christ, wherein we partake of his
nature : ' He that doth righteousness is righteous, as Christ is righteous,'
* Suarcz dc gra. lib. vi. cap xii. numb. 3, 10.
126 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
1 John iii. 7. There is a real likeness to Christ in righteousness, though
not an equal perfection. The new nature is a draught of Christ, something
of Christ put into the soul, such a likeness to Christ, that it seems to be (as
it were) another Christ, as the image of the sun seems to be another sun in a
pail of water, therefore called a ' forming of Christ in us,' Gal. iv. 19. Not
by any communication of his substance, either of the divine or human nature,
but by conveying such affections into us, which bear a likeness to the affec-
tions of Christ. Hence we are exhorted to have ' the same mind which
Christ had,' Philip, ii. 5, and to ' arm ourselves with the same mind,' 1 Peter
iv. 1, which supposeth such a mind put into the new creature which he is
to excite, and put into actual exercise. And the apostle speaks of a con-
formity to Christ in his death and resurrection, Philip, iii. 10. And God
did ' predestinate' all his own ' to be comformed to the image of his Son,'
Rom. viii. 29, e-jfi/Moo^o-og, of the same form and shape. Jesus Christ con-
formed himself to us, by assuming the human nature ; and God conforms
us to Christ, by bestowing upon us a divine. Hence we are said to be the
seed of Christ, Isa. liii. 10 ; not a carnal seed as the Jews say, and therefore
deny Christ to be the Messiah, because he left no posterity. Whereas seed
is spiritually understood, as in the first promise, the seed of the serpent or
the devil. Devils do not beget, but metaphorically, as they instil their
cursed principles into men ; so Christ sows his principles in us, whereby we
become his seed. Hence also renewed men are called « his fellows,' Heb. i. 9.
If fellows with him in the covenant, and fellows with him in glory, fellows
also with him in his disposition of loving righteousness, and hating iniquity.
This disposition was the inward motive of his death, and the foundation of
his advancement. Without this disposition we cannot be conformable to him
in his death, and consequently not his fellows in his advancement. The new
creature is a likeness to Christ, therefore called the new man ; as the natural
man is like to Adam, therefore called the old man. The new man and old
man are titles of Christ and Adam, and transferred upon others by a figure,
metonymia causa pro effectu. These are the heads and roots of the two dis-
tinct bodies of men in the world. All are in the old Adam by nature, and so
partake of the old man ; all believers are in the new Adam by faith, and
so partake of the nature of the new man. As we did partake of Adam's
nature by our natural birth, so we partake of the nature of Christ by our
spiritual : by the one we have the ' image of the earthly,' by the other the
new creature hath the ' image of the heavenly,' 1 Cor. xv. 48, 49 ; the one
derives sin, the other righteousness ; they both imprint their image accord-
ing to the quality of their extraction. Christ is full of purity, righteous-
ness, charity, patience, humility, truth, and in a word, all the parts of holi-
ness ; then the form and image of Christ in the new creature can be no
other than a lively representation of those divine qualities, a soul glitter-
ing with goodness, humility, &c, which the apostle comprehends in two
words, ' righteousness and true holiness.' Therefore, if there be not a like-
ness to Christ in the frame and qualities of our souls, we are not bom of
him. No man will say an ox, or a sheep, or a dog descends from Adam,
because they have not the likeness, shape, and qualities of Adam ; neither
can any man without such a likeness to Christ in faith, humility, patience,
love, obedience, and minding the glory of God, number himself in the spiri-
tual seed of Christ. He retains the nature poisoned by the serpent, creep-
ing upon the earth, feeding upon the dust, not the nature formed by the
eternal Spirit.
(5.) It is a likeness to the Spirit, which is the immediate cause of it.
Therefore the new creature is called spirit in the abstract, as a natural man
2 COE. V. 17.] THE NATURE OF REGENERATION. 127
is called flesh in the abstract: John iii. 6, ' That which is torn of the flesh,
is flesh ; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.' As that which is
born of the flesh is like to flesh in its nature, so that which is born of the
Spirit is like to the Spirit in its nature, as light in the air, being the natural
effect flowing from the sun, is like to that light which is in the sun ; its
relishes, delights, breathings, are according to its spiritual original ; its mo-
tions, purposes, dispositions, are like those of the Holy Ghost, of whom it
is born. The principles and impressions in the nature must be agreeable to
those the Spirit hath. The Spirit is a Spirit of holiness, grace, love and zeal
to the glory of God ; his office is to exalt and glorify Christ. If we are re-
newed, then we shall have the same draught in our hearts, the same design ;
the fleshly principle will be changed into spiritual. They will be habitual
too, as the frame of the Holy Spirit is. A natural man may do sdme acts that
look like spiritual by fits and starts, but there is no settled principle ; where-
as the spirit in a new creature is a spirit of meekness, and curbs the pas-
sions ; a spirit of humility, and overthrows pride ; a spirit of zeal, and fires
the heart ; a spirit of power, and arms the soul against sin ; a holy spirit,
and theiefore cleanseth it; an heavenly spirit, and therefore elevates it.
Quest. Wherein doth this likeness to God chiefly consist ?
Ans. 1. In a likeness of affections. God is no bodily shape ; we cannot
be like him in our bodies, but in our souls, as they are spirits ; but if there
be a dissimilitude of affection and disposition, the unlikeness to God is
greater than a likeness to him in point of the natural being. There is no
draught of this image in us, unless we have a conformity of affections to
God ; it is then chiefly evidenced by a delighting in him, by faith and love,
wherein we bear a resemblance to him in his affection to himself, by delight-
ing in his image in others, wherein we imitate his affection to his creatures.
He that loves not that image of God which is visible, cannot love the invi-
sible original, 1 John iv. 12, 20, and so, having no likeness to God in his
affection, can have no likeness to God in his nature. And the apostle posi-
tively affirms, that ' he that loves, is born of God,' 1 John iv. 7. The new
creature extends its arms to every thing wdrich hath a resemblance of that
whose image it bears. The divine nature is chiefly seen in the objects of
the affections, when they are set upon the same objects, and in a like manner
as God's and Christ's are. When we grieve most for sin, for this grieves
the Spirit, when we desire most an inward holiness, this God most longs
for : ' Oh that there were such an heart in them !' When we hate sin as
God hates it, because of the inward filthiness ; when we love grace as God
loves it, because of its native beauty ; when we can love God and Christ
above all the world, and other things in order to him and his glory ; when
we can trust Christ with all our concerns, and God doth trust him with his
glory : then, and not till then, there is an image of God in us, which God
values above all the world. When the soul is thus touched and quickened
by grace, she can no more strip herself of the object and manner of her affec-
tions, than she can of the affections themselves. And when she doth reach
out herself to all that is good, and hath a complacency in it, it is her happi-
ness, because it is the great likeness to the spring of happiness. When we
have the like affections with God, we have in our measure a like happiness
and blessedness with God.
2. In a likeness of actions. Men by sin are ' alienated from the life of
God,' Eph. iv. 17 ; by restoring grace then they are brought to have com-
munion with God in his life, to live as God lives. By nature men live the
life of beasts and devils ; by grace they come to live the life of Christ. If
he lives then the life of God, he must be comformable in his actions to the
128 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
acts of God. No nature is stripped of affections and actions proper to it ;
it would be else a picture without breath, a body without motion, a lifeless
colour. The divine image is not a painted statue, but an active being.
The nearer any thing approacheth in its nature to the fountain of life, the
more of liveliness and activity it must needs partake of. The communi-
cable perfections of God are enstamped upon the soul as a pattern to, imi-
tate, and as a principle to quicken. A new creature acts like God ;* as
melted and inflamed gold will act after the nature of fire, by the assistance
of that quality communicated by the fire to it, so doth the soul by that
divine quality it partakes of. It is as impossible that this image of God can
produce anything but divine acts, as that the image of the sun in a burning
glass should produce a darkness and coldness in the air. There will be the
manifestation of the life of Christ in the motions of our soul, as the apostle
speaks in case of sufferings for him there will be in our bodies, 2 Cor. iv. 10.
Natural men are called the devil's children, because they resemble him in
nature and works, egging on to sin, and delighting themselves in their own
and others' iniquities, John viii. 44 ; so renewed men are God's children,
because they live the life of God, and abound in the works of God, 1 Cor.
xv. 58. As there is the same nature and the same spirit which Christ had,
there will be a following of him in his works ; all creatures of the same
species have the same instinct, the same nature, the same acts that the first
creature of that kind had originally in its creation. Grace being a new ex-
cellency advancing the soul to a higher state, endues it with a more noble
kind of operation. Nothing is lifted up to a more perfect state of being, but
in order to a more perfect manner of acting ; if a beast should be elevated
to the nature of man, would you then expect from him the actions of a beast
still ? And can any have the implantation of the divine nature, who hath
only the actions of a man which bear no resemblance to God ?
3. This likeness to God consists principally in a likeness to him in holiness.
It is only ' he that doth righteousness is born of him :' 1 John ii. 29, ' If
you know that he is righteous, you know that every one that doth righteous-
ness is born of him.' It is by this the children of God are manifest from
the children of the devil, 1 John iii. 10 in doing righteousness. If we are
unlike to God in this, we are like him in nothing ; God hath not a pretence
of holiness, but a real purity. He that hath not ' escaped the corruption
that is in the world through lust,' is no ' partaker of the divine nature ;' the
apostle puts that as a necessary qualification, 2 Peter i. 4. If by afflictions
good men are partakers of God's holiness, much more by regeneration:
Heb. xii. 10, ' He chastened us for our profit, that we might be partakers of
his holiness.' If God aim in his corrections at the bringing his people to
partake with him in holiness, as a father doth at the reformation of his
child, that he may be a follower of his virtues, much more doth God aim
at it in regeneration, when a spirit of holiness is infused into the soul. The
new creation is a drawing this excellency of God in the soul ; if any attri-
bute lift up his head above another, it is this ; in this we chiefly are to imi-
tate him ; this is the greatest evidence of the divine nature. By sin we
1 come short of that which is the glory of God, Rom. iii. 23 ; by the renew-
in <» of the soul we attain the glory of God ; that is, attain a state of holiness,
and at last a perfection of it, a communion with him in holiness here, and a
full enjoyment of it hereafter. Whatsoever our fancies, our hopes, our pre-
sumptions are, if this be not drawn in our soul, if we have not an internal
holiness, we are not new creatures, and therefore not in Christ.
Use 1. It serves for information. If regeneration be such an inward change,
* Intellectus reformatus in Deum agit tanquam Deus, say the Platonists.
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 129
a vital principle, a law put into the heart, the image of God and Christ in
the soul ; then,
1. How few in the world are truly new creatures! Is the law transcribed
in many men's lives ? nay, can we all read it copied in our own hearts ? Can-
not many see the image of the devil sooner than the image of God in their
own souls ? Is not the law of sin writ in text letters, and with many flourishes,
when the law of God is writ in characters hardly legible, and crowded into
a narrow room ? How many are changed from childhood to youth, from
youth to manhood, from manhood to age, and the old nature still remain-
ing in its full strength, and the body of death more vigorous than twenty
or thirty years ago ! Changed years, and unchanged hearts, are a very sad
spectacle.
(1.) Profane men are numerous. None will offer to rank these in the
number of new creatures. Such nasty souls are no branches of Christ, nor
habitations for him ; we read of the devil in swine, but never of our Saviour
in swinish souls. Are such regenerate ? Can brambles be ever accounted
vines, or thistles fig-trees ? These rather look like hellish than divine crea-
tures ; diabolical, not God-like natures. A devotedness to the sins of the
flesh is inconsistent with the circumcision made by Christ: Col. ii. 11,
' Putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ ;'
that is, the body of sins which exert themselves in the flesh or natural body ;
whereas such have the body of sin, with an activity in every member of it.*
Is the image of Christ in such men ? Is not he meek as a lamb ? Are not
they fierce as lions ? Is not he holy, and they defiled with intemperance ?
Did not he labour for nothing but the glory of his Father, and the salvation
of souls ; and they mind nothing but the dishonour of God, and the destruc-
tion of themselves and others ? Did not he do good to his enemies, and they
scarcely spare their friends ? Alas, with this contrariety, how can they pre-
tend the image of Christ, when they have nothing but what looks like the
image of his enemy the devil ? Is not the gospel counted as great a foolish-
ness by such, as at the first times of its publishing ? Are not the great mys-
teries of God, and the contrivances of eternity, entertained with coldness,
and sometimes with scoffs, and the word, the great instrument of this change,
unregarded ? Are such new creatures, that contemn the very means to attain
it ? Surely they are so far from being near the kingdom of God, that they
are in the very suburbs of hell. Is a hugging base lusts against the light of
nature, a contempt of God's law and authority, the nature of Christ ? Were
any such spots upon our Saviour's garment ? Is this to be like him who was
holy, harmless, separate from sin and sinners ?
(2.) Among professors, is there much evidence of a new creation ? When
men shall say, All that the Lord speaks to us we will do, has not God as
great occasion to say as he did of old, Deut. v. 24, « Oh that there were such
a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep my commandments !'
We may find a change of language in some, a change of outward actions in
others, but how few are there among many who stand up before God
with the breath of life ! Here and there a man or woman, wherein God
may see the image of his own nature. How few are they with whom
Christ can shake hands, and justly call them his fellows ! Christ may be
in the mouth, and the devil formed in the heart ; the name of Christ may
be upon them, and the nature of Christ not in them. They may be born
of the will of man in a religious education, but not born of the will of
God in a spiritual regeneration. Is it not a graceless Christianity in many
* Daille.
30 oharnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
men, a faith without holiness, a Christianity without Christ ? Regenera-
tion is never without faith, love, and righteousness. They depend upon
grace, as the property upon the form. Wherever the new creation is, these
are, for they are the qualities created ; wherever they are not, there is no-
thing of a new creature, let the pretences be never so splendid. There
may be a nearness to the kingdom of God by profession, when there is no
right to it for want of regeneration. Instead of humility, according to our
Saviour's pattern, doth not ' pride compass men as a chain,' Ps. lxxiii. 6,
counting that their ornament, which is the strength of their old nature.
Instead of patience, roaring passions ; instead of meekness, boiling anger ;
instead of love, a glowing hatred. How few then are renewed ! But few
shall be saved, and therefore few regenerate. How little is the report of a
likeness to God believed by the incredulous world ! How few are the
strivings of any towards heaven ! Most lie quiet without any such motions,
like the dust on the ground, unless some stormy affliction raise them a
little towards heaven, whence they quickly fall back to their old place.
2. It informs us that a dogmatical change, or change of opinion, is not
this new creature. It is not, if any man change his opinion from Gentilism
to Christianity he is a new creature, but ' if any man be in Christ,' by a vital
participation from union with him. As men generally place saving faith in
dogmatical assents, so they place the new creation in a change of opinion,
as well from truth to error as from error to truth, though there be no spiri-
tual knowledge of God, nor internal cordial closing with the gospel, nor
practice of it. Such a change may endue the head with a knowledge which
never gently slides down to the affections. It may indeed have some in-
fluence upon the life, as this or that principle comes nearest to, or is divine
truth, and is settled as an opinion in the soul ; yet this great change may
not be wrought. That is but a change in the head, this in the heart ; that
of opinion, this of affection ; that perfects the understanding, this both the
understanding and will, and the whole soul. There is a natural desire of
knowledge, but a natural aversion from grace ; whence this change becomes
easy, the new-creature change difficult. A hot contriving head may have a
cold and sapless heart. A head informed by the knowledge of truth may be
without a heart enlivened by the Spirit of truth. A head changed in opinion
only will descend into the bottomless pit, when the least grain of renewing
grace shall not receive so much as a singe from those flames. A change
from error to truth, without a heart framed to the truth, doth but more
settle a man upon his lees, and makes him not only more regardless, but
opposite to a true change to God. It stores up wrath for him, and his very
judgment will be a witness for the condemnation of his practice. The know-
ledge of God will not justify, but condemn a practical denial of him ; but for
all that, they are abominable, Titus i. 16. This new-creature change is not
from one doctrine to another, barely considered as doctrine, but a change to
the gospel in the main intendment of it, as it is 'a doctrine according to
godliness,' 1 Tim. vi. 3, as it may affect, purify, and direct the soul in its
motion. And by the way observe this : whenever you are solicited to a
change of opinion, consider the truth of it by this rule, whether it have a
tendency to encourage and promote internal godliness, since this doctrine of
regeneration was the first gospel lesson taught, to which all succeeding
truths refer as to their end and centre. The apostle tells us what the
issue of all such doctrines are that refer not to this, ' pride, doating about
questions, envy, strife, railings, and evil surmisings,' verse 4. A heap
of notions may consist with a body of death in its full strength, but a
spirit of grace cannot ; a notionalist may speak great things, but a new
2 Cob. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 131
creature acts them. Great speculations only are but leaves without fruit,
like cedars, that by their shadows may give a refreshment, but have no
fruit to fill the soul hungering after righteousness.
3. Morality is not this new-creature change ; that is, moral honesty,
freedom from gross vices, &c. I have before spoken something about it,
shewing it insufficient, when I handled the necessity of regeneration ; we
cannot speak too much against it, it being a soft pillow, from whence many
slide insensibly into destruction. How many, upon this account, think
themselves new creatures, who are yet deeply under the image of Satan ;
and though they have blown off some dust from the law of nature, yet never
had a syllable of the law of grace writ in their hearts ! Nay, the image of
the devil may be more deeply engraven in a soul whose life is free from an
outward taint. Profane men express more of the beast ; a civil and moral
conversation may have more of the devil and serpent within, in spiritualised
wickedness.
(1.) Yet morality is to be valued. It is a comely thing among men, a
beauty to human societies, satisfaction to natural conscience, security to
the body, example to others : men are to be applauded for it, and encouraged
in it. It is a fruit of Christ's mediation, left for the preservation of human
societies, without which the world would be a mere Bedlam and shambles.
The works of kindness, justice, mercy, love, pity, &c, are useful and com-
mendable. It is a thing which our Saviour loved, yet not with such a love
as eternally to reward it. He looked upon the young man with some affec-
tion, Mark x. 21, but scarce upon the Pharisees without anger and disdain.
(2.) Yet we must not set the crown belonging to grace upon the head of
it, and place it in a throne equal to that of the new creation. It is too
amiable for men to be beaten off from it, yet with just reason we may per-
suade them to arise to a higher elevation. It is a curious paint, a delightful
picture, an useful artifice, but not a vital principle. A glow-worm is a lovely
light, yet it is not a star. We press not men to throw off morality, but to
advance it, to exchange it for Christ, that their moral virtues may commence
Christian graces. It is an elevation near the kingdom of God, not a trans-
lation into the kingdom of God ; it is nature improved, not nature renewed;
it is a well-coloured picture without a principle of life ; an outward resem-
blance, not an inward power, 2 Tim. iii. 5 ; a form of godliness ; as a change
that is made upon cloth in the draught of a picture, but no change in it by
the conveyance of life. For,
[l.J It removes not the body of death. It is a cutting away the outward
luxuriances, not the inward root. It removes the stench and putrefaction, not
the death ; an embalmed carcase is as much dead as a putrefied one, though
not so loathsome. It removes not that wherein the strength of sin lies,
though it doth somewhat of the stench of sin. It may check those degene-
rate lusts inconsistent with the peace of natural conscience, but not heal the
corrupt nature. It may be a change from scandalous to spiritual sins; from
vanity in the outward life, to vanity in the mind ; from debauched practices,
to a vainglorious and envious spirit : Eph. iv. 17, 18, 'Henceforth walk not
as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their minds ; having the understand-
ing darkened, being alienated from the life of God.' By the Gentiles, from
whom the apostle would have the Ephesians differenced, he means not the
lower sort, but the whole rank, ver. 21, there was a ' truth in Jesus ' which
they had been ' taught ; ' he makes no distinction between the looser rabble,
and the professors of wisdom, whom he calls fools, Rom. i. 22, the followers
of the divine (as they called them) philosophers, were alienated from the life of
God, and walked in the vanity of their minds. The new man he exhorts
132 chabnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
them to put on was another kind of thing than what the greatest moralists
among the heathen were acquainted with. It was at best human, not divine ;
an old nature purified, not a new implanted ; or as the apostle phraseth it,
a walking in the vanity of their mind, in the darkness of their understand-
ings, though not in a vanity of gross actions. It can never remove that
body of death, which was introduced into the world while this outward
morality stood. What immorality against the light of nature do you find in
Adam ? He did break a positive command in eating the forbidden fruit ;
you find nothing of drunkenness, lying, swearing ; his great sin was inward
pride and unbelief, nothing of those sins, the freedom from which you boast of,
and rest on. Some would make Adam guilty of the breach of every com-
mand in the moral law ; virtually I confess they may ; expressly I do not
see how they can ; and also virtually the highest mere moralist is guilty of
the breach of the whole ; yet all his morality, after the breach of this one com-
mand, could not preserve him in paradise, nor all the morality without a new
nature restore you to it. You may have Adam's morality with Adam's cor-
ruption ; a freedom from gross vices, with a heap of spiritual sins in your
hearts, as Adam had, but not a true righteousness without the new Adam,
the quickening Spirit.
[2.J Therefore the highest morality without a new creation is but flesh ;
all men out of Christ agree in a fleshly nature. It is the highest thing in
the rank of flesh, but it is not yet mounted to spirit. Water heated to the
highest pitch is but water still ; and morality in the greatest elevation of it
is but refined flesh ; an old nature in an higher form. A profane man
reduced to a philosophical morality is putrefied flesh reduced to some sweet-
ness, endued with a fresh colour, but wanting life as much as before ; it is
an old nature new mended. But a new creature is Christ formed in the
soul. Moral virtue colours the skin, renewing grace enlivens the heart;
that changeth the outward actions, this the inward affections ; that paints
the man, this quickens him ; that is a change indeed in the flesh, not of the
flesh into spirit ; it is a new action, not a new creation. There is a dif-
ference indeed among men in this respect, as there is of cleanly lambs from
a filthy swine, or a ravenous wolf; yet both are in the rank of beasts. There
seems to be a difference in the wickedness and malice of devils. Our
Saviour tells us of a kind that are ' not cast out but by fasting and prayer,'
Mat. xvii. 21, intimating that there are other kinds of them, not altogether
80 bad or so strong, yet all agreeing in one common diabolical nature ; as
there is a difference in gracious men, one shining like a star, another of a
lesser light, yet all agree in the nature of light, and light in the Lord. So
though there be a difference among men, in point of moral virtue, yet all
agree in the nature of flesh : ' That which is born of the flesh is flesh,' John
iii. 6. Let it be what it will, a Nicodemus as well as Judas, it is flesh, a
more refined sensuality, an animal life.
[3.] It must needs be differenced from the new creature, because its birth
is different. Moral virtue is gained by human industry, natural strength,
frequent exercises ; it is made up of habits, engendered by frequent acts.
But regeneration is an habit infused, which grows not upon the stock of
nature, nor is it brought forth by the strength of nature ; for man being
flesh, cannot prepare himself to it. That may be the fruit of education,
example, philosophy ; this is of the Spirit ; that is a fruit of God's common
grace, this of his special grace ; that grows upon the stock of self-love, not
from the root of faith, and a divine affection ; that is like a wild flower in
the field, brought forth by the strength of nature ; this like a flower in the
garden, transplanted from heaven, derived from Christ, set and watered by
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 133
the Spirit. And therefore the other being but the work of nature, cannot
bear the characters of that excellency, which the affections planted by the
Spirit do. That is the product of reason, this of the Spirit ; that is the
awakening of natural light, this the breaking out of spiritual light and love
upon it ; that is the excitation of an old principle, this the infusion of a
new ; that a rising from sleep by the jog of conscience, this a rising from
death by the breath of the Spirit, working a deep contrition, and makingall new.
[4.] It differs from the new creature, in regard of the contractedness of
the one, and the extensiveness of the other. That is in part a purifying of
the flesh, this a purging both of flesh and spirit, 2 Cor. vii. 1 ; that binds
the hands, this clears the heart ; that purgeth the body, this every part of
the soul ; that, at the best, is but oil in the lamp of life, this oil both^ in
lamp and vessel ; that is a change of outward postures, modes, and fashion
of walking, this of nature, heart, and spirit ; that seems to be a dislike of
some sins, this of all. If anything in moral honesty be given to God, it is
but a certain part, the greatest and best is kept back from him. That may
be a casting away some iniquity, but not making a new heart, when both are
commanded together : Ezek. xviii. 31, ' Cast away from you all your trans-
gressions, and make you a new heart and a new spirit.' That is a casting
away the loathsome works of the flesh, this a new root to bring forth the
fruits of the Spirit.
[5.] It diners from the new creature in the immediate principle of it, and
its tendency. That is a cleansing the outward flesh in the fear of man, out
of reverence to superiors (as it is said of Jehoash, he did that which was
right, while he was under the awful instructions of Jehoiada, 2 Kings xii. 2).
This is a ' perfecting holiness in the fear of God,' 2 Cor. vii. 1. That is an
outward reformation from the hearing of the word, some acts materially
performed from the newness of the thing, John v. 35, this from a judicious
and hearty approbation of the law and will of God ; that ariseth from a
natural love to reason, justice, equity, this consists of love to God ; that
avoids some sins, because they are loathsome, this because they are sinful ;
that tends not to God for himself, but for something extraneous to him ; it
is an acting for self, not for the praise of God. The actions of unregenerate
morality, as well as loathsome profaneness, are to gratify the flesh in some
part of it ; they all meet in that point, as the clearest brooks, as well as the
the most rapid and muddy streams, run to feed the sea.
Well, then, deceive not yourselves ; conclude not yourselves new creatures
by your moral honesty ; it will not follow, that because you have some
virtues you have therefore true grace, but it will follow that if you are
new creatures, and have faith and love, you have all graces in the root;
and they will appear in time, though they may lie hid a while in that
seminal principle ; the greater virtues contain the less, but the less do not
infer the greater.
4. It will certainly follow from hence, that restraints are not this new
creature. Restraining grace and renewing grace are two different things ;
the one is a withholding : Gen. xx. 6, ' I withheld thee from sinning against
me ;' the other an enlivening with a free spirit against it. Restraint may be
from a chastisement, attended also with something of natural conscience.
Abimelech had some natural integrity in his conscience not to meddle with
another man's wife, which God acknowledges : ' I know that thou didst this
in the integrity of thy heart ; for I also withheld thee.' Yet without this
restraint by a punishment, this natural integrity might have been baffled by
the temptation. Restraints may spring from the law in the hand of the
magistrate, when it doth not spring from the law of God in the heart. Men
134 chabnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
may love that which they do not act, at least they may love it in others,
though not in themselves, for some extrinsic considerations, and wish they
had as fair a way to commit it as others have ; they may hate what they
practise. Do all that hear the word, love the word, hide it in their hearts,
and let it sink down into the bottom of their souls ? Do all that abstain
from sin, loathe what they abstain from ? The restraints of many being
barely outward restraints, are no more arguments of regeneration, than God's
withholding the devils by the chain of his powerful providence is a sign of
the new creation of them. The damned are hindered from committing many
of those sins which were their pleasure upon the earth ; it is not a change of
their disposition, but of their condition. Neither punishments in hell, nor
punishments upon the earth, alter the nature ; though after lying a thousand
years in hell, they should have leave to dwell upon the earth again, they would
have the same inclinations without an inward change. Do we not see it daily
in men's afflictions, though the sense of the smart nips a little those inclina-
tions, yet when that sense is extinguished, those inclinations bud forth afresh?
The bare pruning a tree makes it bear more fruit of the same kind as long as
the root remains, rather than diminisheth it: Isa. i. 5, 'Why should you be
stricken any more? you will revolt more and more : the whole head is sick,
and the whole heart is faint.' While the head is sick and the heart faint,
though there may be a weakness to act some sins under the stroke, yet after-
wards the revoltings are more violent many times than they were before.
The best that restraints work of themselves, is but a cautiousness to sin
more warily. The act may be repressed, while the habit remains.
5. A serious fit of melancholy, or a sudden start of affections, is not
this work of the new creature. It is an habit, a law writ in the heart ; not
a transient pang, or a sudden affection ; not a skipping of fancy, or a quick
sparkling of passion ; but a new nature, a divine frame, spreading itself over
every faculty ; knowing God in our understandings, complying with hitn by
our wills, aspiring to him by a settled and perpetual flame of our affections,
rising heavenward, like the fire upon the altar, conforming ourselves to him
in the whole man, a denial of whole self for God. It is not a working of the
imagination, or a melancholy vapour, which may quickly be removed, or a
flash of joy and love ; but a serious humility, a constant grief under the
remainder of corruption yet unextirpated ; a perpetual recourse to God, and
delight in him through Jesus Christ. Are your affections raised sometimes
to God ? and are they not oftentimes raised higher to objects extrinsecal to
God ? Such affections may arise rather from the constitution of the body
than alteration of the soul. They are but a taste of the heavenly gift and
the good word of God, Heb. vi. 4, 5 ; a taste, and no more, and is! but a
transient work. The object about which our affections are stirred may be
divine, yet the operation but merely natural. May not sometimes affections
be stirred much at the hearing the sufferings of our Saviour pathetically
expressed, yet only out of a natural compassion, from an agreeable impres-
sion upon the fancy ? The story of Joseph in the pit, and Christ upon the
cross, may be heard with the same workings of passion. And may not the same
be done at a well-humoured play, or at the hearing a report of the lament-
able death of a Turk or heathen, pathetically expressed ? These are but the
workings of natural spirits. Some affections are as moveable as quicksilver,
upon the least touch ; they sweat like marble in moist weather, but resemble
it also in hardness. You do not find the affections to be the chief seat of
the law ; this would be as to write letters upon melted wax or running
water, but the tenor of the covenant runs upon the mind : • I will put my
law into their minds,' Heb. viii. 8, 10. And when Gud works upon the mind,
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 135
the affections will attend the dictates of that, and the motions of the will.
But a work upon the affections only, is like water in a sponge, easily sucked
up, and upon the least compression squeezed out. These may be where
there is no root of grace ; they suddenly rise, and suddenly vanish. When
unrooted notions are received only into the fancy, without any illumination
of the understanding, or determination of the will, the affections to them will
be as volatile as the fancy which entertained them. Those in Mat. xiii.
20, 21, that received the word with a sudden joy, were as suddenly offended
for want of a root : 'anon with joy receives it, by and by he is offended.'
The word translated anon, and by and by, sudug, is the same, a lightning of
affection, and a sudden vanishing ; therefore this is not the new creature,
sudden affections, or a melancholy fit. The law of God seated in the heart,
mind, and will, though a constant course of affection is a very good character
to judge of the new creature.
6. It informs us of the excellency of the new creature. How excellent is
this new creature ? It is a change, a divine nature, a likeness to God, an
excellency above that of the greatest moralist under heaven. The apostle
calls it a change from ' glory to glory,' 2 Cor. hi. 18, implying that the first
change wrought upon the soul is glorious, and a new creature excellent in
its first make, more glorious in its progress, unconceivably glorious when
God shall put his last hand to the completing of it. Regeneration is more
excellent than creation. It is more noble to be formed a son of God by
grace, than made a man by nature ; nature deforms, grace beautifies. By
nature we are the sons of Adam, by the new nature the members of Christ.
As grace excels nature, and Christ surmounts Adam, so much more excellent
is the state of a Christian, a real Christian, above that of a man. Can there
be a greater excellency than to have a divine beauty, a formation of Christ,
a proportion of all graces, suited to the imitable perfections of God ? Man
is an higher creature than others, because he hath an higher principle. A
life of reason is more noble than that of sense. To live by sense, is to play
the part and live the life of brutes ; to live by reason, is to live the life of a
man : but he that lives by the Spirit, lives the life of God, answers the end
of his creation, useth his reason, understanding, will, affection for God, by
whom they were first bestowed ; acts more nobly, lives more pleasantly,
than the greatest angel could do without such a principle. A new creature
doth exceed a rational creature, considered only as rational, more than a
rational doth a brute. The apostle makes a manifest distinction between
the natural or the -^v^r/ibg, the rational and the spiritual man, 1 Cor. ii.
14, 15. A man with the richest endowments, is no more to be compared
in excellency with a regenerate man, than the top of a craggy mountain is
with a well-dressed garden. That must needs be excellent, the forming of
which is the end of all God's ordinances in the world, the end of the Spirit's
being among the sons of men, the end of keeping up mankind, the end of
his patience in forbearing his punishment upon contempt of the gospel.
The end of his preserving the world, is to form Christ in the heart ; and
when the last new creature is formed, God hath no more to do in the world :
when all that are given to him shall come to believe, Christ shall then ' come,
to be admired in them,' 2 Thes. i. 10. He doth not come, therefore, till all
his chosen ones are brought in to believe in him, for then he would not be
admired by all those that are saints in his purpose. This, therefore, must
needs be excellent. One new creature is more excellent than the whole un-
renewed world with their choicest ornaments. It was never pronounced of
them, that they were • partakers of the divine nature.'
7. How much therefore should new creatures be esteemed and valued ?
136 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
Is anything, next to God, more worthy our esteem than that which bears his
image ? Is anything, next to a crucified Christ, glorified in heaven, more
worthy our valuation, than Christ formed in the heart of a believer ? What
esteem have men had for those who have had tempers like to some heroes,
some generous and useful men in the world ? How much more respect
should be given to them that bear the characters of God upon them, and
have communion with God, and Christ, and the Spirit, in their nature ! If
the dead image of God in a natural man ought to be respected, much more
the living image of God in a renewed man. If a picture is to have respect,
much more the life. To slight them, therefore, redounds to the slighting
that infinite perfection, whose image it is. They are his living images, sent
into the world to represent him. He then that disesteems them for that
work, disesteems him that wrought and engraved them, by the same rule
that he that despised the disciples despised Christ, and the Father that sent
him, Luke x. 16 : 1 Thes. iv. 8, ' He therefore that despiseth you, despiseth
not man but God, who hath also given us his Holy Spirit.' Yet no better
must be expected here ; for the contracted spirit of the world can love no
other birth but its own, no other similitude but what draws near unto it :
4 If you were of the world, the world would love his own ; but because you
are not of the world, therefore the world hates you,' John xv. 19. The copy
can expect no better usage than the original. The nearer any approach in
likeness to Christ, the more they will be exposed to contempt and scorn in
the world.
8. If the new creature be such a thing as you have heard, then the sin of
a regenerate man hath a greater aggravation than the sins of any in the world.
If you slip into sin, the sins of the whole unregenerate world have not so
great a blackness. It is true a new creature may, and doth sin ; for though
a new man is created in him with all his members, and essential and integral
parts, yet the body of death doth remain still with all its members, and a
seed-plot still, though not in the same strength and fruitfulness as before.
For the apostle Paul doth not complain of a member of death, or a piece of
sin, but the whole ' body of it,' and ' the law of sin in his members,'
Rom. vii. It seems it did reside there still ; and so it doth in all the re-
newed, though but faint and feeble, an old man indeed, growing older every
day, losing its teeth and strength, less able to bite, less able to assault. Yet
sometimes a new creature may fall into sin, but not without great aggrava-
tion. For other men sin against natural, you against spiritual principles ;
others sin against an habit of common notion, you against an habit of divine
grace. A natural man sins against the light of God in his conscience, a
renewed man against the life of God in his heart.* Others sin against a
Christ crucified and risen from the grave ; he sins against a Christ new-
formed and risen in his heart. Others sin against the law of God in the
word, he against the law written in his mind and word too. Such cast dirt
upon the Spirit's work, cross the end of so noble a piece, bring a thief into
the Spirit's temple, and grieve the Holy Spirit, who instructed him better.
Whenever you sin, it must cost you more grief, because your sins are more
grievous ; and you must grieve the more for them, because the Spirit is
grieved by them. Grief for sin is a standing grace in the new creature, and
part of a likeness to the Spirit of God, whatsoever some men dream to the
contrary.
Use 2. Is of comfort. There is ground of joy unspeakable and full of
glory that results from this. Are you of this new creation that I have been
discoursing of ? Then take your portion of comfort. The jewel of comfort
* Gurnal, part ii. p. 218, 219.
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 137
belongs only to the cabinet of grace. It is fit you should have the comforts
of heaven in your hearts, who have a fitness for heaven in your nature.
The day of the new birth was a happy day, to be brought from under the
rule of sin and death in it, to the rule of the Spirit of God and life in it ;
from bearing fruit to death, to bringing forth fruit to God and everlasting
life. If sin be a torment to the womb that bare it, no joy can reside in an
unregenerate spirit ; if sin be the soul's rack in its own nature, grace must
be its pleasure ; for it carries as much contentment and satisfaction in its
bowels, as sin doth disquietness and sorrow.
1. You have, by the new creation, a relation to the blessed Trinity. Such
are the sons of God, the seed of Christ, the temple of the Spirit ; what a
connection is there between you and the three persons ! God in Christ, and
Christ in you, that you may be ' made perfect in one,' John xvii. 23. God
in Christ reconciling the world, you in Christ reconciled to God ; God in
Christ as a father in a son, you in Christ as members in the body ; Christ
in you as a head in the body, the Spirit in you as an informing and enliven-
ing principle. It makes you related to the Father as his friends, by the
ceasing of your enmity ; to the Son as his propriety, for then you are his ; to
the Spirit as the tutor of you and inhabitant in you ; all implied, Rom.
viii. 8-10. By your former birth you were children of wrath ; by this, chil-
dren of God : by that, partakers of the serpentine nature of the destroyer ;
by this, partakers of the divine nature of your Creator and Redeemer : by
nature you descended from the loins of Adam, and thereby were related to
all the corruption of the world ; by the new birth you are descended from
the Son of God, and ' counted to the Lord for a generation,' Ps. xxii. 30,
and thereby related to all the perfection of heaven ; as really descended from
Christ by a spiritual, as from Adam by a natural generation. What an over-
flowing comfort is this ! To be a king's son is a higher privilege than merely
to be his subject ; subjects have protection, sons affection ; subjects partake
of the kindness of the prince, sons of his nature. As a son, he hath a right
to the inheritance of the father ; as a subject, not. Men are subjects by cove-
nant, though born of others, sons by generation. By being a new creature,
the regenerate man acquires a more noble relation, than by being a crea-
ture. That relation that he lost by a prodigal corruption, is restored to him
in a more excellent way by his spiritual regeneration.
2. If you be new creatures, you are the delight of God. It is impossible
but God should have the tenderest respect to his own likeness ; he must
needs take a pleasure in a resemblance to his own nature, in a habit of his
Spirit's infusing. Can God despise the work of his own hand ? Can he
then despise the work of his heart, a likeness to himself, to his Son, to his
Spirit ? His delight is strengthened by a threefold cord, ' he delights not in
the strength of a horse, nor takes pleasure in the legs of a man,' but ' in
them that fear him, in them that hope in his mercy,' Ps. cxlvii. 10, 11. You
are the first fruits of his creatures, peculiarly dedicated to him as his portion
by the new birth : James i. 18, ' Of his own will begat he us, with the word
of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures,' taken out
of the mass of the world for a holy offering to himself ; the more refined
part of bis creation, not barely creatures, but first fruits peculiarly belonging
to him, upon whom he looks with a delightful eye, and under another relation.
God cannot but love himself, and therefore that which approacheth most near
to himself; for nothing in the creature is a fit object for God's love, but his
own living image in him. As he loves himself in himself, so he loves him-
self in his creature. To deny his truth, is to deny himself; to deny his
love to his image, would be to deny his love to himself. He can as soon
138 chaknock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
hate his Christ glorified at his hand, as hate Christ formed in the soul. If
sin makes men the objects of his hatred, as being contrary to his nature,
grace then makes them the objects of his love, as being agreeable to his
nature. He cannot but delight in his own birth, and delight in the seals of
his own Spirit. You could not but displease him by being in the flesh ;
4 those that are in the flesh cannot please God,' Rom. viii. 8 ; you then
please him by being in the Spirit. Shall the pleasure of the Father of spirits,
in his own image, be of a lower degree than that of a natural father in his son,
which bears the lineaments of his body ? He hath no pleasure in anything
in the world, if not in you. Sin soon deformed all after he had pronounced
them good, and stopped the joy God had in his works ; it is by your redemption
by his Son, and regeneration by his Spirit, that the joy in his works is re-
stored to him ; if he should not delight in you, what hath he in the world to
please himself with ? Your services please him ; a new spirit, a new beauty is
added to all your addresses. A new creature prays not as before, hears not
as before, he refers all to God ; there is a brokenness instead of pride, every
sacrifice is washed in contrition, a zeal of spirit, a heavenly warmth, a sweet
and delightful savour ascends up to him. It is you only that with grace
' serve him acceptably,' Heb. xii. 28, with such a godly fear and frame
wherein he takes a pleasure.
Well then, the new creature is the delight of God, though the scoff of
men ; the pleasure of him that commands the world, though reproached by
them that shall fill hell with their souls.
3. How great a foundation then is laid in this for your happiness ! New
creatures, divine nature, a relation to God, the delight of heaven : ' If any
man be in Christ, he is a new creature ; old things are passed away, behold,
all things are become new.' New for them, as well as in them. Distance
and dissimilitude from God is the foundation of all misery ; a likeness then
to him is the basis of all blessedness. Divine happiness is connatural to the
divine nature, and due to it, as it were jure intrinseco ; as new creatures you
are heirs, as sanctified creatures you are made meet for the inheritance ; you
have a hereditary right, and an aptitudinary right. Can any comfort be
greater, than to have right to an inheritance, and a fitness to enjoy it ? • Now
are we the sons of God,' 1 John iii. 2, we have this real relation ; not only
named so, but are so, which is a certain foundation of a happiness which doth
not yet fully appear to us. But such a knowledge we have, that when the
original of this new nature shall appear, our imperfect likeness shall arise to
a full perfection, ' we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is ; '
upon the account of this relation we know there will be an exact likeness be-
tween him and us. I suppose it is properly meant of a likeness to Christ,
we shall see him as he is ; for the apostle, verse 5, refers it to Christ, with-
out altering the person he had spoke of before ; so that it is not meant of a
seeing the essence of God, but the sight of Christ. Where lust reigns, the
natural consequence is storms and dissatisfaction ; he that hath the image of
the devil, hath a model of hell ; the new creature having the image of God,
hath a model of heaven. A drop of grace is a drop of glory ; so much as
there is of the new creation, so much of heaven is put into the soul. It is
' a lively hope ' of heaven here, and a full enjoyment of heaven hereafter,
that the soul is • begotten unto,' 1 Peter i. 3, 4. The greater the progress
in this state, the more lively are the hopes of it, and the nearer approaches
of heaven to the soul ; such a foundation of happiness, with the hopes and
foresight of it, cannot but be attended with unconceivable pleasure.
4. How highly comfortable is it to view yourselves, and consider the
draught of this image, and the progress of the new creation in your souls ?
2 Cob. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 139
How comfortable is the work of self-examination to such a soul ! With
what pleasure may you look upon your present estate, and be filled with
ravishments at every view ? When you look back upon your former con-
dition, and think of your state of death, the noisomeness of your hearts to
God, the stiffness of your souls against him, when you consider how spiritual
death reigned over every part ; and now see your nature changed, your souls
upon a lively and quick motion to God, jour relishes of the sweetness of
spiritual pleasures to be greater than those of sensual ; how comfortable is
it to behold those diffusions of God in your souls, and to feel them full of
love to him, and full of love from him ! How comfortable to view the
original, and copy from it, and to see how near the one doth resemble the
other ; to cast yuur eye upon the state of wrath you were in by your first
birth, and upon the state of grace you are in by the latter ; to consider your
former drudgery under sin, and your present freedom in the service of right-
eousness ! It would make you perform those commands so often repeated,
of rejoicing in the Lord alway, and shouting for joy, since mercy doth so
compass you about, Ps. xxxii. 11, Philip, iv. 4. As upon the awakenings of
conscience, and the exercise of its reflective office, there must needs arise an
anguish and torment in an unrenewed soul, so upon the reflections of the
same faculty in a new creature, there must spring a sparkling delight. As
God by the reviews of himself and contemplation of his own excellency hath
an infinite joy, so the new creature by the views of itself hath a joy in its
measure proportionable to that of God himself. As it is in itself the image
of God, so it is a lower fruition of him. I enjoy my friend somewhat in
his picture when the original is absent ; and this joy is greater when a beam
from heaven doth shine upon this image, and both illustrate and discover
the beauty of it, which in the darkness of ignorance and mistakes cannot be
seen. But take heed that in these reviews you impair not your comfort by
any proud and God-neglecting reflections, but with humble and debasing
thoughts of yourselves, and thankful admirations of the grace of God, and
praises of him for so excellent a draught in your hearts. It is wonderful to
perceive how by such a carriage the comforts of heaven flow in upon the
sou1, when thus humbly and thankfully it opens itself before God in this
review. And let this add to your comfort, that if the reviews of so imperfect
an image in you, and the dark sight of God, whose image it is, be so delight-
ful, how much more pleasant will it be when your souls shall be elevated to
the highest perfection and the most satisfying fruition !
5. And how great a comfort it is to consider that this imperfect image,
which is the foundation of happiness, will in time be perfect, and as fully
resemble him whose image it is as j the creature is capable of ! There is a
day of perfect and glorious regeneration coming, wherein you will appear in
■all your royalty as heirs of God. The divine nature shall glitter without any
filth of sin to sully it ; holiness shall hold the sceptre without any lust to
shake it. There is a day wherein Christ shall make all things new in the
church, and in the soul ; he sits upon his throne and saith it : Rev. xxi. 5,
• Behold, I make all things new.' It will be so new and admirable, that when
you look back upon that mean draught of it while you were in the world, you
would think you never had a grain of the divine nature before in you. As the
vision of God will be perfect, so will your likeness to him, 1 John iii. 2; as
it will be a vision without any clouds, so it will be a likeness without any
dissimilitude, according to the creature's capacity. The vision of Christ here
transforms us into a likeness to him in his death and resurrection, the vision
hereafter transforms us into a likeness to him in glory ; the close look of the
soul upon God shall divest it of all carnal conceptions; the understanding
140 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
shall perfectly behold the original, the will closely embrace it, the affections
centre in it without distraction ; the whole soul shall be changed from a less
degree of glory to an unconceiveable perfection in it, changed ' from glory to
glory,' 2 Cor. iii. 18, when the well of living water springing up in thee to
eternal life shall spring into it. This fire-baptism will not leave till it hath
fully consumed your dross, and refined your souls. That Spirit that begun
the work will fill the heart with the knowledge and love of God, as his pro-
mise is to fill the earth, Isa. xi. 9. He will not leave despoiling you of the
oldness of the flesh till there be not a mite left, and clothing you with a new-
ness of the spirit till there be not a grain of the soul free from this new en-
livening. As he began, so he will finish, in abolishing that which remains
of vanity, and in filling this holy temple with the glory of the Lord. There
is certainly as much power in the second Adam to perfect, as well as to begin
this new creation, as there was in the first to convey his soul and defiled
image to his posterity. The honour of Christ and the good of the new
creature are concerned in it ; the honour of Christ in point of power and
affection, the good of the new creature in point of happiness ; his honour
would suffer if he did not perfect what he had begun. As Moses pleads with
God for the perfecting the Israelites' deliverance in bringing them into
Canaan, that the nations might not say, God was not able to deliver them,
Num. xiv. 16. In point of affection he loves his Father, therefore the image
of his Father ; he loves himself, therefore the picture of himself ; he loves
his Spirit which glorifies him, therefore will perfect the draught he hath made.
It will, then, in time be perfect, not a lineament of God but will be illustri-
ously drawn ; there shall be no more complaints of a body of death, nor any
snarlings of sin and lust.
Upon these considerations you may apply the comfort this new creation
affords you,
(1.) Against troubles in the world. Old things are passed away, even the
old events and issues of your afflictions, they are no longer used merely to
trouble you or punish you, but to perfect this new creation, to engrave more
deeply or exercise this divine image. All things are but fellow-labourers to
throw out the rubbish, and blow up this divine spark : Horn. viii. 28, they
' all work together for good, to them who are called according to his purpose.'
As regenerating grace gives us a relation to God, so it should expel fear : Isa.
xliii. 1, ' Fear not : for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by name ;
thou art mine.' What reason is there to fear when he hath called you by
name, in a special manner, not in a general way ? What reason to fear when
thou hast the badge of God upon thee, who hath new created thee ? The
grace wherein you stand, or the state of grace, should make you not only to
' rejoice in the hope of the glory of God,' but to ' glory in tribulations also,'
as well as the apostle, Rom. v. 2, 3, because it ' works patience,' &c. It
dresseth up the new creature, and draws the several parts of the gracious
habit into exercise. Though it seem strange, yet the ' glorying in tribulation '
is as proper an effect of this new creation as ' rejoicing in hope of the glory
of God.' Grace, being the foundation of your glory in heaven, cannot but
be the foundation of glorying in everything else which heightens it, and
pusheth it nearer to its centre. Let not affliction, crosses, reproaches, molest
your new nature ; be new creatures as to your respects to them as well as
relation to God. Our Saviour's sonship, and the meat the world knew not
of, supported him under greater injuries than we can ever be subject to.f
What clouds of trouble should ever sadden that heart which hath the living
image of God in his soul ? This alone should turn the wormwood of afflic-
tion into honey, and bitterness into sweetness.
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. Ml
(2.) You may apply the comfort of your new creation against temptations.
Will not the power of God be employed in the defence of that which is his
only image in the world, since he knows that Satan is most active against it,
because it is his image ? And upon the same account will not God be active
for it ? Surely that Spirit which begat it broods upon its own birth, and
watches for the defence of it against its mighty adversaries. Satan watches
to cast dirt upon the divine nature ; the Spirit watches to hinder it, and if
cast on, to wipe it oif, and restore it to its beauty. Can it enter into the
heart of an infinite affection nakedly to expose his own work, his affectionate
new creature, made up of faith in him and love to him, that which maintains
his honour in the world, designs all for his glory, values his honour above
his own credit, yea, his life ; opposeth everything that opposeth him, hates
everything that is loathsome to him, would endure any misery rather than
displease him ; I say, shall a God of infinite tenderness expose this creature
to the violences and furies of hell without any defence ? What should we
make of God, by entertaining such thoughts of him, but a hard master, a
cruel tyrant, one that would make his own work the sport of devils, to stand
by carelessly and see his image trampled upon, and leave the best subjects
he hath in the world to the mercy of his mortal enemy ? Let not such a
thought enter into any new creature, nor let us believe that the love in the
heart of the new Creator is less than the power in his hand. It was the
sonship and resurrection of our Saviour secured him against the counsels of
enemies : Ps. ii. 2 and 7 compared, ' Thou art my Son, this day have I
begotten thee.' So our communion with him in his resurrection secures
us against the malicious designs of Satan. Thou art my son, this day have
I regenerated thee, is the voice of God to a new creature ; and by this rela-
tion his happiness is secured under the greatest assaults, if he keep up faith,
which will fetch vigour from the Head. The devil by his whole legions of
temptations cannot more prevail against the seed of God, than Haman could
against Mordecai, because he was of the seed of the Jews, as his wife pru-
dently advised him, Esther vi. 13.
(3.) This comfort of the new creation is applicable against fears of falling
away. Were grace like a moral habit, acquired by moral acts, it might sink
under a force, it might be lost ; but it is a divine work, a new creation in
Christ, not anything gained by moral philosophy, and a road of virtuous
actions. Men may seem to begin in the Spirit and end in the flesh ; but
doth the Spirit begin this regeneration work, to suffer it to end in the flesh ?
When the apostle speaks of men's works, he fears the consequence ; 1 ut
when he speaks of God's working in a man, he is confident of a good issue,
Philip, i. 6. God never begins but he resolves to perform and finish. As
it is impossible for one united to Adam in a natural way not to partake of
his sinful life, so it is impossible for one united to Christ in a gracious way
not to partake of his spiritual life. And as every man is really in the loins
of Adam, so every believer is, in a sort, spiritually in the loins of Christ, and
is as truly denominated his seed ; and as no man can be cut off from the stock
of Adam but by the grace of God, so no man can be taken off from the stock
of Christ, when once implanted, but by the retraction of that grace, against
which there is sufficient security in the covenant of grace, and several pro-
mises in Scripture, like stars in the heavens, set to give light to this truth.
The new creature under the gospel shall grow in beauty as the lily, in strength
like a cedar ; his beauty shall be as fresh as that of the rose or lily, his root
as firm as that of a cedar ; and this from God, who will be as the dew unto
it : Hosea xiv. 5, ' I will be as the dew to Israel : he shall grow up as the
lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.' As dew quickens the plant, s0
142 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
will God enliven Israel ; what withering can there be under such an influ-
ence ? If you have been made new creatures in Christ, you are made stable
creatures, his charge is as great to preserve you as it was to renew you.
Besides, the divine nature is so delightful a thing, that he that once is a pos-
sessor, hath no mind to be a loser of it. He that hath once put off the old
man, and put on the new, will have little heart to make another exchange,
and divest himself of his beautiful robe, to be clothed again with the old
tattered rags which he hath flung upon the dunghill. The new creation is
a • fellowship with Christ in his resurrection,' Philip, iii. 10, and therefore
in the consequents of it. As Christ did not rise to die again, so the soul is
not made new to become old again. Christ formed in the soul is like Christ
incarnate in the world : the divine nature may be obscured, it may and will
have its humiliations ; it cannot indeed die, but though it seem to die, it will
have its resurrection, and afterwards its ascension into glory.
(4.) It is comfort against weakness of grace, and strength of corruptions.
The whole frame of the new creature is wrought at once : the soul is infused
at once, but not as Adam was, created in his full stature, and perfect strength,
and exercise of all his faculties. But as Adam's posterity were generated,
first infants, then men, others may be more honourable creatures, but the
weakest grace is a new creature ; others may be more noble members, but
every new creature is a member of the body ; others may have more grace,
but not a better title ; the weakest is a heaven-born heir, and hath the same
title by the purchase of the Redeemer, the reality of the new creation, and
the spirit of adoption. I do not mean by the weakest grace a superficial
desire, or a velleity not to sin, and yet a daily running into it ; but a grace
mating and mastering corruption, though residing with it ; a grace that is
daily eating into the bowels of lust, and growing up to a sharper animosity
and strength against what is contrary to it ; for the least degree of grace is
prevalent against sin, and is not overpowered by it, though it be mightily
opposed. The essence of grace is the same in every new creature, though
the degrees be different : it is one thing to have the nature of fire, another
thing to have the strength of it ; a spark is essentially fire, and will burn,
though not so much as a flame. If the frame be new, though the draughts
be not so clear, nor the lineaments drawn with such lively colours, yet there
is a representation ; the first draught of a picture bears a likeness to the
person, but it will be more lively after the second or third sitting, when the
limner hath laid on his fresher colours.
[1.] If your complaints of the weakness of grace and strength of corrup-
tion be sincere, it is a comfortable sign you will hold out. Hasty pretenders
and proud boasters are not durable. The seed sown in the stony ground
• presently sprung up,' Mat. xiii. 5 ; grew faster, as if it would outstrip the
common harvest, but as soon withered ; whereas that which was sown in the
good ground sprung up leisurely to perfection, and endured the storm.
[2.] You cannot reasonably think you should presently be rid of your cor-
ruptions. Some spice of a cured disease will remain in the soul as well as
the body, and a certain spiritual weakness after the raising of the new crea-
ture. The law in the mind doth not presently raze out the law of sin in the
members. There is a diabolical nature as well as divine. The Platonist
could say, The virtuous man who doth something, uirgmigtrov, is both a god
and a demon.* Christ formed in the heart doth not presently dispossess the
serpentine nature, but master it. A man restored to health from a sharp
disease may do the actions of a sound man, yet not in that manner and
soundness, for all his motions are infected with the relics of that disease
* Plotin. Enead. I. lib. ii. cap. 6.
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 143
which lately mastered his hody. Original corrupt ion is not as a cistern
(then it may be emptied), but a spring ; pump out all you can at one duty, it
will rise again, you will see it, before the next service.* It is true that ' he
that is born of God commits not sin,' he sins not with such a frame as he
did before ; but it is as true that ' If we say we have no sin, we deceive our-
selves, and there is no truth' of grace 'in us,' 1 John i. 8. There will be
a running issue, that you may frequently touch the hem of Christ's garment
for a cure. The soul of the best is never like to be ' without spot or wrinkle '
till it be glorious, Eph. v. 26.
[3.] All God's communications of grace are gradual. Doth the mustard
seed spring up in an instant to the tallness of a tree ? Grace is sown in an
instant, but e;rows not up so suddenly. Christ formed in the heart is like
Christ in the flesh ; first in his cradle, before he be upon his legs. The
new creation is not a sudden leap from corruption to perfect purity ; the day
dawns in the heart, but the light takes a time to expel the darkness : Prov.
iv. 18, ' The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and
more unto the perfect day.' The first appearance at the dawning is an
earnest that the victory will be complete at last. God did not make a full
discovery of Christ to Adam, his revelations of him grew brighter with every
age ; the nearer his coming, the clearer was the foresight of him. The
divine nature hath its time of discovery in the creature, as it had in Christ
the original ; there were forty days between his resurrection and ascension,
wherein he was but in the first degree of his exaltation. Christ risen in the
heart will take some time before he ascends and carries up the soul to spiri-
tual heights with him.
[4.] Consider well how it is with thy will. It is not the having of lusts,
but the fulfilling of them, wherein our danger lies : Rom. xiii. 14, ' We have
then put on the Lord Jesus Christ, when we make no provision for the flesh,
to fulfil it in the lusts thereof,' but endeavour to walk holily. The author
of the Epistle to the Hebrews could pretend to little more than will : chap,
xiii. 18, ' willing to live honestly,' xaXoug, comely, beautifully. And herein
Paul • exercised' himself, Acts xxiv. 16. He manifested this will by compli-
ance with all seasonable occasions to that purpose. Is there grace in thy
whole soul ? Is there an enlightened judgment to see the foulness of sin
and the loveliness of Christ ? Is there a renewed will to incline to God and
to close with the Redeemer ? Is there a rectified affection, consisting of love,
desire, delight, though yet but weak in all the faculties ? Are there dissatis-
factions in you upon internal reviews ? Have you not strong bewailings and
laments for the strength of sin and weakness of grace, and breathings after a
more vigorous and active grace ? Let not then your complaints of the body
of death stifle your praises of God for what he hath wrought in Christ in order
to your full deliverance. They did not so in Paul, Rom. vii. 24, 25 ; let
them not do so in you. Take comfort in what God hath wrought, bless him
for it, and solicit him to confirm that which he hath wrought in you, Ps.
lxviii. 24. He that provides food for the ravens that cry, will not stop his
ears at the voice of his own image.
(5.) It is comfort against the fear of death. If you were born only of the
old Adam, you were spiritually dead, and you must eternally die ; it were
unavoidable, if not changed ; but if born of an incorruptible seed, the disso-
lution of your body shall be the consummation of your glory. Death strikes
the outward man, and the new creature elevates the soul. The new nature
will as naturally ascend to heaven, when it is unclothed of flesh, and hath
left all the relics of corruption behind it, as the pure flame aspires into the
* Kogcrs on Pet. p. 181.
144 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
air, and seems to long to embody itself with the sun, the first fountain of
light. How joyfully will the original and copy meet : Philip, i. 23, ' to de-
part from hence,' is ' to be with Christ.' The truth of grace in the creature,
and the infinite righteousness in the Creator, kiss each other. How affec-
tionately will God entertain that image of himself ! How delightfully will
Christ view himself in the soul, and the soul view itself in the heart of
Christ ! The soul shall see Christ in glory, and Christ shall behold the
soul in perfection, where there will be nothing but life and love, love and
life for ever. Is death then to be feared, that brings the new creature to
this happiness ?
Use 3. Is for examination. Of all things, this deserves the strictest in-
quiry, in regard of its absolute necessity, and in regard of its superlative
excellency.
1. It is possible to know it, and not very difficult to know it. You may
know the acts of your own heart. Can you not view your own thoughts ?
Can you desire, or love, or hate, or grieve, but you must know that you
do so ? Can you not tell what is the object of your inclinations, what
your affections run most greedily after ? No man can be such a stranger to
his own soul, if he look into it. Can you not tell whether you are the same
men as before ; whether you love what before you hated, and hate that which
before you loved ? A soul may know whether it loves God supremely or no,
so as to appeal to God for the truth of it, as Peter to our Saviour : John
xxi. 17, ' Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.' It is in this reflexive power
that a man excels a brute.
2. You must inquire into the effects and operations of it. Where there
is this spiritual change, there is life ; where there is a spiritual life, there
will be spiritual operations. You must inquire, then, what sense and motion
you have, that is superior to a life of nature. This new creation is not
only the taking down the old frame, but setting up a new. The old crea-
ture frame will grow more inactive, the new creature form more sprightly.
Regeneration is never without some effect ; if we have not the proper-
ties, we have not the nature. If the air be dark and pitchy, that a man
cannot see his way, it is a sign the sun is not up to enlighten that hemi-
sphere. A thick darkness cannot remain with the sun's rising, The works
of darkness, with their power, cannot remain with a new creature state. The
old rubbish cannot wholly remain with a new building. Look well, there-
fore, whether old principles, aims, customs, company, affections, are passed
away, and whether new affections, principles, ends, be settled in the room.
Be sure to distinguish well between the form and the power, between a paint
and life, and regard well your inward acts. The acts of the new creature
are principally in the proper seats of it, the mind, the heart, the will, the
conscience, the affections. Outward acts are no sign at all ; no man can
perfectly judge of another by them, nor any man judge of himself. As the
strength of sin, so the strength of grace, the new creature, lies in the heart.
Those waters which are bitter, are bitterest, and those which are sweet, are
sweetest, at the fountain; they lose somewhat of their qualities in the streams,
by the mixture of other things with them.
3. In general observe, what contrariety there is to what you were before,
and the very point wherein this contrariety doth consist. It is a spiritual
habit, a divine nature, the law of God in the heart. It must principally be
discerned in its motion to God, in its respect to God, whose law, nature,
habit it is, directly contrary to the sinful habit, the law of sin in the heart,
the old serpentine nature which moved to sin. Let us see in general how it
was with Paul, who speaks so much of the new creature. He was quite
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 145
another man after his being in Christ than he was before. He was before an
admirer of his own righteousness, a contemner of grace, a persecutor of
Christ and his members. After the new creation, his pharisaical plumes
fall, his own righteousness is as dross, he lays it down at the feet of Christ ;
grace is highly admired by him, and his whole labour is spent in glorifying
Christ, and edifying his church. He abhors that which before he delighted
in : he did before his own will, and the will of his sect ; now, • Lord, what
■wilt thou have me to do ?' He is now an admirer, where he was a despiser ;
his industry, passions, heart, are for Christ, as before they were against him.
The doctrine of the cross is no longer folly, but wisdom : he glories as much
in being persecuted for Christ, as in being a persecutor of him and his people.
His ravaging wolfish nature is gone, and a lamb-like nature in the place of
it ; he hath as much sweetness toward the people of Christ, as he had sour-
ness against them. Of an executioner, he becomes a martyr ; and would not
only lose his life, but be an Anathema, to do them good whom before he
hated. Christ was his life, Christ was his joy, Christ was his all, and no-
thing but Christ dear to him. A quite contrary strain. And this is a new
creature ; and therefore examine yourselves. Is there faith instead of unbe-
lief, the knowledge of God instead of ignorance, a constant glowing affection
to him instead of enmity, or a coldness of love, the love of the Creator
instead of that of the creature ? This is to have the image of God instead
of that of the devil.
But, in particular,
1. What fervent longings have you after a likeness to God ? The first
draught of this image begets strong desires for a farther perfection. The
sighs and groans for a likeness to God are the first lineaments of God in
the soul, and arise from some degree of affection to him, and delight in him.
The breathings of the soul are • for the living God,' as David, Ps. xlii. 2 ;
Ps. lxxxiv. 2, for God, as a principle of life and spirit in him. This hunger-
ing and thirsting after righteousness is a sign of righteousness already in the
soul, and an earnest of a further fulness, Mat. v. None can fervently and
unweariedly long for a divine nature but such as have had some taste of it.
The divine nature in the soul will be returning to that nature whence it
derives its essential purity. The principle coming from God will be aspiring
to that nature which it is a part of, as rivers to the sea, and swell if they be
hindered. He must needs long after a full draught, and can no more satisfy
himself with imperfect lineaments, than a sick man can with an imperfect
cure. It is to this end he breathes after heaven, because it is a state of per-
fection, not from any carnal notion of it. He knows he is not already per-
fect, and therefore presses forward with eager desire and endeavour, ' if by
any means he may attain the resurrection from the dead,' Philip, iii. 11-13,
&c. He doth not only desire a freedom from sin, but to be as pure and ele-
vated in affection to God as an angel. God is not only free from unright-
eousness, but full of righteousness ; and therefore those desires of a divine
nature are not limited to, and centred in, a negative holiness. He would set
himself no other pattern but God. It is an excellent speech of a heathen,*
exhorting not only to live the life of a good man, which civil virtue and the
vogue of men approved of, but to look above that to the choicest desire of a
divine life ; for, saith he, our endeavours should be for a likeness to God,
not to good men. To endeavour to be like to man, is to make one image
like another ; but a new creature aims at the highest exemplar ; it aspires
after no lower a pattern than God himself, his will, his rule, his glory, his
* Plotin. ^Enead. i. lib. ii. cap. 7. n?e; yao rourovi : i, e. 6s«v,-, oh <r°lt uvfyuiTCv; aya.-
iou; V 'cii^'otuati,
VOL. III. K
146 chaknock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
pleasure. Do the breathings of your spirits rise as much for it, as the steams
of your lusts did before against it ?
2. Put this question to yourselves, What inward authority hath God over
your hearts ? Is the government of God set up in your souls ? Can you
with joy say, The Lord reigns, and none but he shall reign over me ? The
new creature coming under another government, hath frames suitable to it,
and delightfully owns that supreme authority, and pleases himself more in a
subjection to God, than the wicked can in their slavery to sin. Do you ' yield
yourselves to God, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto
God' ? Are the motions of your souls guided by him ? You are then ' alive
from the dead;' it is the apostle's assertion, Eom. vi. 4. Sin doth reside ;
but which reigns, God or lust ? An usurpation may be on sin's part, when
no voluntary subjection on ours. Is it an absolute, or only a partial resigna-
tion of yourselves to him ? Do you give him a moiety, or do you give him
the whole ? Has he the sole sovereignty ? or would you give him an asso-
ciate ? Are any evil ways hated, out of a respect to his word, to his autho-
rity, wisdom, goodness, or a respect to yourselves ? Ps. cxix. 128, ' I esteem
thy precepts concerning all things to be right, and I hate every false way.'
Ver. 133, ' Order my steps in thy word, and let not any iniquity have domi-
nion over me.' Are God's dictates readily obeyed ? Doth a free submission
to his authority govern and act thee in his ways ? Do you count his yoke
easy, and his burden light ? Do you glory in the chain of grace, and count
the service of sin as iron fetters ? Is the will of God above your own wills ?
Do you defy the one to observe the other ? Is God's will sacred with you,
when it thwarts your own, or only when it suits your interest ? It is not
then the authority of God which prevails with you, but the authority of some
extraneous thing which hath the chief moving force. If so, there is no sign
of the new creature in such a frame.
3. How are your affections to God ? It is a new creature we are speaking
of, and that is inward chiefly. Sin may be left in the practice, and not
hated : goodness may be practised, when it is not affected. "Where, then,
is the new creature ? It is not only a change of professions. Simon Magus
had changed that before his baptism, but not his heart, either before or after,
Acts viii. 21. The strength of sin lies in the understanding, will, and affec-
tions, and it is there that the strength of grace must appear, and set up its
banners. Are your affections and lusts of your flesh crucified ? They must
be so, if you are Christ's new creatures, Gal. v. 24. The strong stirring of
natural conscience may weaken a present resolution to an act of sin, but not
an affection to it, and to the habit of sin. It may restrain from outward
exercises, not from inward dispositions. Natural conscience informs of the
evil, but doth not confer upon us a disaffection to that evil. What are the
inclinations of your affections ? Are they pitched upon God ? What are
they for duration ? Are they constantly in motion to him ? Is it your plea-
sure to think of him, to live to him ? Are the remainders of unlikeness to
him your grief, your yet imperfect image your delight, not because it is im-
perfect, but because it is his image ? Every sigh, or a slight affection, is
not a new creature. It is a deep engravement, a constant inclination, con-
trary to what it was before, as white to black. Do your affections corres-
pond with the affections of God ? Do you hate everything that he hates ?
Or is there any one lust thou wouldst caress and hide among the stuff?
Such a frame is not the new-creature frame. God loves not one sin, neither
must we, if we be like him. Is the love to God and Christ more settled
than love to father or mother, which is an inbred affection, born with our
natures ? Mat. x. 37. It must be so supreme. What desires have you to
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 147
magnify his name ? Do you love him so intensely, as to part with your
lives to glorify and enjoy him ? If you be new creatures, God and his glory
will be dearer to you than friends, credit, life. He said not amiss, that no
man is a true Christian who is not an habitual martyr ; that is, that hath
not a disposition to lay down his life for the honour of God. And that
apostle who hath spoke so much of the new creature had such a raised
affection, Acts xx. 24, he would ' not count his life dear, so he might finish
his course with joy ;' which was • to testify the gospel of the grace of God.'
He could lay down his head more willingly upon a block than upon a pillow,
if he might finish his course to his Master's honour, and publish his grace.
Where there is no concern for the honour of God, there is little sign of a
likeness to him ; for this is an essential part of true Christianity. If we
have a new nature, we cannot but love that nature, wherever we find it.
And where we find it in a greater degree, and infinitely perfect, as in God,
we cannot but love it there above all ; else we offer violence to the divine
nature ; and in not loving it in God, we love it not in ourselves. It is im-
possible there can be this divine nature without spiritual affections, and that
the image of God can be in us without having an intense love to him whose
image it is. If anything, then, lie nearer the heart of any man than God,
the image of God is not in him. Therefore look into your hearts. How
doth your hatred break out against sin ? How is your sorrow poured out
for sin ?
4. How stand your souls to inward and spiritual duties ? How vile are
you in your own eyes because of sin ? What grief is there even for your
least imperfections ? Are you every day defacing your pride, and strength-
ening your humility ? Pride is the great fort of the old man, humility the
great security of the new. How are you in prayer ? Are you constant, are
you fervent, have you daily converses with God ? I mean secret prayer and
meditation : there are the most intimate converses with God. I appeal to
you that neglect those duties ; can you pretend to this new creation ? Do
you think that the image of God in the heart would not often move to its
original ? Can a likeness to God consist with an estrangedness from him ?
Can any man live the life of God that doth not care for the presence of God,
either speaking to him, or thinking of him ? Can that law in the heart,
which is put in that we may not depart from him, consist with this which
is the prime departure, never to seek him, or to seek him coldly ? All
the affections of the new creature bend to him, and centre in him. Can
this be without a drawing near to him ? The ' spirit of grace ' is fol-
lowed with a ' spirit of supplication :' Zech. xii. 10, ' the spirit of grace
and of supplication.' The Spirit is not a dumb spirit in the new crea-
ture. The first work in the heart is to cry, ' Abba, Father' : Gal. iv. 6,
' God hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba,
Father.' The first impression made by the Spirit is upon the eye of the
soul to look to God, and the voice of the soul to cry to him. It is the
first work of a regenerate man as regenerate. It is the argument our
Saviour uses to Ananias, to have confidence that Paul was not the same
man as before: Acts ix. 11, 'Behold, he prays.' Our old nature being
made up of aversion from God, the proper language of that is, ' Depart from
us.' The new nature being made up of an inclination to God, the proper
language of that is, ' It is good for me to draw near to God ;' for upon this
renewing grace God is the proper centre of the soul, and the same prin-
ciple which moves other things to the centre will move the soul to God.
It is made the effect of a pure heart : 2 Tim. ii. 22, ' Peace with them that
call on the Lord out of a pure heart,' and the characteristical note of a
148 chaenock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
saint : 1 Cor. i. 2, < Saints, with all that in every place call upon the name
of Jesus Christ our Lord.'
5. What valuations and relishes have you of the word and institutions
of Christ ? As the life is, so is the food ; a spiritual appetite for spiritual
food is a comfortable sign of a renewed nature. In every nature there is
an aversion to what is destructive, an inclination to what is preservative.
Every creature doth as much desire its proper food, as it abhors that poison
that would blast it. The new nature hath a new taste, his palate is em-
bittered to his former pleasure, and refined and prepared for his new de-
light : he relisheth what before he loathed, esteems that sweetest that before
was unpleasantest. The law in the heart, being an impression of the word,
will answer it with a choice affection. The first cleansing of the heart, and
the progressive sanctification of it, is wrought by the word : Eph. v. 26,
' That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the
word.' The image of God in the heart cannot but value the image of God
in his law ; since the soul is brought to a love of God, it will love his ope-
rations, and all the methods of them, and therefore his word. A rectified
judgment will have a rectified affection ; there will be a spiritual palate,
whereby it proves and ' approves what is the good, acceptable, and perfect
will of God,' Rom. xii. 2. What is pleasing to God is good and pleasing to
him. And the same apostle sets it as a sign of a perfect man, or a sincere
new creature, to esteem that the wisdom of God which the world counts
foolishness : 1 Cor. ii. 6, ' We speak wisdom among them that are perfect.'
The Spirit of truth in the new creature will fill it with a strong affection to
those truths in the word. Truth in the heart, and truth in the word, being
so near of kin, cannot be strangers or unwelcome to one another. What
sympathy, then, is there between the word and your hearts? What exer-
cise of grace in it ? What improvement of grace by it ? Do you desire it
to satisfy your curiosity, or to further your growth ? 1 Pet. ii. 2, ' As new-
born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.'
Are you like the plants, both cleansed and quickened by the showers, and
discovering themselves in a fresh verdure ? How do you dilate your souls
for it ? How do you work it upon your hearts ? Do you desire it should
be stamped upon you ? Do you long for a more perfect intimacy with it ?
Do you prize it above the satisfactions of wealth and the pleasures of sense?
Is it 'more excellent than gold,' Ps. xix. 10, 'and sweeter than honey?'
Ps. cxix. 103. Do you spiritually concoct it, and turn spiritual meat into a
spiritual juice, as the stomach doth meat into chyle, and other parts of the
body into blood ? Life can only do this. Do you love to have it dwell
richly in you, and bring down the highest imaginations to the foot of it ?
Do you cut the throat of your dearest Isaacs when the word commands you?
Is it a pleasure to you to see the face of God in his ordinances ? Is your
pleasure raised most by the spirituality of truth ? The more spiritual any
truth is, the more satisfactory it is to a spiritual taste. Do your hearts burn
within you at the warm breath of Christ ? Are they not only warmed, but
raised into a flame, and that lasting ? Not like the straw, which doth blaze
and vanish.
6. What holiness is there in your hearts and lives ? God cannot be
otherwise than holy, therefore holiness is the perpetual concomitant of the
divine nature ; and so the apostle makes it to consist in ' escaping the pol-
lutions that are in the world through lust,' 2 Pet. i. 4. There is a principle
which springs up in holy motions and thoughts. It is in the soul the image
of God is stamped, and it is there that the new creature doth chiefly exercise
and preserve it. Holiness must be the proper effect of that which is planted
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 149
by the Spirit of holiness. He that pretends to a likeness to God without it,
fathers an irregularity upon him, and makes him a monstrous begetter. It
is not born of the will of the flesh, to follow sensual pleasures, nor of the will
of man, to follow only rational delights ; but of the will of God, and therefore
follows that will it was born of, John i. 1 3. ' Let thy kingdom come, thy
will be done,' is the natural language of the new creature, and glad he is to
have the Spirit point him to those ways that are most conformable to the
divine will, for it is not a strained holiness, but natural, such a one as ariseth
from the 'fear of God in the heart,' Jer. xsxii. 40, and a care to please God
in his walk : 2 Cor. vii. 11, ' Yea, what care V It is holy as God is holy,
in some measure, and therefore like him whose infinite purity cannot endure
pollution. And it can no more divest itself of its inclinations to righteous-
ness than the soul can strip itself of its natural activity. There is a certain
connection between a ' heart of flesh ' and ' walking in God's statutes,' Ezek.
xxxvi. 26, 27. To what purpose doth God give it ? either for his own work
or for the devil's ? There is no need of it for the latter ; the heart of stone
would have done his work effectually : therefore for the service of the former,
and that constantly, for the new creature is ' created to good works,' not to
do them by fits and turns, but ' to walk in them,' Eph. ii. 10 ; and he is
described by tbe apostle to be one that ' walks after the Spirit,' Rom. viii. 1,
the ordinary course of his heart is spiritual. How is it with you, then ? Is
holiness your proper element ? Is it a death to you when any thing con-
trary to it buds up in your hearts ? Is there a purity of heart joined with a
zeal for goodness, Titus ii. 14 ? They go hand in hand, as being both the
ends of our Saviour's death, and both the works of the Spirit. Is there an
angry detestation of the loathsomeness of sin, and a kindly affection to the
purity of grace ? It will be thus if the new creation be wrought, for as in
original sin there was the root of all evil, therefore all holiness may be op-
posed, and all sin practised ; so in the habit of grace there is the root of all
grace, therefore all sin will be loathed, and every part of holiness will be
loved. But on the contrary, if your old lusts be rather improved than im-
paired ; if you are more charmed by swinish pleasures, and enamoured of
them ; if the enmity in your hearts or the loathsomeness in your lives re-
main, is there anything of a new creature in you ? Judge for yourselves.
Do you make as rich a provision for the flesh as before ? Is your heart and
life set upon it with as much affection ? Are you joyful when employed in
its drudgery ? Is this to be a new creature ? Can there be such darkness,
if the sun of grace were risen upon you ? Such fruits evidence the standing
of the old root. He tbat hath the black mark of the devil in his life hath
no reason to think he hath the spiritual badge of Christ in his heart ; and if
he do, he doth deceive himself.
7. How is your disposition against those things which are contrary to a
divine nature ? No creature hath a greater antipathy to that which is con-
trary to its nature, than a regenerate man hath against that which is contrary
to the divine. It is as impossible there can be a friendly neighbourood be-
tween the new man and the old, as between the ark and Dagon, between heat
and cold, which are always quarrelling, yea, between Christ and Belial, 2
Cor. v. 16.
(1.) Against the motions of sin. An irreconcileable war is commenced be-
tween grace and corruption. At the first inlet flesh is in arms to hinder ;
the spirit in arms to maintain its standing, Gal. v. 17. The contest is in
the whole man ; grace being seated in the heart, sends out its commands, and
despatches forces to every part to meet with its enemy,* as motion begin-
* Jackson, vol. iii., 4to, p. 495
150 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
ning at the centre diffuseth itself through the whole sphere, shaking every
part to the circumference. Light will oppose darkness in every part of the
air ; they cannot shake hands together ; the increase of one is the decrease
of the other. Sensibility is a sign of life ; a dead man complains not of
wounds and cutting ; you may take out his bowels, cut limb from limb ; but
a living man will complain of the least prick of a pin or a pinch. Natural
men cannot complain of that which they do not feel. There is a mighty
friendship between a dead carcase and rottenness, nothing is noisome to it.
Loads of sin may lie upon him, like mountains upon a dead body, and no
complaint : ' The motions of sin work in his members ' without resistance,
and ' bring forth their fruit unto death,' Rom. vii. 5. But the new creature
counts the least sin that hath stolen in upon him his torture, like the stone
in the bladder, a worm in the root, and can find no rest till he routs the be-
ginnings of the disease. If there be no antipathy then to that which is con-
trary to the life and being of a Christian, it is a sure sign that there is
nothing of a divine life ; for as a renewed man ' esteems all the precepts of
God to be right,' and ' hates every false way,' Ps. cxix. 128, so he must
abhor every motion which would divert him from what he values, and entice
him to what he hates. How are your understandings sensible of the first
risings contrary to the interest of the new creature ? Are they more ready
to dissent from them ; your wills more ready to check them than before ?
What counterworkings against the flesh, with its affections and lusts ? Are
you ready with weapons in your hand to stay the first stirrings of corruption ?
Are you ready to pluck those buds, and fling them away with disdain ? Doth
both your courage and strength increase ? Can you more readily be in arms
against the rising of a lust than formerly you were, and cannot without
horror bear the approaches of them ? Doth a little dust of sin got into your
eye set you a- weeping before God ?
(2.) How stand you affected to spiritual sins ? Here you should lay the
great stress in your examination of the new creation, for your lives may be
the lives of saints, while your hearts are the hearts of devils ; we may have
no spots of the flesh upon our garments, and a world of them upon our
souls ; spiritual sins may revel where the more fleshly and sensual iniquities
are excluded. There is a war in the heart of the new creature against spiri-
tual wickedness : Eph. vi. 12, ' For we wrestle not against flesh and blood,
but against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked-
ness in high places ;' or wickedness spiritualised in the high places, Uebg ra
irviv/jjarixa rrtg irov7joiag h roTg sftovpavioig, the choicest faculties of the soul.
Satan doth most excite those sins in the heart, and natural conscience makes
no resistance against them. It is only an enlightened conscience that un-
derstands and abhors this darkness, and loathes those steams which others
cherish. Do you wrestle against these which partake most of the devil's
nature ? Do you dandle them in your minds, or do you groan at the ap-
pearance of them ? Do you fly from them as you would do from a visible
apparition of the devil ? These are most contrary to the divine nature and
life of God. And a renewed man can no more avoid contesting with them
than the nature of a living creature can with poison. But if you can with-
out any reluctancy play the wantons with these in your hearts ; if you think
pride, vain-glory, ambition, speculative wickedness, &c, no evils ; if your
hearts never start at the appearance of them ; if you entertain them as wel-
come guests, though you be never so free from the filthiness of the flesh, you
have yet the strength of Satan's image in you, nothing of a Christian formed.
A natural man may quarrel with some sins, not with all ; renewed men with
all, because all are enemies to God, and to the life of grace in the heart. He
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 151
is always with arms in his hand to extirpate sin, and drive the Canaanite
from his forts as well as the open field.
(3.) Are you in the like manner affected against temptations and occasions
of sin ? The state of regeneration makes the soul more subject to the
assaults of temptations than before, from the envy of Satan, who stomachs
the happiness of the new creature. Do your souls start at the appearance
of a temptation ? Do you regard any enticement to a departure from God
as your torment ? Do you discountenance it at the first approach, and give
it no civiller entertainment, than ' Get you behind me, Satan' ? Christ in
the flesh did so, and Christ formed in the heart will do no less ; if he happen
to come near the way of evil men, he will observe the wise man's counsel,
Prov. iv. 14, 15, he will ' avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass
away.' His spirit will rise against anything that would intrude upon him,
which looks unfriendly towards God. The nobleness of the new nature will
make him disdain a sordid temptation, and inspire him with a holy gene-
rosity ; and the stronger the nature, the more vigorously will it oppose that
which would deform it. And if any temptation break in upon it at any
time, and master it, how restless is it to be delivered from it, applies
itself with all its force to heaven, complains against it, engageth God's power
on its side, makes up the gap where sin hath broken in, and fortifies the
place to prevent a future assault! In short, a natural man nourishes inward
lusts, meets motions to sin half way, smiles upon an approaching tempta-
tion. A new creature starts at the first appearance for the most part, frowns
upon Satanical suggestions, turns aways his eyes from beholding vanity. One
makes provision to maintain them, the other to destroy them ; one submits
to the tempter, the other arms himself against him.
8. Put this question to yourselves, What delight do you find in God and
his ways ? This indeed is an evident sign of the new nature ; by this men
may judge of themselves, if they will not deceive and flatter themselves in
their search. This is the greatest evidence of sincerity in all the ways of
God. For the law cannot be in any man's heart, unless he delight to do
the will of God : Ps. xl. 8, ' Thy law is within my heart, I delight to do
thy will, 0 my God.' He will be carried out with a spiritual joy and triumph
to the acting what is spiritually good, with a mighty pleasure, as great as
the body takes in eating when it is hungry, or drinking when it is thirsty.
It was thus with our Saviour in the flesh, it is thus with Christ formed in
the heart, it is his meat and drink to do the will of God ; not so much in
the new creature as it was in Christ, because in that there is a remaining
principle of resistance, in Christ none. It is then he can ' delight himself
in the Lord,' Isa. lviii. 14, and count him his ' exceeding joy,' Ps. xliii. 4.
As it is an argument that Seneca gives of the divine original of the soul, that
it is most pleased with divine speculations, it is no less an argument of the
new creation, when it is delighted, not only with the speculative, but with the
practical contemplation of God, when the soul that triumphed before in the
pleasures of sin can burn with an ardent love to God, and solace itself in
communion with him ; and unless holy services be our delightful element,
we have not a likeness to that God, who is not only righteous, but delights
in ' righteousness, loving-kindness, and judgment,' Jer. ix. 24. Every being
owes so much respect to its own welfare, as not to act sluggishly and drowsily
in its main concern ; for the same love which excites it to perform those
things which are essential to its preservation will oblige it to act with the
highest complacency ; and the more conducing they are to the well-being of
the creature, the more powerful is the joy which spreads itself through the
whole essence of the creature ; therefore holy services being as intrinsecal to
152 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
a holy principle as the most inward operations of any creature can be to
its nature, will be done with a vigorous frame, and an edged intenseness of
spirit. Without this, in some degree, nothing requisite to the operations of a
new creature can be performed ; without it we have no aversion to that
which is contrary to the law, nor an inclination to what is conformable to
it. It is a consent of the will to the whole law, Rom. vii. 16, a delight of
the affections in it ; a consent to it in respect of the goodness ; a delight in
it (ver. 22), in respect of the authority enjoining it, as it is the law of God ;
not principally as it is in some parts conformable to human reason, but as it
is the divine will, whereby both the sovereignty, holiness, and righteousness
of God is owned by the whole inward man ; the understanding, will, and affec-
tions, conspiring together with a strong delight in God and his law. Hence
you find David so often expressing his delight in it, Ps. cxix. 14, 35, 47, 70,
77, &c. And indeed so much of weariness as we have in any service, so
much of an old nature and a legal frame ; so much as we have of love and
delight, so much we have of a new creature, and new covenant grace. A
natural man cannot have any of this choice joy in any spiritual service,
be?ause it is against his nature ; no more than a fish can delight to be upon
the land out of its proper element ; but a new creature hath little delight in
anything, but as it regards God, and tends to him; other men's delights are
terminated in the flesh, but the elevations of a renewed soul are highly
spiritual. How then is it with you ? Are the duties of religion, communion
wioh God in them, your delightful element ? Is a flight of your love to
him, the acting for his glory, as pleasant as flattery to a proud nature, or
gain to a covetous disposition ? Have you little satisfaction in what you
do, but still breathe and strive after a higher frame, and cannot rest, till
with your choice embraces of your souls you clasp about God himself?
0 happy man ! None but a divine nature could fill thee with such pleas-
ing transports.
Use 4. Is of exhortation.
1. To those who are new creatures, that have some comfortable evidence
in their souls, that there is the image of God renewed in them.
(1.) How should you admire and glorify God ? Is it possible that so
noble a work can be unattended with a spirit of gratitude ? How should
you be filled with a sense of divine goodness, and formed to set forth his
praise ? Surely this of thankfulness is not one of the least good works
you are created unto. Before, when you were alienated from the life of God,
you were estranged from his love and his praise, you would never glorify
him whom you did not affect ; but since a heavenly nature is introduced, a
heavenly work should become the very life of your souls; tongues and hearts
should be set on fire by grace.
[1.] Has not God made you differ from the whole mass of the corrupted
world ? There is as great a difference between a new and an old creature
as between the clearest day and the darkest night; as between Christ,
who is glorified in heaven, the head of his own flock, and the devil,
who is damned in hell, the head of the unbelieving world ; so they are
opposed by the apostle, 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15. Might you not have run down
the stream with others, lived only a natural life with others, and at last died
an eternal death, and descended, with all your intellectual and moral endow-
ments, to the place only due to corrupt nature ? But God, the God that is
blessed for ever, hath breathed into you a breath of life, caused you to stand
up before him with a resemblance of his nature, set you apart for himself,
wrought you for glory, and made you live another life, a life by the faith of
the Son of God. And is it not reason you should differ from all the world
2 Cor. V. 17.J the nature of regeneration. 153
in your praises of him, who hath made you differ so vastly in your state and
condition ?
[2.] Hath not God in this bestowed upon you a higher perfection than all
natural perfection in the world ? The lowest degree of sense is more excellent
than the highest inanimate perfection ; therefore a fly, in regard of life, is
more excellent than a diamond, or the sun itself. The lowest degree of
reason is above the highest degree of sense, and the lowest degree of renew-
ing grace transcends the highest degree of reason, because this in the highest
degree is but human and natural, that in the lowest degree spiritual and
divine. Therefore you owe more to God for your regeneration than all
creatures of the world do for their natural existence. He hath done more
for you, in communicating to you his own nature, than if he had made you
viceroys over men and angels, and put the whole created world under your
feet, without investing you with this new creation.
[3. J And this God hath done for you, when you were in the common
lump, and had no more worth in yourselves to move him to it than the rest
of the world. No other motive on your part but misery. All the world
had the same ; for it lay in the like condition. All that you had, all that
you were, was proper to move him to a contempt of you, and a loathing you
for ever. It was the invention of his own overflowing love, not any per-
suasion of your worth. What were you, and what was your father's house,
that he should thus translate you from the drudgery of sin to the liberty of
grace, from a spiritual death to a divine life ? Had God called you out of
the womb of nothing, unshaped as the great chaos, and asked you what
degree of creatures* you were willing to be raised unto, would you have pre-
sumed to desire God to make you like himself ? Yet God in regeneration
raised you to a state you durst not ask, above a rational creature, even to a
divine, when he had no motive to anything, but to turn you, with Nebuchad-
nezzar, to graze among the beasts, and partake with devils in the eternal
misery of that image you had contracted.
[4.] It is therefore a wonderful and miraculous change. If the framing
the body of man be so 'wonderful' a work, Ps. cxxxix. 14, and a curious
piece of embroidery, how much more admirable is this new formation of the
soul into the likeness of God. If we should see a silly fly or a poisonous
spider, a clod of earth, or a glow-worm, transformed into a glittering star,
it would not be so great a miracle ; it would be a change from one natural
image to another. But this is a change from hell to heaven, from being a
limb of the devil to become a member of Christ, from a worse than Egyptian
darkness into a marvellous light. That is but a change of one innocent
nature into another ; this a change of a nature hateful to God into a nature
delightful to him, a corrupt creature into an holy one, a change of something
worse than a bare creature into something like the great Creator and Re-
deemer. This is your change, therefore the highest obligation in the world
lies upon you, to praise and glorify God. It is in the day of your regenera-
tion that God hath rolled away the reproach of your corruption and death, as
he said of the Israelites when tbey were circumcised in Canaan, Joshua v. 9.
To quicken you to praise,
First, Often reflect upon your former state. Cast your eyes back upon
what you were, that you may be thankful for what you are. Ah, what was
I once ? An hater of God, and hated by him ; one bearing the image of
Satan, and delighting in it ; a noisome heap of lusts, estranged from God,
sold under sin, dead to goodness, an enemy to the law. What a condition
was I in then ! Good Lord, how astonishing was thy mercy, how wonder-
ful thy love, how great was thy power, to draw me out of tbis state !
154 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
Secondly, Review what you are. What am I now ? Here is a new light
in my understanding, new inclinations in my will ; I can now look upon
God with pleasure and run his ways with delight. Christ is my only joy,
and Christ is my only gain. My old nature is wearing away, my new nature
is rising higher and clearer ; now am I freed by the blood of Christ from my
guilt, and by the Spirit of Christ from my filth. What shall I render to the
Lord for these inestimable benefits towards me ? 0 blessed God ! 0 dear
Redeemer ! 0 infinite condescending Spirit, to work these things for me, in
me ; to clear such a nasty soul, imprint such a heavenly image, conform me
to so excellent a pattern, and by grace to fit me for a glorious eternity !
Let then the love of the author, the excellency of the work, the misery of
your former state, the happiness of your new, be joined together in your
considerations to enhance your praise ; and since you live the life of God,
be sure to live the life of thankfulness.
(2.) As it is your duty to admire and glorify God for making you new
creatures, so it is your duty and advantage too to preserve in its vigour this
new nature in you. When Adam's life was infused, he was to preserve it
by feeding upon the fruits of paradise, Gen. ii. 29. And you must preserve
your spiritual lives by the fruits of divine institutions placed in the church.
The inner man is to be strengthened ; Paul prays to this purpose for the
Ephesians, Eph. iii. 16, ' that he would grant you to be strengthened with
might by his Spirit in the inner man,' which is not, as some understand it,
a strengthening of reason, mind, and understanding, The Scripture by
heart understands the mind, will, and judgment, but the apostle joins this
inner man so with the heart (ver. 17, ' That Christ may dwell in your hearts
by faith'), that he doth manifestly put a difference between this inner man.
and the heart, making one the seat, the other the root in it. The apostle
wishes them not a strength of the soul, but a strength of the new man and
image of Christ in the soul. The devil is a mighty enemy to it ; he hath
lost a servant ; he will leave no stone unturned to recover him ; his servant
will be his judge ; he will therefore endeavour to overthrow him. Go to
God, therefore, for new supplies in the case of Satan's assaults ; desire him
to put a vigour into your grace, water the seeds, and blow up the divine
spark. Our Saviour desired assisting and strengthening grace for Peter,
when he foresaw the devil's preparations to worry him, Luke xxii. 31, 32.
So should we for ourselves, and Christ will not be backward to second us in
it ; yea, he will prevent us, and send in an auxiliary force over and above
the standing habit which makes up the new creature. We need the gales of
heaven to blow us forward, the concourse of God to his gracious creature, as
well as his common concourse to his natural. Is it not the highest reason
to engage all in the defence, and strengthening that which is the delight of
God, the happiness of the soul, and the envy of the devil ? What is worth
our care, if this be thought worthy of our neglect ? Sloth in preserving and
strengthening argues a lesser value of a thing. Would you lose beauty for
deformity, health for sickness ? Would you lose the pleasures of heaven for
the anguish of hell ? Preserve this image then from being defaced, and look
that Satan draw no more black lines in your hearts. ' Skin for skin, and all
a man hath will he give for his life ;' eat his own flesh to preserve his life as
long as he can. Oh then, if I may so say, soul for soul, and all that you
have, you should give and employ for maintaining this spiritual life, which is
as much above a natural life as the sun above a dunghill. Blow it up every
day, dress the lamps as the priests in the temple. It is for want of this
strengthening it, that we have so little liveliness in duty. It is for want of
this excitation that we walk so often in darkness. What have we else to do
2 Cor. Y. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 155
but this ? Preservation and strengthening of life is the chief design of men
in the world. Is not a divine life of more worth ? Let not then the cares
of our bodies surpass those for our souls, and our fondness to natural life ex-
ceed our affection to spiritual life. We know but in part, we see but as in a
glass darkly. The inclinations of our hearts to righteousness are not in their
full strength.
(3.) Grow up to a taller stature. There must be a daily putting off the
old man, and a putting on the new, a renewing the inward man day by day,
2 Cor. iv. 16. And though at the first regeneration there is the forming all
the essential parts of grace, yet afterwards there is a daily augmentation
(the Galatians were both knowing God, and known of him, Gal. iv. 9, yet of
these did the apostle travail, till Christ was formed again, ver. 19), till the
design of Christ be fully complied with, and the soul grown up to the
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, by the participation of his
nature. As providence is a continued creation, so growth is a continued
regeneration. As a man grows in reason by new improvements, so ought a
Christian in grace, by new additions. Things are not ripened at once.
The spirits in raw and immature bodies are depressed by gross and earthy
mixtures with them, till they are encouraged by the sun and showers, and
thereby able to digest the crude parts, and arrive at perfection.
[1.] This must be : Job xvii. 9, ' The righteous shall hold on his way,
and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger.' The new
nature can no more stand at a stay, than a living tree can, till it come up to
the measures of its nature. It is the nature of seed to propagate itself, and
spread its virtue into branches and fruit. It will be aspiring to that perfec-
tion which nature hath allotted to it. If you do not grow, it is a sign there
is no life in you. It is but a common gift, or a common grace, at best; the
counterfeit, not the reality of the new creature. Living natures do thrive ;
pieces of art stand at a stay. He is no member of Christ, but as a wooden
leg or arm; not knit by any vital band, but some extrinsic ligaments; not fed
with the increases of God, because he doth not grow. To content ourselves
with a low degree of grace, makes us unworthy of the benefit of regeneration,
and below those that pretend to a likeness to God.
[2. J It must be uniform. As it is one habit which is infused, so it
equally thrives in all the parts of it. An unequal growth is the effect of a
disease, not of nature. As nature causes a proportion of parts in the make,
so likewise a proportion of parts in the growth. It is not a growth in faith,
and a decay in love ; or a growth in love, and a decay in faith. To pretend
to the one without the other, is to have an head without an heart, a life
without blood or spirits. A natural man may grow in some moral orna-
ments, as a dead man in hair and nails ; but a spiritual vitality shewrs itself
in an equal increase of all the members in the new creature. And it is best
discerned by the thriving of those graces which are most contrary to your
natural disposition, which cannot so well be discerned in those which have
some foundations in moral natures ; as humility hath a mild disposition,
which by the addition of grace, advanceth to an eminent humility. But a
new creature thrives in those graces which were most contrary to his corrupt
nature, now over-mastered. The second draught of a picture defaceth not
one line or two of the former, but the whole frame, to make it more near
the original. And thus a new creature ought to grow as the vine, and revive
as the corn, in all the branches and fruits proper to its nature, Hosea xiv. 7.
[3.] By this we please God and pleasure ourselves. The more illustrious
any work is, the more glory redounds to the artist. If the beginnings of tie
new creation be so amiable as to make heaven itself in love with it, how in-
156 chaenock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
finitely will God be pleased to see it grow to maturity among the whirlwinds
and storms of temptations ; every increase, adding new colours and lustre to
this beauty, will renew the jubilee in heaven. Thus will God pronounce it
good at first, and very good the nearer it comes to perfection, as he did in
tbe creation of the world. By this growth you will have a greater capacity
for heaven ; for if the first new creation capacitates a man for glory, the
higher it springs, the more beautiful the divine nature grows, the nearer it
is to glory and the fitter to be planted in an eternal paradise, the more a
right to heaven will appear to yourselves.
(4.) A foux-th exhortation. Behave yourselves in your ordinary walk, as
new creatures of another rank from the world. It is the inference the
apostle makes from the new state wherein the Ephesians were, ' For you
were sometimes darkness, but now light in the Lord : walk as children of the
light,' Eph. v. 8. You must bring forth fruits meet for regeneration, meet
for him by whom you are renewed, as the ground doth herbs, meet for him
by whom it is dressed, Heb. vi. 7.
[1.] Adorn the gospel, whereby the divine impression is made upon you.
The apostle argues against lying, and by the same reason against all sin,
from this head, Col. iii. 9, 10. The gospel adorns the soul by its impres-
sion ; the soul should adorn the gospel by its conversation : Titus ii. 10,
' Adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.' Let the writing of
the law in the heart appear on the other side of the life, and the divine light
in your hearts shine in your outward man, as a candle through a lantern, that
God may be glorified, Mat. v. 16. Let not lust and sin, extraneous to the
new creature, bear any rule in any action ; let no unworthy action reproach
your profession. Do nothing unbecoming one who is like him that rules the
world, unbecoming that word and gospel which God hath magnified above
all his name. Defile not your garments ; we can never walk with God but
in white, Rev. iii. 4, in the whiteness of purity, not in the blackness of sio.
Do not any works of Satan with the nature of God upon you. Indeed, we
may be ashamed, that when there is so much of the image of Christ in the
gospel, there should be so little of the image of Christ in our lives. Walk
as those that are enrolled among the spirits of just men made perfect, as
those who have the honour to be of the assembly of the first-born ; live to
God, not to yourselves. The more wicked the generation is you live in,
the more it is your duty to shine, as the lights of heaven in the darkness of
the earth, Philip, ii. 15, and the more it will be your commendation, as it
was the praise of Job, that he was upright in the land of Uz, among the
race of profane Esau, not among the offspring of praying Jacob : Job i. 1,
' That man was perfect, and feared God.'
[2.] Live above affections to a drossy world, if you would honour your new
nature. An earthly spirit cannot be the effect of a heavenly birth. Let not the
rattles of your childhood be your present pleasure, or the bewitching world have
any influence upon you. The world is no fit boundary for the soul in its natu-
ral capacity, much less in its spiritual ; it is too empty for an immortal soul,
much more for a divine nature. Let not anything on this side God be your
oarling, but your footstool, to mount you nearer heaven. Value them only
as they enable you to do the higher duties of religion without distracting
cares, and are subservient to the honouring God in the world. As the new
creature was not redeemed with a vile price, so it is not endued with so sor-
did a nature, as to be much in love with these things. The conquest of
this is one of the first fruits of the new birth. 1 John v. 4, ' "Whatsoever is
born of God, overcomes the world ;' there is a mighty antipathy between the
world, and anything that is the offspring of God. There cannot be so much
2 CoR. V. 17. J THE NATURE OF REGENERATION. 157
ignorance of the things of another world, as to prize so vile a piece, as a
house with walls and furniture, infected with a sinful leprosy. Let the in-
ward contempt of the blandishments of it grow up in you ; distract not
yourselves with cares for it, but trust in God's promise, and leave things to
the conduct of his wise providence. It is inconsistent with a new nature
to lie at the bottom of this great sea, sucking up weeds and sand, and never
peep its head above water, towards heaven.
[3.] Be much in the thoughts and views of the divine original of your
nature. Shall the new nature seldom look up to that place whence it de-
scended, or cast its eye upon that beautiful hand that framed it ? Surely
the new creature cannot be so unnatural. Employ your souls in exercises
of an unbounded love to God, a settled delight in him, a high esteem of
the righteousness of his nature, and an habitual walking with him ; let the
esteem of him, and vilifying yourselves, be your daily employment. The
looking upon him will transform you more into his image ; by this spiritual con-
verse you will partake of a new brightness, and clearer lineaments. Every
view will leave a greater perfection upon his image in you, by a reflection of
a glory, 2 Cor. iii. 18. By this your hearts will be more suitable to those
regions of blessedness to which the divine image is hastening. It will make
you sweat out some corruption every day, and advance you some steps to-
ward the state of bliss.
[4.J Fix your aims on a state of perfection. You are to walk, not to
stand still. Never rest till all that righteousness which of right belongs to
that divine nature in you, be conferred upon you ; breathe after a more
close conjunction with the original. Keep up in a due sprjghtliness your
detestations of sin, which you had when you were first enlivened ; with what
a holy indignation you flung away your lusts, with a Get you hence, and,
What have I to do any more with idols ? Set an edge upon this hatred every
day, sharpen your indignation more and more. Preserve in your'souls those
affections which did rise up in you, when the irresistible charms of divine
love did first allure you, when you first cast your eyes upon this new likeness
and image of God ; quicken them daily, and ' press forward towards the mark
for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ.'
[5. J Let your affection be carried to everything which partakes of the same
image. There is in all creatures a kindness to those of their own nature ;
the most ravenous do not prey upon their own species ; all men, descending
from Adam, having the same nature, have some kindness to those of their
own kind ; and all descending from Christ have the same nature, the same
affections and instincts. It is in love and holiness wherein God doth de-
cipher himself in the soul ; he would not be drawn in any other attributes
in the heart of man ; and thus in the Scripture he publisheth himself in
the abstract as holiness and love, delighting to be imitated by his creature
in those two perfections, ' God is love, and he that dwells in God dwells in
love,' 1 John iv. 16. Love is, therefore, the nature of the new creature,
and love to the same objects whereon God's love is pitched, first himself,
then his image in his creature. So the love of God and that of a new
creature go hand in hand together ; first, the affections of the new nature
stream out to God as the prime and original beauty, then to all new crea-
tures, as they partake more or less of this divine image. This universal
charity to God, grace, and good men, is the inseparable property of the new
creature, the highest perfection of it, and the beginning of a state of glory.
Love all those that partake of this divine nature.
[6.] Endeavour to propagate your new nature to others. It is the pro-
perty of goodness to be diffusive of itself ; and God, the highest goodness,
158 chabnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
is the most communicative. The divine nature should imitate him in this.
No nature but delights to propagate itself. The new nature ought not to be
sluggish in it; since the great change lies in the end, since the glory of God
is set up as its main intendment, it will oblige it to propagate holiness and
righteousness, whereby God is most glorified ; for thereby the number is
increased to represent him on earth and praise him in heaven. No sooner
was Paul renewed, but he endeavours to bring all the world into the same
frame. The apostate angels, being revolted from God, labour to sink all the
world into the same disposition. Fire communicates by a touch its own
nature to all matter that comes near it, and turns the hardest metals into its
own likeness. So ought that holy fire in a new creature to labour to convert
everything into its own flames. This is a peculiar mark set upon the evan-
gelical times, and the special fruit of a gospel impression : Isa. ii. 3, ' Many
people shall say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to
the house of the God of Jacob.' It should be your endeavour that all about
you may be the better for you. Strive to affect your children and servants
with a sense of the corruption of nature derived from Adam, and the neces-
sity of being implanted in the new head of the world, and partaking of an-
other nature from him. Thus to be a fellow- worker with God is the most
absolute work of grace, as to beget in its own likeness is the most perfect
work of nature.
And to persuade you to walk and act as new creatures, consider,
First, The excellency of your birth. It is a birth of heaven, a resemblance
to God ; do nothing below it or unworthy of it. Is it fit for you to lie among
the pots and smut yourselves ? The consideration of the relation you bear
to God should inspire you with heroic resolutions for his glory. You are
the only persons that keep up God's honour in the world, and his final anger
from it. Whenever you are tempted, reflect upon yourselves, as Nehemiah :
' Should such a man as I ' do this ? Neh. vi. 11. Or as Joseph to his mis-
tress, ' Behold, my master hath committed all that he hath to my hand ;'
behold, God hath put his divine nature in my heart, and ' shall I do this
wickedness ?' Consider in every action what that God you call Father by
regenerating grace, that Christ who is the great exemplar and copy of the
image in you, would do in such cases and circumstances. How unworthy is
it for a living man to do dead works ! As your life springs from the highest
principle, let it be employed for the highest ends. Was ever any prince
ashamed of his honour ? And shall any new creature be ashamed of the
particular badge of heaven upon it ; of that righteousness which is the true
nobility of his nature ? Holiness is the beauty of an intellectual and rational
creature ; it must then be your highest honour to live conformably to the
dignity of your nature.
Secondly, It was the intendment of God you should walk in a nobler man-
ner than the rest of the world. Did God infuse into Adam a soul of a higher
nature than that of beasts, to enable him to live only the life of beasts ? God
intended by the infusion of this new principle, that you should live above
the sphere of humanity and the rate of man. How doth the apostle chide
the Christians because they did not advance above the life of mere man ;
and therefore gives them a title chiefly belonging to the unregenerate world :
1 Cor. iii. 3, ' Are you not carnal, and walk as men ? ' Our Saviour expects
a more worthy carriage from his children than what barely nature can teach
them. He would have them as God, and imitators of him, Mat. v. 44-47,
and do something peculiar to this new state, which cannot be done by any
unregenerate man in the world. Your holiness is not to be of the common
level with the morality of the world, but such as may set forth the ' praise of
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 159
God,' 1 Peter ii. 9 ; they are a ' chosen generation,' therefore should have
choice conversations ; a ' royal priesthood,' therefore princes' deportments ;
a ' holy nation and peculiar people,' therefore should have holy and peculiar
behaviours. They should thus be public evangelists, to set forth s^ayyii'/.riTs,
the graciousness and righteousness of God. There is also the highest obli-
gation, because he hath ' called them out of darkness into his marvellous
light.' God intended that their conversations should be such as should
amaze the world into a love of holiness, and admiration of that light which
gives them such excellent directions, and that nature which enables them to
so exact a walk. God's temples were not intended to be made dunghills.
Thirdly, Not to walk as new creatures is a dishonour to God. You that
do not walk answerable to your high calling do more highly dishonour him
than all other persons. You are quite contrary to his image, and represent
God to the world as they would have him, not what he is in his own nature ;
for by a careless walk the world will judge God to be like you, or you very
unlike to God. Is God holy, and you impure ; God merciful, and you re-
vengeful ; God a God of peace, and you fomenters of malice and contention ?
To pretend to his image with such qualities is to disparage his nature, and
rather degrade God to a likeness to the flesh than to mount up to a true
resemblance of him : Ps. 1. 21, ' Thou thoughtest I was altogether such a
one as thyself.' It is a disgrace to a noble father to have a swinish, clown-
ish, ill-bred person pretend to be his son. But how much is the contrary a
glory to Christ, as delicious fruit and choice flowers credit the beams of the
sun ! What a mighty pleasure is it to God to behold a suitable walk of his
new creatures ! He loves them, and ' his countenance doth behold the up-
right,' Ps. xi. 7. How much must he, who is holiness itself, take compla-
cency in the holiness of it. If he loves it while in a low degree, no question
but he loves it more in a higher exaltation. How does the Holy Ghost
repeat Enoch's walking with God twice in Gen. v. 22, 24, to witness his
pleasure in it ?
Fourthly, Not to walk suitable to your new creation is a mighty disadvan-
tage to yourselves. Though a new creature doth not totally lose his grace
if a temptation deflower his purity, yet his grace suffers an impair, and per-
haps he may never recover the same degree of grace and comfort he had
before. It is a question whether David ever had his sails filled with such
strong gales of the Spirit after his fall as he had before. The marks of a
disease will hang about us after the disease is cured, and the same stock of
health may never be restored again. If you do let your hearts run out at
any time to any sinful pleasure, though it may not raze out the image, yet
it will make you more unfit for those views of God which can only maintain
it. When you come before him, after such a departure, how will your hearts
recoil upon you ? With what pleasure can you look upon him whom you
have so abused in his image in your souls,- and in his image in his law '?
Besides, every unworthy walk detracts somewhat from the weight of that
crown you might otherwise expect to be reserved in heaven for you, and
makes it of a greater alloy. But if you keep close to the law in the word,
and the law in your hearts, what communications will you have from God ?
What inward touches and feelings of him ? How hastily will he run to meet
you half way, and kiss you with the kisses of his mouth ? ' Thou meetest
him that rejoices and worketh righteousness,' Isa. lxiv. 5. How intimately
will he wind himself into the secret corners of your hearts, as John xiv. 23,
' and make his abode with you ;' and like fire in every part of iron, fill every
part of the new man with a glowing and divine heat ?
Fifthly, Such an exact walk will mightily stop the current of sin. It may
160 charnock's works. , [2 Cor. V. 17.
justly be feared, the sins of many have taken too much heart from the unsuit-
able carriages of professors. But a walk according to the rule of the new
creation might inflame others to godliness, at least stifle some corrupt
motions, suspend some inclinations to sin, and for a time bind up the devil
in them. This is the greatest charity to the world ; by other benefits we
advantage particular persons, by a holy example all that behold us. It
strikes an awful reverence into the hearts of men, as being a ray of God ;
what the gospel enjoins are things comely, and of good report, many of them
lovely and illustrious, even in a carnal eye ; therefore such expressions of a
gospel impression would engender admirations of it, cast a lustre upon the
truth of God ; men will look upon such works with reverence,* and ' glorify
God in the day of their visitation ' or conversion, as Calvin understands it.
To be a holy people is to be ' sought out,' they are both joined, Isa. Ixii. 12.
Many by seeing the holiness of the church in gospel times shall be induced
to give up their names to the Lord ; it will tend more to the regeneration of
others than a thousand sermons ; it will raise the reputation of Christianity,
and cause them to believe it to be of a divine extract ; it would stir men up to a
holy emulation to be like them. And beholding the law of God transcribed
in the life, it would convincingly answer the cavils of the world, and demon-
strate the commands they count grievous to be in themselves practicable.
But whither is this gospel ornament we have been speaking of fled ? Where
is it to be found? How few walk as new creatures, • as becomes the gospel,'
however they profess it, and pretend a zeal for it !
Exhortation 2. To those who lie still buried in the ruins of the old Adam,
who carry the image of beasts in their lives, or of devils in their hearts, or
both, such I would advise earnestly to seek this new creature state. Let
not your hearts be besotted to a neglect of it, and stupefied into endless tor-
ments, which will, as surely as you live, be the dreadful issue, if this be not
attained. To be so long under the gospel, and retain the obstinacy of an old
nature to God, is a high aggravation. Talk not of sparing the old man ; it
is your enemy, wound it to death, use the utmost severity towards it ; put it
off, leave not a rag, if possible, behind ; send it away, as Abraham did
Hagar, and without so much as a bottle of water, to despoil it of any hopes
of return. But, alas, how do you cherish and hug this enemy ! How do
you value it, as if it were a part of yourselves ; as if you could not live
without poison, or be happy without misery ! How do you bid the new
man stand far from you, as if it were a real torment to be in the arms of
Christ, and the new creation your disease, not your felicity ! Though yon
were the most unblameable in your lives, free from any pretence of an accu-
sation there, what were you without this change, but devils in the garb of
angels of light, poison in fair cabinets, and the natures of serpents in the
bodies of men ? "What is become of your souls ? Are they so immersed in
flesh, that nothing of spirit can make impressions upon them ? Have men
quite forsworn the attaining any other excellency than what mere nature
bestowed upon them ? What deformity do you find in God, that you slight
his image, which should be imprinted on you? What frightful thoughts have
you of the Spirit that solicits you ? How come your souls so senseless of
their real happiness ? Oh what a happy thing were it, if this day Christ
were formed in all our hearts; that though we are nasty dunghills, worse than
the stable wherein our Saviour was born in the flesh, we might become the
sanctuary of our Lord and his Spirit ; it is then the angels would renew their
song at the birth of Christ in the heart as well as that in the world, * Glory to
God in the highest,' peace and eternal goodwill to such a soul. If you have
* As the word lvo*Ttvtravres, signifies, 1 Peter ii. 12.
2 Cor. Y. 17.J the natube of regeneration. 161
any stragglings in your hearts, any convictions upon your consciences, and
make not a further progress, these will be so far from being your advantage,
that they will add an emphasis to your damnation.
Let me use some motives to press you.
(1.) Shall not the loathsomeness and misery of your present state startle
you ? It is a nature that makes you ' the children of wrath,' Eph. ii. 3.
Were your old natures acceptable to God, what need any change ? But
the requiring this change demonstrates the old nature to be abhorred by
God. This nature is the devil's filth, the serpent's poison, a deformed
leprosy ; it is the pain, anguish, torment, rack of every man that dies in it ;
it smells rank of hell. Is not another nature then desirable ? When you
commit some grievous sin, to which you are not accustomed, are you not
dejected ? Do you not think worse of yourselves for it ? And are you not
pleased when you can escape it ? If the reformation of one sin be a desir-
able thing, how much more the reformation of the whole nature ! For if a
drop of that filth bubbling up in the life be so loathsome, what loathsome-
ness is there in the heart, where the fountain springs ! What gall of bitter-
ness must be in the root, when a little of the fruit is so bitter to your taste!*
Corruption is the dishonour of your natures, the poison of your souls, the
cause of all your unhappiness. It is this that banished you from paradise,
ravishing away your pleasures, subjected you to vanity, the wrath of God, the
hatred of angels, and. tyranny of devils ; it is this that hath deformed your
souls. Despoil yourselves of this cursed old man, give yourselves no rest till
you have conquered it ; never say, it is incorporated in your entrails and
marrow. Where the question is about your everlasting happiness, let no
excuse prevail.
(2.) Shall not the excellency of another state allure you ? It is the
excellency of any piece of art to come nearest its original ; that star is most
glorious that doth most partake of the sun's light and power. The very light
of nature tells us the state wherein we are is not our perfection ; something
the soul flutters at beyond this, though it naturally understands not what it
is. Is it not, then, the happiness of the soul to be reduced to its true
centre, to be reinstated in an unspotted nature, to return to a due respect to
those ends for which it was made, to have the understanding conversant
about the loveliest object, the will inclined to the most amiable goodness,
and the affections twining about it, and growing up with it? Can it be any-
thing else but the highest excellency, to live the life of God ; to have the
image of God wrought upon you, and your souls conformed to his holiness ?
Can that be an imperfection, which makes you like an infinite righteousness?
It was the highest perfection of man to be made according to the image of
God, wherein God, as in a glass, might see a resemblance of himself. Is it
not then a desirable thing to have it drawn again with more lively and last-
ing colours, after sin and Satan have so basely defaced it? All other things
are not the perfection of man's nature ; for whatsoever else there is, is
possessed by beasts or devils; the pleasures of sense, by beasts; the endow-
ments of knowledge, by devils ; but the divine nature by neither. This
therefore, which neither devils can be blessed with, nor beasts capable of, is
only the perfection of the soul, more excellent than the soul itself, since
that which perfects is more excellent than that which is perfected by it.
Original corruption destroys your health, sullies your purity, enslaves your
liberty. Regeneration restores your health, expels your filthiness, and knocks
off your fetters. Let the excellency of this better state prevail with you.
* Daille, Sur. Colos. p. 247.
VOL. III. L
162 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
(8.) Will the honour of the thing allure you ? Where shall you meet
with so honourable a relation ? It is more honour to be a new creature in
rags than a carnal prince in purple, though the greatest in the world, for
you will then be settled heirs of all the promises. Is it not, then, more
glorious to partake of the nature of that God, who crea'ed and commands the
world, than by the force of the old nature to be slaves to sordid lusts, which
are both a drudgery and a disease ? As a spirit is more excellent than the
body, so a spiritual being and frame is more honourable than a fleshly.*
There is a greater relation between God and a new creature than between
natural fathers and sons. The sons of men have but a little particle of the
vile matter and flesh of their fathers, but a renewed man hath the whole
divine Spirit in him; and by virtue of this, all things will, one time or other,
rise up and call you blessed ; you will be more allied to Jesus Christ, by
the inward formation of him in your hearts, than the blessed virgin by the
conception of Christ in her womb, Luke xi. 27. She was more happy by
partaking of Christ in her heart, than by conferring a flesh on Christ from
her body. What an honourable thing is it to be moulded into the divine
likeness ! Can you be more glorious, unless you were gods ?
(4.) Will pleasure charm you ? View it here. Pleasure must neces-
sarily follow this new state, as light the sun ; there is no state without a
pleasure pertaining to it. Pleasures of sense belong to a life of sense ;
intellectual pleasures to a life of reason ; divine pleasures to a divine
nature. ' All the ways of wisdom are ways of pleasantness,' Prov. iii. 17.
An infinite perfection is attended with an infinite happiness ; the more
lineaments, then, you have of the divine perfection, the more tastes you will
have of the divine happiness. God hath an infinite pleasure in his own
perfections ; it is his felicity to enjoy himself, to view himself. Pleasure
then must naturally result from this image drawn in the soul ; and as
naturally, I conceive, according to the degrees of it, as the pleasure God
hath in his own- holiness and love. The pleasure of heaven is the perfection
of holiness ; therefore there is a pleasure also attending the draught of it
here ; an imperfect pleasure from the imperfect form of it, as a perfect plea-
sure from the completing of it in glory. What want can there be of plea-
sure, if you come into this state ? Will you not be conversant about the
highest object, and that with your choicest faculties ? Can this be without
some communications of the pleasure of God, as well as his nature V You
will find a pleasure in the very stragglings to get into this state, much more
in it.
(5.) Do you profess yourselves enemies to the devil ? Why then will you
gratify him by continuing in an old nature ? He keeps a jubilee when he
can draw men into great sins, and bind them under them ; his main indus-
try is to make men like himself, and continue them in that likeness. The
whole world, that are not of God, lie wrapped up in the devil's image : 1 John
v. 19, ' The whole world lies in wickedness, or ' in the wicked one,' 'E» rw
vrovripQ ; more consonant to the former verses. Satan and natural men lie
nugging together, though the latter dream not of it. His intent in assault-
ing man in paradise was to destroy the righteousness of his nature ; his
design now is to hinder the restoration of it, by keeping men off from the
means, making them have false thoughts of the unpleasantness of it, as
though it were a state injurious to man's tranquillity, by suppressing con-
victions, which are the first portals to the courts of blessedness. Oh, gratify
not the devil ; fly from his image, that you may fly from his misery.
(6.) Why will you cross your own sentiments, when sober reason in you
* Nerimberg. de adorat. lib. i. cap. 12, p. 71.
2 Cob. V. 17.] the natuee of regeneration. 163
may have leave to speak ? What do you think was the end for which you
came into the world ? Was it to serve the devil or God ? Whose image
is it most rational for you to bear ? Are there not innate desires in man to
be as God ? Adam desired it unlawfully ; the same spirit runs through the
veins of his posterity. God has shewn you a way in his word whereby you
may lawfully desire it, and successfully accomplish it. Do not all creatures,
one way or other, instruct you in it ? Do they not all run back to their
fountain ; rivers into the sea, that they may have a new formation in it ;
beams retracted to the sun ; and why not the soul to God ? Do they not
all declare the glory of God ? And shall man stand alone ? And what way
is there for him to declare God's glory, but by the reformation of his nature '?
You once had this desirable nature in your first head, and lost it ; you may
have the re-possession in the second head, and for ever preserve it. You
cannot deny your obligation to have it, therefore you cannot deny your duty
to seek it. You know your souls received their original from him ; you
likewise know that there is an obligation to return to him. As the spirit
naturally returns to God who gave it, so it cannot be happy in that return,
unless it first morally return to God, to be formed like him.
(7.) Nothing else can advantage you if you want this new-creature state.
You can no more enjoy happiness by Christ without it, than Adam did in
paradise, in the presence of God, with the nakedness of his nature. His
being in paradise, the richer part of the whole lower creation, could neither
heal him nor content him, after the loss of the purity of his nature. In that
happy place his conscience racked him. There he fled from his Creator,
which in his innocent nature he never attempted to do ; and all the plea-
sures of that place could not restore him to God's favour or his own peace,
without the promise of a seed, and by that seed the restoration in part of
his former image.
(8.) Lastly, take this for your encouragement, it is attainable by the
meanest person, Col. iii. 11. In the new creation ' there is neither Greek
nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
free ; but Christ is all and in all ; ' that is, there is no distinction of any.
The eloquence of the Greek, or the rudeness of the barbarian ; the uncir-
cumcision of the Gentile, or the circumcision of the Jew ; the baseness of
the slave, or the liberty of the freeman, doth neither advantage nor disad-
vantage them in this work of the new creation ; and he names Scythians, as
being the rudest and most unpolished among all the known Gentiles.* No
natural endowments advantage us ; no worldly indigencies hinder us. The
soul of the meanest is as capable of the new creation as the soul of the
highest. There is nothing required to the putting on the new man, which
is not attainable by the one as well as the other ; yea, sooner by those of
the meanest endowments, as wanting that fuel for their pride, which is the
chief hindrance to a gospel impression. God values nothing but his own
image ; neither is he any more taken with the glittering parts and wisdom
of men than our Saviour with the glory of the temple, which his ignorant
disciples did so much admire.
Quest. But what means must be used to obtain this excellent privilege ?
Am. It is indeed the work of God, yet means may be used.f He that
observes precepts of morality shall gain moral habits ; and by practising
acts of temperance become temperate. So he that follows the rules given
in the word for attaining the new creation, shall have it produced in him ;
and the more assuredly, because it is not produced by him but by God,
• Daille, Sur. Coloss., p. 238, &c. f Jackson, vol. iv. chap. 21, p. 399.
164 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 17.
who is more able to create new hearts in us than the unregenerate man is
to work a moral reformation.
For means :
1. Be deeply sensible of original corruption. View yourselves in the
glass of Adam ; reflect upon the fall, and the dreadful consequences of it ;
take an exact account of the enmity of thy nature, as the word represents
it. We must acquaint ourselves with our sin and misery, and have self-
emptying thoughts, before we can seek after a new creature. Man is
apt to think his nature good enough ; and this makes him the more miser-
able and wretched, and causes him to think there needs no change,
Eev. iii. 17.
2. Be deeply humbled before God. Lay yourselves low before him, and
abhor yourselves in dust and ashes. Complain of your corrupt nature ;
melt before God, dissolve into tears. When you are weary and heavy laden,
sensible of it by contrition, Christ will give rest by regeneration. The
heart must be melted before it be made new. Pride must be humbled ; we
must be vile in our own eyes, as well as vile in our own nature. ' The
Lord is nigh to them that are of a broken heart,' Psalm xxxiv. 18.
3. Often meditate of the excellency of this state, as it is represented in the
word. Men hear and forget ; they leave behind them what they have heard ';
they hide it not in their hearts ; therefore doth not the word profit them.
Think often of the honour of being a new creature, as well as the necessity
of being a new creature ; if you have any thoughts arising of resting upon
your knowledge, or morality, or good meaning, say to your soul, as the
apostle in another case, 0 my soul, ' covet earnestly the best gifts, yet
shew I unto thee a more excellent way.' If any imagination arise which
flatters you with hopes of being in Christ without an inward change, regard
it as an angel from the bottomless pit, sent from the great impostor to seduce
you from your happiness.
4. Fixedly resolve not to be at rest till you procure it at the hands of
God. Perhaps you may have had some resolutions before, and some diver-
sion hath chilled those purposes ; waver not with uncertain velleities be-
tween inclination and aversion. Content not yourselves with sluggish
wishes, and yawning desires, but put heart and hand to the work. Set
vigorously to it, and those sons of Anak, those seeming terrifying difficul-
ties, will fly before you. Where doth the Scripture tell you, that God will
neglect his laborious creature, and stand by without assisting him in his
serious endeavours ? No, no ; God will not be wanting in his power, nor
the Spirit in his operations, if we firmly purpose and strongly pursue.
' God is near to all that call upon him in truth,' Psalm cxlv. 18 ; that is,
to all that call upon him with a true purpose and desire for his mercy : he
is near by his merciful presence, not by his essential presence only. Fool
not away your vows in vain mirth, nor drown your resolutions in sensual
pleasures. Say as David in another case, ' I have sworn, and will per-
form it,' that I will in good earnest endeavour that I may become a new
creature, Psalm cxix. 106.
5. Pray. Regeneration is against the inclinations of old nature ; inter-
mit not therefore to call earnestly for help from heaven ; it is best attained
upon the knee. God is the foundation of all vitality ; the life of grace is no
less the eftect of his breath than the soul of Adam. Go to Christ, in whom,
as in a steward, is treasured up a fulness of grace, to dispense to him that
seeks it. Beg earnestly of the Spirit, who is the officer appointed, the
great limner to draw this image in us. Why can you not go to Christ as
well as the leper, and lie sobbing before him, • Lord, if thou wilt, thou
2 Cor. V. 17.] the nature of regeneration. 165
canst make me clean,' thou canst change my nature ? Do it constantly, do
it fervently, and take notice with what inspirations you will be filled. But
do you solicit him for this mercy at all ? Has God one breath from thee
in a whole week to this purpose ? Have you, since you heard it, pressed
from the necessity of it, made your case known to God ? Has there been
one groan, one sigh for it ? What a stupid creature is man ! Time will not
always last ; God will be solicited for it, and it is fit he should. An old
nature is like an old devil, it cannot be cast out without fasting and prayer.
The great changes of the soul are chiefly wrought in prayer and the word :
our very looking up to God and upon God in humble prayer makes a
gradual transformation in our souls : we never are in the mount with him,
but our souls (as Moses his face) look quite of another hue and colour. By
frequent converse with friends, we grow more into an imitation of the excel-
lent qualities we perceive in them. Converse with God in frequent prayer
and meditation, and you will grow more and more into a holy likeness to
him.
6. Attend diligently upon the word. To pray to God to renew you, and
slight the word which he hath appointed as an instrument to effect it, is to
dishonour God ; for while you pray to him to be a father to beget you, you
contemn him as a governor, by neglecting the means he hath appointed for
such ends. As the devil formed himself in the soul by man's listening to
and sucking in his temptation, so Christ forms himself in the soul, by our
sucking in the milk of the word, as the disposition of the nurse is by the
milk conveyed to the infant. It is wrought by the gospel, 1 Cor. iv. 15,
1 for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.' Not by the
word of God at large, which consists of law as well as gospel. So the
regenerations of old were wrought, not by the law, but by that of gospel
mixed in that administration. By this means you may get a spiritual
knowledge, and discard that ignorance which is the foundation of an aliena-
tion from the life of God, Eph. iv. 18, ' alienated from the life of God
through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their
hearts.' Study the promises, and plead them before the Lord, for ' by
these you are made partakers of the divine nature,' 2 Peter i. 4. Besist not
any divine impressions, by a sluggishness and a listlessness. Be not in
love with your spiritual death, nor cherish the bondage to sin in your will,
when God makes motions to enliven and enlarge you. Welcome the breath-
ings of the Spirit. Open your souls, as some flowers do for the sun ;
drink in the drops of heaven, as the earth doth the rain ; and when the
Spirit quickens you by its influences, quicken the Spirit by your earnest
supplications, Cant. iv. 16 ; make much of him, persuade his stay. Breathe,
0 blessed Spirit, upon this wilderness. Never leave till it be changed into
a fruitful garden, both pleasant to, and fruitful for, my blessed Creator and
gracious Redeemer.
A DISCOURSE OF THE EFFICIENT OF
REGENERATION.
Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God. — John I. 13.
This evangelist so plainly describes the deity of Christ, and in so majestic
a style, in the beginning of the chapter, that the accidental view of it in a
book lying open by neglect, was instrumental for the conversion of Junius,
that eminent light in the church, from his atheism.
We shall take our rise only from ver. 9, ' That was the true light, which
lighteneth every man that comes into the world.' John Baptist, who, ver.
6, &c, was to bear witness of this light, was a light by our Saviour's asser-
tion, 'a burning and a shining light,' John v. 35, but not that 'true light'
which was promised, Isa. xlix. 6, to be 'a light to the Gentiles, and the sal-
vation of God to the ends of the earth.' The sun is the true light in the
heavens and of the world ; not but that other stars are lights too, but they
all receive their light from the sun. Christ is called the true light, by nature
and essence, not by grace and participation : 1 John v. 20, ' We know him
that is true ; and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ,'
the natural light and Son of God.
1. True, as opposed to types, which were shadows of this light.
2. True, as opposed to false. Philosophical lights, though esteemed so,
are but darkness, and ignesfatui, in comparison of this.
3. True original light, ratione officii, illustrating the whole world with his
light. Whatsoever is light in heaven or earth, borrows it from the sun ; who-
soever is enlightened in the world, derives from him ' which lighteth every
man that comes into the world.' Some join coming into the world, to light,
and read it thus, ' He is the light coming into the world, which lighteth
every man.' The Greek is something ambiguous, and it may be referred to
light, though not so commodiously. But the translation which we have
hath been followed in all ages of the church ; and is contended* for only by
those who deny the deity of our Saviour, or are somewhat affected to them
that do.
How doth Christ light every man that comes into the world ?
1. Naturally. So Calvin; the world was made by him, and therefore that
* Qu. ' the other is contended for ' ? — Ed.
John I. 13.] the efficient of begeneration. 167
which is the beauty of the world, the reason of man, was made and kindled
by him. As all the light the world hath had since the creation flows from the
sun, so all the knowledge which sparkles in any man is communicated by
Christ, even since the creation, as he is the wisdom of God, and as mediator,
preserving those broken relics of the fall : Prov. xx. 27, ' The spirit of man
is the candle of the Lord,' lighted and preserved by him. The light of na-
ture, those common notions of Jit and just in men's consciences, those honest
and honourable principles in the hearts of any, those beams of wisdom in
their understanding, though faint, and like sparkles raked up in ashes, are
kept alive by his mediatory influence, as a necessary foundation for that
reparation which was intended in his first interposition.
2. Spiritually. So not only the Socinians, but some very sound, under-
stand it ; not that all are actually enlightened, but,
(1.) In regard of power and sufficiency, he hath a power to enlighten
every man ; able to enlighten, not a few, but every man in the world ; as the
sun doth not light every man, though it hath a power to do so, and doth
actually light every man that shuts not his eyes against it.
(2.) Actually, taking it distributive, not collective ; that whosoever is en-
lightened in the world, hath it commmunicated from Christ ; as Ps. cxlv. 14,
' The Lord upholds all that fall, and raises up all those that are bowed
down ; ' as many as are upheld and raised, are upheld and raised by God.
He doth indeed ' shine in darkness,' his light breaks out upon men, but they
are not the better for it, because 'the darkness comprehends it not'; as when
there is but one schoolmaster in a town, we usually say, he teaches ell the
boys in the town; not that every individual boy comes to school, but as
many as are taught, are taught by him. I embrace the former, because the
evangelist seems to begin with his person, as God; his office, as mediator; and
then descends to his incarnation ; and it is a sense which puts no force upon
the words. And I suppose that every man is added, to beat down the proud
conceits of the Jews, who regarded the Gentiles with contempt, as not en-
joying the privileges conferred upon themselves ; but the evangelist declares,
that what the Gentiles had in natural light, and what they were to have in
spiritual light, did, and was to come from him, who would disperse his beams
in all nations, ver. 10. And therefore ' he was in the world,' before his com-
ing in the flesh, in regard of his virtue and efficacy, by the spreading his beams
over the world, enlightening men in all ages and places with that common
light of nature ; he was near to every man ; ' in him they lived, and moved,
and had their being ; ' but the world by their natural wisdom knew him not,
and glorified him not. ' The world was made by him, yet the world knew
him not.' Ingratitude hath been the constant portion of the mediator, from
the world ; they knew him not in past ages, knew him not in the present
age of his coming in the flesh; they did not acknowledge him with that affec-
tion, reverence, and subjection that was due to him.
He aggravates this contempt of Christ,
1. By the general right he had, ' he came to his own,' 'Eig ra, V5/a, ver.
11, meaning the world, it being put in the neuter gender. The whole world
was his property and his goods, yet they knew not their owner. In this,
worse than the ox or ass.
2. By the special privileges conferred on those to whom he first came, and
from whom he should have the most welcome reception ; implied in these
words, ' and his own,' 6i 'ibioi, in the masculine gender, his own people, that
had been his treasure, to whom he had given his law, entrusted with the
covenants and oracles of God, these ' received him not.' His own, some
say, as being peculiarly committed to him, the angel of the covenant; where-
168 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
as other nations were committed to angels to receive laws from them. His
own flesh and blood, who expected a Messiah, to whom he was particularly
sent, as being the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Christ is most rejected
where he proffers most kindness. Those of Tyre and Sidon, those of Sodom
and Gomorrah, would not have used him so ill as Capernaum and Jerusalem,
his own people. He descends to shew the loss of them that rejected him,
the benefit of those that received him : ver. 12*, ' But as many as received
him, to tbem gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that
believe on his name.'
Where is,
1. The subject : those that received him.
2. The benefit : the dignity of sonship.
3. The manner of conferring this benefit : ' gave them power.'
4. The instrumental cause : ' believe on his name.' Though his own re-
jected him, they lost a dignity which was conferred upon those that received
him : he lost not his pains, for he gathered sons to God out of all parts of
the world. ' To as many as received him.' It was not now peculiar to the
Jews, who boasted of being Abraham's seed, and to have the covenant en-
tailed upon them to be the people of God. It was now conferred upon those
who were before Lo-ammi and Lo-ruhamah, Hos. ii. 23. It was nothing
but faith on his name that gave men the privilege of being the sons of God,
and this was communicated to Gentiles as well as Jews. Power : not a
power, but a dignity, as the word properly signifies. Not a power if they
would, but a will, for they were born of the will of God. Faith brings men
into a special relation to God ; which faith is more than an assent and giving
credit to God ; for to believe on God, to believe on his name, is a phrase
peculiar to Scripture. ' To become the sons of God ;' some understand this
of sonship by adoption, but the following verse gives us light to understand
it of a sonship by regeneration. St Paul uses the word adoption, but St
John, both in his gospel and epistles, speaks more of the new birth, and
sonship by it, than any of the other apostles ; ' who were born not of blood,'
or ' of bloods.' He removes all other causes of this, which men might
imagine, and ascribes it wholly to God. This place is variously interpreted.
1 Not of blood.' Not by natural instinct, saith one; not by an illustrious
stock. The Jews imagined themselves holy by their carnal generation from
Abraham in a long train of ancestors. Grace runs not in a blood. It is
not often a flower growing upon every ability ; ' not many wise, not many
mighty.' Not hereditary by a mixture of blood. Natural generation makes
men no more regenerate than the rich man in hell was regenerate by Abra-
ham, his natural ancestor, whom he calls ' father Abraham.' Religious
parents propagate corruption, not regeneration ; carnal generation is by na-
ture, not by grace ; by descent from Adam, not by implantation in Christ
Abraham had an Ishmael, and Isaac an Esau : man begets only a mortal
body, but grace is the fruit of an incorruptible seed. ' Nor of the will of the
flesh.' Not by human election,* as Eve judged of Cain that he should
be the Messiah, or Isaac of Esau that he should be heir of the promise, as
the Jews say. Not by a choice of those things which are necessary, pro-
fitable, or delightful to the flesh ;f not by a will affected to the flesh, or
things of the flesh. Not by any sensual appetite, + whereby men used to
adopt one to bear up their names when they wanted posterity of their own.
I would rather conceive it to be meant of the strength of nature, which is
called flesh in Scripture; not by legal observances, the ceremonies of the
* Mercer in Hos. ii. 1. t Cajetan.
J Amyraldus Fine Thes. Salmur. Spirit. Adopt., Thes. vi.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 169
law being called carnal or fleshly ordinances, Heb. ix. 10. It is not a fruit
of nature or profession. ' Nor of the will of man.' Calvin takes the will of
the flesh and the will of man for one and the same thing, the apostle using
two expressions only to fix it more upon the mind. I rather judge it to be
meant thus : not by natural principles, or moral endowments, which are the
flower and perfection of man as man. It is not arbitrary, of the will of
man, or the result naturally of the most religious education. All the power
of regenerate men in the world joined together cannot renew another ; all
the industry of man, without the influence of the heavens in the sun and
rain, cannot produce fruit in the earth, no, nor the moral industry of men
grace in the soul ; ' but of God,' or the will of God ; his own will : James
i. 18, • Of his own will begat he us,' exclusive of all other wills mentioned
before. It is the sole efficiency of God ; he hath the sole hand in it; there-
fore we are said to be both begotten and born of him, 1 John v. 18. It is
so purely God's work, that as to the principle he is the sole agent ; and as
to the manifestation of it, he is the principal agent. Not of the will of the
flesh, that is only corruption ; nor of the will of man, that at best is but
moral nature. But whatsoever the meaning of those particular expressions
is, the evangelist removes all pretences nature may make to the efficiency of
this regeneration, and ascribes it wholly to God.
1. There is a removal of false causes.
2. A position of the true cause.
(1.) The efficient, God.
(2.) The manner, by an act of his will.
Shewing thereby,
[1.] No necessity in him to renew us ; no motive but from himself.
[2.] No merit on our parts. Man cannot merit, say the papists, before
grace ; no child can merit his own birth, no man grace.
Doct. 1. Man, in all his capacities, is too weak to produce the work of
regeneration in himself.
It is subjectively in the creature, not efficiently by the creature, neither
ourselves nor any other creature, angels, men, ordinances.
Doct. 2. God alone is the prime efficient cause of regeneration.
Doct. 1. For the first. Man, in all his capacities, is too weak to produce
the work of regeneration in himself. This is not the birth of a darkened
wisdom and an enslaved will. We affect a kind of divinity, and would centre
ourselves in our own strength ; therefore it is good to be sensible of our owq
impotency, that God may have the glory of his own grace, and we the com-
fort of it in a higher principle and higher power than our own. It is not the
bare proposal of grace, and the leaving the will to an indifferent posture,
balanced between good and evil, undetermined to the one or the other, to
incline and determine itself which way seems best to it. Not one will, in
the whole rank of believers, left to themselves. The evangelist excepts not
one man among them ; for as many as received Christ, as many as believed,
were the sons of God, who were born ; which believers, every one that had
this faith as the means, and this sonship as the privilege, were born not of
the will of the flesh nor the will of man.
For the proof of this in general,
1. God challengeth this work as his own, excluding the creature from any
share as a cause : Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27, ' J will sprinkle clean water upon
you, 1 will cleanse you, I mil give you a new heart, / will put a new spirit
into you, / will take away the heart of stone, 1 will give you a heart of flesh,
/ will put my Spirit into you.' Here I will no less than seven times. No-
thing is allowed to man in the production of this work in the least ; all that
170 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
is done by him is the walking in God's statutes by virtue of this principle.
The sanctifying principle, the actual sanctification, the reception of it by the
creature, the removal of all the obstructions of it, the principle maintaining
it, are not in the least here attributed to the will of man. God appropriates
all to himself. He doth not say he would be man's assistant, as many men
do, who tell us only of the assistances of the gospel, as if God in the gospel
expected the first motions of the will of man to give him a rise for the acting
of his grace. You see here he gives not an inch to the creature. To ascribe
the first work, in any part, to the will of man, is to deprive God of half his
due, to make him but a partner with his creature. The least of it cannot be
transferred to man but the right of God will be diminished, and the creature
go shares with his Creator. Are we not sufficient of ourselves to do any-
thing ? and are we sufficient to part stakes with God in this divine work ?
What partner was the creature with God in creation ? It is the Father's
traction alone, without the hand of free-will. ' None can come, except the
Father, which hath sent me, draw them,' John vi. 44. The mission of the
Mediator, and the traction of the creature, are by the same hand. Our Sa-
viour could not have come unless the Father had sent him, nor can man
come to Christ unless the Father draw him. What is that which is drawn?
The will. The will, then, is not the agent ; it doth not draw itself.
2. The titles given to regeneration evidence it. It is a creation. What
creature can give itself a being ? It is a putting in a law and a new heart.
What matter can infuse a soul into itself? It is a new birth. What man
did ever beget himself ? It is an opening the heart. What man can do
this, who neither hath the key, nor is acquainted with the wards ? Not a
man knows the heart ; it is deceitful above all things, who can know it ?
3. The conveyance of original corruption doth in part evidence it. We
have no more interest of our wills in regeneration, than we had in corruption.
This was first received by the will of Adam, our first head, thence transmit-
ted to us without any actual consent of our wills in the first transmission ;
that is conveyed to us from the second Adam, without any actual consent of
our wills in the first infusion. Yet though the wills of Adam's posterity are
mere passive in the first conveyance of the corrupt habit from him by gene-
ration, jet afterwards they are active in the approbations of it, and produc-
tion of the fruits of it. So the will is merely passive in the first conveyance
of the grace of regeneration, though afterwards it is pleased with it, and
brings forth fruit meet for it.
4. Scripture represents man exceeding weak, and unable to do any thing
spiritually good. ' So then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God,'
Rom. viii. 8. He concludes it by his so then, as an infallible consequence,
from what he had discoursed before. If, as being in the flesh, they cannot
please God, therefore not in that which is the highest pleasure to God, a
framing themselves to a likeness to him. The very desire and endeavour of
the creature after this, is some pleasure to God, to see a creature struggling
after holiness ; but they that are in the flesh cannot please him. ' Can any
good thing come out of Nazareth ?' was said of our Saviour. So may we
better say, Can any good thing come out of the flesh, the enslaved, possessed
will of man ? If it be free since it was captivated by sin, who set it free ?
Nothing can, but ' the law of the Spirit of life,' Rom. viii. 2. To be ' sin-
ners,' and to be ' without strength,' is one and the same thing in the apos-
tle's judgment : Rom. v. 6, 8, ' While we were yet without strength ;' after-
wards, ' while we were yet sinners ;' he doth not say, We are without great
strength, but without strength, such an impotence as is in a dead man. Not
like a man in a swoon, but a man in a grave. God only is almighty, and
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 171
man all impotency ; God only is all-sufficient, and man all-indigent. It is
impossible we can have a strength of our own, since our first father was
feeble, and conveyed his weakness to us ; by the same reason that it is im-
possible we can have a righteousness of our own, since our first father
sinned : Isa. xliii. 26, 27, ' Declare, that thou mayest be justified. Thy first
father hath sinned.'
5. This weakness is universal. Sin hath made its sickly impressions in
every faculty. The mind is dark, Eph. iv. 18; he cannot know, 1 Cor.
ii. 14 ; there is a stoniness in the heart, he cannot bend, Zech. vii. 12 ;
there is enmity in the will, he cannot be subject, Rom. viii. 7. As to faith,
he cannot believe, John xii. 39. As to the Spirit, the worker of faith, he
cannot receive ; that is, of himself, John xiv. 17 ; acknowledge Christ he
cannot, 1 Cor. xii. 3. As to practice, he cannot bring forth fruit, John xv. 4.
The unrighteousness introduced by Adam poured a poison into every faculty,
and dispossessed it of its strength, as well as of its beauty : what else could
be expected from any deadly wound but weakness as well as defilement ? *
The understanding conceives only such thoughts as are pleasing to the law
of sin ; the memory is employed in preserving the dictates and decrees of it ;
the imagination full of fancies imprinted by it; the will wholly submitting to
its authority ; conscience standing with fingers in its mouth, for the most
part not to speak against it ; the whole man yielding itself and every mem-
ber to the commands of it, and undertaking nothing but by its motions,
Rom. vi. 19.
6. To evince it, there is not one regenerate man but in his first conversion
is chiefly sensible of his own insufficiency ; and universal consent is a great
argument of the truth of a proposition ; it is a ground of the belief of a deity,
it being the sentiment of all nations. I do not speak of disputes about it
from the pride of reason, but of the inward experience of it in any heart.
What more frequent in the mouths of those that have some preparations to
it by conviction, than I cannot repent, I cannot believe, I find my heart rot-
ten, and base, and unable to any thing that is good ! There have been
instances of those that would elevate the power of man, and freedom of will
in spiritual things, who have been confuted in their reasonings, and acknow-
ledged themselves so, when God hath come to work savingly upon them. In-
deed, this poverty of spirit, or sense of our own emptiness, insufficiency, and
indigence, is the first gospel grace wrought in the soul, and stands in the
head of all those noble qualifications in our Saviour's sermon, as fitting men
for the kingdom of God : ' Blessed are the poor in spirit ; for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven,' Mat. v. 3. And God in the whole progress of this
work keeps believers in a sensibleness of their own weakness, thereby to
preserve them in a continual dependence on him ; and therefore sometimes
withdraws his Spirit from them, and lets them fall, that they may adhere more
closely to him, and less confide in themselves.
2. What kind of impotency or insufficiency is there in the soul to be the
cause of this work ?
Ans, 1. It is not a physical weakness for want of faculties. Understand-
ing we have, but not a spiritual light in it to direct us ; will we have, but no
freedom to choose that which is spiritually good. Though since the fall we
have such a free will left, which pertains to the essential nature of man,
yet we have lost that liberty which belongs to the perfection of human
nature, which was to exercise acts spiritually good and acceptable to God.f
Had the faculties been lost, Adam had not been capable of a promise or
command, and consequently of ever sinning after. In Adam, by creation we
* Senault, Corrupt, p. 8. f Ames Medul. lib. i. cap. xii. sect. 44.
172 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
were possessed of it. In Adam, by his corruption, we were stripped of it ;
we have not lost the physical but the moral nature of these faculties ; not
the faculties themselves, but the moral goodness of them. As the elementary
heat is left in a carcase, which yet is unfit to exercise any animal action for
want of a soul to enliven it ; so, though the faculties remain after this spi-
ritual death, we are unfit to exert any spiritual action for want of grace to
quicken them. If man wanted faculties, this want would excuse him in his
most extravagant actions : no creature is bound to that which is simply im-
possible ; nay, without those faculties, he could not act as a rational crea-
ture, and so were utterly incapable of sinning. Sin hath untuned the strings,
but did not unstring the soul ; the faculties were still left, but in such a dis-
order, that the wit and will of man can no more tune them, than the
strings of an untuned lute can dispose themselves for harmony without a
musician's hand.
2. Neither is it a weakness arising from the greatness of the object above
the faculty. As when an object is unmeet for a man, because he hath no
power in him to comply with it ; as to understand the essence of God ; this
the highest creature in its own nature cannot do, because God dwells in in-
accessible light ; and it is utterly impossible for any thing but God to com-
prehend God. If man were required to become an angel, or to rise up and
kiss the sun in the firmament ; these were impossible things, because man
wanted a faculty in his primitive nature for such acts : so if God had com-
manded Adam to fly without giving him wings, or to speak without giving
him a tongue, he had not been guilty of sin in not doing it, because it was
not disobedience, for disobedience is only in what a man hath a faculty to
do ; but to love God, praise him, depend upon him, was in the power of
man's original nature, for they were not above those faculties God endued
him with, but very correspondent and suitable to him. The objects proposed
are in themselves intelligible, credible, capable to be comprehended.
3. Neither is it a weakness arising from the insufficiency of external reve-
lation. The means of regeneration are clearly revealed in the gospel, the
sound is gone into all the earth, Rom. x. 18, and the word of the Lord is an
apprehensible object ; it is ' near us, even in our mouths,' Rom. x. 8 ;
' the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes,' Ps. xix. 8.
If the object were hid, the weakness lay not on the part of man, but on the
insufficiency of revelation ; as if any thing were revealed to man in an un-
known tongue, there were an insufficiency in the means of revelation.
But, 4, it is a moral weakness. The disability lies chiefly in the will,
John v. 40 ; what is there, ' You will not come to me,' is, ver. 44, ' How can
you believe T You cannot, because you will not. Carnal lusts prepossess
the heart, and make their party in the will against the things of God ; so
that inward propensities to embrace sin, are as great as the outward tempta-
tions to allure to it, whereby the soul is carried down the stream with a wil-
ful violence. In this respect he is called dead, though the death be not of
the same nature with a natural death ; for such a one hath not the natural
faculty to raise himself ; but this is an impotency arising from a voluntary
obstinacy ; yet the iniquity of a man binds him no less powerfully under
this spiritual captivity, than a natural death and insensibility keeps men in
the grave ; and those fetters of perversity they can no more knock off, than
a dead man can raise himself from the grave. By reason of those bands
they are called prisoners, Isa. xlii. 7, and cannot be delivered without the
powerful voice of Christ commanding and enabling them to go forth : Isa.
xlix. 9, • That thou must say to the prisoner, Go forth.' The apostle lays
the whole fault of men's not receiving the truth upon their wills: 2 Thes.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 173
ii. 10, * They received not the love of the truth ;' they heard it, they knew
it, but they loved not that which courted them. It is not seated in any de-
fect of the will, as it is a power of the soul ; for then God, who created it,
would be charged with it, and might as well charge beasts to become men,
as men to become gracious.* Man, as a creature, had a power to believe
and love God ; to resist temptations, avoid sin, and live according to nature ;
but man, as corrupted by a habit derived to him from his first parents, and
increased by a custom in sin, cannot believe, cannot love God, cannot bring
himself into a good frame ; as a musician cannot play a lesson when he
hath the gout in his fingers. When the eyes are full of adultery, when the
heart is full of evil habits, it ' cannot cease to sin,' it cannot be gracious,
2 Pet. ii. 14.
Now, these habits are either innate, or contracted and increased.
(1.) Innate. By nature we have a habit of corruption, fundamental of
all other that grow up in us. Man made a covenant with sin, contracted a
marriage with it ; by virtue of this covenant sin had a full power over him.
What the apostle speaks of the marriage between man and the law, Rom.
vii. 1—4, is applicable to this case. Sin as a husband, by way of covenant,
hath a powerful dominion over the will, and binds it as long as sin lives ;
and the will hath no power to free itself, unless a higher power make a
divorce, or by the death of the husband. This is the cause of man's obsti-
nacy against any return to God, the will is held in the cords of sin, Prov.
v. 22. The habit hath obtained an absolute sovereignty over it : Hosea
v. 4, ' They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God.' Why ?
« For the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them,' that is, in their hearts.
This adulterous or idolatrous habit holds their wills in chains, and acts them
as a man possessed by the devil is acted according to the pleasure of the
devil. The devil speaks in them, moves in them, and doth what he pleases
by them. And which binds the will faster, this habit is not in a natural
man by way of a tyranny, but a voluntary sovereignty on the part of the
will ; the will is pleased and tickled with it. As a woman (to use the simi-
litude of the Holy Ghost in that place) is so overruled by her affections to
other lovers that she cannot think of returning to her former husband, but
her unlawful love plays all its pranks, and riseth with that force against all
arguments from honesty and credit, that it keeps her still in the chains of
an unlawful lust ; so this is not a habit which doth oppress nature, or force
it against its will, but by its incorporation, and becoming one with our nature,
has quite altered it from that original rectitude and simplicity wherein God
at first framed it. It is a law of sin, which having razed out the purity of
the law of nature, commands in a greater measure in the stead of it. Hence
it is as natural to man, in his lapsed state, to have perverse dispositions
against God, as it is essential to him to be rational. And the chariot of
that weak remaining reason left us, is overturned by our distempered pas-
sions ; and the nobler part of man is subject to the rule of these, which bear
down the authority both of reason and God too. That one sin of the angels,
howsoever complicated we know not, taking place as a habit in them, hath
bound them for ever from rising to do any good, or disentangling themselves
from it, and may perhaps be meant by those ' chains of darkness ' wherein
they are reserved and held to the judgment of the great day, having no will
to shake them off, though they have light enough to see the torment appointed
for them.
(2.) New contracted and increased habits upon this foundation. Custom
turns sin more into another nature, and completes the first natural disorder.
* White, Instit. torn. i. lib. i. sect. xv. pp. 1 16, 111.
174 chaknock's wobks. [John I. 13.
An unrenewed man daily contracts a greater impotency, by adding strength to
this habit, and putting power into the hands of sin to exercise its tyranny,
and increasing our headstrong natures in their unruliness. It is as impos-
sible of ourselves to shake off the fetters of custom, as to suppress the un-
ruliness of nature : Jer. xiii. 23, ' Can an Ethiopian change his skin ? or a
leopard his spots ? then may you also do good that are accustomed to do
evil.' The prophet speaks not here of what they were by nature, but what
they were by custom ; contracting thereby such a habit of evil, that, like a
chronic disease, could not be cured by any ordinary means. But may he
not accustom himself to do good ? No ; it is as impossible as for an Ethio-
pian to change his skin. Those habits draw a man to delight, and therefore
to a necessity, of sinning. The pleasure of the heart, joined with the sove-
reignty of sin, are two such strong cords as cannot be untwisted or cut by
the soul itself; no, not without an overruling grace. It was a simple
wound in Adam, but such as all nature could not cure, much less when we
have added a world of putrefaction to it. The stronger the habit, the greater
the impotency. If we could not raze out the stamp of mere nature upon our
wills, how can we raze out the deeper impressions made by the addition of
custom ? If Adam, who committed but one sin, and that in a moment, did
not seek to regain his lost integrity, how can any other man, who by a mul-
titude of sinful acts hath made his habit of a giant-like stature, completed
many parts of wickedness, and scoffed at the rebukes of conscience ?
Let us now see wherein this weakness of our wills to renew ourselves doth
appear.
1. In a total moral unfitness for this work. Grace being said to make us
meet for our Master's use, it implies an utter unfitness for God's use of our-
selves before grace. There is a passive capability, a stump left in nature,
but no fitness for any activity in nature, no fitness in nature for receiving
grace, before grace ; there is nothing in us naturally which doth suit or corres-
pond with that which is good in the sight of God. That which is natural
is found more or less in all men ; but the gospel, which is the instrument of
regeneration, finds nothing in the nature of man to comply with the main
design of it. There is indeed some compliance of moral nature with the
moral precepts in the gospel, upon which account it hath been commended
by some heathens ; but nothing to answer the main intendment of it, which
is faith, the top grace in regeneration. This hath nothing to commend itself
to mere nature, nor finds an internal principle in man that is pleased with
it, as other graces do, as love, meekness, patience, &c. For faith strips a
man of all his own glory, brings himself from himself to live dependently
upon another, and makes him act for another, not for himself; and there-
fore meets not with any one principle in man to shew it countenance : ' No
good thing dwells in the flesh,' Rom. vii. 18. There may be some motions
lighting there, as a fly upon a man's face ; but they have no settled abode,
and spring not up from nature. If the apostle, who was renewed, found an
unfitness in himself to do that which was good, how great is that unfitness
in a mere natural will, which is wholly under the power of the flesh, and
hath no principle in it correspondent to spiritual truth, to renew itself!
If this regeneration had any foundation in nature, it would be then in most
men that hear the gospel, because there is not a general contradiction in men
to those things which are natural ; but since there is no good thing dwells
in any flesh, how can it be fit of itself to be raised into a conformity to God,
which is the highest pitch of the creature's excellency? The Scripture
represents us not as earth, which is fit to suck in showers from heaven ;
but as stones, which are only moistened in the superficies by the rain, but
John E 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 175
answers not the intendment of it. Adamants are unfit to receive impres-
sions ; and the best natural heart is no better, like a stone, cold and hard.
The soul with its faculties is like a bird with its wings, but clogged with
slime and clay, unfit to fly. A barren wilderness is absolutely unfit to make
a pleasant and fruitful garden. There is a contractedness of the heart till
God enlarge and open it, and that in the best nature. Acts xvi. 14, Lydia,
it is said, worshipped God ; there was religion in her, yet the Lord opened
her heart for the gospel. Can anything be more indisposed than a fountain
that is alway bubbling up poison ? So is the heart of man, Gen. vi. 5.
The least imagination rising up in the heart is evil, and can be no better,
since the heart itself is a mass of venom. If the renewed natures find so
much indisposition in the progress of sanctification, though their sails be
filled with grace, how great must it be where corrupt nature only sits at the
stern ! As when Satan came to tempt our Saviour he found nothing in him,
no touchwood in his nature to take fire by a temptation, so when the Spirit
comes, he finds no tinder in man to receive readily any spark of grace.
This unfitness is in the best mere nature, that seems to have but a drop of
corruption : a drop of water is as unfit to ascend as a greater quantity.
2. There is not only an unfitness, but an unwillingness. A senseless slug-
gishness and drowsiness of soul, loath to be moved. No man doth readily
hold out his arms to embrace the tenders of the gospel. What folding of the
arms ! yet a little more slumber, a little more sin. Man is a mere darkness
before his effectual calling : ' Who hath called us out of darkness,' 1 Peter
ii. 9. His understanding is darkened ; the will cannot embrace a thing
offered, unless it have powerful arguments to persuade it of the goodness of
that thing which is offered; which arguments are modelled in the under-
standing, but that being darkened, hath wrong notions of divine things,
therefore cannot represent them to the will to be pursued and followed.
Adam's running away from God to hide himself, after the loss of his original
righteousness, discovers how unwilling man is to implore God's favour.
How deplored is the condition of man by sin ! since we find not one prayer
put up by Adam, nor can we suppose any till the promise of recovery wa3
made, though he was sensible of his nakedness, and haunted by his con-
science : ' I was afraid, because I was naked : and I hid myself,' Gen. iii. 10.
He had no mind, no heart, to turn suppliant unto God ; he runs from God,
and when God finds him out, instead of begging pardon by humble prayer,
he stands upon his justification, accuseth God to be the cause by giving him
the woman, by whose persuasion he was induced to sin. What glass will
better discover the good will of nature to God than the first motions after
the fall !
3. There is not only an unfitness and unwillingness, but an affection to
something contrary to the gospel. The nature of outward objects is such,
that they attract the sensitive appetite, corrupted by sin, to prefer them
before that which is more excellent ; the heart is forestalled by an inordinate
love of the world, and a pleasure in unrighteousness : 2 Thes. ii. 12, they
' believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness ' ('E-jdoKyiaavng),
a singular pleasure. Where the heart and the devil agree so well, what liking
can there be to God or his will ? Where the amity between sin and the
soul is so great, that sin is self, and self is sin, how can so delightful a friend
be discarded, to receive one he thinks his enemy! This weakness ariseth
from a love to something different or contrary to what is proposed.* When
a man is so tied to that object which he loves that he minds not that con-
trary object which is revealed by a fit light, as a man that hath his eyes or
* Testard. de Grat. thes. cli.
176 chabnock's works. [John I. 13.
his heart fixed upon a fair picture, cannot observe many things that occur
about him ; or if he doth consider it, he is taken so much with the things he
loves, tbat he seems to hate the other; that though he doth count it good,
yet compared with what he loved before, he apprehends it as evil, and judges
it evil, merely by the error of his mind, — a practical, affected, and voluntary
ignorance. So though a man may sometimes judge that there is a goodness
in the gospel and the things proposed, yet his affection to other pleasures,
which he prefers before the gospel, causes him to shake off any thoughts of
compliance with it. Now, all natural men in the irons of sin are not weary
but in love with their fetters, and prize their slavery as if it were the most
glorious liberty.
4. There is not only unfitness, and unwillingness, and a contrary affection
to the gospel, but according to the degrees of this affection to other things,
there is a strong aversion and enmity to the tenders of the gospel. This
enmity is more or less in the heart of every unrenewed man ; though in some
it is more restrained and kept down by education, yet it will appear more or
less upon the approaches of grace, which is contrary to nature. As a spark
as well as a flame will burn, though one hath less heat than the other, there
is the. same nature, the same seminal principles in all. The carnal mind,
let it be never so well flourished by education, is enmity to God ; and there-
fore ' unable,' because unwilling, ' to be subject to the law,' Rom. viii. 7.
By nature he is of the devil's party, and hath no mind the castle of his heart
should ever come into the hands of the right owner. It is in every faculty.
Not one part of the soul will make a mutiny within against sin, or take
part with God when he comes to lay siege to it ; when he ' stretches out his
hands,' he meets with a 'rebellious and gainsaying people,' Rom. x. 21. It
can converse with anything but God, look with delight upon anything but
that which is the only true object of delight. It can have no desire to have
that law writ in his heart whose characters he hates. All the expressions
in the Scripture denoting the work of grace, import man's distaste of it ; it
is to deny self, crucify the flesh. What man hath not an aversion to deny
what is dearest to him, his self; to crucify what is incorporated with him,
his Isaac, his flesh ? The bent of a natural heart, and the design of the
gospel, which is to lay man as low as the dust, can never agree. A corrupt
heart, and the propositions of grace, meet together as fire and water, with
hissing.* The language of man, at the proposals of the gospel, is much like
that of the devils, ' What have we to do with thee ? Art thou come to
destroy us ?' Luke iv. 34.
5. This aversion proceeds on to a resistance. No rebels were ever stouter
against their prince than an unrenewed soul against the Spirit of God : not a
moment without arms in his hand ; he acts in defence of sin, and resistance
of grace, and combats with the Spirit as his deadly enemy : ' You always
resist the Holy Ghost ; as your fathers did, so do ye,' Acts vii. 51. The
animosity runs in the whole blood of nature ; neither the breathings of love,
nor the thunderings of threatenings, are listened unto. All natural men are
hewed out of one quarry of stone. The highest rock and the hardest ada-
mant may be dissolved with less pains than the heart of man ; they all, like
a stone, resist the force of the hammer, and fly back upon it. All the
faculties are full of this resistance : the mind, with stout reasoning, gives a
repulse to grace ; the imagination harbours foolish conceits of it ; in the
heart, hardness and refusing to hear ; in the affections, disgust and displea-
sure with God's ways, disaffection to his interest ; the heart is locked, and
will not of itself shoot one bolt to let the King of glory enter. What party is
* Stoughton, Preacher's Dignity, p. 72.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 177
like to be made for God, by bare nature tbus possessed ? Nature indeed
doth wbat it can, though it cannot do what it would ; for though it resist the
outward means and inward motions, yet it cannot efficaciously resist the
determining grace of God, any more than the matter of the creation could
resist the all-powerful voice of God commanding it to receive this or that
form, or Lazarus resist the receiving that life Christ conveyed to him by his
mighty word. God finds a contradiction in our wills, and we are not re-
generate because our will hath consented to the persuasions of grace ; for
that it doth not do of itself ; but the grace of God disarms our will of all that
is capable to make resistance, and determines it to accept and rejoice in what
is offered. Nature of itself is of an unyielding temper, and removes not one
scale from the eye, nor any splinter from the stone in the heart ; for how can
we be the authors of that which we most resist and labour to destroy ?
6. Add to all this, the power of Satan in every natural man, whose interest
lies in enfeebling the creature. The devil, since his first impression upon Adam,
hath had the universal possession of nature, unless any natural man free
himself from the rank of the children of disobedience : Eph. ii. 2, ' The
spirit that now works in the children of disobedience ;' where the same word
svipys/v is used for the acting of Satan, and likewise for the acting of sin, in
Rom. vii. 5, as it is for the acting of the Spirit, Philip, ii. 13. In whom he
works as a spirit as powerfully according to his created strength, as the Holy
Ghost works in the children of obedience. As the Spirit fills the soul with
gracious habits to move freely in God's ways, so Satan fills the soul (as much
as in him lies) with sinful habits, as so many chains to keep it under his
own dominion. He cannot indeed work immediately upon the will, but he
uses all the skill and power that he hath to keep men captive for the per-
formance of his own pleasure : 2 Tim. ii. 26, ' Who are taken captive by him
at his will,' or for his will, 'Eig to sxiivou 3s/.j],aa. It is in that place a dread-
ful judgment which God gives some men up to for opposing the gospel, tak-
ing away his restraints, both from the devil and their own hearts ; but more
or less he works in every one that opposeth the gospel, which every unrenewed
man under the preaching of the gospel doth ; he is the strong man that
keeps the palace, Luke xi. 21. Can the will of man make a surrender of
it, at God's demand, in spite of his governor ? What power have we to throw
off these shackles he loads us with ? We are as weak in his hand as birds in
a fowler's. What will have we, since we are his willing slaves ? The darkness
of nature is never like by its own free motion to disagree with the prince of
darkness, without an overpowering grace, able to contest with the lord as
well as the slave ; for by the fall he is become prince of the lower creation,
and holds it in chains too strong for weakness to break. How great, then, is
man's inability ! How unreasonable is it to think that the will of man,
possessed with such unfitness, unwillingness, affection to other things, aver-
sion to the gospel, resistance of it, and in the devil's net, can of itself do any-
thing towards its recovery, from that it counts no disease, or to turn to that
which it accounts its burden ? If unspotted and sound nature did not pre-
serve Adam in innocency, how can filthy and crazy nature recover us from
corruption ? If it did not keep him alive when he was living, how can it
convey life to us when we have not a spark of spiritual life in us ? Man
was planted a ' noble vine,' but turned himself into ' a degenerate plant ;'
nothing that hath decayed can by its own strength recover itself, because it
hath lost that strength whereby it could only preserve itself.
1. Man cannot prepare himself for grace.
2. He cannot produce it.
178 chaknock's works. [John I. 13.
3. He cannot co-operate with God in the first work.
4. He cannot preserve it.
5. He cannot actuate it.
1. Man cannot prepare himself for the new birth.
I shall premise a few things for the better understanding of this,
(1.) Man hath a subjective capacity for grace above any other creature in
the inferior world ; and this is a kind of natural preparation which other crea-
tures have not. A capacity in regard of the powers of the soul, though not
in respect of the present disposition of them. A stone or a beast are not
capable of habits of grace, no more than of habits of sin, because they want
rational natures, which are the proper seats of both. Our Saviour did not raise
trees or stones to life, though he had the same power to do that as he had to
raise stones to be children to Abraham ; but he raised them that had bodies
prepared, in part, for a receptacle of a soul. As there is a more immediate
subjective capacity in a man newly dead for the reception of life upon a
new infusion of the soul, because he hath all the members already formed,
which is not in one whose body is mouldered into dust, and hath not one
member organised fit for the acting of a rational soul. These faculties have
a spring of natural motion in them, therefore are capable of divine grace to
make that motion regular ; as the wheels of a clock out of order retain their
substance and their motion if their weights be wound up, but a false
motion unless the disorder of the spring be mended. Man hath an under-
standing to know, and, when it is enlightened, to know God's law ; a will
to move and run, and, when enlarged by grace, to run the ways of God's
commandments ; so that he stands in an immediate capacity to receive the
life of grace upon the breath and touch of God, which a stone doth not, not
the most sparkling jewel any more than the meanest pebble ; for in this it
is necessary rational faculties should be put as a foundation of spiritual
motion. Though the soul be thus capable as a subject to receive the grace
of God, yet it is not therefore capable, as an agent, to prepare itself for it
or produce it ; as a piece of marble is potentially capable of being the
king's statue, but not to prepare itself by hewing off its superfluous parts,
or to raise itself into such a figure. If there were not a rational nature,
there were nothing immediately to be wrought upon. If there be not a
wise agent and an omnipotent hand, there were nothing to work upon it.
(2.) Besides this passive capacity, there are more immediate prepara-
tions. The soul, as rational, is capable to receive the truths of God ; but
as the heart is stony, it is incapable to receive the impressions of those
truths. A stone, as it is a corporeal substance, is capable to receive the
drops of rain in its cavities ; but because of its hardness is incapable to
suck it in, and be moistened inwardly thereby, unless it be softened. Wax
hath a capacity to receive the impression of the seal, but it must be made
pliable by some external agent to that purpose. The soul must be beaten
down by conviction before it be raised up by regeneration ; there must be
some apprehensions of the necessity of it. Yet sometimes the work of
regeneration follows so close upon the heels of these precious preparations,
that both must be acknowledged to be the work of one and the same hand.
Paul on the sudden was struck down, and in a moment there is both an
acknowledgment of the authority of Christ, and a submission to his will,
when he said, ' Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? ' Acts ix. 6. The
preparation of the subject is necessary, but this preparation may be at the
same time with the conveyance of the divine nature : as a warm seal may
both prepare the hard wax, and convey the image to it, by one and the
same touch.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneeation. 179
(3.) Though some things which man may do by common grace may be
said in some sort to be preparations, yet they are not formally so, as that
there is an absolute causal connection between such preparations and re-
generation. They are not causa, dispositive of grace, not disposing causes
of grace. Grace is all in a way of reception by the soul, not of action from
the soul. The highest morality in the world is not necessary to the first
infusion of the divine nature. Mary Magdalene was far from the one, yet
received the other. If there were anything in the subject that was the
cause of it, the tenderest and softest dispositions would be wrought upon,
and the most intelligent men would soonest receive the gospel. Though we
see them sometimes renewed, yet many times the roughest tempers are
seized upon by grace ; and the most unlikely soils for fructifying God plants
his grace in, wherein there could be no preparations before. It is not with
grace as it is with fire, which gives as much heat to a stone as to a piece of
wood ; but the wood is sooner heated than the stone, because it is naturally
disposed, by the softness and porousness of its parts, to receive the heat.
Moral nature seems to be a preparation for grace ; if it be so, it is not a
cause howsoever of grace, for then the most moral person would be soonest
gracious, and more eminently gracious after his renewal, and none of the rub-
bish and dregs of the world would ever be made fit for the heavenly build-
ing. There seems to be a fitness in morality for the receiving special grace,
because the violence and tumultuousness of sin is in some measure appeased,
the flame and sparks of it allayed, and the body of death' lies more quiet in
them, and the principles cherished by them bear some testimony to the
holiness of the precepts. But though it seems to set men at a greater near-
ness to the kingdom of God, yet with all its own strength it cannot bring
the kingdom of God into the heart, unless the Spirit opens the lock. Yea,
sometimes it sets a man further from the kingdom of God, as being a great
enemy to the righteousness of the gospel, both imputed and inherent, which
is the crown of the gospel : to imputed, as standing upon a righteousness of
their own, and conceiving no need of any other; to inherent, as acting their
seeming holiness neither upon gospel principles, nor for gospel ends, but in
self-reflections and self-applauses. What may seem preparations to us in
matters of moral life, may in the root be much distant and vastly asunder
from grace ; as a divine * of our own illustrates it, two mountains whose
tops seem near together may in the bottom be many miles asunder. The
foundation of that which looks like a preparation may be laid in the very
gall of bitterness ; as Simon Magus desiring the gift of the Holy Ghost, but
from the covetousness of his heart. Other operations upon the soul which
seem to be nearer preparations, as convictions, do not infer grace ; for the
heart, as a field, may be ploughed by terrors, and yet not sown by any
good seed. Planting and watering are preparations, but not the cause of
fruit ; the increase depends upon God.
(4.) There is no meritorious connection between any preparation in the
creature and regeneration. The Pelagian opinion was,f that by a generous
love of virtue we might deserve the graee of God, and the farther assistance
of the Spirit, we first (say they) put our hearts into the hands of God, that
God may incline them which way he please ; and by thus making our wills
depend on God, we merit help from God, and make ourselves worthy of him.
Whether this be the opinion of any now, I know not. This is to assert,
that man gives first to God, and then God to man in way of requital. What
son can merit to be born ? What desert before being ? Nothing can be
pre-existent in the son which merits generation by the father. The fair hand
* Mr Burgess. t Vossi. Hist. Pelag. lib. 3, par. 2, Thcs. 12, page 349.
180 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
of moral nature can no more induce God to confer on man the state of grace,
than the deed of conveyance of a manor, fairly drawn, can dispose the lord
to pass it away.* In what part of Scripture hath God indulged mere nature
with any promise of adding grace upon the improvements of natural abilities ?
Whatsoever conditional promise there is, supposeth some grace superior to
nature in the subject as the condition of it. We do not find that God hath
made himself a debtor to any preparation of the creature.
But there is no obligation on God by anything that may look like a pre-
paration in man. For,
[1.] If man can lay any obligation on God, it must be by some act in all
parts his own, for which he is not in the least obliged to God. Thinking is
the lowest step in the ladder of preparation. It is the first act of the
creature in any rational production, yet this the apostle doth remove from
man, as in every part of it his own act : 2 Cor. iii. 5, ' Not that we are
sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency
is of God.' The word signifies reasoning. No rational act can be done with-
out reasoning ; this is not purely our own. We have no sufficiency of our-
selves, as of ourselves, originally and radically of ourselves, as if we were
the author of that sufficiency, either naturally or meritoriously. And Calvin
observes that the word is not avrapxua but rxavorjjs, not a self-ability, but
an aptitude or fitness to any gracious thought. How can we oblige him by
any act, since, in every part of it, it is from him, not from ourselves ? For
as thinking is the first requisite, so it is perpetually requisite to the progress
of any rational act, so that every thought in any act, and the whole progress,
wherein there must be a whole flood of thoughts, is from the sufficiency of
God. We cannot oblige God after grace, much less before, for when grace
is given there must be constant effluxes of grace from God to maintain it ;
and the acts of grace in us are but a second grace of God. How can we
then oblige him by that which is not ours, either in the original or improve-
ment ? If when a man hath given to another a rich gift he must also give
him power to preserve it, and wisdom to improve it, the person cannot be
said by his improvement of it to oblige the first donor. What hath any man
that he hath not received ? 1 Cor. iv. 7. The apostle excludes everything
in us from the name of a donation to God. If there be no one thing but is
received from God, then no preparation to grace but is received from him.
The obligation then lies upon the receiver, not upon the donor. But may
we not oblige God by the improvement of such a gift ? The apostle includes
everything, challengeth him to name any one thing which was not received,
which will contain improvements as well as preparations. If we have power
to improve it, wisdom to improve it, hearts and opportunities to improve it,
all these are by way of reception from God.
[2.] If man can lay any obligation upon God, it must be by some pure,
spotless act. This cannot be ; no pure act can spring from man. God hath
taken an exact survey of the whole world in its dark and fallen state, and
could not, among those multitudes of acts which spring from the will of man,
find one piece of beauty, one particle of the divine image, for he hath pro-
nounced this sentence upon them, with repetition, too, as his infallible judg-
ment : ' There is none righteous, no, not one : they are all gone out of the
way, they are together become unprofitable ; there is none that doeth good,
no, not one,' Rom. iii. 10-12. The most refined nature derived from Adam
was never found without fault ; a pure virtue is a terra incognita. The pro-
ductions of nature are always evil. If not one action be fully good in the
nature of man, what meritoriousness can there be in any preparation of
* Scrivener's Course of Divinity, Part i., Book i., c. 15, page 52.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 181
nature for the grace of God ? Can the clearest virtue that ever was since
Adam oblige God to pardon its own defects, that is, the defects of that very
act of virtue ? Much less can it challenge a higher degree of grace to be
transmitted to it.
[3.] If any preparation were our own, and were pure, yet being natural,
how could it oblige God to give a supernatural grace ? If there be anything
of meritoriousness, it is only something of the same kind with the work in a
greater degree, but there is no proportion between natural acts and super-
natural grace. There is no one scripture, or one example, declaring grace
to be given as a reward to mere nature, or any act of nature. God indeed,
out of his infinite righteousness, and equity, and goodness, hath rewarded
some moral acts with some worldly advantages, or the withdrawing some
judgments threatened, as Ahab's reprieve from judgment upon his humilia-
tion, 1 Kings xsi. 27, 29 ; and the temporary pardon to Nineveh, upon their
submission to the prophet's threatenings, Jonah iii. 8-10. But what obli-
gation lies upon God to reward men doing thus with superadditions of grace ?
for there is no proportion between such a moral act and so excellent a reward.
We may as well say that a coal by glowing and sparkling may merit' to be-
come a star : or that the orderly laying the wood and sacrifice upon the altar
might merit the descent of fire from heaven to kindle it.
[4.] If there was any obligation on God, by any preparations of nature,
then such acts would be always followed with renewing grace. There would
be an obligation on God's righteousness to bestow it. And if it should be
denied, the creature might accuse God of a failure in justice, because he
gave not what was due. God sure would observe that rule of justice which
he prescribes to man, not to detain the wages of a hireling, no, not for a night.
Were grace a debt upon the works of nature, God were then obliged not only
to pay it, but pay it speedily, it being exact righteousness so to do. But we
see the contrary. Publicans and harlots are raised and beautified, while
pharisees lie buried in the ruins of nature. These preparations are many
times without perfection. The pangs of conviction resolve sometimes into
a return to the old vomit, and make no progress in a state of life and grace.
The apostle's rule will hold true in the whole compass of the work, Rom.
vi. 11, ' If it be of works, then it is no more grace.' So much as is ascribed
to any work or preparation by the creature, so much is taken from the glory
of grace, and would make God not the author, but assistant, and that too by
obligation, not by grace.
[5.] From this it follows, that man doth not prepare himself by any act
of his will, without the grace of God. What preparation can he make, who is
so powerfully possessed by corrupted habits, which have got so great an em-
pire over him, struck their roots to the very bottom of his soul, entrenched
themselves in the works of custom, that if he goes about to pull up one, his
arm shakes and his heart faints ? How strongly do these rooted habits re-
sist the power of grace ! How much more easily do they resist the weakness
of nature in confederacy with them ! What is said of the remnant of Jacob
as a ' dew from the Lord,' as ' the showers upon the grass,' that it ' tarneth
not for man, nor waits for the sons of men,' Micah v. 7, may be said of the
grace of God ; it waits not for the preparations and dispositions of the crea-
ture, but prevents them. It is a pure gift ; though we are active with it, yet
we are wholly indisposed for it. We can no more prepare ourselves to shine
as stars in the world, than a dunghill can to shine -as a sun in heaven. What
preparations doth God wait for in the heart of an infant when he sanctifies
it? If ' without Christ we can do nothing,' John xv. 5, then no prepara-
tions without Christ; for they are something, and very considerable too.
182 chaenock's woeks. [John I. 13.
There is no foundation to think there should be any preparation in the crea-
ture, as of the creature.
First, The first promise of redemption and regeneration intimates no such
thing in man to either of them : Gen. iii. 15, ' I will put enmity,' &c. The
putting enmity into man against Satan is promised by God as his own work.
There was a friendship struck up, a confederacy made, the devil entertained
as a counsellor ; God would now break this league, he only puts enmity into
the heart against Satan : < It shall bruise thy head,' &c. The bruising the
serpent's head is wholly the act of Christ. It, not the man or the woman,
but the promised seed. As there were no preparations in the creature to
that which Christ acted in the flesh, so there are no preparations in that
creature for what Christ is to do in his Spirit. He bruised Satan in his flesh
upon the cross without any preparations in the creature ; and so he bruiseth
Satan in the heart, by his Spirit, without any preparations on the creature's
part. For anything I see, had man in the state of innocency been sensible
that his dependency, as to any good, and motion to good, ought to be upon
God, and he to have waited upon God for his change and confirmation, he
might have stood ; but when he would practically assert the liberty of his
own will in a way of indifl'erency to good and evil, he fell. And by the way,
those that assert the freedom of their own will naturally, without the grace
of God, either common or special, seem to me to justify Adam's first affected
independency of God.
Secondly, God is as much in the new creation as he was in the old. Not
only the creation of the matter, but the preparation of it to receive the form,
was from God ; neither the matter, nor any part of it, prepared itself. If
nothing prepared itself to be a creature, how can anything prepare itself to be
a gracious creature, since to be a new creature is more than to be a creature ;
and every preparation to be a new creature is more than any preparation to
be a creature ? The new creation differs, I must confess, from the old crea-
tion ; but it is such a difference which makes it rather harder than easier.
First, The object of the old creation was nothing, the object of the new is
something ; but a thing that hath no more active disposition to receive a new
form, than nothing had.*
Secondly, The object of the first creation was a simple and pure privation ;
the object of the second is a contrary form, which resists the work of God :
there was only an action of creation in the first, there is an action of de-
struction in the second ; the destruction of the old form and the creation
of a new. Is it likely that any nature would voluntarily prepare itself for its
own destruction? God in the first creation found no disposition in the sub-
ject to entertain a form ; here he finds a contrary disposition to resist the form.
Thirdly, What preparation had any of those we read of in Scripture from
themselves ? What disposition had Paul, when he was struck down with a
heart fuller of actual enmity than he had at his birth ? Did the apostles
expect any call from their nets, or set themselves in a readiness before they
heard that call ? A voice from Christ was attended with a divine touch or
power upon their hearts ; both the preparation and the motion itself took
birth together. And what preparations are there in Scripture, but are attri-
buted unto God ? If a conviction be thorough and full, and consequently a
preparation, it must refer to that Spirit which our Saviour asserts to be the
principal cause of it, John xvi. 8, 9, ' When he is come,' that is, the Com-
forter, ' he will reprove the world of sin.' It is laid wholly upon this, as
the end of the almighty Spirit's coming, whereby it is not likely men would
be convinced without him. Is there any desire or prayer for it ? Even this,
* Daiile.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 183
if true, is from the Holy Ghost ; ' no man can call Christ Lord, but by the
Holy Ghost,' 1 Cor. xii. 3. Did any of those our Saviour cured of bodily
infirmities, prepare themselves for that cure ? Neither can any man prepare
himself for his spiritual cure.
Fourthly, What thing in all the records of nature ever prepared itself for
a change ? All preparations in matter for receiving any form arise not from
the matter itself, but from some other active principle, or the new form in
part introduced, which by degrees expels the old ; as in water, when heat
comes in the place of cold, the preparation is not from the water, but from
the new quality introducing itself. The grace of God is to the soul as form
is to matter. The body is formed in the womb, for the reception of the
soul, but not by the embryo, but by the formative virtue of the parent,
fashioning the parts of the body to make it a fit lodging for the soul ; or, as
some think, the soul itself, as the bee, fashions its own cell ; but howsoever
it is not from itself. The preparations of Lazarus to rise were from the
voice of Christ, not from the stinking body of Lazarus. The nature of all
is alike. That one lute is better prepared for an harmonious touch, is from
the musician's skill, not any art of its own. If one man of the same nature
with another be endued with rich morals, it is from the common grace of
God exciting natural light, and the common notions of fit and just; as the
reason one vine of the same kind brings forth more generous fruit than an-
other, is from the stronger influence of the sun. All nature assents to this
truth, that nothing doth prepare itself for a change.
Fifthly, If man did prepare himself for grace, it would be a disparagement
to God, it would violate the sovereignty of God. It would be derogatory to
the majesty of God to have his grace depend upon the conditions and pre-
vious preparations in the creature ; it would lay the foundations of grace in
a man's self, and impose a necessity in God to come in with further grace,
and make his actions dependent upon the actings of the creature. The be-
ginning of faith would be from us, and the supplement from God ; the work
of grace would be of him that ' wills and runs,' and not ' of God that shews
mercy,' Eom. ix. 16. It would change the whole tenor of the Scripture,
and make conversion not God's drawing of us, but our traction of God ; for
he that doth dispose himself to grace, is in some sort the cause of that
grace, as he that doth dispose the subject for such a form is in a sort the
cause of that form. If the preparations were from the will of man, man
would begin the noblest work that ever was wrought, and God would be
made no more than an attendant upon the creature's motion ; whereas the
very beginning in the will, as well as the perfection, is ascribed to God :
Philip, ii. 13, ' God works in you both to will and to do of his good plea-
sure.' God's good pleasure is the original cause of this work upon the will,
not the will's good pleasure. The work then depending on God's good plea-
sure, excludes any dependency on the will of man ; it is therefore called a
creation, to shew God's independence upon anything as to this work.
Sir/hhj, Where should this preparation begin ? in what part of the soul?
Shall it begin in the understanding ?* That hath lost the reins whereby it
governed the lower parts of the soul. Nothing is more discomposed in its
nets than that faculty. It is well compared to a charioteer or coachman
fallen from his box, and his feet entangled in the reins of the horses, which
hurry him about.f The sensitive appetite, like a wild horse, hath got the bit
between his teeth, runs about, and draws the understanding after it. In-
deed a charioteer that hath lost the government of his horses endeavours to
* Amiraut. de predest. chap. 5, p. 48.
t Chainier, Panstiat. torn. iii. lib. 4, cap. i. Thcs. 12.
184 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
remedy that violence ; he cries out, makes all resistance, hath a will to help
himself ; but the understanding is so far from resisting, that it takes pleasure
in the disorder of the passions ; it prompts the will to follow them, and this
is properly to be a servant to sin. Shall it begin in the appetite ? How can
that incline to range itself to the order of reason ? It hath no reason itself,
it submits not to the laws of reason ; it hath got the mastery of it, and hath
prescription for its dominion, of a long standing, ever since the fall. The
dominion of sin is in the understanding, will, appetite, whence all of them
are called flesh, so that all the motions of the soul depending upon them,
the slavery must needs be voluntary. Therefore neither the understanding
conceives, nor the will wills, nor the appetite desires, anything against them-
selves ; how, then, should the will, which is captivated by a corrupt under-
standing and disorderly affections, recover itself, when it must necessarily
be under the guidance of one of these jailors ? Suppose the understanding
were illuminated, are those evil habits in the will corrected barely by the
illumination of the understanding ? If they are corrected, why doth not the
will alway follow the dictate of the understanding ? But, alas ! those evil
habits determine the will to evil, as good habits determine it to good; for it
is the nature of habits to incline the faculties to those things which are suit-
able to the nature of those habits ; therefore as long as it remains under the
command of those evil inclinations, it is impossible it should pass from evil
to good. But that the will hath evil inclinations, appears by the Scripture
calling the whole man flesh ; else corruption would not be universally seated
in the soul, but only accidental in the will, from the darkness of the under-
standing. But certainly, as Adam in innocency had an habitual holy dis-
position in his will, so man, in his fall, hath a corrupt inclination in his will,
an habitual quality, whereby he drinks iniquity like water, Job xv. 16. What
power of the will can take those cords off which hold it prisoner, whereby
it must be prepared for a free motion ?
To evidence this further, we shall consider,
1. That man doth not naturally, neither can, understand the new birth.
2. He cannot desire it. Understanding and desire are necessary pre-
parations to any rational change a creature can make in itself.
1. Man cannot understand it. This is necessary to a change. What-
soever is done by the will, must be done by the impulse of some other
faculty. Sensitive appetite cannot instruct the will to this work. Sense is
not capable of reason, much less of religion, though it be the portal to
both. The will can never be moved to any good thing, unless the mind
propound it as good and amiable. The act of thinking must precede the
act of believing, for we cannot believe without thinking of what we believe.
It is less to think than understand. If we cannot, then, do that which is
less in the preparation, we cannot do that which is greater, especially when
it is impossible to will without thinking ; and thinking is a necessary means
to willing. He that cannot prepare himself for a good thought, how can
he prepare himself for a gracious habit? What ability have we to any
act of faith, when we have no ability to any thought of faith ? We can-
not by the strength of nature understand it, if we consider,
(1.) The first blot caused by sin was upon the understanding. Man
was first deceived by the sophistical reasonings of the serpent. The first
effect of sin was to spread a thick darkness upon Adam's understanding.
Though the whole house, and every beam of it, fell together, yet this faculty
was first unfastened, and brought all the rest to ruin. As soon as ever he
ceased from glorifying God as God, a darkness was brought upon his foolish
heart : Rom. i. 21, ' When they knew God, they glorified him not as God,
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 185
but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened,'
where the apostle describes the state of man in corrupt nature after his fall.
Folly first in the heart to desire the forbidden fruit, and then darkness came
upon the understanding. Their diaXoyiffpol, their reasonings, became empty
and contradictory ; tbeir primitive light departed, and darkness, as a priva-
tion, took place. What true motion can there be in the will, wben there
was so thick an obscurity in the understanding ? Where there is but a false
knowledge in the mind, there can be no true motion in the will. There
must then be a restoration of this light, before there can be any prepara-
tion to a good act of the will. Adam recovered not this light by his own
strength, no, nor by the outward declaration of the gospel in the promise ;
for no outward object proposed to the understanding confers any power upon
tbe faculty. How can it then be recovered by our strength, since we have
rather added to the scales than diminished them ? For,
(2.) Tbere is a darkness transmitted from him to the understanding of
every man by nature. The light is darkened in the heaven of tbe soul, the
more spiritual part of the mind, Isa. v. 30, as the prophet speaks in another
case. Our understandings are so closed up with the thick slime of sin, that
we cannot see the beauty of gospel truths ; ' darkness comprehends not tbe
bght,' Jobn i. 5. Though the light of the sun did shine a thousand times
brighter than it dotb, and strike upon the face and eyelids of a man with the
greatest glory, yet if there be a spot upon the apple of his eye, if he wants a
seeing faculty, he can apprehend nothing of it. Hence the apostle prays for
the illumination of the understanding of the Ephesians, chap. i. 17, 18, and
that they might have ' a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge
of God.' And our Saviour tells them that they 'must be taught of God,'
John vi. 45, by an internal teaching of the Spirit, as well as by himself in
an oral instruction. What a thick cloud was upon Nicodemus his mind,
when he discoursed with him about regeneration, who was the ablest teacher
to illustrate it to his fancy and understanding ! It is not such a darkness
as if he might understand the mysteries of heaven, if he would exert the
strength of his own reason. This would be only as a man shutting his eyes
who had a visive faculty ; but it is such a darkness as cannot be expelled
by flesh and blood, or anything arising from it : ' Flesh and blood,' saith our
Saviour to Peter, ' hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in
heaven,' Mat. xvi. 17. Flesh and blood includes everything in opposition
to God. Our Saviour had externally owned himself, in the face of the Jews,
to be the Messiah, the Son of God ; but besides this, there was an inward
illumination granted to Peter, for the apprehending and embracing so great
a truth. There is not only a darkness upon the minds of those who have
no outward revelation of the will of God in Christ, but upon those who
sire in the midst of the sunbeams : Deut. xxix., ' Yet the Lord hath not
given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this
day.' They wanted not the beams. No people in the world had the or-
dinances of God besides them ; but they wanted an organ fitted to receive
and use them, which was not in their power, but is mentioned as the gift
of God. God promises to make his people to know his ways. What needs
that, if they could know them without him ? We have indeed the light
of the gospel, we have also a faculty, but without an eye disposed for the
light, we enjoy no benefit by it. Now who ever heard that darkness could
prepare itself for its own expulsion ? It cannot comprehend the light, much
less prepare for the reception of it. Who ever heard of one born blind, in a
capacity to prepare himself for sight ? We are blind in naturals, much more
in spirituals. The most polished reasons among the heathens, both for
186 chaknock's works. [John I. 13.
knowledge in naturals and prudence in civil affairs, doated, and with all their
wisdom knew not God.
(3.) There is an unsuitableness and a contrariety in the mind of man to
the gospel, which is the instrument of regeneration. There is a mighty-
distance between the spiritual object and the natural faculty. The under-
standing, though never so well furnished with natural stuff, is but natural,
and flesh ; the object is supernatural and spiritual ; therefore the richest
mere nature can no more attain to the knowledge of spiritual things, than
the clearest sense can attain to the knowledge of rational. Though every
man « by nature hath the things contained in the law,' Rom. ii. 14, 15, yet
no man hath by nature the things contained in the gospel. The gospel hath
not the same advantage in the hearts of men as the law hath, for it finds
nothing of kin to it. Though a natural heart hath some broken pieces of
the law of God deposited in it, yet there is not the least syllable of Christ or
regeneration writ in the mind by the hand of nature. The understanding
therefore naturally cannot prepare itself for the reception of the gospel, be-
cause it hath not any principle in it which suits the doctrine of it. It seems
a ridiculous thing to the wisest carnalist, who receives not the things of God,
because, out of the pride of natural wisdom, he counts them foolishness,
1 Cor. ii. 14. Hence not many wise are renewed in their minds. Had the
gospel truth been as agreeable to reason as the other common notions im-
printed in man, it would have been preserved in the world longer than it
was, since, without question, Adam did communicate to his posterity the
notion of a redeemer, which did soon die among them, because not consonant
to that reason they had derived by nature from Adam. It was a knowledge
given to Adam by revelation, not imprinted in his nature by creation. Be-
sides, there is a contrariety in the mind to the truth of the gospel. As we
say of liberty, so of enmity. Though it be formally in the will, yet it is
radically in the understanding. The mind is the seat of those hostile prin-
ciples which act the will against God, Rom. viii. 7. The mind of man re-
gards the things of God as unpleasant, and an intolerable yoke and hard
bridle. Let light, the most excellent thing in the world, glare upon a man
that hath sore eyes, he will turn away from it, or shut his eyes against it ;
tor though he understands the worth of it, yet it hath a quality offensive to
him. So is the gospel to those notions settled in the distempered mind.
Men give not credit to the declarations of the gospel ; ' Who hath believed
our report ?' hath been the voice of God's messengers in all ages, Isa. liii. 1.
No man, unless known by all never to speak truth, but is more believed
than the God of infallible and unerring truth ! What principles, then, are
there in the understanding to prepare it for the reception of that which is so
contrary to its ancient inmates ?
(4.) Besides this, the natural levity of the understanding doth incapacitate
it to prepare itself. It is with the understanding as with a line, the farther
it is stretched out the weaker and more wavering it is. So is the under-
standing, being at a distance from God. How do vain thoughts intrude into
the mind ! No man can keep a door locked against them. We feel them
rushing upon us while we endeavour to avoid them. We are confounded
and overwhelmed by them, and drawn to things against our own resolutions.
Man hath not the command of his own heart, so much as to think steadily
of a divine object. How can he then prepare his own heart, when he cannot
without grace fix in any holy meditation which is necessary for the renewal
of it, since nothing is more discomposed in its acts than the mind of man,
which is always dancing about,' like cork in the water, or feathers in the air ?
Whence should come any preparation to good order, but by some super-
John I. 13. "I the efficient of regeneration. 187
natural ballast, to establish it from fluctuating ? Tbis disease every man is
sensible of, and whatsoever disease is inherent in nature cannot be cured by
any preparations by that nature which is wholly overgrown with it.
(5.) Hence it follows that a natural mind hath no right notion of grace.
To the right notion of a thing is required suitableness, pleasure, and a fixed-
ness of the mind upon it. A natural mind wants all these. How can it
then prepare itself for that which it hath no knowledge of ? And without
knowledge it cannot commend it to the will. The apostle asserts a plain
cannot in this business : 1 Cor. ii. 14, ' He cannot know them, because they
are spiritually discerned.' Being destitute of the Spirit, they cannot discern
the things of the Spirit. Sense can discern things sensibly, not rationally.
Reason can discern things rationally, but not spiritually. The light where-
by a natural man judges of the things of the gospel is a star-light or a moon-
light, which gives not a distinct view of the object. The evil disposition
must be removed from the mind, before the object be entertained according
to its worth. As if any natural object have such excellent qualities in it,
that if it be embraced it will draw the will and affections alter it ; yet if the
mind be ill-disposed, and doth not judge of the object according to the merit
of it, it will refuse it. Offer a man gold who understands not the worth of
gold, it will not allure him. Man with his eyes is spiritually blind, and with
his ears is spiritually deaf. So God calls the Gentiles, which were to be
brought to Christ for a restitution of their eyes : Isa. xliii. 8, ' Bring forth
the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears.' Such can no
more judge of the excellency of spiritual things than a blind man can have
regular conceptions of colours, or a deaf man of the excellency of music. * If
■ no man can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Ghost,' 1 Cor. xii. 3 ; if no
man can have a magnificent conception and speech of Christ, but by the
Spirit giving him both that conception and utterance, he cannot have a
notion of the formation of Christ in the heart without the gift and impression
of the same hand. What preparations, then, can arise from nature, when
the mind can have no conception of Christ but by the Spirit of God ?
Well, then, to conclude this. What preparations can there be in nature,
since we cannot understand the things of God, when yet we have more clearness
in our understanding to see them than we have force in our wills to love
them and embrace them ? It is in the understanding that the common
notions, which are the grounds of knowledge, are deposited. There is less
of ignorance in our understanding than of enmity in our will. The eye can
see further than the arm can reach. If therefore we cannot think or under-
stand, by all that help of common notions, without the grace of God, how
can we then prepare our wills for it, to comply with it, and renew that
faculty which is chiefly possessed with a contrariety to it ?
2. As we cannot understand it, so we cannot naturally desire it. What
is not spiritually discerned cannot spiritually be desired. Not but that ac-
cording to those unformed conceptions which men have of it by common
grace, there may be some weak velleities, but they are wishings without a
will, not desires according to the value of the thing. Mercy first breathed
on our first parents, before they breathed after that. The first motion came
from God. So soon were they turned obstinate enemies against their Crea-
tor, without any thoughts of turning suppliants, though they had not lost the
conceptions of their late integrity, which if they had, they had been wholly
insensible, without any trouble of conscience. What desires can we natur-
ally, then, have for it, who have far weaker conceptions of that happiness
than they had immediately after they lost it ? We cannot desire what we
do not apprehend. A beast cannot desire to be a man, because he hath no
188 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
conceptions of the excellency of the human nature above his own. No nature
can ever affect that which is contrary to it. No flesh can ever desire its own
crucifixion. If we seek, we shall find ; if we ask, we shall receive ; but who
first toucheth the heart to seek or to ask ? If we cannot think a good
thought of ourselves, how can we think so good a thought as a desire of re-
generation? To say, then, we can desire the new creation of ourselves,
without some kind of grace, is to assert another doctrine than what the
apostle Paul asserted to those already regenerate. The first will, which is
the necessary spring of all actions, is wrought by God, Philip, ii. 13. The
frame of man's will and desire stands to another'point : John viii. 44, ' The
lusts of your father you will do.' The best renewed man ' knows not what
to pray for as he ought,' without the instruction of the Spirit, Rom. viii. 26.
We cannot give our hearts a lift to heaven, or breathe out an unutterable
groan, without the help of an infinite Spirit. The root of man's affections
grows downward, not upward. What breathings can be expected in a soul
choked up with sin ? There was no motion of the church till ' the hand of
her beloved was put in by the hole of the door,' and made a motion in her
bowels, Cant. v. 4. The church owed no obligation to her free will
and her own predispositions. There is not a smoke in the heart to heaven
without a spark first from heaven ; not a step till God enlargeth the heart.
Velleities are from common grace, under the preaching of the word; fervent
and saving desires are from special grace, by the hand of the Spirit. So
that there are no preparations from nature to this, since both our apprehen-
sions of it and desires of it spring not out of that stock.
The second main thing is this, As man cannot prepare himself for it, so he
doth not produce and work it in himself. This is evident from the former.
If he cannot make any preparation, which is the less, he cannot cause any
actual production of it, which is the greater.
But to evidence it more, let us spend some time in this.
As it doth not depend upon the will of man in the preparation, so neither
in the production.
I shall evidence it, first, by arguments drawn from the consideration of
God.
If this work depended upon the will of man, as the first cause in the pro-
duction, it would deprive God,
1. Of his sovereign independency. If man's will were the first cause of
regeneration, God would not be the supreme independent cause in the noblest
of his works. This work is nobler than creation in respect of the price paid
for it. The world was made without the death of anything to purchase the
creation of it. But the divine image is not restored without the death of
the Son of God, every line in this new image being drawn with his blood.
Is there anything happens in the world but by the conduct and efficacy of
his providence ? Do all the motions of the heavens, the productions of
creatures, the universal events of nature, depend upon the will, power, and
wisdom of God ? And shall the soul, the most excellent of the lower crea-
tures, bearing the characters of God's wisdom and goodness upon it (the
acts of the soul in the way of religion, being the noblest acts it can produce),
he left wholly to itself in the production and management of these ? Shall
God, the supreme cause in everything else, be an inferior and secondary
cause in this affair ? It is 'not he that plants, nor he that waters, but God
that gives the increase,' 1 Cor. iii. 7. God is the first cause, upon whom
man depends in all kind of actions, much more in supernatural actions,
chiefly in the understanding and will, upon which faculties, no creature can
have any intrinsic influence to cause them to exercise their vital acts. If
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 189
the will of man were the first cause, God would be an attendant to the crea-
ture in the noblest works. God would not then be the first mover, but man.
The will willing would then be the cause of God's working, not God's work-
ing the cause of the will's willing and choice. God's working would be con-
sequent upon the will, and so the effect of the will's free motion. Man
would then be the dispositiva causa in relation to God. It would make God
the second cause, and represent him expecting the beck, and the preparations
of man, before he did exert any act. It would make God to will that which
man wills, and make God to will that which man may reject. It would
follow that God concurs not to regeneration by way of sovereignty, but by
way of concomitancy. It would not be a victorious but a precarious grace,
which is against the whole tenor of the Scripture, which represents God as
holding in his hands the first links of all second causes : Rom. xi. 36, ' For
of him, and through him, and to him, are all things.' He is the first gover-
nor of all the wills and powers of the creatures, the first cause of all motions.
He orders all, without being ordered by any. Now this is below the majesty
of God, to be conducted in his motion by the will of the creature ; to have
the purposes of his goodness brought into act by an uncertain and slippery
cause. How can it be conceived that God should put his hand to the more
ignoble works of nature, and turn over the noblest work of the new creation
to the airy will of the creature.
To conclude ; God must either be precedent in his operation to the act of
the will, or follow it. If precedent, we have what we would ; if subsequent,
then God is a mere attendant upon the motions of the creature, and a ser-
vant to wait upon man. This is to advance free will to the throne of God,
and depress God to the footstool of will ; this is to deify the creature, by
placing the crown of the sovereign independency of God on the head of
free will.
2. It puts a blot upon the wisdom of God. If God expects the deter-
mination of the will of man, whether he shall act or no, then God is disposed
by the will of man to the intention of his end. But it is very inconsistent
with that unfathomable and unerring wisdom, to have the attainment of his
end depend upon an agent wherein nothing is wrapped up but folly and mad-
ness, Eccles. ix. 3. This is to make his power depend upon weakness, and
his gracious ends towards his creature hang upon the extravagancies of one
distracted, which no wise man would be guilty of. Is God in all things else
a God of power and wisdom, working all things in number, weight, and mea-
sure, springing up every motion in the lower world, by an unblameable coun-
sel ? And shall he leave the forming of the image of his Son, wherein his
wisdom is most seen, to the slight irregular will of man, which hath neither
weight nor measure in itself ? This would make the immutable counsel of
' God depend upou the mutability of the creature ; which would be incon-
sistent with the wisdom of man, who chooseth the firmest means he can for
the conduct of his designs ; for if man wills this day, then God wills ; if
man reject it the next day, then he rejects that which God wills. So God's
will must be at uncertainty, according to the will of man. How shall his
counsel stand upon so tottering a bottom ? How shall he do all his pleasure
if it were a mere dependent upon the pleasure of the creature, contrary to
what he is pleased positively to assert : Isa. xlvi. 10, ' My counsel shall stand,
I will do all my pleasure.' The apostle doth couch these two arguments
together: Eph. i. 11, 'Who works all things according to the counsel of
his own will ;' he argues (1) from the power of God, ' who works all things,'
whereby our own works, and power, are excluded, and God asserted to be
the supreme cause of everything, in an efficacious and energetical manner,
190 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
as the word hioyih siguifies. (2.) From his wisdom, ' according to the
counsel of his own will,' wisely and justly, and therefore not according to
ours, wherein there is nothing but folly and evil. This excludes all our own
wills in the first work. Now, to assert that this beautiful image were brought
forth upon the stage of the heart by the will of man, as the first cause, would
destroy God's prerogative, and represent his operations under the conduct
of our own counsel and will, not of his own. Certainly if there be a secret
and wise Spirit of providence, running through the whole world to preserve
his honour in his works, as certainly there is, the most honourable declara-
tion of them in the heart cannot be thought to be left to the conduct of wild
and hare-brained nature.
3. If the will of man were the prime cause of regeneration, it would de-
prive God of his foreknowledge and prescience ; it would make that fore-
knowledge, which is certain and infallible, merely contingent. For if the will
of man were wholly left to its own determination, the motions of the will
were doubtful and uncertain, till the will doth determine itself ; and so God's
knowledge of them would be uncertain, for it is clear, that from a thing
wholly uncertain, there cannot arise a certain knowledge. Therefore, God
could not be said certainly to foreknow the conversion of man, if the efficacy
of grace depended upon so contingent a cause as the liberty of man's will ;
for then it might not be, as well as be ; the will might not embrace it, and
so the knowledge of God be but merely conjectural, — a knowledge unworthy
of a deity, which must be supposed to be omniscient ; a knowledge depend-
ing upon a peradventure, or at best, it is but a very likely it will be so.
This would be a debasing the deity to an opinionative knowledge, which
could not be certain, because depending upon so indetermined and wavering
a cause. God cannot know this or that man's regeneration from eternity,
but he must see it infallibly in himself willing it, or in the causes of it, irre-
sistibly producing it.* But if the efficacy of grace depends upon the will,
then God doth not certainly determine the regeneration of man. And for
God to foreknow that which he himself hath not determined, and when
nothing in the creature, nor anything in the circumstances, doth determine
it, is to make God see that (as one saith) which neither in the creature nor
in himself is to be seen.
Obj. Some may object, How doth God come to foreknow sin, for that de-
pends upon the liberty of the will ?
Ans. It would be too long to inquire into this, I shall only at present say
this, it is certain God doth foresee every sin, otherwise the evil acts of men
could not be predicted. Our Saviour could not then have foreknown what
the scribes and priests would do to him, as he doth foretell : Mat. xvi. 21,
' Christ began to tell them how many things he was to suffer of the chief
priests and scribes.' And since God cannot fail in his predictions, but they
will certainly come to pass, the hearts of the Jews could do no other thing,
supposing the prediction, than what Christ doth here foretell, for their wicked
wills would certainly determine themselves that way. And God, by a con-
currence of causes which he had linked together in his hand, orders things
so, that meeting with the corruption in their wills, their wills determine
themselves to such actions there foretold ; yet is not God therefore the author
of sin. For sin being no positive thing, cannot have an efficient, but a defi-
cient cause ; and God determines the withdrawing of his common grace, and
the ordering of such and such circumstances, and so did foresee how a free
creature, with that corruption in his heart, would determine himself in such
occasions, when involved in such circumstances. But now in the work of
* Ball of the Covenant, p. 341, 342.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 191
regeneration, outward circumstances cannot cause any determination of the
will, because those outward circumstances of grace meet with nothing in the
heart full of corruption, to take part with them, which outward circumstances
of sin do. Therefore since there can be no foresight of God in this case,
depending upon the concurrence of outward circumstances, unless there were
something in the heart which did suit them, the determination of the will
cannot proceed from them, but from God himself, willing and determining
the will by a positive influx of his grace. The determination of the will to
sin comes from within, from its natural corruption concurring with such oc-
casions, which, joining together, determine the will to it. Therefore God
foresees what a free creature will do ; but there being no principle in the will
by nature to correspond with any gracious external circumstances, it cannot
determine itself to grace, because it wants a principle of determination within
itself, the corrupt habits determining it quite otherwise. Sin proceeds not
so much from the liberty as the captivity of the will ; and God knowing
the corrupt frame, can foresee what man in such a frame will do upon occa-
sion ; as we may easily resolve that an habitual drunkard will be drunk
when he hath sensual objects placed before him.
4. Another consideration is this : to make the will of man the efficient of
his regeneration, is to make the truth of God a great uncertainty.
(1.) First, In the covenant he made with Christ. If his .having a seed
depended upon the will of man, the promise of God to give him a seed might
be null and void ; for at least it must be granted possible, that not one man
under heaven would have accepted of his terms ; and then his coming to
save had been in vain, because there was a possibility that not one man
would have embraced the salvation offered. Since the number of rejecters
of him is greater than the number of receivers, it is likely the less number,
if left to their own wills, would have followed the greater, since the preva-
lency of evil examples above good ones is every day evident. It had not
been, then, ' the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand,' Isa. liii.
10, 11, but the pleasure of man shall prosper in the hand of the will of man.
The great resolve of God, the priesthood of Christ, the design of drawing a
generation of persons out of the world to praise him, had hung upon a mere
hap-hazard and a may-be, if it had depended only on man's will ; and God
should have waited the leisure of free will, to see whether the most glorious
design that ever was laid should prosper, and whether he should have been
a God of truth, or a liar to his Son. Though our Saviour had laid the foun-
dation of our redemption in his own most precious blood, yet he must have
depended on our will for the fruits of his purchase ; it had been a great un-
certainty whether he had seen one grain of fruit for all his expense. He
might have been a king without one subject, or the destruction of one
potent enemy he came to conquer, not one sin subdued, not one devil cast
out of any soul. This might have been ; for though by God he was made a
king, yet according to the other assertion, it depended on the will of man
whether he should have one subject to own his authority ; and, if so, God
had been very unwise to enter into covenant with him, and Christ very un-
wise to come upon such grand uncertainties at the best, when it was a ques-
tion whether any one person should have enjoyed the fruits of his death.
How can it enter into any man's heart, that so great a contrivance as the
sending of Christ to be the means of salvation, with such great promises
to see the fruits of his death in a seed to serve him, should depend in
the main fruits and effects of it on any thing undetermined by the will of
God ; that so great a weight should hang upon so thin a thread as the will
of man ?
192 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
(2.) In the promises he makes to men. How could God promise that so
absolutely as he doth, Ezek. xxxvi. 26, ' A new heart will I give you,' if
this work did depend upon the will of man, which might frustrate the truth
of God in his promise ? And when God knew there was no principle in their
hearts that could rise higher than to shame and confusion, not to sa excel-
lent a work as regeneration, as is intimated, ver. 32, ' Not for your sakes do
I do this : be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, 0 house of
Israel ;' what reason was there for God to depress them to confusion, if
they had had power to renew themselves ? If this promise of God depended
not upon any thing in them in the first making, it could not depend upon
any thing in them in the full performance of it. We must either make God
a liar, or unwise, or remove any efficiency in the will of man as the first
cause. What blasphemy would it be to say, that God was so unwise as to
promise that which depended upon the power of another, whether it should
be wrought or no ; that God could not be certainly true to his word, unless
free-will assisted him !
5. It despoils God of his worship, in those two great parts of it, prayer
and praise.
(1.) Prayer. With what face can any solicit God for that grace, which he
conceives to be in his own power to have when he will ? It is a mocking of
him to desire .that strength of him, which he hath given us already, inhe-
rent in our nature. . If it were the work of our wills, it would require only
the excitation of them, not any application to God. Who begs for what he
hath ? Who desires an alms that hath thousands in his purse ? As prayer
would be a vain thing in any man that should deny a providence over-
ruling the affairs of the world, so it would be as vain a thing to call upon
God for grace, if the whole affair of regeneration were left to the conduct of
man's will. The end of God's making promises of a new heart, and a new
spirit, is to be inquired after to do it for us, Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 37. The na-
tural consequent, then, of asserting the power of our own wills, is not to call
upon God, but direct our desires to another cause, to solicit our own wills,
not God. It would not be, then, according to the language of the church,
' Turn thou us, 0 Lord, and we shall be turned ;' ' Draw me, and I will run
after thee,' Lam. v. 21, Cant. i. 4, but, I will turn to thee, and then shalt
thou be turned to me ; I will run after thee, and draw thee to myself. The
royal authority, and power of God, and his glory in granting, is the founda-
tion of prayer ; therefore the Lord's prayer is concluded with this, as an
argument to move God to grant what is asked, ' Thine is the kingdom, the
power, and the glory;' that is, thou art rich and powerful, and hast all sorts
of blessings to bestow. With what face can any one go to God with these
words in his mouth, when he ascribes the kingdom, power, and glory, in so
great a work, to his own will ? We can never pray in confidence to God
for it ; for all confidence is wrought by a consideration of the will of him we
pray to, to accomplish what we desire, and of his power to effect it. What
confidence, then, can we have in his will particularly to work it for us, if we
conceive he hath left it to our hands, as the proper work of our own wills ?
This was the ground of our Saviour's supplications, with strong cryings and
tears, that ' God was able to save him,' Heb. v. 7 : able naturally, in respect
of his power ; able morally, in respect of his truth to his promise. If God
were careless in this concern, and had cast off all from his own hands, on
the hand of free will, God might well say to any man, as he did to Moses,
' Why criest thou unto me 1 Speak to the children of Israel that they go
forward,' Exod. xiv. 15. Why cry you to me ? You may do it yourselves.
Go forward with your own wills. The natural language of man to God
John I. 13. J the efficient of regeneration. 193
would not be, Lord, let thy kingdom come, thy will be done, give me a new
heart ; but, I will have thy kingdom come, I will have thy will be done,
I will procure myself a new heart, I will change my heart of stone into a
heart of flesh.
(2.) Praise. It doth deprive God of this part of his worship also, praise
even for his greatest blessings. If our own wills did produce this work,
the greatest cause of glorying would be, not in God, but in ourselves. We
have as little ground to praise God, if it be our own work, as we have to
pray to him for it. All that can be said is, that we have ground to praise
him for the means of regeneration ; and this is no more ground than they
have that are not regenerate under the enjoyment of the same means. If
a man could give himself a natural being without God, he could be his own
creator, his own foundation ; so if he could give himself a spiritual being
without the grace of God, he would be a god to himself ; for in this case
he would really do more to his conversion than God. If God offer grace
equally to all, and the pliableness of one man's will to receive it above
another were from himself, he would then owe an obligation to himself, but
no more to God than the other that rejected it owes. The apostle, by asking
the question, ' Who hath made thee to differ ? And what hast thou that
thou didst not receive ?' 1 Cor. iv. 7 (though it be meant of a difference of
gifts, yet it is argumentum a minori), clearly implies, that what difference
there was between them and others, was not of their own planting, nor grew
up from the stock of nature. But if regeneration lte wrought by a man's
own will, it is not God that makes the difference, therefore the glory doth
not belong to him. He is the author of a general call, therefore the glory
of that pertains to him, it is true ; but yet as much from the damned that
have lived under the gospel, as from the glorified saints in heaven, because
the special entertainment of this call was not from the efficacy of God's
grace, but the liberty of man's will ; for, according to this assertion, the love
of God would be equal both to the damned and saved, and would not shine
with a fairer lustre in heaven than it doth in hell. The apostle wisheth the
Philippians to ' work out their salvation with fear and trembling ;' and en-
courageth them by this argument, because God is the author of all that good
which they do.* If the determination of the will, then, is from itself, is it
not a brave ground to glory in ourselves ? How shall any man give God the
glory of his salvation ? If it be said, God did enlighten their understandings
by the preaching of the gospel, this is an illumination common to all ; and
the reason some believe and others not, is not from the gift of God, but
from themselves ; how can we give God a peculiar praise for that wherein
there is no difference between the best and the worst of men ? But the
apostle saith, God gives us to will, that is, the operation of our will, and not
only the illumination of the understanding ; therefore, that our wills do
terminate in that which is good, we hold of God ; the apostle doth not say,
God hath given us power to will, but produced the will in us, and that of
his good pleasure. If, therefore, God work no more in one than in an-
other, there is no place for God's good pleasure, because there is no differ-
ence. Let us see with what kind of language the praise of God would be
clothed, according to the doctrine of free will.f A renewed man may say
thus : Lord, I give thee thanks, that thou hast conferred upon me a super-
natural grace ; but thou didst also give as much grace to my neighbour ; but
I added something to that which thou didst supernaturally give me ; and
* Amiraut. Scrm. in Phil, ii pp. 12, 13.
t Banncz, in 2da 2dae Qu. 10, p. 248.
VOL. ill. N
194 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
though I received no more than he did receive from thee, yet I did more
than he, since he remains in his sin, and I am regenerate ; therefore I have
no more obligation to thee and thy grace, than he that believes not ; for,
Lord, thou didst not make me diner from the other, because he had equal
gifts with me ; but I made myself to differ, because I superadded my own
wile to thy divine assistance. How much of the glory of God would be
pared off by such a half-witted praise as this ! How low would be the accla-
mations of glorified saints in heaven ! What foundation of pride in the
creature, contrary to the intendment of the gospel, which is chiefly to
humble man, if man were the cause of the most excellent work in himself !
It would write vanity in a great measure upon that excellent exhortation
of the apostle, ' Let him that glories, glory in the Lord,' 1 Cor. i. 31, since
there would be a bottom for flesh to glory in his presence, contrary to the
design of God in his works, ver. 29, which is, ' that no flesh should glory in
his presence.'
Arg. 2. The second sort of arguments is drawn from the nature and state
of man.
1. In creation. Man did not create himself; to be a new creature is
more than to be a creature. As man contributed nothing to nature, so
neither can he contribute anything to grace, any more than a passive capacity
in respect of faculties, which yet are the gift of God to him, nothing of his
own acquisition. The soul, though framed with all its faculties, is as little
able to engrave the image of God upon itself, as the body of Adam, formed with
all its parts and members, was able to infuse a living soul into itself; there
is no reason therefore to attribute our creation to God, and regeneration, the
glory and excellency of a creature, to ourselves. I know such similitudes
ought not to be strained too high ; yet when this doctrine agrees with other parts
of Scripture, we may form an argument from this metaphor of creation where-
by regeneration is expressed in Scripture. It is confessed by most, if not all,
that no creature, not an angel, can be an instrument in the very act of crea-
tion of another thing, much less the chief efficient of its own creation ; for
creation is an act of omnipotency, and an incommunicable property of the
Deity, not to be delegated to any creature. The creation of man, in a state
of such perfection as to be endued with the image of God, was a greater
work than simply the creation of his body or the essential faculties of his
soul, yea, greater than the creation of the whole world, because the attri-
butes of God did more lively appear in him, and particularly his holiness.
The restoration then of this righteousness to man, after it is lost, is a greater
work than the first creation of his body and soul, it being the same thing
with the conferring at first his original rectitude upon him. If man there-
fore could create this in his own soul after it is lost, he would do a greater
work than simply the creation of a world. Surely there is as much power
and wisdom required to the new-creating righteousness in the heart, after it
is perished, as there was in the placing it there at first ; and then it will fol-
low that none can new create it but an infinite wisdom, power, and holiness.
If man therefore can create it in itself, he must have a wisdom, power, and
holiness equal to that of God his first creator, for what could not be done by
any creature at the first conferring it, but it was necessary that it should be
a work of infinite power, cannot be done by a less power now, because the
work is every whit as great ; and no less power is requisite to a second
creation of a thing after it is perished, than was necessary to the first crea-
tion of it, since this power of creation cannot be derived to any creature. As
when life is gone from a fly, and the body of it dried and shrivelled up, all
will grant that the restoring life to this fly must be done by an omnipotent
John I. 13. J the efficient of regeneration. 195
power. The case is the same with us by nature ; spiritual life, upon the
fall, was wholly fled, no good thing dwells in our flesh, Rom. vii. 18, not
one thing spiritually good ; that which is born of the flesh is flesh, wholly
flesh in every part of it. If the making a living fly or worm is above the
power of nature, much more the creating of so glorious a fabric as grace in
the soul. Man might as well have implanted the divine image in his soul at
first, as restore it after it was lost. To ascribe such a power to man to raise
himself is a greater power than Adam had by creation, because to restore a
man's self from death to life is greater than to preserve the vital principle he
hath already, and act naturally from it.
2. In the state of innocency. Let us consider man in that, and it will
appear he is unable to renew himself. If man did not keep himself up, with
so great a stock of natural rectitude in paradise, how can he recover himself
and that stock after it is lost ? 'Man in his best estate is vanity ; all Adam
is all vanity.' * In the estate of pure nature, he is vanity in respect of his
mutability, much more vanity then in his fallen state, from the experience
of which Adam rightly called his second son Abel, vanity, Hebel, the word
used here. How soon did the breath of the serpent melt the impression
upon him ! And if he did not by his innocent will preserve that purity
which he had received, how can he by his corrupt will recover that purity
which he hath lost ? If Adam had had a will to 'preserve, he might have
stood, but in losing his will he lost his power ; if he did not maintain his
will in his rectitude, nor (as some say) could not without the grace of God,
how can he, by the mere force of his own will, restore that lost rectitude to
himself ? If an universal integrity stood in need of grace to preserve it, an
universal depravation stands in need of a more vigorous force than that of our
will to eject it. If Adam, who had no disorders in nature to rectify, did not
stand by his own will, it is not likely that we, who have strong habits to
conquer, can be restored by the strength of our own wills. What nature did
not do when it was sound, it is not likely to do a greater thing when it is
wounded. We cannot now have more power than Adam had in innocency ;
but he was not then endued with a power to regenerate himself if he should
fall, but death was pronounced, both spiritual and eternal. If temptations
corrupted him, and if he, being in a good condition, did not maintain him-
self in it, but pass from a good condition to a bad, how can we, by the only
liberty of our will, pass into a good one ? Are temptations less powerful
now than before ? f Is the devil less vigilant to take all occasions to subvert
us ? Suppose our wills were not so evil as they are, would it not be more
easy for the enemy to draw the will to himself, when it is irresolved between
two parts, when the guide of it is so easy clouded, than it was to draw
Adam's will to evil from that good to which he might readily have determined
himself? Adam had the greatest advantages human nature, in a natural
wa^, was capable of; he was created with a fulness of reason. But how
long do we converse with sense, which fastens upon temptations, before we
come to a use of reason ! i After we are come to some smatterings of reason,
and a growth in it, as we think, what whisperings and impulses to sin do
we feel ! What an easiness to embrace incentives, a deafness to contrary
admonitions ! What languishing velleities, and palsy desires at best, for that
which is good ; a mighty mist and darkness upon our understandings, irreso-
lution in our wills ? How can we with all these fetters be able of ourselves
to put ourselves into a better state, and act against nature, which is impos-
sible any creature can do but by a superior power !
* Ps. xxxix. 5. Heb., All Adam is all vanity, ^2, settled or standing.
f Amiraut. Serm. de Epi. Evangel, p. 211.
196 charnqck's works. [John I. 18.
3. Consider man also in the state of corruption.
(1.) If the will of man by nature were the cause of regeneration, it would
follow that corruption were a cause of regeneration. ' The imagination of
the heart of man is only evil, and that continually,' Gen. vi. 5. That which
is evil, therefore, cannot be the cause of that which is man's greatest happi-
ness. All actions are according to those innate qualities and habits which
the agent hath ; all corrupted things act no otherwise than corruptedly, be-
cause every act hath no more in it than what the principle, which is the
spring of the action, conveys to it. If the heart, then, be wicked, it cannot
do anything but what is wicked, and a wicked act can never be the founda-
tion of regeneration. If a corrupt man, as corrupt, can be the cause of
regeneration, then he can act graciously, not only without a gracious habit,
but by and from a corrupt habit. If the acts are corrupt, the product of
them must be corrupt, for man, in renewing himself, must act either as cor-
rupt or good. If as good, then he was renewed before he set about the
renewing himself. The question will then be the same, How came he by
that restoration to goodness ? If as corrupt, then corruption is the spring
of the noblest happiness of the creature. It would then follow that a man
can perform acts of life before he lives ; that vital acts may be exerted by
dead principles ; that sanctification can grow up from an unsanctified root ;
and that the will, with its old corruption, can be the cause of its elevation
to another state ; and that the old creature can perform a new creature's
act before it be a new creature. Then a carnal mind, while it is carnal,
may be subject to the law of God, which the Scriptures say it cannot be,
Rom. viii. 7. Then those that are in the flesh may please God in an high
manner, by the renewing themselves. This would be more strange than if
we should see a crab-tree bring forth pomegranates ; a corrupt tree would
then bring forth good fruit, and that the highest fruit, contrary to our
Saviour's assertion, Mat. vii. 18. It would follow that the stony heart
would be the cause of the fleshly, and so an effect would rise from a cause
quite contrary to it, and the complying principle in man be wrought by the
resisting principle. It is as much as if the fire should cool, and the water
burn, by their own innate qualities. If the will of man corrupted be the
cause of principles of grace, then the old creature brings forth the new.*
The image of the devil is the cause of producing the divine nature, and hell
the cause of an heavenly principle. It would follow that an act of one kind
can be produced by an habit of a contrary nature, and that a man can act
graciously before he be gracious. Before grace, no action is essentially
good, because there wants a gracious principle, whence it must receive its
denomination as good. One act, then, of corrupted man, or a multitude of
acts, cannot be the cause of grace, because they all centre in that denomina-
tion of evil. How the acts of the will, whereof not one can be called good
till the will hath a good principle, can produce so noble a work and habit as
grace is, is not easily intelligible. Our being engrafted into the good olive
tree is contrary to nature, Rom. xi. 24. Nature cannot naturally contribute
to that which is opposite to it. We are wild by nature ; our new implanta-
tion is contrary to nature. A good nature, therefore, cannot be the natural
effect of a wild nature.
(2.) Since corruption, the power of man is mighty weak in naturals and
morals, much more certainly in spirituals.
[1.] In naturals. No natural body that lies under a grievous disease can
repair itself by its own power without some external assistance. A wounded
member must be beholding to oils and plants for a cure. No man can cast
* rolhill of the Decrees, p. 373, 374.
John I. 13.] the efficient of eegeneration. 197
out a disease when he will. He may be sick when he will, by eating that
which is contrary to nature ; but the cure doth not depend upon his will,
but upon physic. Outward medicines must recover that which he lost by
his own wilfulness. The will indeed is conditio sine qua won; there must be
a will to use the means, or a man must be forced to use them, as we deal
with madmen and children which are unwilling to take physic. But who
ever heard of a man that could cure himself by his own will without the
application of medicines ? How can the soul then be restored to its vital
integrity, by its own force ? How can it change its own temper without
some superior power operating upon nature ? ' Man is like a wild ass's
colt,' Job xi. 12. What wild creature ever tamed itself? If any say
that the will of man, by the use of outward ordinances, can cure itself, it
is answered, Those ordinances are operative, not in a physical but moral
way, and therefore such an efficiency as is in plants and drugs cannot be ex-
pected from them. There must be an operation of our own wills to make
them efficacious. But what shall cure the will where the disease principally
lies, and the love of the disease is seated ? Who shall remove the beloved
inclination from the will ? Can nature cast out nature, or Satan cast out
Satan ? What can make us willing ? When we are made willing, the cure
is half wrought, as, when a madman is willing to be cured of his infirmity,
you can hardly count him any longer mad. The evil principles in the will
will never aim at their own destruction. If this work of regeneration were
only the curing of a man that were sick or wounded, it could not be done by
the power of man's will, but by the application of some external medicine,
though nature did concur with it. But it is not a sickness but a death,
therefore cannot come under the influence of the will of man in the first
work. Shall a man have more power to cure his soul of mortal sins, than to
cure his body of mortal wounds ?
[2.] In morals. Whence comes that intemperance, incontinence, luxury,
which overflows mankind, who are carried to those things which impair
health, even in meats and drinks, against the reluctancy of reason, whose
will is led not by reason but appetite, and choose not like men but beasts,
under the notion of pleasant and gustful ? Is not this from the will con-
ducted by appetite ?* The temperance and continence opposite to this is
not in Scripture counted part of the extraction of nature, but the gift of
God : 1 Cor. vii. 7, ' But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after
this manner, another after that,' speaking of continence. That which is
God's gift is not merely the fruit of human will ; for in the apostle's lan-
guage they seem to be opposed, viz., to be from God, and from ourselves ;
to be God's gift, and yet our own. In Eph. ii. 8 there is a plain antithesis,
' Not of yourselves : it is the gift of God.' It is the same expression of that
moral virtue of continence as it is of the divine grace of faith ; ' it is the
gift of God.' We are nothing in morals without God, no more than a beam
is when the sun is clouded or withdraws its light. Shall we, then, allow
a greater power to man in spiritual things than the Scripture doth in
morals ? Shall the one be the gift of God, and the greater the acquisi-
tion of nature ? Cannot the clay form itself into a vessel of moral honour ?
Shall it, then, be able to form itself into a vessel of grace ? If we are not
intrinsecally sufficient of ourselves to exercise a moral act, since our natures
are so overgrown with corruption, we are less sufficient of ourselves to exer-
cise a supernatural act without a divine motion. Can anything assume an
higher nature than what it originally hath ? Man hathi assumed a lower
nature than that wherein he was created, which no creature besides him
* Ducat, dc Imagin. Dei, lib. ii. cap. iii- p. 26.
198 chaknock's works. [John I. 13.
in this lower world hath. Since he hath brutified himself, and cannot
moralise himself without common grace, how can he advance himself into
a participation of the divine nature without special grace ? How can man, so
habitually evil, ascend up to an higher nature ?
[3.] In this corrupt state of man, any one sin beloved will hold a man
down from coming to God. It is impossible for a man, wedded in his heart
to his riches, and bemired in earthly confidences, to enter into a renewed
gospel state. ' How hard is it,' saith our Saviour, ' for them that trust in
riches, to enter into the kingdom of God !' Mark x. 24, 25. This one cor-
ruption commanding in the heart, will hinder any resurrection by the power
of nature, for on man's part Christ pronounces it impossible for such an one
to enter into the kingdom of God, ver. 27, that is, into a gospel-state ; and
that upon the score of this single sin, which only appeared at this time in
that young man. The like he pronounceth of another sin, that of ambition:
John v. 44, ' How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another ?'
That one fancy of the Jews, of a temporal conquering Messiah, did so pos-
sess their brains, that it barred the door against all the power of our Saviour's
miracles ; and the bare objective proposal of him, though unanswerable by
reason, could not remove this rooted fancy. One sin in the will, hath more
power than any imagination in the fancy. When Adam disfigured his nature
by one sin, he had no strength to recover himself, though his righteousness
was but very lately fled from him. We need not question his recovery of it,
had it been in the power of his will to will it, and the power of his nature to
regain it. If one sin, then, in the will, is a bar against the power of nature,
what are all those lusts which swarm in the heart of man, and swell up this
lake of natural venom in the soul? If one fetter stakes down a man to an
impotenqy and impossibility, how great is man's weakness under all those
fetters which every day he loads himself with ! One string about a bird's
leg will keep it from flying away, much more many.
Arg. 3. Another sort of considerations, is from the state of man under
the gospel.
1. If regeneration depended on the will of man, what is the reason more
do not receive the gospel than are seen by us to receive it ? If the faculty
of believing were given to all, then all would believe upon the promulgation
of the gospel, because the gospel is ' the power of God to salvation,' Rom.
i. 16. If it be the power of God in the outward preaching of it, then all
would believe. If all do not believe, then some other secret power attends
it, which makes it efficacious in one, not in another ; it is ' to them that
are saved ' only, ' the power of God,' 1 Cor. i. 18; to others, though of great
reason, foolishness. If the strength of arguments be the cause in one, what
is the reason those arguments have not force upon another ? What is that
which makes the difference ? All men have reason ; and what is common
reason doth conduct all men more or less. If men could open the eyes of their
mind to understand the excellency of gospel proposals, what is the reason
that among those great multitudes to whom it is preached, so few in all ages
have embraced it, though the things proposed are in themselves desirable,
and suit so well, in respect of the blessedness promised, to the natural desire
of man for happiness! When it was preached by the apostles, it was
edged with miracles, attended with a remarkable holiness, yet they com-
plained that few received their report. Even in that age, and succeeding
ages, men have been so far from receiving it, that they have scoffed at it,
persecuted with all their fury the professors of it. It hath been thus
despised, not only by the meanest and blindest sort of people, but by men of
the most elevated understanding among the heathen philosophers, that
John I. 13. J the efficient of eegeneeation. 199
could pierce into the depths of nature ; and by the Jews too, who had the
Messiah promised to them, expected him about that time, had so many pro-
phecies decipering him, wbich all met with their accomplishment in his
person ; who were also amazed at the miracles he wrought in his life, and those
which accompanied his death. Doth not all this shew the natural blindness of
man, that there is need of some higher power to open his eyes, besides the
objective proposal, that he may acknowledge the excellency of those things
which are presented to him ? Do we not find men ready to acknowledge
reason upon other accounts, to be wrought into warm affections by pathetical
speeches ? Why are they not as ready in this, if it were in the power of their
own understandings and wills ? Do we not find the wills of men averse
from it, though in their consciences they approve of the doctrines of it ?
What is the reason a man is renewed at one time, and not before, when he
hath heard the same arguments inculcated many a time ? Many drops
would not work it before, and one drop works it now in an instant. Is it
from the power of reason in man? What reason is there, then, that he
should be mastered by one reason now, who was not mastered by the same
reason, and many more as strong, formerly ? Whence comes that light into
the mind '? What is the reason such a man was not regenerate before, when
he hath in some fits meditated upon former arguments, and afterwards one
effects it, by a secret insinuation, without any previous meditation, and a
sudden turn of the will is wrought ? Can this be supposed to be from the
will principally ? Rather from some divine spirit spreading itself over the
soul, and opening the passages of it which were before shut. That place,
Mat. xi. 21, where our Saviour speaks of the Tyrians and Sidonians, if the
gospel had been preached to them, they would have repented in sackcloth
and ashes, doth not prove the power of man to renew himself, but that they
would have testified some outward humiliation, as Ahab did at the threaten-
ing of Elijah; * or rather, Christ exaggerates the hardness of the Jews' hearts
in comparing them with the Tyrians in a hyperbolical manner of expression ;
as we do when we reproach a man for unmercifulness, we say, Had I en-
treated a Turk or barbarian as much, I should have bended him ; not that
we commend the humanity of the Turks, but aggravate the cruelty of those
we have to do with. The proposal of an object is not sufficient without the
inspiration of a will, whereby that concupiscence which masters that faculty
may be overpowered.
2. If regeneration were the fruit of man's will, what is the reason that
men convinced by the preaching of the gospel, and under great terrors too,
find themselves unable to turn to God ? What is the reason they are not
presently renewed ? Would they be torn with such horrors, and bear about
them such racks in their consciences ? Would they fill heaven and earth
with complaints, were it in their own power to make themselves such as
God commands them to be ? If this were found in the more ignorant sort
of people, the reason then might be charged upon their want of knowledge ;
but men of great wits and insight are filled with those complaints when God
begins to rebuke them. And such as have a great deal of grace, as David,
when God charges sin upon him : Ps. li. 10, ' Create in me a clean heart ;
renew in me a right spirit ;' why should they solicit God for renewing
grace, were it in the power of their own hand ? Would any that fear God,
as David did, mock him at such a rate, as to desire that of him which they
are able to do without him ? Were there a natural power in man to turn
himself, why did not Judas, after his conscience lashed him, go to his
Master's knees to desire pardon, rather than to the gibbet ? He had long
* Amiraut. Ser. de Evang., Ser. 6, p. 286.
200 charnock's works. JJohn I. 18.
experience of the merciful disposition of his Master ; he had not grace given
nun to incline his will to such an act ; yet Peter was turned after his denial
of his Master ; was there anything more by nature in him than in Judas ?
Or did Peter do that by the strength of his own will, which Judas did not
do ? No ; the Scripture assures us, it was from the prevalency of Christ's
prayer, a secret influence from Christ's look, stirring up that grace that was
already in his heart ; he might else have gone out cursing his Master as
long as he had lived : ' No man can come to me, except the Father draw
him,' saith our Saviour; though he be convinced, there must be the Father's
traction as well as conviction to complete the work. All drawing implies a
resistance, or at least a heaviness and indisposition in the thing so drawn,
to come of itself. There is much difference between the proposal of the
object, and the cause of our entertaining it. The object is the final cause
which puts us upon motion ; the object moves the will as an end, but it
gives no power to move. If a man hear of an alms to be distributed at such
a place, and he knows he stands in need of it, and hath a desire to go to
receive it, this knowledge of the necessity of it will not give him legs to go, if
he be lame and unable to go ; and he that doth go to receive the alms, the
desire to receive the alms puts him upon motion ; but the intention of re-
ceiving the alms was not the efficient cause of that motion. If he had not
had strength in him from some other cause than the alms, he could never
have gone. Our motion to God must proceed from some higher cause than
barely the proposal of the object, and a conviction by it.
4. Argument is drawn from the condition of the regenerate themselves.
They are not able to rid themselves of the remainders of sin, much less
can natural men of the body of sin. From the impotency after grace, we
may rationally conclude a greater weakness in a natural man that hath not
one spark of grace within, to be blown up from any breathing of grace from
without. The flesh lusts against the spirit in a regenerate man ; how peace-
ably doth it enjoy its dominion in a natural man, where there is no spirit to
control it, and lust against it ? Eegenerate men ' cannot do the good they
would,' and they 'do the evil which they hate,' Rom. vii. 15, 19, though
they have a law of grace in their mind, set up in contradiction to the law of
sin in their members. How can a natural man, then, do so good a thing as
the renewal of himself, and the destruction of his sin, who hath no will to
the one nor hatred of the other, who hath the law of sin flourishing in him,
and delights to read the characters of it and perform the wills of the flesh 1
If there be such an inability in a renewed man, who hath a relish of God
and the goodness of the law, who hath sin in part mortified, and cast out of
the mind, to the members and suburbs, how much greater must the in-
ability and resistance be where there is nothing but opposing flesh ! What
need the apostle issue out such heavy complaints : ' 0 wretched man that I
am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' Rom. vii. 24, if
he had power in his own hands to free himself from this oppressing sin ?
If Paul, a living tree in God's garden, having both the root and sap of
grace, be so wretched, so weak and unable to free himself from those suckers,
how wretched then is a dead rotten stake, which hath no spiritual root !
How can he free himself from a total spiritual death, when this great apostle
could not free himself from a partial spiritual death by all that stock of
grace already received ? If a good man finds it so laborious a task to en-
gage against the relics of nature, and manage an open hostility against the
wounded force of his sensual appetite, much more is it a difficult task for
a natural man to row against the stream of unbroken nature, when the
natural resistance is in its full strength, and the bent of nature standing
John I. 13.1 the efficient of regeneeation.
201
point-blank against God. If a well-built and well-rigged ship, with her
sails spread, can only lie floating upon the waves, and make no way till a
fresh wind fills the sails, surely the rough timber that lies upon the ground
can never fit and frame itself into a stately vessel.*
5. It is against the whole order which God has set in the world, for any
thing to be the cause of itself, or of a higher rank of being than what it has
by nature. No effect is nobler than its cause ; grace is more noble than
nature. A seal cannot convey any other image than what is stamped upon
itself, and no further than its own dimensions ; neither can nature stamp
anything of grace upon the soul, because it hath no such image engraven on
it by God. Nature, though never so perfect in its own kind, can never pro-
duce a thing of higher perfection than itself; a plant can never produce a
beast, nor a beast a man, nor a man an angel. No natural quality can be
changed in any subject by itself, but by the introduction of some other
quality superior to it. The fire can never freeze while it is fire ; water can-
not part with its coldness without some superior acting upon it ; and can
those that are naturally bad ever become spiritually good but by an almighty
power ? No nature can exceed its own bounds, because nothing can exceed
itself in acting. Whatsoever a natural man doth is but natural, and can
never amount to grace, without a change of nature and addition of a divine
virtue. If any thing could rise above its own sphere, it would be stronger
than itself. Nothing can never make itself something ; the best apostle
counts himself no better, — 2 Cor. xii. 11, 'I am nothing,' — and entitles grace
the sole benefactor of all his spiritual good, 2 Cor. xv. 10. _ What thing
ever gave itself its own shape ? Every piece of art is brought into figure by
the workman, not by itself. Conformity jp Christ is a fruit of the election
of God, not first of the choice of our own wills. Rom. viii. 29, ' Whom he
did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his
Son.' The first link of the chain in the providential and in the gracious
administration is in the hands of God. Hence in Scripture the gracious
works in the soul run in the passive for the most part : ' Ye are justified, ye
are sanctified ; ' not you justify or sanctify yourselves ; though sanctification
and purging and working out salvation is ascribed to them that have received
grace and life, as acting afterwards for such ends, and producing such eftecls
by the strength of grace received from God, and grace accompanying that
first grace in its acts.
As we have proved that man by his own strength cannot renew himself,
let us see whether he can do it by his additional capacities.
1. Man, by the help of instituted privileges, doth not produce this work
of regeneration in himself, without a supernatural grace attending them.
Ordinances cannot renew a man, but the arm of God, which doth manage
them, edgeth them into efficacy, as the arm that wields the sword gives the
blow. Means are the showers of heaven, but they can no more make the
heart fruitful till some gracious principles be put in, than the beams of the
sun, the dews of heaven, and the water-pots of the clouds, can make a bar-
ren ground bring forth flowers, without a change of the nature of the soil,
and new roots planted in it. All the spectacles in the world cannot cure a
man's eyes, he must have a visive faculty to make use of them. Our faculty
must be cured before we can exercise it about objects or use means proper to
that faculty. All persuasions will not prevail with a dead man ; the fairest
discourses, the most undeniable arguments, the most moving rhetoric will
not stir or affect him, till God take away the stone from the grave and raise
him to life. The report of the prophets will do no good without the revela-
* Gurnal, part i. p. 21.
202 chaknock's works. [John I. 13.
tion of God's arm, Isa. liii. 1, because all those things do not work in a
physical way, as drugs and plasters, which attain their end without any
active concurrence of the patient, but in a moral way ; the will therefore and
nature must first be changed before those can do any good. You can never
by all your teachings teach a sheep to provide for winter, as an ant doth,
because it hath no such instinct in its nature. If any thing were like to
work upon a man, the most stupendous miracles were most likely to produce
such an effect upon the reasons of men ; yet those supernatural demonstra-
tions without a man only cannot make him believe a truth. Miracles are a
demonstration to the eye as well as preaching to the ear ; though they be
confessed to be above the strength of nature, yet all the spectators of them
are not believers : John xii. 37, ' But though he had done so many miracles
before them, yet they believed not.' Many of those that saw our Saviour's
works did not believe his doctrine ; nay, they irrationally ascribed them to
the devil, when they could find no reason in the nature of them to charge
them upon such a score. The raising Lazarus from the dead was as high a
miracle as ever was wrought ; yet, though many of them believed, yet others
did not, but accused him to the pharisees, who thereupon more vigorously
took counsel to put him to death, John xi. 45, 46, 47, 53, though they
acknowledged that he did many miracles. They had reason as well as others ;
the miracles were undeniable, as being acted before many witnesses ; the
natural force of them upon all reasons was equal, the considerations arising
from them unanswerable. There were evil habits in the will, not removed
by grace, which resisted the unanswerable reason of the miracles. What
made the difference between them and those that believed ? Why did not
the wills of the enemies follow the undeniable reason, as well as the wills of
others ? Miracles may astonish men, but cannot convert them without a
divine touch upon the heart. 1 Kings xviii. 39, the people were astonished
by that wonderful miracle of fire falling from heaven and consuming the
sacrifice, and licking up the water in the trench ; and some reverential reso-
lutions were produced in them : they fell upon their faces and said, ' The
Lord he is God ;' they shewed their zeal in taking Baal's prophets, and
helping, or at least suffering, Elijah to slay them ; yet those people revolted
to idolatry, and continued so till their captivity. The easiness of faith upon
the apparition and instruction of one risen from the dead was the opinion of
one of the damned : Luke xvi. 30, ' If one went to them from the dead, they
will repent ;' but this opinion was contradicted by Abraham, ver. 31, who
positively asserts, ' If they did not hear Moses and the prophets, they would
not be persuaded though one rose from the dead.' If their wills were
obstinate against the means God had appointed for their conversion, the
same wills so corrupted would be as obstinate against the highest sort of
miracles. If that, then, which is above the hand of nature to act, and bears
the character of omnipotency upon the breasts of it, doth not work upon
men's hearts and wills of themselves, surely nature itself cannot turn the
heart to God.
The two great dispensations of God are law and gospel ; neither of these
can of themselves work this.
(1.) The law. The law will instruct, not heal.* It acquaints us with our
duty, not our remedy ; it irritates sin, not allays it ; it exasperates our
venom, but doth not tame it ; though it shews man his miserable condition,
yet a man by it doth not gain one drop of repentance. It tells us what we
should do, but corrects not the enmity of our nature whereby we may do it.
The apostle takes notice of the enmity of man to the law : Rom. v. 6, 7,
* Judicat et damnat peccatum in uatura hominis, non tollit. — Melanclon.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 203
• Yet enemies,' ' yet sinners.' That yet may refer to what he had spoken of
the law in the chapter before. Though men had had so much time from the
fall to recover themselves, and had so many advantages by the law and the cere-
monies of it, yet all those years spent from the foundation of the world had
produced no other effect than the weakening of them ; as creatures that are
wounded, by their strugglings waste their own strength. Yet sinners, till
this time sinners, whereby the load of sin which lay upon the world was
made more heavy by the continual addition made to those heaps. The
offence did rather abound by the law than was diminished : Rom. v. 20, ' The
law was given that sin might abound.' Though it made a clear discovery of
the will of God, yet it rather aggravated sin ; it added no power to perform
that will. The motions of sin were exasperated by it, ex accidentia and
brought forth fruit unto death ; all the means by the law forthe repressing
of sin did rather inflame it. Sin could not be overcome by it, because the
law was ' weak through the flesh ; ' that is, had not so much power as sin
had ; it was like a little water put upon fire, which did rather enrage than
quell it : Rom. vii. 8, 9, * Sin revived ' when the law came, it had a new
life, and the apostle found himself utterly unable to overpower it. There
were, ver. 5, ' motions of sin,' •ra^/./.ara, not only a power in sin, but an
enraged power, which adds to the strength of a person ; ' sin slew him :
taking occasion by the commandment,' ver. 10, and a dead man is wholly
at the disposing of nis conquerors. The law was ' holy,' it had an impres-
sion of God's holiness upon it, Rom. vii. 12-14, there was also equity and
conveniency in it, it was 'just and good,' and though these were considera-
tions enough to spur men on to rid themselves of this tyrant sin, yet they
could not, they had not strength enough to do it ; though it was holy, just,
and good, yet it was not strong enough to rescue them ; and the reason of
it, the apostle lays upon the difference in the nature of both : ver. 14, ' We
know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin ; ' there was
an enmity in his nature to it, and therefore he must lie under the power of
it till a mighty deliverer stepped in to conquer it. Do we find any better
effect of the ceremonial law, which was the gospel in a mask, and which was
the instrument of all the regenerations among the Jews ? How few do we
find renewed among them under that means which they enjoyed solely, and
no other nation in the world partners with them in it ! How frequent were
their revolts, and rebellions, and idolatries, inconsistent with regeneration,
we may read in Joshua and Judges. The inefficaciousness of means appears
evidently in that nation which had greater advantages than any in the world
besides ; the covenants, sacrifices, oracles of God, warnings by prophets,
yet so frequently overgrown with idolatry from the time of their coming
out of Egypt to the Babylonish captivity, and ten tribes wholly cashiered
for it.
(2.) The gospel. Though the veil of ceremonies be taken off from it, and
it appeareth open faced, yet till the veil be taken off the understandings of
men, it will produce little fruit among them, 2 Cor. iii. 14. The gospel is
plain, but only ' to him that understands,' Prov. viii. 9, as the sun is
clear, but only to him that hath an eye to see it. The gospel itself cannot
remove the blindness from the mind. The proposal of the object works no
alteration in the faculty, without some acting on the faculty itself. The
beams of the sun shining upon a blind man make no alteration in him. The
Jews, to whom the gospel was preached by our Saviour himself, could not
believe, because God blinded their eyes, &c, John xii. 39, 40. There must
be a supernatural power, besides the proposal of the object, to take away
this blindness and hardness which is the obstruction to the work of the
204 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
gospel. Though the Son of God is come, and the gospel be preached, yet
the understanding whereby we know is given us by him : 1 John v. 20,
1 And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an under-
standing, that we may know him that is true ; ' the light of the gospel shines
upon all, but all have not an eye given them to see it, and a will given them
to embrace it. The mere doctrine of it doth not regenerate any man ;* some
have tasted of the heavenly gift, that is, have had some understanding of
Christ, who is the heavenly gift, the Son given to us, Isa. ix. 6, and are
partakers of some common illumination of the Holy Ghost, yet are not
regenerate. Was not the gospel preached to the Jews, even by the mouth of
our Saviour whom they crucified ? And was it not preached to the Gentiles
by the mouths of those apostles whom they persecuted ? Were there not pro-
posals that suited the natural desires of men for happiness, yet did not many
that seemed to receive it, receive it not in the love of it ? If God himself
should appear to us in the likeness of a man, and preach to us as he did to
Adam, if he did not overpower our hearts with an inward grace, he would do
us no good at all by his declarations. We do not read of any work imme-
diately upon Adam at the promulgation of the gospel by God himself, though
it appears that afterwards there was, by his instructing his sons to sacrifice,
and his expectations of a Messiah. But we certainly know that our Saviour,
God manifested in the flesh, declared the gospel in his own person, and
found no success but where he touched the heart inwardly by the grace of
his Spirit. All mere outward declarations are but suasions, and mere suasion
cannot change and cure a disease or habit in nature. You may exhort an
Ethiop to turn himself white, or a lame man to go ; but the most pathetical
exhortations cannot procure such an effect without a greater power than that
of the tongue to cure nature ; you may as well think to raise a dead man by
blowing in his mouth with a pair of bellows. Judas had enjoyed the best
means that ever were, yet went out of the world unrenewed ; and the thief
upon the cross, who never perhaps was in any good company in his life till
he came to the cross, nor ever heard Christ speak before, was renewed by
the grace of God in the last hour.
2. Neither can a man renew himself by all his moral works, before faith.
Our calling is not according to our works, but « according to God's own
purpose and grace,' 2 Tim. i. 9. Paul, before his conversion, was ' blame-
less as to the righteousness of the law,' Philip, iii. 6, yet this was loss ; a
bar rather to regeneration, than a means to further it. For all this legal
comeliness he ranks himself, before his conversion, in the number of the
dead : Eph. ii. 5, < When we were dead in sins ;' not you, but we, putting
himself into the register of the dead. Whatsoever works a man can morally
do before faith, cannot be the cause of spiritual life ; they are not vital
operations ; if they were, they were then the effects of life, not the cause ;
the Scripture makes them the effects of grace : ' created to good works,'
Eph. ii. 10. What is an effect cannot be the cause. The best works before
grace are but a refined sensuality, they arise from self-love, centre in self-
satisfaction, are therefore works of a different strain from those of grace,
which are referred to a higher end, and to God's well-pleasing. In all works
before grace there is no resignation of the soul to God in obedience; no self-
denial of what stands in opposition to God in the heart ; no clear view of the
evil of sin; no sound humiliation under the corruption of nature; no inward
purification of the heart, but only a diligence in an external polishing. All
those acts cannot produce an habit of a different kind from them. Let a
man be stilted up with the highest natural excellency ; let him be taller by
* Cocceius, de Fcederc, c. 15, p. 472, 473.
John I. 18.] the efficient of regeneration. 205
the head and shoulders than all his neighbours in morality, those no more
confer life upon him than the setting a statue upon an high pinnacle, near the
beams of the sun, inspireth it with a principle of motion. The increasing
the perfection of one species can never mount the thing so increased to the
perfection of another species. If you could vastly increase the heat of fire,
you could never make it ascend to the perfection of a star. If you could
increase mere moral works to the highest pitch they are capable of, they can
never make you gracious, because grace is another species, and the nature
of them must be changed to make them of another kind. All the moral
actions in the world will never make our hearts, of themselves, of another
kind than moral. Works make not the heart good, but a good heart makes
the works good. It is not our walking in God's statutes materially, which
procures us a new heart, but a new heart is in order before walking in God's
statutes, Ezek. xxxvi. 27. Our regeneration is no more wrought by works
of our own than our justification. The rule of the apostle will hold good in
this, as well as in the other : Rom. xi. 6, ' If it be of grace, it .is not of
works ; otherwise grace is no more grace ; ' and faith is ' the gift of God,
not of works, lest any man should boast,' Eph. ii. 9. And the apostle,
Titus iii. 5, opposeth the ' renewing of the Holy Ghost ' to • works of
righteousness.' He excludes works from being the cause of salvation ;
and would they not be the cause of salvation, if they were the cause of the
necessary condition of salvation ?
Prop. 3. As man cannot prepare himself to this work, nor produce it, so
he cannot co-operate with God in the first production of it. We are no
more co-workers with God in the first regeneration, than we were joint
purchasers with Christ in redemption. The conversion of the will to God
is a voluntary act ; but the regeneration of the will, or the planting new
habits in the will, whereby it is enabled to turn to God, is without any con-
currence of the will. Therefore, say some, we are active in prima acta, but
not in primo actus; or we are active in actu exercito, but not in actu signato.
Some say, the habit of faith is never created separate from an act, as the
trees at the creation of the world were created with ripe fruit on them ; but
the tree, with the power of bearing fruit, and the fruit itself, were created at
one and the same time by God. Yet though the habit be not separate at
first from the act, yet there is no co-operation of the creature to the infusion
of that habit, but there is to the act immediately flowing from that habit ; for
either that act of grace is voluntary or involuntary. If involuntary, it is not
a gracious act ; if voluntary, it must needs be ; since the tone of the will is
changed, then the creature concurs in that act ; for the act of believing and
repenting is the act of the creature. It is not God that repents and believes
in us ; but we repent and believe by virtue of that power which God hath
given us. In the first act, therefore, there is a concurrence of the creature ;
otherwise the creature could not be said to repent and believe, but some-
thing in the creature, without or against the will of the creature. But in
the first power of believing and repenting, God is the sole agent. Jesus
Christ is the sun that heals our natures, Mai. iv. 2 ; the rain that moistens
our hearts : Ps. Ixxii. 6, ' He shall come down like rain upon the mown
grass.' What co-operation is there in the earth with the sun to the produc-
tion of flowers, but by the softness it hath received from the rain ? It would
else be parched up, and its fruits wither. The Holy Ghost doth by his own
power make us good trees ; but we afterwards, by virtue of that power, work
together with him, in bringing forth good fiuit.* Yet this is also a subordi-
nate, not a co-ordinate working; rather a sub-operation than a co-operation.
* Pemble, p. 31.
206 chaenock's works. [John I. 13.
1. The state wherein man is at his first renewal excludes any co-working
with God. The description the apostle gives of a state of nature excludes
all co-operation of the creature in the first renewal : Titus iii. 3, ' For we
ourselves were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts
and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.'
And Eph. ii. 2, 3, • Among whom we all had our conversations in time past,
in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.'
Every man is naturally taken up in the fulfilling the desires of the flesh ; not
only the Gentiles, to whom Paul writes, but himself ; for he puts himself
and the rest of the Jews in the number. In the second verse it was ' ye
walked ;' in ver. 3, it is ' we all ;' and in Titus iii. 3, ' we ourselves.' We
who had the oracles of God, that had greater privileges than others, were
carried out with as strong an impetus naturally, till grace stopped the tide,
and after stopping, turned it against nature. When the mind was thus pre-
possessed, and the will made the lusts of the flesh its work and trade, there
was no likelihood of any co-operation with God in fulfilling his desires, till
the bent of the heart was changed from the flesh and its principles. The
heart is stone before grace. No stone can co-operate with any that would
turn it into flesh, since it hath no seed, causes, or principles of any fleshly
nature in it. Since we are overwhelmed by the rubbish of our corrupted
estate, we can no more co-operate to the removal of it, than a man buried
under the ruins of a fallen house can contribute to the removal of that great
weight that lies upon him. Neither would a man in that state help such a
work, because his lusts are pleasures ; he serves his lusts, which are plea-
sures as well as lusts, and therefore served with delight. There is naturally
in man a greater resistance against the work of grace, than there is in the
natural coldness of water against the heat of the fire, which yet penetrates
into all parts of the water.
2. Regeneration is a new principle. What operation can there be before
a principle of action ? All co-operation supposeth some principle of work-
ing ; as actus secundus supposeth actum prirnum. But a man, before his first
regeneration, is blind in his mind, perverse in his will, rebellious in his
affections, unable to know the truth, unable to do good, dead in sin. If he
does co-operate with God before the habit be settled, then we can act before
we have a power to act. We can please God in taking his part, and joining
issue with him, before we have a gracious principle ; which is contrary to the
Scripture, which tells us wre are first begotten of God before we can keep
ourselves, or exert one act for the bettering ourselves : 1 John v. 18, ' He
that is begotten of God keeps himself.' The preservation of ourselves, and
every act tending thereto, follows the infusion of the first principle. And the
apostle Paul implies, that God works in us to will before we work : Philip, ii.
12, 13, ' Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God works
in you both to will and to do,' &c. The apostle supposeth not any opera-
tion in them before, because he supposeth not their working without God's
giving them a will, the act of volition. The working of the creature sup-
poseth some divine work first upon the will. Did the dust of the ground,
whereof Adam's body was formed, co-work with God in figuring it into a
body ? or doth the body contribute any more than a passive receptivity to
the infusion of the rational soul ? Lazarus did not concur with Christ till
his powerful voice infused life and strength into him. His rising and walk-
ing was from a power conveyed, wherein Christ did work ; but there was no
co-working in him in the conveyance of that power. We do not say that a
man co-works with the sun in enlightening a room, because he opens the
shuts which barred out the light ; the opening whereof is no cause of the
John I. 13.] the efficient of eegeneration. 207
sun's shining, but a conditio sine qua non. But do we so much in the first
renewal ? It is God alone who darts his beams, and opens our hearts too,
to admit it : Acts xvi. 14, it is said, ' the Lord opened Lydia's heart.' The
will cannot concur in the actual infusion of a gracious principle, because it
hath no spark in itself by nature, suitable to that principle which is bringing
it into the soul itself. Tbe shining of God into the soul is compared to
the chasing away that darkness which at the first creation was over the
face of the deep : 2 Cor. iv. 6, ' For God, who commanded the light to
shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God.' What co-working was there in that dark-
ness to remove itself, but a necessity upon it to obey the command of God,
who had the sovereign power over his own works ? If the creature did co-
work with God at first, it could no more be said to be dead than a man asleep
may be said to be dead ; a*nd grace were only an awakening, not an enlivening.
3. If there were any co-working of the will with God in the first infusion
of grace, God would not be so much the author of grace as he is of nature
in any other creature. The creature would share with him in the first prin-
ciple of its action, which no creature in the world can be said to do. It
would rather be a concourse of God than a creation ; but all the terms
whereby God sets forth himself in the work of regeneration import more
than a bare concourse or a co-operation with the creature : ' I will take away
the heart of stone ; I will write my law in their hearts ; I will put my Spirit
into them,' are loftier expressions than are used to signify a co-working only.
He appropriates the whole work to himself, without interesting the creature
in any active concurrence, any more than at his creation.
4. If the will of man did co-work with God in regeneration, it would then
share part of the glory of God. The whole glory would not belong to God,
which he challengeth to himself in Scripture. He were then but an half
Saviour, an half new-creator. We should be in joint commission with him,
by the power of our own wills, in the first motion. If creation and resur-
rection are acts of an almighty power, man co-operating with him in the
very act of creation and resurrection would partake with God's almightiness,
and in some sort be co-equal with him, and a joint partner with God in a
work which required almightiness for the effecting it. Surely since the
same power which raised Christ from the dead works first in every believer
for his spiritual resurrection, he contributes no more to it than the body of
Christ in the grave did to its resurrection, which was a work not of his
humanity, but divinity. Plucking out of the power of Satan is an effect of
the power of grace, and God's gift, 2 Tim. ii. 25, 26. God first ' gives
repentance, that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil.'
A slave, whose hands and feet are laden with fetters, can contribute nothing
to his deliverance but a will and desire to be delivered ; nor that, if he be in
love with his fetters, which is the case of every one of us by nature, who are
as fond to be in the devil's custody as he is to have us. What co-operation
can there be in this case ? Whatsoever is an act of mercy, and an act of
truth in God, he is to have the sole praise of; it doth not in any sort belong
to the creature. The psalmist emphatically excludes man from it : Ps.
cxv. 1, ' Not unto us, 0 Lord, not to us, but unto thy name give glory,
for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake.' Not unto us, twice repeated, but
to thy name give glory. Do believers beg of God the giving glory to him-
self, and not unto them ; and will they contradict their prayers, by sharing
the praise with God ? This is expressed for deliverances. Much less doth
any praise and glory belong to the creature for the most excellent deliverance
of all, from the power of sin, Satan, and death.
208 charnock's works. [John I, 13.
6. How can men co-work with God in the first regeneration, when they must
needs acknowledge that in the progress of it they are oftener hinderers than
furtherers of it ? If God did not work more strongly in us than the best of
us do in ourselves, and breathe a willingness into our wills, after regenera-
tion, we should come short of salvation for all the first stock. How often
do the best complain of their disability ! Is it not frequent in the mouths
of Christians in all ages as well as of Paul : Eom. vii. 18, ' To will is pre-
sent with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not' ? How
easily are our purposes shaken, and our strength staggers ! Can we then
co-operate with God, when we have no purpose, no strength ? Let every
man's experience speak for himself, how apt he is to check the motions of
the Spirit ; to let our Saviour stand and knock, and not open. What strag-
glings of the body of death ! What indispositions in an holy course ! Is
there not often a kind of rustiness of soul, cold damps in spiritual duties ?
What faint hands in any holy work ! What ebbs and floods, ups and downs
in his heart ! What feeble knees in his walk ! What hung-down heads in
laying hold of Christ in repeated acts of faith ! What frequent returns of
spiritual lethargies ! And all this after habitual grace. If our co-operations
with God after grace received, are but a remove from non-acting, next neigh-
bours to no working at all, we must conclude it to be worse with man before
grace was settled in the soul, and that there was no active concurrence with
it in any manner of acting; otherwise there would be as much co-operation
before the implantation of habitual grace as after, which is hard to be ima-
gined, that a man should be no stronger with grace received than under the
want of it.
Prop. 4. Man by his own strength cannot actuate grace after it is received.
To what purpose did the saints of old pray to quicken them, if they stood
not in as much need of exciting grace from God as of renewing grace : Ps.
lxxx. 18, ' Quicken us, and we will call upon thy name;' Ps. cxix. 25, 27,
and many places in that psalm. The new creature is little better than an
infant in the best, and cannot go unless God bear it in his arms, as he speaks
of Ephraim, Hosea xi. 1, 3. They cannot move unless led by the Spirit.
The child hath a principle of motion in it, but cannot go without the assist-
ance of the nurse ; nor the soul, without the assistance of God, actuate that
principle of grace. Habitual grace is the instrument, not the principal agent.
A sword, though it hath an edge, cuts nothing till it be moved by some strong
arm. The first principle of the motion of grace resides in God. Purifica-
tion in its progress is attributed to faith as an instrument, but to God as a
principal agent. It is said, Acts xv. 8, 9, ' God gave them the Holy Ghost,
as he did to us, and put no difference between us and them, purifying their
hearts by faith.' Yet the will of man concurs in this actuating of faith, as
a subordinate cause : 1 John iii. 3, a man is said to • purify himself by hope.'
A well-rigged soul, with its habit of grace spread, as well as a ship with its
sails, must wait the leisure of the wind before it move. Paul acknowledges
his acting for the service of God to be not from himself principally: 1 Cor.
xv. 10, 'Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.' It was the
grace of God used me as an instrument; the glory must not stick to my
fingers ; it was the grace of God with me, affording strength and help to
that grace which was in me. If this concourse of God be necessary in all
natural actions, it is much more in the spiritual frame of the soul to keep it
up, and to keep it acting. It is not we that work to will and to do, but God
works to will and to do. It is to be considered that the apostle writes to
them that are in a state of grace, exhorting them to a progress in salvation,
depending upon God, who works the after will and the after doing, as well
John I. 13.] the efficient of regenebation. 209
as the first will and compliance with the grace of God. Do we not find
renewed men not able, with all the grace they have, to quicken themselves
sometimes in duty ? What is the reason they lie spiritless before God, often
with breathings, sighs, and groans for quickening, and it is far from them ?
They stir themselves up, meditate, summon up all the powerful considera-
tions they can, yet find themselves empty of a spiritual vigour. Surely there
is some principal power wanting to spirit their grace, and make them leap in
duty ; some invisible strength hath withdrawn itself, which did before conduct
and breathe upon them, and fill their souls with a divine fire. They find it
not in the power of the hand of their own will to actuate and quicken the
grace they have, much less is it in the power of any man's hand to renew
himself. The work of grace is not only a traction at the first, but a con-
tinual traction, as conservation is a continual creation : ' Draw me, and we
will run after thee,' Cant. i. 4. The church there speaks it as regenerate,
desiring a continual traction from God, as the first ground of her race after
Christ. Life she had, for she promiseth to run ; yet this race she could not
begin nor continue, without traction from God.
Prop. 5. Man cannot by the power of his own will preserve grace in him-
self. Our Saviour's prayer to his Father, John xvii. 11, 15, to ' keep them,'
imports, that they were too weak to keep themselves : ' Unless the Lord keep
the city, in vain doth the watchman wake,' Ps. cxxvii. 1. Unless God pre-
serve the soul, all the watchfulness of habitual grace will be to little purpose.
All creatures, if God hide his face, are troubled, Ps. civ. 29, much more the
new creature, whose strength doth more necessarily depend upon God, be-
cause of its powerful opposites. Were it not for the assisting grace of God,
the unruly lusts in our hearts would soon bear down habitual grace in the
best. How many temptations are prevented which we cannot foresee ! How
many corruptions are restrained, which the best grace cannot fully conquer !
How is the tide and torrent of these waters beaten back, which otherwise
would go over our heads ! The poor will of Adam preserved him not against
a temptation, when he had no indwelling corruption to betray him ; nor did
the will of the angels, who had no temptation, keep them from forsaking their
habitation. How can any renewed man, alive with all his grace, merely by
the strength of his own will, keep himself from sinking down in the lake of
his old corruption ? He that would ask the fallen angels in the midst of
their torments, what was the reason of their fall, would receive no other
answer but that their strength was unsuccessful, because it depended upon
their own will.* The knowledge of the gospel and evangelical impressions
are never like to keep up without the Holy Ghost: 2 Tim. i. 14, ' That good
thing which was committed unto thee, keep, by the Holy Ghost,' not by
thine own strength. If we cannot keep a form of sound words, which, as it
is knowledge, is more agreeable to the natural appetite of man, without the
Holy Ghost, much less can wre preserve grace in us, which is more stomached
by coiTupt nature. Neither are good frames like to be preserved in us with-
out God's keeping : 1 Chron. xxix. 18, ' Keep this in the imagination of the
thoughts of the heart of thy people.' Our hearts will not let any good motion
sink into them, unless God give a pondus to his own motion. If, then, re-
generate men are unable of themselves to actuate and preserve grace received,
much more inability is there in a natural man to gain that which he hath not
a spark of in his own nature, but an enmity to.
Quest. But, do you divest man of all power, all freedom of will ? Is he able
to do nothing in order to regeneration ?
* Senault, Christian Man, p. 203.
vol. in. o
210 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
Ans. We do not divest man of all power ; therefore, before we consider
what power belongs to man, we may consider,
(1.) Man simply in his fall. So man lost all his natural ability by his
first sin, and was the meritorious cause of his losing supernatural grace,
which God by a judicial act removed from him ; and in this state man had
no ability unto anything morally good. Nothing was due to Adam but the
state of the devils, who have no affection to anything morally good, but al-
way do that which is in its own nature evil, and always sin with evil inten-
tions. Adam would have been thus, had the threatening, according to the
tenor of it, been executed ; there had been no common affections, no more
light in his understanding than what might have served for his torment ; as
wicked men, after death, are deprived in a judicial way of that light in their
minds, those velleities and good motions which sometime hovered in them,
those affections which were here exercised now and then towards God. The
sentence given against Adam is then pronounced against them, and they
laid under the final execution of it, which was to die the death: Gen. ii. 17,
' Thou shalt surely die ; ' a death of all morality, all affections to anything
that hath the resemblance of goodness. It might be a prediction of what
would be in course, as well as what would be inflicted in way of judicial re-
compence. None of these things can be looked for in Adam, or any of his
posterity, as fallen ; not a grain of life, or anything tending that way, was
due to him, but only death.
(2.) Man is to be considered as respited from the present suffering this
sentence by the intervention of Christ ; whereby he is put into another way
of probation. So those common notions in our understandings, and common
motions in our wills and affections, so far as they have anything of moral
goodness, are a new gift to our natures by virtue of the mediation of Christ.
In which sense he may be said to ' taste death for every man,' Heb. ii. 9,
and be ' a propitiation for the sins of the whole world.' By virtue of which
promised death, some sparks of moral goodness are preserved in man. Thus
his 'life was the light of men;' and he is 'the light that lightens every man
that comes into the world,' which sets the candle of the Lord in the spirit
of man a-burning and sparkling, John i. 9, and upholds all things by his
mediatory as well as divine power, Heb. i. 3, which else would have sunk
into the abyss. By virtue of this mediation, some power is given back to
man, as a new donation, yet not so much as that he is able by it to regene-
rate himself; and whatsoever power man hath, is originally from this cause,
and grows not up from the stock of nature, but from common grace.
Which common grace is either,
[1.] More general, to all men. Whereby those divine sparks in their under-
standings, and whatsoever is morally praiseworthy in them, is kept up by
the grace of God, which was the eause that Christ tasted death for every
man : Heb. ii. 9, ' That he by the grace of God should taste death for every
man ;' whereby the apostle seems to intimate, that by this grace, and this
death of Christ, any remainders of that honour and glory wherewith God
crowned man at first are kept upon his head ; as will appear, if you consider
the eighth Psalm, whence the apostle cites the words which are the ground
of his discourse of the death of Christ.
[2.] More particular common grace, to men under the preaching of the gos-
pel. Which grace men ' turn into wantonness ' or lasciviousness, Jude 4.
Grace they had, or the gospel of grace, but the wantonness of their nature
prevailed against the intimations of grace to them. Besides this common
grace, there is a more special grace to the regenerate, the more peculiar fruit
of Christ's mediation and death for them. All this, and whatsoever else you
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 211
can conceive that hath but a face of comeliness in man, is not the birth of
fallen nature abstracted from this mediation. Therefore when the Gentiles
are said to ' do by nature the things contained in the law,' it is not to be
understood of nature merely as fallen, for that could do no such thing ; but
of nature in this new state of probation, by the interposition of Christ the
mediator, whose powerful word upheld all things, and kept up those broken
fragments of the two tables of law, though dark and obscure. And consider-
ing God's design of setting forth the gospel to the world, there was a neces-
sity of those relics, both in the understanding, and affections, and desire for
happiness, to render men capable of receiving the gospel, and those inexcus-
able that would reject it. So that by this mediation of Christ, the state of
mankind is different since the fall from that of the evil angels or devils. For
man hath, first, a power of doing that which is in its own nature good ;
secondly, a power of doing good with a good intention ; not indeed supremely
for the glory of God, but for the good of his country, the good of his neigh-
bours, the good of the world, which was necessary for the soldering together
human societies, so that sometimes even in sins man hath good intentions.
Whereas the devil doth always that which in its own nature is evil, and al-
ways sins with evil intentions.* Without this mediation, every man had
been as very a slave to sin as the devil ; though he be naturally a slave to
sin, yet not in that full measure the devil is, unless left in a judicial manner
by God upon high provocations.
There is then a liberty of will in man ; and some power these is left in
man. And here I shall shew,
1. What kind of liberty this is.
2. That there is some liberty in man.
3. How far the power of man by common grace doth extend.
Quest. First, what kind of liberty this is.
Ans. 1. The essential liberty of the will remains. Liberty is of the essence
of the will, and cannot be taken away without extinction of the nature of
man ; it is free from compulsion, otherwise it were a not-will, which liberty
doth not consist in a choice of good or evil. For even under this depravation
it cannot choose evil qua malum, as such. It can choose nothing but what
appears to it under the notion of good ; though it many times embraceth that
which is materially evil, yet the formal consideration upon which it embraceth
it is as good, either in reality or in appearance ; as the sight in every colour
sees light. And when it is carried out to that which is really evil, and only
apparently good, it is by force of those habits in the understanding, which
make it give a false judgment ; or, by the power of the sensitive appetite,
which hurries it on to the object proposed, but alway it respects in its mo-
tion everything as good, either an honest, pleasant, or profitable good.
Ans. 2. Though the essential liberty of the will remains, yet the rectitude
whereby it might have been free only to that which was really good is lost.
Man by creation had a freedom of will to choose that which was really good,
yet had a mutability, and could choose evil ; and by choosing evil rather
than good, sank his posterity into this depraved liberty which now remains.
Though since the fall man is preserved in his natural freedom, and cannot
be forced, yet he hath not a power to will well, because that righteous prin-
ciple whereby he did will well is departed from him ;f yet because the essen-
tial freedom due to his nature remains, whatsoever he wills he wills freely,
so that though something the will wills may be materially good, yet it wills
that good in an ill manner, for being overcome naturally by sin man can do
* Dr Jackson, vol. ii. fol. p. 3091.
t Ames Medul. lib. i. cap. 13, thes. 10.
212 chaknock's works. [John I. 13.
nothing but according to that law which sin, as a master that hath conquered
him, imposeth upon him : 2 Peter ii. 19, ' They themselves are the servants
of corruption : for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought
in bondage.' And of all men in a state of nature, though under common
grace, the apostle pronounceth, Rom. iii. 11, that 'there is none that seeks
after God ;' that is, in any thing they do, though never so good, they seek
not God but themselves. 'There is no fear of God,' no respect to God
' before their eyes,' ver. 18, whence it comes to pass, that by reason of this
dominion of sin nothing can be done well. Heuce man is said to be dead ;
not that the life which doth constitute the nature of the soul is taken away,
but that which renders it fit for performing actions pleasing to God ; for such
a life doth consist, not in the nature of the soul or will, but in that habitual
integrity which was in man by creation. As the body when it is dead doth
not cease to be a body, but ceaseth to be animated, by the separation of the
soul from it, so the soul may be truly said to be dead, though the power of
the soul be not taken away. If the spiritual rectitude in that power which
did constitute it spiritually living be departed, by the removal of this right-
eousness, the will is not free to spiritual things, though it be to natural. It
is ' free among the dead,' as the psalmist speaks of himself, Ps. lxxxviii. 5 ;
free to dead works, not to living ; to this or that dead work, to any work
within the verge of sinning, as a bird in a large cage may skip this way and
that way by its natural spontaneous motion, but still within the cage.
Ans. 3. Therefore, though man hath lost this liberty to good, he retains a
freedom to the commission of sin, under the necessity of sinning. This free-
dom is a power of choice and election of a thing, which differs from that spon-
taneity which is in beasts, who act by instinct, without any reasoning in the
case, because they want a reasoning power. Though man be under a neces-
sity of sinning, yet it is not a necessity of constraint, but a necessity of im- .
mutability, which as 'Consistent with liberty, though the other be not. A
creature may he lUncbangeably carried to good or evil, and yet be free in
both : to good, as the angels and glorified saints cannot will to sin, because
their wills are immutably determined to good. They cannot but praise and
love God, yet they freely do both ; and our Saviour did freely do that good
which he could not but do by reason of his hypostatical union, otherwise he
could not have merited, for all merit requires the concurrence of the will.
To evil.; the devils cannot will to do good, because their wills are unchange-
ably determined to evil, yet they sin as freely as if there were no immutable
necessity upon them. So man cannot but naturally sin in all that he doth,
yet he is not constrained to sin, but sins as freely and voluntarily as if there
were no necessity upon his nature to corruption, — as freely as if God had
not foreseen that he would do so. Man sins with as great a pleasure as if
he were wholly independent upon the providence of God ; and the more a
man is delighted with sin, the greater freedom there is in it. Hence the
Scripture lays sin upon the choice of man : Isa. lxvi. 3, 4, ' They have
chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations.' They
were their own ways, that is, ways proper to corrupt man ; but they chose
them and delighted in them. Man is voluntary under his depravation, free
in his aversion from God ; a free necessity, a delightful immutability. The
will cannot be compelled to will that which it would not, or not to will that
which it would. When sin ariseth from a settled habit, the freer is a man in
his sin ; and though he cannot act otherwise than according to that habit,
yet his actions are most voluntary, because he is the cause of that habit
which he acquired by evil acts, and by succeeding acts testifies his approba-
tion of it.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 213
2. That there is some liberty in man, some power in man. Not* indeed
such a power as the Jews thought man had naturally, of exercising himself
about anything that God should reveal, without the infusion of a new power,
to enable him to act that which God required by supernatural revelation.
Some power and liberty must be allowed,
(1.) To clear the justice of God. No just man will punish another for
not doing that which was simply and physically impossible ; and ' shall not
the Judge of all the earth do right ?' It is a good speech of Austin, If there
were not the grace of God, how could the world be saved ? If there were
not free will, how could the world be judged ? If man were divested of all
kind of liberty, he might have some excuse for himself; but since the Scrip-
ture pronounceth men without excuse, Rom. i. 20, some power must be
granted to clear the equity of God's justice. No man sins in that which he
is under an inevitable constraint to do, and so would be unjustly punished.
It doth not appear that God doth condemn any man simply for not being
regenerate, but for not using the means appointed to such an end, for not
avoiding those sins which hindered his regeneration, and which might have
been avoided by him if he would, though indeed every unregenerate man will
be condemned. The pouring out the wrath of God upon man is principally
for those sins which they might have refrained, and had sufficient reason
against : Eph. v. 6, for ' because of these things,' that is, for those gross
sins which they might have avoided, mentioned ver. 5, ' comes the wrath of
God upon the children of disobedience,' anndiag ; men that would not be
persuaded, which obstinacy was in their will. As these are the causes of
God's wrath, so these will be alleged as the principal reasons of the last
sentence. And our Saviour in his last judgment doth not charge men with
their unregeneracy, but with their omissions of what they might have done,
and that easily ; and commissions which they might have avoided, Mat. xxv.
41-43, wTith their not feeding his members when they were hungry, &c,
which were things as much in their powTer as anything in the world. And
the reason Christ renders of the sentence passed upon men, to depart from
him, was their working of iniquity : Mat. vii. 23, 'Depart from me, you that
work iniquity ;' that work it voluntarily, and work that you might have for-
borne. Though unregeneracy doth exclude a man from heaven, as a condi-
tion without which a man cannot come there, yet nothing of this is mentioned
in the last sentence. It' man had a firm will to turn to God, and had not
then a power conferred upon him to turn, I know not what to say ; but man
hath no will to turn, yea, he hath no will to do those things which he might
do. Supposing man hath a power to avoid such and such sins, he is justly
punished for not making use of that power. Nay, supposing he had no
power to avoid them, yet if his will be set to that sin he is justly condemned,
not for want of power, but for the delight his will took in it. From which
delight in it, it may be gathered that if he had had a power to have shunned
it, he would not have shunned it. If a man be assaulted by murderers that
will cut his throat, if he will not use his power against them, but take a
pleasure in having his throat cut, is not this man a self-murderer, both in the
judgment of God and man ? Let me use another illustration, since the
end of all our preaching should be to humble man and clear God. If a man
be cast out of an high tower, and be pleased with his fall, would he not be
justly worthy of it, and to be neglected by men, not because he did not help
himself in his fall, for that was not in his own power, but because he was
mightily pleased and contented with his fall, and with such a pleasure, that
if he had been able to have helped himself he would not ? So though man
* Smith, Select Discourse, p. 290, &c.
214 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
be fallen in Adam, yet when he comes to discern between good and evil, he
commits the evil with pleasure. So that supposing he had no power to
avoid sins, yet he is worthy of punishment because he doth it delightfully.
Whence it may be concluded, if he had had power to avoid it, he would not,
because his will is so malignant.
(2.) Without some liberty in the will, free from necessity of compulsion,
man would not be capable of sin, nor of moral goodness. No human law
doth impute that for a vice, or a virtue, to which a man is carried by con-
straint, without any power to avoid. Where anything is done without a
will, it is not an human action. Beasts therefore are not capable of sin, be-
cause they want reason and will. If man had not liberty of will, he would
be as a beast, which hath only a spontaneous power of motion without reason.
Sin could not be charged upon man, as God doth all along : Ps. xcv. 10, ' It
is a people that do err in their hearts ;' and Ps. cxix. 21, ' Thou hast rebuked
the proud that are cursed, which do err from thy commandments.' It had
been no error in them, if they had not done it voluntarily. The erring from
God's commandments ariseth from pride of heart, they had not else deserved
a rebuke. Who would chide a clock for going wrong, which hath no volun-
tary motion ? Man without a liberty of will could not be the author of his
own actions, and sin could no more be imputed to him, than the irregular
motion of a watch can be imputed to the watch itself, but rather to the work-
man or governor of it. Without a voluntary power, man would be as an
engine, moved only with springs ; and human laws, which punish any crime,
would be as ridiculous as Xerxes' whipping the sea, because it would not stop
its tide. Neither were any praise due to man for any moral virtue, no more
than praise is due to a lifeless picture for being so beautiful, or to the
limner's pencil lor making it so : the praise is due to the artist, not to the
instrument.
(3.) Without some liberty and power of motion in the will, all the reason
of man, and those notions in the understanding, left by the virtue of Christ's
mediatory interposition, would be to no purpose. The reason why men do
err is because they do not take right ways of judging according to those means
they have : ' Ye err,' saith our Saviour, ' not knowing the Scripture, nor the
power of God,' Mat. xxii. 29. They have a faculty of judgment, and means
whereby to judge, which would prevent errors. There is therefore some
suitable power in man to follow the judgment of reason, if he will. He would
be in vain endowed with that power of reasoning, if there were not a power
of motion in some measure suitable to that reason. The authority of judg-
ing in the understanding would be wholly insignificant ; all debates about any
object proposed would be to no end, if the will had not a liberty to follow
that judgment. How can God make appeals to men as he doth, if they had
not a power of judging that they ought to have done otherwise, and might
have done otherwise than they did ? Though man hath not a sufficient light
left in his nature for salvation, yet he hath such a light of reason in him to
which he might be more faithful in his motions than he is, otherwise the
apostle could not have argued from that light the heathens had to their con-
viction, as he doth, Eom. i. 19-21, &c, and manifests their unfaithfulness to
that truth which God had manifested to them, and manifested in them in
their nature. Most sins do arise from the neglect of being guided by that
light which is in men.
(4.) The glory of God's wisdom in the government of the world would
not have been so conspicuous, if some liberty had not been allowed to the
will. It is no great matter to keep in order an inanimate thing, as a clock
that must obey a necessity ; God would have been but like a good clock-
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 215
keeper only, as one* saith. But how much doth it make for the wisdom of
God, to make the free motions of his creature, the various humours in the
will of man, centre at last in his own glory, contrary to the will and design
of the creature ; that they have their natural motions, their voluntary mo-
tions, and God superintends over them, and moves them according to his
own will regularly, according to their nature, without crossing them ? ' The
determinate counsel of God,' in the death of our Saviour, and the free will
of Pilate and the Jews, meet in the same point : God acting wisely, gra-
ciously, justly ; their wills acting freely and naturally, reduced, without injury
to their nature, to the due point of God's will.
Quest. 3. The third question, How far doth the power of man by common
grace extend ?
Am. As in a body deprived of the soul there is some power of growth
left in the hair and nails, so some power is left in the soul, though it be
spiritually dead. As a regenerate man by special grace hath a power of
doing that which is spiritually good, so a natural man by common grace
hath a power of doing things morally good, if he will. God keeps the key
of regenerating grace in his own hands, and unlocks what hearts he pleases,
and brings in a vital spirit into whom he pleases ; but there is by common
grace an ability in men to do more than they do, but that they harbour,
cherish, and increase those vicious inclinations in their own souls. But let
it be remembered that this power is not to be abstracted from God's common
grace, as the power of a renewed man after grace is not to be abstracted from
special grace, nor the natural powers of motion to the actual motion, not to
be abstracted from God's general providential concourse.
(1.) Man hath a power by common grace to avoid many sins : I say, a
power by common grace ; for sometime, upon the neglecting the conduct of
natural light, God pulls up the sluice of his restraining grace, lets out the
torrent of their natural corruption upon them, which forcibly hurries them
to all kind of wickedness ; as it is said, Rom. vii. 24, 26, ' Wherefore God
also gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts ; for
this cause God gave them up to vile affections.' Wherefore, and for this
came, that is, for going contrary to that natural light they had, God let the
lusts of their own hearts, which he had restrained, have their full swing
against them. In this case sin can no more be avoided, than a man can stop
a torrent.
Again ; though a man, as he is in a state of nature, cannot but do evil,
yet he is not necessitated to this or that kind of sin, but he may avoid this
or that pro hie and nunc in particular, though he cannot in general ; as a
man who hath the liberty of walking where he pleases in a prison, he may
choose whether he will come into this or that walk within the liberty of the
prison ; but let him move which way he will, he is a prisoner still.
Quest. If it be said, if a man hath power to avoid this or that sin, why
may he not avoid all ?
Am. I answer, If he had power to avoid all, he would be restored to the
state of Adam. But the reason is this,f the power to avoid this or that par-
ticular sin ariseth from a particular cause, the natural subjection of appetite
to reason, the lightness of temptation ; or if the temptation be more vehe-
ment, the stirring up reason and pressing considerations against it ; but the
power to shun all sin depends upon the subordination of the faculties one
to another, in the due order of their creation, and an universal subjection of
them to God. Though a man, by a careful watch, may withstand a parti -
* Ingelo. Bentivol. part 2, p. 99.
f Fitzherbert, Policy and Religion, part 2, chap, xvi., sect. 13.
216 chaenock's works. [John I. 13.
cular temptation, yet as long as he is alienated from God, and hath corrupt
habits in him, which are prone to sinful acts, he will one time or other, by
some sudden temptation, be carried out according to his natural inclination,
before he is able to premeditate, and set reason on work. And sometimes
the motions to sin come in such troops, that he cannot stir up his force
against all, so that while he is combating against one, another comes behind
anrl surpriseth him. As another Romanist illustrates it,* a vessel hath three
holes to leak at ; a man with two hands may stop two of them, which he will,
but the third will remain open of necessity. None will say that the devil can
avoid all sin in general, and become holy for the future, because his will is
determined to sin, but this or that individual act of sin he may ; for he may
choose whether he will assault this man or that with such a "temptation, or
whether at this time or another. As if two commands were given to the
good angels, and it be left to their wills whether they will do that or the
other, though they cannot but do good, because their wills are so determined,
yet they have a liberty to choose which command they will at present follow.
And the reason of this is this : there is no physical necessity upon a man
to this or that sin, as there is that the fire should burn. Lusts only offer
themselves ; they have no force upon a man, but by his own will ; they have
no authority from God to compel him ; then God should be the author of
sin. Satan can give no commission to them to break open our hearts ; and
though he be a strong adversary, he cannot break them open. If the door be
open, it is our own act. Is there any necessity upon a man to run into this
or that infectious company, or drink brimful cups, till he hath drowned both
his reason and sentiments of morality ? Hath he not power to quell many
incentives to sin ? Shew me that man in the world that, upon serious con-
sideration, would say, it is utterly impossible for him to avoid this or that
particular sin when he is tempted to it. What men do in this case, they do
willing, though a strong temptation may be the first motive of it. It is said,
Hos. v. 11, 'Ephraim willingly walked after the commandment,' though the
first motive to it was the command of their prince Jeroboam.
To evidence this, let me do it by some queries, which may both satisfy
that we divest not man of all power, and prevent the ill use men may make
of this doctrine, to encourage sluggishness.
1. Cannot you avoid this or that foreseen occasion of sin ? Cannot he
that knows how prone he is to overthrow his reason when the wine sparkles
in the glass, avoid coming within the sight of it ? What force is there upon
his legs to go, or his hands to take the cup ? Can we not starve those
affections we have to this or that particular sin, by neglecting the means to
feed them ? If a man stood by with a drawn sword to stab you if you went
into such a place, could you not forbear going in ? What is the reason ?
Fear. And why might not a natural fear of God, heightened by considera-
tion, be of as much force with you as the fear of man, unless atheism hath
swallowed up all sentiments of a Deity ? Do you not rather wish for oppor-
tunities, and court a temptation ? put your heads out of the window, with
Sisera's mother ; why is the chariot of the devil so long a coming ? It is
said, Prov. xxi. 10, ' The soul of the wicked desires evil.'
2. Have you not a power to avoid gross sins ? Is there any force upon
men, to open, sensual sins ? Have they not a power to abstain from fleshly
lusts ? Has not the will a commanding power over the members ? What
hinders it from exercising that power ? The members are not forced, but
they are « yielded up ' by consent of the will to sin, Rom. vi. 19. Had not
* Soto, Council of Trent, book 2, p. 197.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 217
Achan as much natural power to forbear taking the wedge of gold and tbe
Babylonish garment, as tbe rest of that vast number of the Israelites ? Not
one of their bands toncbed any of the ^poil. Had he not as much power as
any of them to have restrained his bands, though he could not quench bis
covetousness ? The law of nature tells us, we ought not to do that to
another which we would not have done to ourselves. Have we not as much
power to observe this as the Gentiles, who did by nature tbe things contained
in the law ? Why may not a man's will command bis tongue to speak that
which is true, as well as that which is false ? Is there not power to con-
trol it from speaking blasphemy, and belching out cursed oaths ? Cannot
you command the hand to forbear striking another wrongfully ? Has not
a murderer power to keep his sword in bis scabbard, as well as to sheath it
in his neighbour's bowels ? Can any man say, that there was one gross sin
in the whole course of his life, but be had a power to avoid it if he would ?
Forbearance of gross sin consists in a naked omission and a not acting,
which is far more easy than a positive acting, and every man hath a power
to suspend his own act.
3. Did you never resist a temptation to a particular sin ? Why may you
not then resist it afterward if you will, since the same common grace attends
you ? If the will be disengaged one moment from a sin under a great
temptation, why not another moment from sin, under a less temptation ? No
temptation can overpower your strength, unless the will freely shake hands
with it : Acts v. 3, ' Why hath Satan filled thy heart, to lie to tbe Holy
Ghost ?' His meaning is not, why Satan bath done it, for Ananias could
not render a reason of that ; but why didst thou suffer Satan to fill thy
heart ? If you have given a check to Satan before, is it not as easy to say
again, ' Get thee behind me, Satan ' ?
4. Have you not power to shun many inward sins ? Man, where he hath
least power, yet he hath some, viz. over his thoughts. We cannot, indeed,
hinder the first risings and motions of them, which will steam up from the
corrupt fumes and lake whether he will or no ; but cannot we hinder the
progress of them ? Is there not a power to check the delight in them if we
will, or divert our thoughts another way, not listen to their suggestions, and
hold no inward converse with them ? Though you cannot hinder their
intrusion, may you not hinder their lodging ? ' How long shall vain
thoughts lodge within you ?' Jer. iv. 14. Sure we have a power by common
grace to forbear any conference with the motions of flesh and blood.
5. When you do sin, had you not many assistances against it, which if
you had hearkened to, you might have avoided it ? Were there not previous
dissuasions from that inward monitor, conscience ? When sin hath been
enticing you on one hand, and conscience warning you on the other, have
you not more willingly listened unto the pleasant reasoning of sin, than the
wholesome admonitions of conscience ? Can you not as well listen to what
conscience as to what sin doth propose ? But have you not wilfully scorned
its judgment ? Have you not raged against it with a confidence in sin (which
is the case of the foolish sinner, Prov. xiv. 16, ' The foolrageth, and is con-
fident '), and would ' not consider any of the ways of God ' it minded you of,
Job xxxiv. 27, and gave no more regard to its sober dictates, or its louder
pressings, than you have to the barking of little curs in the street ? Why
could you not, with those assistances, have avoided that particular act of sin?
The fault was clearly in your wills. Can you not rather choose a cup of
wine, than a cup of poison ? clear streams, than muddy waters ? Besides
those assistances, you might have had more, if under the batteries of temp-
tation you had sought to heaven for them. Might you not, then, have
218 chabnock's works. [John I. 13,
avoided this or that sin, when you had such assistances, and might have had
more ?
6. Have you not avoided sin upon less accounts and considerations ?
The heathen philosopher could observe, that men may live better than tbey
do.* The wrestlers and champions in the Olympic games lived most temper-
ately and continently during that time, to be more fit for the gaining the
prize. May not rational considerations do as much, if excited in your minds,
as an ambitious desire of honour and affection to victory did in them ? Had
not Saul a power to withdraw his hand from the unrighteous persecution of
David before, as well as when he was sensible of David's kindness in sparing
his life when he might have killed him ? A drunkard under the disease and
pain caused by his sin, can forbear his cups ; doth his disease confer any
power upon him more than he had before ? No ; why could he not then
have forborne his drunken revellings ? Can men be restrained from some
sins by the eye of a man, the presence of a child ? What power do their
eyes confer upon them ? They only excite that which they had before.
Cannot men forbear a sinful act for a sum of money if it were proffered them,
or in the presence of a king, who is said to ' scatter away evil with his eyes,'
Prov. xx. 8, or in a visible and imminent danger ? If a gibbet or a stake
were set before men, that tbey should be immediately executed if they did
not forbear such a sinful action, or if they did not go to hear a sermon ;
can any be so foolish, to think that the glister of gold, the penalty of the
law, the sight of a gibbet, should confer a power upon you which you were
not before possessed with ? It is not then the want of power to avoid sin,
but the want of will.
7. Why doth conscience check any man after the commission of sin, if it
were not in his power to avoid it ? All those actions which fall under the
cognisance and check of conscience, are actions in our own power, and
within the verge of our wills. For the pain of conscience is of another kind
than that pain or grief which is raised by those accidents we could not
avoid. It ariseth from the liberty of the will, and galls the soul when it
considers, that that which it hath done was in its power to be done other-
wise. This is the common language of men upon the regrets of conscience :
I might have done otherwise, I was warned by my friends ; I slighted their
warnings, I had resolutions to the contrary, but I stifled them. All men
have laid the fault upon themselves, and what is universal consent hath a
truth in it ; the consciences of all men would not gall them for that which
they had no power to decline. Indeed, if men were necessitated to sin,
they could not be tormented in hell, for the torment there is conscience
acting rationally, and reflecting upon them for their wilfulness in the world.
If man had not a power to refuse sin, conscience would have no ground for
any such reflections to rack and torment them. And it is observable, that
natural men, somewhat awakened upon a deathbed, are not so racked by
their consciences simply for not being regenerate, as for not avoiding those
sins which were hindrances, and not using those means which were ap-
pointments of God for such an end, because those were in their power ; but
they wilfully embraced the one, and as wilfully refused the other.
Prop. 2. Man hath a power, by common grace, to do many, more good
actions (actions materially good) than he doth. Evangelical works we can-
not do without union to Christ ; so himself saith, ' Without me you can do
nothing,' John xv. 5 ; nothing according to the order of the gospel, nothing
spiritually, nothing acceptably, because no such fruits can arise, where faith,
the root of such works, is wanting. Though man be much crippled in regard
* Fitzherbert of Folicy and Religion, part ii. chap. xxx. sect. 32.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 219
of morals, yet he is not wholly dead to them, as he is to spirituals. A man
may ' break off his sins by (moral) righteousness, and his iniquity by shewing
mercy to the poor ;' by taking off the yoke of oppression, and restoring of
what he hath rifled, which counsel Daniel gives to Nebuchadnezzar, chap,
iv. 27. Though a sick man cannot do all the acts of a sound man till he be
perfectly cured, yet he hath some power of acting some things like a sound
man, remaining with his disease. The young man in the Gospel (yet out of
Christ) morally kept the law ; so may men under the gospel keep the outward
and material part of the precept. There are not only some common notions
left since the fall, but also some seeds of moral righteousness in the nature
of man. The Gentiles did not only, by nature, in part restored, know the
things written in the law, but they did by nature do them, Rom. ii. 14 ; upon
this stock they bore many excellent fruits. What patience, chastity, con-
tempt of the pleasures of the world ! "What affections to their country, and
bowels of compassion to men in misery ! And what devotion in the external
worship of their gods, according to their light, were exemplary in them,
though only under the conduct of nature ! And these works, though they
were not according to the exactness of the law, and failed also in the man-
ner of them, and could not please God for want of faith, yet so far as they
were agreeable to the law of nature, and in regard of the materiality of
them, were not offensive to God. This moral righteousness of theirs was
only external, and rather an image of righteousness than a true one. Abi-
melech had a natural integrity, which God acknowledges to be in him, and
did arise from his moral nature, though he also appropriates to himself
the restraint of Abimelech, and his concurrence with an approbation of that
moral integrity : Gen. xx. 6, ' I know that thou didst this in the integrity
of thy heart : for I also withheld thee from sinning against me, therefore
suffered I thee not to touch her ;' yr\T\i *& I gave thee not up to touch her.
If men did nourish a moral integrity, which they might do, God would con-
cur with them to preserve them from many crimes. If those which were
only under the guidance of natural light had so much power to do many
moral acts by a common grace, is man's power less under the gospel, where-
by they have an addition of a greater light to this natural ? If man was
able to do so much by the light of nature, there can be no inability brought
upon him under the light of the gospel, unless men, by their sluggishness
and obstinacy, provoke God judicially to deprive them of that power, and
withdraw his hand from them, and so give them up to all kind of wicked-
ness, as it is the dreadful case of many in these days. Man may keep the
law of nature better than he doth, and for not keeping that he is con-
demned.*
Prop. 3. Men have a power to attend upon the outward means God hath
appointed for regeneration. Though man cannot renew himself, yet he hath
a natural power to attend upon the means God hath afforded. Though a
man hath not power to cure his own disease or heal his wound, yet he hath
power to advise with others, and use the best medicines for his recovery.
There is not an outward duty a renewed man doth, but a natural man hath
power externally to do it ; though what is essentially good in all parts, can-
not be done without special grace, yet what is externally good may be done
by the assistance of common grace. Have you not passions, fear, love, de-
sire, grief? "Why cannot you exercise them about other objects than ordi-
narily they are employed about ? "Why can you not make hell the object of
your fears, and heaven the object of your desire ? "Why might not Esau
have wept for his sins, as well as for the loss of the blessing ? Might he not
* Preston, vol. iii. p. 39.
220 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
have changed the object if he would ? Why may we not exercise our inward
affections more in our attendance on God ? Is not a little excuse sufficient
to put off from duty, a great excuse not sufficient to keep you from com-
mitting sin ? Great business must be laid aside for sin, not the least laid
aside for God. Every little thing is a lion in the way then. Do you not
many times rack your minds to invent pleas for neglect of duty ? Why can
you not set them on work to consider reasons to move you to service ?
Have we not power to be more serious in the use of means than we are ? We
can be so when some affliction presses us, or conscience gnaws us. Neither
of these furnishes us with a new power. Conscience is like the law, acquaints
us with our duty, but gives us no strength. The charge God brings against
Ephraim was, that he ' would not frame his doings to turn towards God,'
Hosea v. 4 ; he would entertain no thoughts, not one action that had the
least prospect towards repentance ; he would use no means for that end, or
have a look that way. If a man will not do what is in his power, it is a sign
he will not be renewed. Can he pretend to a desire to live, who will not eat,
and endeavour to prevent foreseen dangers ? Or can he pretend to a desire
to build, that will not use materials when he may ?
There are two great means : hearing the word, and prayer.
(1.) Hearing the word. Have not men power to go to hear the word,
to hear a sermon, as well as to see a play? Have they any shackles upon
their feet, that they cannot carry them to a place of worship as well as to a
place of vanity and sin ? Can you not as well read the Scripture as a ro-
mance ? Hath not the will a despotic power over the members of the body ?
How came Herod to have more natural power to hear the word, and to hear
it ' with pleasure,' Mark vi. 20, than other men have ? May you not strive
against diversions, resist carnal affection, rouse up your souls from their
laziness, and endeavour to close with the word ? How smilingly would God
look upon such endeavours ? If men do not, it is out of a natural sluggish-
ness and enmity of will, not for want of power if they would. Men do not
what they might. Certainly he doth no more desire regeneration who neglects
and despiseth the great instrument of it, than he can be said to desire his own
preservation, who neglects medicines proper for the cure of his disease.
(2.) Prayer. I do not mean a spiritual prayer, which is by the special
assistance and indwelling of the Holy Ghost, but of a natural prayer by com-
mon instinct ; such a one as the apostle puts Simon Magus upon, who he
knew was destitute of any air of the Spirit to breathe out, as being ' in the
gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity,' Acts viii. 22, 23, yet supposeth him
to have a power in some manner to express his desires to God ; or such a
power that was common in heathens, upon any distress to run to their altars,
and fill their temples with cries to their gods. You cannot pray in the Holy
Ghost, but you may send up natural and rational cries to God. Did not
Jonah's mariners cry every man to his god ? Have you not as much power
to cry to the true God as the heathens to false ones ? There is the natural
prayer of those mariners, as well as the natural integrity of Abimelech, which
was not a new-covenant integrity. Can you not be as devout as the pub-
lican, and cry, with more seriousness of affection than generally men do,
' Lord, be merciful to me a sinner' ? When men are upon a death-bed,
ready to take their leave of the world, they can then cry. It is not their
death-bed inspires them with power, more than they had before, but they
have more mind, and see a greater necessity of crying to God. They have
more power in the time of their health, by how much the habit of sin wanted
that strength which hath been acquired by a continuance of acts till the time
of their sickness ; for the fewer sins have been committed, the less is the
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 221
power impaired. Though God hath kept other things in his hand, yet he
hath given us a power of begging, if we will use it as a means to obtain them.
Can you not kneel down before God, and implore his assistance ? Can you
not acknowledge before him that it is impossible for you to change yourself,
but that your eyes are upon his grace ; that you cannot attain bv your own
strength a spiritual heart ; that you will seek nowhere else for it but from
his hand ; and that you will not be at rest till he hath put in his hand and
dropped upon your hearts ? Can you not thus cry out, Oh that I were a
renewed person ! as well as cry out, Oh that I were rich and honourable in
the world ! Had Paul a new tongue when he cried out, ' Who shall deliver
me from the body of this death ?' Was it not the same member wherein he
had breathed out threatenings against the disciples ?
Prop. 4. Man hath a power to exercise consideration. He hath seminals
of jus and aquu/n, and a power of judging according to them: Luke xii. 57,
' Yea, why even of yourselves judge you not what is right ? ' Our Saviour
checks them for not making use of their natural power ; in the searching
their own consciences, and judging their own acts, as well as they did in dis-
cerning the face of the sky, and what weather would follow. There is a
power of consideration in a rebellious heart ; for God acknowledges it in a
rebellious nation : Ezek. xii. 3, ' It may be they will consider, though they
be a rebellious house.'
1. Can you not reflect upon yourselves ? Every man hath a reflexive
faculty ; otherwise he is not a man. Reflection is the peculiar privilege of a
rational creature, without which he is not rational. The Pharisees could
reflect upon themselves, and say, 'Are we blind also?' John ix. 40. Can
you not then take a survey of your past lives ; cast up the accounts of your
souls, as well as your books ? Can you not view your particular crimes,
with the aggravations attending them ? Yea, you can, if you would. Can
you not look back upon the means you have neglected, the love you have
slighted, and the light you have shut your eyes against ? As long as a man
bath reason, he may use his reason in these things as well as in others.
Why may he not reflect upon himself in spiritual concerns, as well as civil
affairs in the world ? Cannot he, by comparing the face of his soul with the
glass of the word, understand his own state, and by self-reflection come to
an understanding of his own lost condition and weakness ?
2. Can you not consider the word ? Cannot your reasons be employed
about the objects the word offers, as well as the objects the world offers ?
Though you cannot act spiritually in the duties of religion, can you not act
rationally in them, as men ? Are you endued with a rational soul, to con-
sider the proposals of worldly affairs and concerns, and can you not exercise
the same power in considering the proposal made to you by the gospel ?
The gospel is not only spiritual, but rational. As long as you have a think-
ing faculty, can you not consider what the reasonable meaning of it is ?
Though you have not a spiritual taste, you have a rational understanding ;
why may it not be busied about one object as well as another ? The natural
repentance of the Ninevites at Jonah's preaching, implied the consideration
of his threatening sermon. Why is there not a power in you to think of
what is proposed to you out of the word, as well as you can think of what
you read of a mathematical or philosophical book, or some history ? The
power is the same in both, the faculty the same. As the object proposed
adds no power to the faculty, so it takes away no power the faculty already
hath. Surely man is not such a block or stone, but he may turn these
things over and over, press them upon his own soul, which may make way
for the sensibleness of his state, and putting the will out of its sinful indiffer-
222 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
ence. What any natural man hath done, that may all under the same
means do, if they will. Why may not the veriest wretch among us humble
himself at the hearing of the word, as well as wicked Ahab ? 1 Kings xxi.
27, 29, ' When Ahab heard these words, he rent his clothes. Seest thou
how Ahab humbleth himself ? ' He discovered an external humiliation, after
the consideration of the threatening denounced by the prophet.
3. Can you not cherish, by consideration, those motions which are put
into you ? There is not a man but the Spirit strives with, one time or other,
Gen vi. 3. Hath not man a power to approve any good counsel given
him, if he will ? Have you not had some supernatural motions lifting you up
towards God, and pressing obligations upon you, to walk more circumspectly ?
Why might you not have cherished them, as well as smothered them ?
Why could you not have considered the tendency of them, as well as have
considered how to divert and drown them, by engaging in some sensual lust ?
Was the power of consideration lost ? No ; you could not then have cast
about in your minds, by what means you should be rid of them, or how you
should resist them. Have you not wilfully rejected them, even when con-
sideration hath been revived at a sermon ? And yet you did industriously
let that good motion die for want of blowing up the spark, by following on
the consideration which was raised upon its feet. When you have ' begun
well, who did hinder you' from a further obedience ? ' This persuasion
comes not of him that calls you,' Gal. v. 7, 8. There was no necessity
upon you, to fortify yourselves in your corrupted habits against the attempts
of the Spirit. Could you not as well have fallen down before the throne of
grace, to have begged grace to second them, as kicked at them, and spurned
them away ? Was it want of power to do otherwise ? or was it not rather
your own obstinate wilfulness ? Since I appeal to you, whether your own
consciences have not tugged at you, and spurred you on at such seasons,
why could you not then beg of God, that such a good motion might not have
departed out of your coasts ? Because a man cannot renew himself, there-
fore to lie down in sluggishness is not the design of this doctrine.
4. Can you not consider those notions you have by natural light ? Man
hath a conscience which minds him of moral good, and pulls him from evil.
No man can deprive himself of these. It will check in those things wherein
others commend us, and commend us in those things wherein others accuse
us. May we not observe the motions of conscience within us ? May we
not consider the charge it brings against us for any act committed, so as to
avoid the like for the future ; and the excusations of conscience, in com-
mending us, so as to do the like acts for the future ? As we have a law
without us, which we may consider, so we have a conscience within us,
which witnesseth to the equity of the law, accusing us for what we do con-
trary to it, and excusing us for what we do in observance of it, Rom. ii. 15 ;
and this in man's corrupt state. Cannot man then observe the dictates of
conscience ? Can he not find out the sense of this law in his mind, though
it be much blurred ? Cannot he act like a man, in following the dictates of
this rational principle, as well as like a beast follow the allurements of sense?
No rational principle in man puts him upon evil, but upon moral good ;
whatsoever draws him from good, or puts him upon evil, are principles
common to him with one brute or other, profit, pleasure, honour, all which
are found in some beast or other. Why may not a man then consider the
rational reports of his own conscience, as well as the brutish whisperings of
sense ? But doth not man endeavour to shuffle off his conscience, and is
mighty jolly when it keeps silence, or when he can stop its mouth with an
excuse ? Do not men wilfully choke the sentiments of it, and keep the
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 223
truth deposited in their sonls, in unrighteousness, Rom. i. 18 ; and like the
scomer, « hear not its rebukes,' Prov. xiii. 1 ? Whatsoever man hath by
the relics of natural light, he may think of. He knows by nature there is a
God; he knows something of his attributes, and of his law; may not those
be his morning thoughts? Is he not stirred up sometimes to contemplate
on them ? May he not do it at other times, since this common grace is
always with him, and leaves him not till he leaves valuing and embracing
its divine assistances ? Let it be remembered, that in all this which man
may do, the power is to be ascribed to common grace through a mediator,
keeping up by his interposition the pillars of the earth, and preserving some
relics of natural light, and the seeds of moral righteousness in man ; not in
the least to be ascribed to bare nature ; and that man's corrupt will, stuffed
with sinful habits, is the cause he makes no use of this power.
Quest. 2. If we have not an ability to renew ourselves, why doth God
command us to do so ? And why doth God make promises to men if they
will turn ? Is not this a cruelty ? as if a man should command another to
run a race, and promise to reward him if he did, and yet bind him with
fetters that he cannot run ? Both the command would be unjust and the
promise ridiculous.
Ans. In general. God may command, and his command doth not signify
a present ability in man.
(1.) He may command, because we have faculties suited to the command
in respect of their substance. For the death of a sinner was not a physical
death, but a moral. Man lost not his faculties, but the rectitude of them ;
he lost the purity of his sight, the integrity of his will, but not the under-
standing and will itself.
(2.) God's command doth not signify a present moral ability to perform
it. God's command, which acquaints us with our present duty, is no argu-
ment of a present power ; for if a command signified more than the duty
man owes, it signified more than a command in its own nature could signify.
God's command to us to renew ourselves implies no more an ability inherent
in the creature to do so than Christ's voice to putrefying Lazarus, ' Lazarus,
arise, come forth,' John xi. 43, implied a power in Lazarus to raise himself;
or his speech to the palsied cripple, ' Arise, take up thy bed,' implied a
power in himself to do it himself before a supernatural conveyance of it.
Do not men exhort every day to sobriety those that have contracted a pro-
found habit of drunkenness and lust, that philosophy doth acknowledge it is
not possible for them to abstain from ; yet no man accuseth those that exhort
them of impertinence, nor those that chastise them of unjustice. God's
commands are not the measures of our strength, but the rule of our dutv,
and do not teach us what we are, but what we should be.
But to clear this more particularly :
God may command, though man hath not a present moral ability to renew
himself. For
[1.] First, Man once had a power to do whatsoever God would command
him ; he had a power to cleave to God. He had not else, in justice, been
capable of any such injunction ; there had been ground of a complaint and
charge against God, if man had been created defective in any of those abili-
ties necessary for his obedience to this command. The command is just ;
God would not else have imposed it, because of his righteousness ; and every
man's conscience testifies that it is highly just he should honour God, love
God, and cleave to God. If it were just, then man was capable to perform
this command ; for man, as a rational creature, is capable of a law, and can-
not be governed otherwise ; and no law could be given so proper for him as
224 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
to stand right to his Creator. Since, therefore, the law was just in itself,
and since God did justly impose it, man was certainly created by God in a
capacity to observe it. No question but God, who furnished other creatures
with an ability to attain their several ends, and perform the orders God had
set them in at the creation, was no less indulgent to man. He that was not
deficient to the lower creatures would not be deficient to the noblest of his
sublunary works. He would have been worse in his rank, without a sufficient
stock, than other creatures were in theirs. There would not have been a
physical goodness and perfection suitable to his station in the world, and his
excellency above other creatures. How could God then have pronounced
him good, among the rest of his works, if there had been in his creation a
natural inability to answer the end of his creation ? If God had created man
in such a state that he could not do righteously, and yet commanded him to
do righteously, and, because he did not, punish him, he would have been
unjust ; as if a man should command another to reach a thing too high for
him, and that when his hands were tied behind him, and because he did not,
beat him. This would have been the case had not man had power at first
to do righteously. Had man preserved himself in that created state, no just
command of God (and it was impossible any unjust command should have
proceeded from infinite righteousness) would have been too hard and too
high for him.
[2. J God did not deprive man of this ability. Man was not stripped of
his original righteousness by God, for man had lost it before ever God spake
to him, or passed any sentence upon him after his fall : Gen. iii. 10, ' I was
naked.' If God had taken it away without any offence of Adam, he might
have expostulated the case. It had been alike unjust, as if God had never
given him power at first to observe the command he enjoined him. It would
have been unreasonable to require that of man which God himself had made
impossible. But God did not take away man's original righteousness.* If
God had taken it away before man's fall, then man was unrighteous before
he fell ; and God, taking it away from him while he was perfect, had made
him, of an holy and righteous man, unholy and profane ; as he that deprives
a malefactor of his sight, for his demerit, makes him of seeing blind. If
God took it away after he spake to Adam in the garden, it would then follow
that Adam was righteous after his fall till God deprived him of it, and so was
innocent while he was sinful, and strong while he was weak. God did not
take it away from him before, but had told him that the loss of it would be the
natural consequent of his eating the forbidden fruit, Gen. ii. 17 ; nor after,
for after we find only temporal punishments threatened. God indeed did
judicially deny him the restoration of it, which, as a governor and a judge,
he might justly do, resolving to govern him in another manner than before.
So that it would be an unjust imputation on God to say, God cut off man's
legs, and then commanded him to run, and come to him. What if God did
foresee that man would fall ; was God therefore the cause of his fall ? God's
prescience, though it is infallible, is not the cause of a thing, no more than
our foreknowledge that the sun will rise to-morrow morning is a cause of
rising of it.
[3. J Therefore, since God did not deprive man of it, it follows that man
lost it himself ; and not barely lost it, but cast it away. He did voluntarily,
by an inordinate intention of will, cast away this original perfection, and fell
a-hunting after his own ' inventions,' Eccles. vii. 29. He did not stick to
that command God had given him, nor implore God's assistance of him, as by
his natural ability he might have done. He consulted not with his com-
* Trigland de Grat. p. 275.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 225
mand upon the temptation, but was very willing to cast off that righteous-
ness wherewith God had endowed him, for an affected godhead. Man
readily swallowed the bait; he did not debate the business with Eve, ' She
gave to her husband with her, and he did eat,' Gen. iii. 6. So that the fault
was wholly in himself, and his present state voluntarily contracted ; for
though the devil tempted him, yet he had no power to force him. He was
easily overcome by him, for it was not a repeated temptation, but a surrender
at the first parley.
[4.] Therefore God's right of commanding, and man's obligation of re-
turning and cleaving to God, remains firm. God's right still remains. God
gave him a portion to manage, though man prodigally spent it. God may
challenge his own. Cannot a master justly challenge that commodity he sent
his servant with money to buy, though he spent it in drunkenness and gam-
ing ? God gave Adam a sufficient stock ; he trifled it away. Must God's
right suffer for his folly, and man's crime deprive God of his power to com-
mand ? The obligation to God is natural, therefore indelible ; the corrup-
tion of the creature cannot render this first obligation void. Righteousness
is a debt the creature, as a rational creature, owes to God, and cannot refuse
the payment of it without a crime. Who deprived him of the power of pay-
ing ? Himself. Should this voluntary embezzlement prejudice God's right of
exacting that which the creature cannot be excused from ? A debtor, who
cannot pay, remains under the obligation of paying. The receipt of a sum
of money brings him into the relation of a debtor, and not his ability to pay
what he hath received. Such a doctrine would free all men who were unable
to pay from being debtors, though the sums they owed were never so vast.
That judge would be unjust that would excuse a prodigal debtor, because he
could not pay when sued by his creditor. No doubt but the devils are bound
to serve God, and love him, though by their revolt they have lost the will to
obey him. If, because we have no present power, our obligation to turn to God
and obey him ceased, there would be no sin in the world, and consequently
no judgments. Who will say, that if a prince had such rebellious subjects
that there were little hopes to reclaim them, he should be therefore bound
not to command them to return to their duty and obedience ? If it be
reasonable in a prince, whose rights are limited, shall it not be reasonable in
God to exact it, who hath an unbounded right over his creature? Either
God must keep up his law or abrogate it, or, which is all one, let it lie • in
the dust. His holiness obligeth him to keep up his law ; to abrogate it,
therefore, would be against his holiness. To declare a willingness that his
creature should not love him, should not obey him, would be to declare
that which is unjust, because love is a just debt to an amiable object and
the chief good, and obedience to a sovereign Lord. Must God change his
holiness because man hath changed his estate ? The obligation of man re-
maining perpetual, the right of God to demand remains perpetual too, not-
withstanding the creature's casting himself into an insolvent condition. If
man still owes this duty to God, why may not God exact his right of man ?
Much more may God call for a right use of those means and gifts he hath,
as a benefactor, bestowed upon man since his fall. No man will deny this
right to God upon serious thoughts. These new gifts and means were given
him not only for himself, but for his Lord, to improve for his glory. God
may justly require the right use of those moral principles and evangelical
means for the ends for which he appointed them.
[5.] It will appear more reasonable, because God demands no more; nay,
not so much as he required of Adam in innoccncy. It is but obedientiu
VOL. III. p
226 chaenock's works. [John I. 13.
redintegrata, a return in part to that perfect holiness which was inherent in
man, and to that obedience in part which was in a great measure due to
God. As when a prince demands the return of rebels, he demands a restora-
tion of that subjection which they paid him before. God required a perfect
obedience in the first covenant, he requires not so much in the second, so
that for want of it a creature shall be cast off; but a sincere obedience is
required, though not in degree perfect. Adam had a fundamental power in
him to perform that obedience which is required, in faith and repentance,
the two great parts of regeneration. Faith is nothing bat an embracing and
accepting of Christ the mediator. Adam had a power of believing and
accepting Christ for his head, had he been proposed to him in paradise, as
the mediator of consistency and confirmation, and the vinculum of holding
him for ever close to God. Had not Adam a power to accept him under this
notion, as well as the good angels have accepted him for their head, and
worship him as mediator; that is, pay him an obedience as mediator when
he comes into the world, Heb. i. 6. Had he not a fundamental power to
grieve, though since sin was extraneous to a state of innocency, he could not
have exercised that grief for himself, repentance being extraneous to obedi-
ence, and unmeet for him in a sinless state? Suppose God had commanded
him to grieve for the sins of the fallen angels, Adam having this passion in
his nature, might have done it. He might have known what sin was in
them, and might have grieved for the dishonour of God by them ; even as
our Saviour did grieve for the sins of others, Mark iii. 5, who knew no sin
himself. And in grieving for his own sin, there was only a change of the
object.
[6.] It is yet more reasonable if we consider, that every natural man
thinks he hath a power to renew himself, and turn to God when he will ;
practically, though not all of them notionally. What reason then hath man
to quarrel with God, and accuse him of demanding that which he thinks he
can give to God, and will not at present, but take his own time to do it, when
he sees it fit ? This practical opinion runs in the veins of every natural
man under the gospel, as well as in the heathens, which appears by the
general wilful delays of men about their eternal concerns, by their vows and
resolutions upon the blows of conscience of reforming their lives, and be-
coming new men without having recourse to the grace of God, or taking any
notice of him in their resolves. This I think is a clear case. ' Yet a little
more sleep,' saith a man, that thinks he can rise time enough when he will,
and despatch his business in a moment, Prov. vi. 10. With what face can.
man accuse God of not giving him power, when he thinks he hath power
enough himself ? or be angry with God for demanding his debt, when he
thinks himself in a solvent condition ? No man will blame another for re-
quiring that of his servant, which his servant boasts he hath power in him-
self to do. The Israelites thought so when they said, Exod. xxiv. 3, ' All
the words which the Lord hath said we will do,' without any applications
to the grace of God to enable them. All men are like Israel in this ; only
the regenerate are most sensible of their own impotence, and scarce any
man else.
|"7.] From all this it follows, that God is not bound to give grace to any ;
and where he doth bestow it, it is an act of his sovereign pleasure. If God
hath given man power, and never took it away, but it was cast away by man,
therefore God's right is not prejudiced, but he may justly demand of man
what once he gave him power to do, especially since it is less than what man
at first owed him ; and when man thinks he hath power to pay him, it will
evidently follow, that God is not bound to give any new power. If God
John I. 13.J the efficient of regeneration. 227
were bound to give a new power to accept of the gospel, he were then un-
just not to confer it ; if he be not bound, it is of mere grace that he bestows
it. God proposeth pardon to all upon such conditions, but he is not bound
to give the condition to any ; he commands all to renew their obedience to
him, but he is not bound to renew any one person. He gives the command
to turn, as a lawgiver and governor ; he gives the grace to some to turn, as
a benefactor. It is gi-ace therefore, not debt. When God confers it, it is
an act of his compassionate mercy ; when he denies it, it is an act of his
just sovereignty. He may, if he please, ' suffer all nations to walk in their
own ways,' Acts xiv. 16. Yet if he please to propose the means of grace to
any, the very knowledge of those mysteries of heaven is a peculiar gift, as
well as the outward proposal : Mat. xiii. 11, 'To you it is given to know
the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.' If
we improve reason to the highest, God is not obliged to give us grace, no
more than if a beast improved sense to the highest, he were bound to give
him reason. Though if there could be a man found in any age of the
world, who did improve reason to the utmost of his power, I would not
doubt God's giving him the addition of supernatural grace, out of the
largeness of his bounty, though still there is no obligation upon God ,
because man doth no more than his duty.
And that God doth not give grace to all to whom the means are offered,
and yet doth command them to turn, and promise to receive them ; —
(1.) It doth not entrench upon his sincerity in his proposals. His pro-
posals are serious, though he knows man will not receive them without an
over-powering grace ;* and though he be resolved not to give the assistance
of his grace to every one under those means, but leave them to the liberty
of their own wills. The gospel is to be considered as a command ordering
men to believe, or as a promise alluring men to be renewed, by representing
to them the happiness of such a state. Consider it as a command, God is
serious in it, though he resolve not to give grace to all to whom the precept
comes, for under this consideration of a command it is a declaration of
man's duty, and a demonstration of God's sovereign authority. Doth God's
resolution of not giving grace weaken the obligation of man to his duty, or
diminish God's authority, or give ground to man to charge him with in-
sincerity ? Consider it as a promise, doth it hinder God's seriousness in
it if he resolves not to give the condition of it to all ? It is sufficient to
shew God's seriousness in it, to declare, that if men will be regenerate,
it will be very pleasing to him ; that he will make good to them what he
hath promised ; that if they be renewed, he will make good every tittle of
the promise to them ; and if they will seek, and ask, and knock, he will not
be wanting to them to assist them.
(2.) It doth not disparage his wisdom to command that to man which he
knows man will not do without his grace, and so make promises to man
upon the doing it. If man indeed had not a faculty naturally fitted for
the object, it might entrench upon God's wisdom to make commands and
promises to such a creature as it would be to command a beast to speak.
13ut man hath a faculty to understand and will, which makes him amanjf
and there is a disposition in the understanding and will which consists in an
inclination determined to good or evil, which makes us not to be men, but
good or bad men, whereby we are distinguished from one another, as by reason
and will we are from plants and beasts. Now the commands and exhortations
are suitable to our nature, and respect not our reason as good or bad, but
* Aniiraut. Sor. sur Phil. ii. 13, p. 79. t Ibid. p. 383.
228 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
simply as reason. These commands presuppose in us a faculty of under-
standing and will, and a suitableness between the command and the faculty
of a reasonable creature. This is the reason why God hath given to us his
law and gospel, his commands, not because we are good or bad men, but
because we are men endued with reason, which other creatures want, and
therefore are not capable of government by a command. Our blessed Lord
and Saviour did not exhort infants, though he blessed them, because they
were not arrived to the use of reason ; yet he exhorted the Jews, many of
whose wills he knew were not determined to good, and whom he told that
they would die in their sins. And though God had told them, Jer. xiii., that
they could no more change themselves than an Ethiopian could his skin, yet
he expostulates with them why they ' would not be made clean :' verse 27,
' 0 Jerusalem, wilt thou not be made clean ? when shall it once be ? ' Be-
cause, though they had an ill disposition in their judgment, yet their judg-
ment remained, whereby to discern of exhortations if they would. To pre-
sent a concert of music to a deaf man that cannot hear the greatest sound
were absurd, because sounds are the object of hearing ; but commands and
exhortations are the object, not of this or that good constitution of reason,
but of reason itself.
(3.) Neither doth it disagree with his justice. It is so far from being un-
just for God to demand what men are obliged to do, though he knows that
they will not do it, that God would be unjust to himself if he did not
demand it, if he let men trample upon his rights without demanding restitu-
tion of them. If a prince sets forth edicts to rebels to return, and promise
them pardon upon their returning, though he knows they are rebelliously
bent, that they will not entertain a thought of coming again under his
sceptre, but will still be in arms, and draw down his wrath upon them, will
not all interpret this to be an act of clemency and goodness in the prince ?
Neither is God an accepter of persons, because he doth not give grace unto
all; for may he not do with his own what he please without injustice?
Those to whom we give alms have reason to thank us ; those to whom we
give not an alms have no reason to complain ; we have gratified the one, but
we have done no wrong to the other. We are all by nature criminals, de-
serving death ; should God leave us in that deplorable estate wherein he
found us, can we accuse him of injustice ? Those that by grace are
snatched out of the pit, have reason to acknowledge it an admirable favour,
as indeed it is ; those that are destitute of grace, and by their own wilful
rejection left to sink to the bottom, eannot impute their unhappiness to him ;
for he left them not without witness ; he presented them the word, exhorted
them to hearken to him ; but, instead of paying their duty, they fiercely
rejected him, abhorred his exhortations, and gave themselves over to sin and
vice. If a man proclaim by a crier that such that can bring such a mark
shall receive such an alms, he sends this private mark to some ; they come
and receive an alms. Had he not power to do what he pleased with his
own, to send his distinguishing token to whom he pleased ? What injustice
is done to the other, to whom he sends not this mark ?
We have shewn that God may command. Let us see why God doth
command, when he knows man hath no power to renew himself ?
1. The first reason is,
To make us sensible of our impotency. The design of God is not to
signify our power to perform it, but sensibly to affect us with our inability,
that we may be the better prepared for a remedy ; as the moral law was
given with such terrifying marks, to make men despair in themselves, and
the ceremonial law annexed to it, to give some glimpse of a Mediator in
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 229
whom they might have strength. And therefore when the Israelites were
so affected, Deut. xviii. 16-18, as to desire not to hear the voice of the
Lord in that manner, nor to see that great fire any more which attended
the law, that they might not die, he commends them for it : verse 17,
1 They have well spoken that which they have spoken.' God is highly
pleased with this sense of their own inability to answer the terms of the first
covenant, since it makes them fly for help and supply to the prophet of the
second covenant. The cabalists therefore say, that the law was given to
take away the venom of the serpent ;* that is, not that we should fulfil the
law, but that we might learn how far we were swerved from the duty we
owed to God, and how unable to gain the happiness we had lost. A conceit
of self-sufficiency secretly lurks in every one of us ; we should think our-
selves gods to ourselves if we saw not the picture of our own weakness in
the spirituality of the command. Therefore, though we cannot ourselves
perform this command of regeneration, it is necessary it should be directed
to us, to make us abject in our eyes, and strip us of all confidence in the
flesh, which is the first step toward a being endued with the Spirit ; to make
us hang down our proud plumes, and sink into that despair in ourselves,
which is necessary to the superstructure of a saving faith. It is necessary
the law should be commanded, to make sin appear exceeding sinful, to give
us a true prospect of ourselves in the glass of the command : the rectitude
of it shews us our crookedness ; the holiness of it, our impurity ; the justice
of it, our unrighteousness ; the goodness of it, our wickedness ; and the
spirituality of it, our carnality and fleshliness. God doth not command us
(though we have no power) to upbraid and triumph over us, but to lay us
low, and humble us.
2. To make us sensible of the grace of God, and urge us to have recourse
to it. It is necessary that man should understand the perfection of divine
righteousness, and what the condition of man was before the fall, that thereby
he may understand the necessity of the remedy, and be more willing to come
under God's wing than Adam was to keep under it ; but without a sense of
his own weakness man would never come to God. God commands us, not
that he expects we should renew ourselves, for he knows we cannot ; but
that being acquainted with our feeble frame, we should implore his grace to
turn us, and have recourse to him, who delights to be sought unto and de-
pended upon by his creature. That this command of renewing ourselves,
and returning to our due obedience, is given to this end, is evident by the
promise of the gospel, which did accompany the command, both to encou-
rage and direct men where to find assistance for the performance of what
the first covenant exacts, and the second accepts. Therefore, with the com-
mands of the law, there is the promise of a great prophet to teach them, an
ordaining typical sacrifices to relieve them ; and the gospel, under the mask
of the ceremonial law, attended the fiery and impossible commands of the
moral. God might have exacted his right without making any promise, it
had been summum jus; but God exacts not his right now, but with a pro-
mise ; where there is jus in one, and remissio juris in the other. And very
frequently in the Scripture, where the command is given to shew us our
duty, yet a promise is joined to it, to shew that though obedience be our
duty, yet sanctification is God's work, as Lev. xx. 8, ' Ye shall keep my
statutes and do them ;' whereupon it immediately follows, ' I am the Lord
which sanctify you.' The precept is to acquaint us with our duty ; the pro-
mise, to acquaint us with the sight of a gracious ability ; the precept minds
us of our debt, the promise minds us of the means to pay it : what is
* Morntc do Keligio. Christian, cap. xxxi. pp. S60, 361.
230 chaenock's works. [John I. 13.
required in the precept is encouraged in the promise. Every precept, heing
a part of the law, is to ' shut us up' to faith, and to ' bring us to Christ,'
Gal. iii. 23, 24. God makes us amends ; that as he requires of us what we
lost by another's fault, he hath provided us a remedy by another's righteous-
ness, which we never performed ; and by his own Spirit, which we never
purchased, if we will but seek it. If God did work it in us without com-
manding us to work it ourselves, we could not have a foundation to make
such sensible acknowledgments of his grace and omnipotent kindness. It is
our work as a due debt; it is God's work as a fruit of his grace ; Isa. xxvi. 12,
' Thou hast wrought all our works in us.' The promise, therefore, of a new
heart and a new spirit, is made indefinitely ; none are aimed in it, nor any
excluded, that will but seek it. And supposing they are predictions rather
than promises, yet they run in the nature of a promise : they are to be
pleaded, for God ' will be inquired after concerning them ;' and the fulfilling
of them to the soul is as pleadable as the fulfilling other prophecies to the
church ; the grounds of the plea are the same in both, the truth of God :
Ezek. xxxvi. 37, ' Thus saith the Lord God, I will yet for this be inquired
of by the house of Israel, to do it for them ;' which may reasonably be con-
cluded to respect the whole antecedent promising discourse of God.
3. These commands and exhortations are of use to clear the justice of
God upon obstinate sinners. God is a judge, and judges by law; com-
mands therefore are necessary, because a rational creature is only governable
by law. If God were not a lawgiver, he could not be a judge ; his judicial
proceedings depend upon his legislative power. Men being to be judged by
their works, must have some law as the rule of those works ; and his law is
no more than the first law in innocency, that is, to return to obedience and
righteousness. These commands and exhortations are the whips and scourges
of perverse consciences, whereby they are galled while they obey not the
motions of them, and render them inexcusable and unworthy of mercy in
despising the conditions God requires of them, and make the case of Sodom
' more tolerable in the day of judgment' than the condition of such men,
Mat. xi. 24. We are apt to bring an unreasonable charge against God of
cruelty and injustice, as though his punishments did not consist wTith right-
eousness. God therefore shews us our duty, and demands it of us, and it
is confessed by us to be our duty ; man is therefore deservedly punished,
because he doth wilfully cherish the old nature in him, the fountain of all
sin ; he hath the truth, and he holds it in possession, but in unrighteous-
ness, therefore the wrath of God is justly revealed from heaven against that
unrighteousness of his, Bona, i. 18. God calls sinners, though he knows
they will not renew themselves, as men send servants to demand the posses-
sion of a piece of ground, though they know it will not be delivered to them ;*
but they do it that they may more conveniently bring their action against
such a person that will not surrender. So upon God's command to men to
be renewed, his justice is more apparent upon their refusal ; as he sent
Moses to Pharaoh, though he knew before that Pharaoh would not hearken
to him. This punishment is only accidental to the gospel, it becomes the
savour of death per accidens, because of the unbelief of those that reject it ;f
the gospel is designed for the salvation of men, not for their condemnation.
If the corruption of man produceth condemnation to himself, must God
abstain from doing good to the world ? There is not a man but abuseth
the light of the sun which shines upon him, and the mercies God gives him,
and thereby brings wrath upon himself, and God knows they will do so ;
would we have God, therefore, to put out the light of the sun, and divest
* Cartwright, Harrao. in John vi. 43. | Amiraut. Ser. sur Philip, ii. p. 90, &c.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 231
the earth of its fruitfulness ? Shall God lay aside his right of commanding,
and take away the preaching of the gospel, and so excellent a thing as the
happy revelation of his gracious promises and exhortations, because many
men by their wilfulness bring the just wrath of God upon them for their
refusal ? Will any man accuse our blessed Lord and Saviour, when he
comes to judgment, that he did them wrong to come and die for mankind,
and cause the news and ends of his death to be published, and exhort
sinners thereupon to believe in him ? Surely men's consciences shall be
full of convictions of their own wilfulness, and the equity of God's justice
thereupon.
4. The commands and exhortations are of use to bring men to God,
according to the nature of rational creatures, and also to keep them with
God. Man not having lost his reason, though he hath lost his rectitude,
cannot be drawn to God in a rational way but by cords proper to man ; for
he is a creature governable only by laws, and therefore must have laws
suited to his nature ; and commands and exhortations are so, for the weak-
ness brought upon men to answer them is by their own defection. God
doth not bring men to him by instinct, as he brought the beasts to Adam,
or the creatures into Noah's ark ; such a conversion would not be reason-
able, nor spiritual, nor agreeable to God, no more than the obedience of
the beasts to Noah.* God therefore draws men by commands, and promises,
and exhortations thereupon convenient to the nature of man, accommodated
to the rational capacity of the creature ; for man being created after the image
of God, ought to be conducted and governed after another manner than other
creatures. The grace of God therefore working suitably to the nature of
man, cannot be conceived by us in any other way than in this of commands
and exhortations. And when men are renewed, the commands for perfect
regeneration are still incumbent upon them (though they cannot attain it in
this life), to stir up their hearts to an exercise of that gracious ability they
have to walk in the ways of holiness, and to that end to a reliance on the grace
of God. The promises are given to them to inflame them to a love of holi-
ness, and to shew them where their chief strength lies ; this appears plainly
to be the intent of the Spirit of God in that command and promise, Philip,
ii. 12, 13, • Work out your own salvation ; for it is God that works in you
to will and to do.' He writes to those already regenerate, Work out your
salvation, use your gracious power, and be encouraged by the assistance
God gives you. Use your own power as if there were no grace to help you
in the performance ; depend upon the grace of God which works in you
both to will and to do, as if you had no power at all of any motion in
yourselves.
So that to sum up the whole of this later discourse, the impotence of man
doth not excuse him.
1. Because the commands of the gospel are not difficult in themselves to
be believed and obeyed. If we were commanded things that were impos-
sible in their own nature, as to shoot an arrow as high as the sun, or leap
up to the top of the highest mountain at one start, the very command
carries its excuse with it in the impossibility of the thing enjoined. But
the precept of regeneration and restoring to righteousness is easy to be
comprehended ; it is backed with clear and manifest reason, and proposed
with a promise of happiness which is very suitable to the natural appetite
of our souls. To command a thing simply impossible is not congruous
to the wisdom, holiness, and righteousness of God ; it would not be justice,
but cruelty. No wise man will invite another man by any promises to do
* Goulart de Providence, pp. 172-174.
232 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
that which is simply impossible ; no just judge will punish a man for not
observing such a precept ; no righteous and merciful person would impose
such a command. But these commands of the gospel are not impossible in
their own nature, but in regard of our perversity and contumacy. The
command of righteousness was possible when first given, and impossible
since by our own folly ; impossible in our voluntary corrupted nature, and
by reason of our voluntarily cherished corruption. The change is not in
the nature of the law, but in the nature of the creature ; and what is impos-
sible to nature is possible to grace, and grace may be sought for the per-
formance of them.
2. Because we have a foundation in our natures for such commands,
therefore man's weakness doth not excuse him. It had been unjust for
God to have commanded Adam in innocency to fly, and give him no wings ;
this had been above Adam's natural power, he could not have done it,
though he would fain have obeyed God, because his nature was destitute of
all force for such a command. It would be strange if God should invite the
trees or beasts to repent, because they have no foundation in their nature
to entertain commands and invitations to obedience and repentance ; for
trees have no sense, and beasts have no reason to discern the difference
between good and evil. If God did command a man that never had eyes to
contemplate the sun, man might wonder, since such a man never had organs
for such an action. But God addresseth himself to men that have senses
open to objects, and understandings to know, and wills to move, affections
to embrace objects. These understandings are open to anything but that
which God doth command, their wills can will anything but that which God
doth propose. The command is proportioned to the natural faculty, and
the natural faculty proportioned to the excellency of the command. We
have affections, as love and desire. In the command of loving God and
loving our neighbour, there is only a change of the object of our affections
required ; the faculties are not weak by nature, but by the viciousness of
nature, which is of our own introduction. It is strange, therefore, that we
should excuse ourselves, and pretend we are not to be blamed, because God's
command is impossible to be observed, when the defect lies not in the want
of a natural foundation, but in our own giving up ourselves to the flesh and
the love of it, and in a wilful refusal of applying our faculties to their proper
objects, when we can employ those faculties with all vehemence about those
things which have no commerce with the gospel.
3. Because the means God gives are not simply insufficient in themselves.
God doth afford men beams of light ; he makes clear discoveries, as it is,
Bom. i. 19, ' He hath shewed it to them, itpaniguts, ' it is manifest in them.'
He displays in their hearts some motions of his Spirit, produceth some vel-
leities. The standing of the world under the cries of so many hideous sins,
is a daily sermon of God's kindness and patience in bearing up the pillars
of it, and is a standing exhortation to repentance; as Bom. ii. 4, ' The for-
bearance, long-suffering, and goodness of God leads to repentance.' The
object is intelligible : ' The word is near us, in our mouths, in our hearts ; '
it is apprehensible in itself, Bom. x. 6, 7. The revelation is as plain as the
surface of the heavens, Ps. xix. 1-3, applied to the preaching of the gospel,
Bom. x. 18. That men are not renewed, and turned to God, is not for
want of a sufficient external revelation, but from the hardness of the heart ;
not from any insufficiency of the means, but the pravity and wickedness of
the soul to whom those means are offered. The commands and means of
the gospel are no more weak in themselves than the law was ; but weak
through the flesh, by reason of the inherent corruption man hath fastened in
John I. 13.J the efficient of regeneration. 233
himself, Rom. viii. 3. Would not the hundredth part of any revelation of
some worldly object, connatural to man's corrupt heart, be sufficient in itself
to put him upon motion to it, and embraces of it ? The insufficiency doth
not lie in the external means, for the gospel is an act of mercy and grace ;
the call is an act of kindness. It is clear to man that God offers ; it is clear
that God will accept, if man will embrace his counsel ; and shall this be said
to be insufficient, because man will reject it ?
4. Because this impotence in man is rather a wilfulness than a simple
weakness, therefore man's pretended weakness doth not excuse him from the
command. It is not a weakness arising from a necessity of nature, but an
enmity of will, whereby some other apparent good is beloved above God,
and some creature preferred before him. There is a double impotence,
mercB infirmitatis, which is a want of power in the hand, when there is a
readiness in the will to perform ;* or malignitatis, wbich is seated in the will
and affections, whereby though a man hath a power to perform, yet he
cannot because he will not ; he will abhor any return to God, and will not
be whetted by his promise to any endeavour. A simple impotency deserves
pity, for it is a rational excuse ; but an obstinate perversity is so far from
an excuse tbat it is an aggravation. The deeper the habit of obstinacy, the
more inexcusable the person.* What a ridiculous excuse would this be, to
say to God, (1.) that I ought not to be obliged to restore myself to right-
eousness, and obey the command of the gospel, because I am of so perverse
a disposition that I will not obey, and will not be restored; or (2.) that God
is bound to restore to him that will to obey and renew himself, otherwise he
is guilty of no crime. f The first would be ridiculous, and both impious.
What hinders any man from being regenerate under the call of the gospel,
but a moral weakness, which consists in an imperious inclination to evil, and
a rooted indisposition in corrupt reason and will to believe and repent?
And here the Scripture lays it upon the hardness of the heart, Rom. ii. 5,
and a rebellious walking after our own thoughts : Isa. lxv. 2, ' I have spread
out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walk in a way that
was not good, after their own thoughts.' We are impotent and cannot,
because we are rebellious and will not. For since man hath an understand-
ing capable to weigh arguments on both sides, and see the advantage of the
good proposed, and the disadvantage of the evil tempting, if he doth the evil,
and refuses the good, is not the fault clearly in his will ? And when by a
custom in sin we ripen the power of our evil habits, we contract an impossi-
bility of doing the good required, and casting out the evil forbidden. This
doth in no sort excuse us, because it is an inability contracted by ourselves.f
God himself threatens punishment to the Israelites, when he confesseth
that they could not attain to innocence : J Hosea viii. 5, ' My anger is kindled
against them : how long will it be ere they attain to innocence ? ' V?^ fcO ;
How long can they not ? Purity or innocence. They had raised such an
habit in them, by casting off voluntarily the thing that is good, ver. 3, that
they could not divest themselves of it, which was so far from excusing them
that it sharpened the anger of God against them.
5. This weakness doth not excuse from obedience to this command, because
God denies no man strength to perform what he commands, if he seek it at his
hands. No man can plead that he would have been regenerate, and turned
to God, and could not ; for though we have not power to renew ourselves,
yet God is ready to confer power upon us if we seek it. Where did God
* Trigland de grat. p. 303. t Ibid.
% Quando vitium consuetudine et progressu corroboratum velut naturalitcr inolevit,
voluntatc sumpsit exordium. — Aug. Civ. Dti. lib. 12, cap. 3.
234 chaknock's works. [John I. 13.
ever deny any man sufficient strength, that did wait upon him in serious and
humble supplications, and conscientiously used the means to procure it. A
man cannot indeed merit grace, or dispose himself for it, so that it must by
a natural necessity come into his soul, as a form doth into matter upon dis-
positions to it. But if a man will do what he can do, if he will put no
obstacle to grace, by a course of sin, would not God, out of his infinite
bounty to his creatures, and out of that general love whereby he would
have all men saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth, give him special
grace ? Hath not our Saviour made a promise in his first sermon to the
multitude, that God • will give good tbings to them that ask him,' with a
much more than men give good gifts to their children, Mat. vii. 11. They
were not only his disciples that he preached that sermon to, but the multi-
tude, comparing it with Mat. v. 1, and Mat. vii. 28. Hath not God declared,
that he ' delights not in the death of a sinner,' Ezek. xxxiii. 11, and doth he
not out of his infinite goodness condescend to beseech us to be reconciled to
him ? Will not the same infinite goodness bow itself down to form a new
image in them that use the means to be reconciled and conformed to him,
as much as they can ? Has not our blessed Saviour already given a testi-
mony of his affection to such endeavours, in loving the young man for his
outward observation of the law, Mark x. 21, who wanted but one thing only
to pass him into a gracious state, the refusal whereof barred him of it ?
And shall not he have a choicer affection to those that strive to observe the
rules he hath left in his gospel ? Will he not be pleased with such motions
in his creatures towards their own happiness ? Will he not further that
wherein he delights ? Think not therefore to justify yourselves at the bar
of God for your sloth, because you are too weak to renew yourselves. It
will not help you then. The question will then be asked, Did you ever
seriously beg it, as for your lives ? Did God ever desert you when you would
tight against sin, when you set yourselves seriously and dependency on him
for grace ? God gives us talents, but by our sloth we embezzle them. It
is upon that score Christ lays it, Mat. xxv. 26, ' Thou wicked and slothful
servant.' God hath not promised to furnish you with more talents, when
you improve not the talents you have already ; non-improvement of them
cuts off all pleas men may make against God upon the account of their im-
potence. As there never was a renewed man, but acknowledged his regene-
ration as a fruit of God's grace, so there was never any man that can say,
he did use his greatest industry in trading with the talents God intrusted
him with, and God refused him the supply of his special grace. If you have
not a new heart and a heart of flesh, ask your own hearts whether ever you
did seriously inquire of God to do it for you. God never fails them that
diligently seek him.
For the use of this :
1. For information.
(1.) See the strange misery of man by his fall. We cannot be the authors
of strength to our own souls, since we are despoiled of that vital principle
which constituted us spiritually living in the first creation. How are we
sunk many degrees below other creatures, who alway have, and still do
answer the ends of their creation, when we, wretched we, have lost both the
will and power to answer the end of ours ? We can understand, will, move,
but not as man in innocency could. In ourselves we are nothing, we have
nothing, can bring forth nothing spiritually good and acceptable to God ; a
mere composition of enmity to good and propensity to evil, of weakness and
wickedness, of hell and death ; a fardel of impotence and conceitedness, per-
versity and inability, every way miserable unless infinite compassion relieve
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 235
us. We have no more freedom than a chained galley slave till Christ
redeem us ; no more strength than a putrefied carcase till Christ raise us ;
an nnlamented hardness, an unregarded obstinacy, an insensible palsy
spread over every part, a dreadful cannot and will not triumphing in the
whole soul. The heart turned into pleasure with its own wounds and chains
is an amazing misery both to good men and angels, because it is so great,
and yet unbewailed/ To see a man endued with a soul so rare, even with
its crack, that the heathens thought it to be a particle of God ; an under-
standing that can peer into heaven, fathom the earth by contemplative
inquisitions, yet cannot strike up a spark of enlightened reason about ever-
lasting happiness ; that that reason, which understands a worldly interest,
should be so blind, so weak, about a heavenly bliss ! A short-sighted mind,
that cannot cast a look so high as to spiritual things, nor rise up in one
holy thought without the grace of God ; a perverse will, that cannot com-
mission one spiritual desire ; a weak arm, that cannot strengthen itself to
grasp and hold one spiritual gift ; a dry wilderness, that cannot issue out a
tear till God open the fountain of the great deep of grace to flow in upon it ;
a hard heart, that relents not under afflictions on earth, nor could under the
flames of hell without grace ! What a woful thing is it to be miserable, and
have no strength to be happy ! to look into a law. and behold it wholly
spiritual, and to reflect upon our souls, and behold them wholly carnal !
Rom. vii. 14, to find a command of regeneration in the judgment of our own
consciences, just for God to impose, good for us to receive, and an utter
inability to square ourselves according to it !
(2.) See the vast power of sin. It is this that hath cast its infectious
roots so deep in our souls, that it is impossible for us to pluck up this
degenerate plant.* The first defection from God was of that nature, that it
did per se, of itself, produce an inability in us, as sickness doth in a body, or
disjointing a member doth weakness in a man; otherwise man, after he had
sinned, had been found in strength, and had had a power to do good, till
God by punishment had taken away that power, and inflicted a contrary
weakness, which would be very absurd to affirm. Adam threw off the royal
robe of righteousness ; and in all those ages which are run out since, man
could not find by all the inquiries of nature how to put it on again without a
supernatural strength. This sin that hath taken held of us, keeps us down,
that we cannot lift up our heads to divine knowledge, or reach out our hands
to perform any divine precept ; it is this has emptied us of our treasure,
stripped us of our strength, made us as poor as Job upon the dunghill, and
as feeble as the cripple at the pool ; and which is worse than this, hath not
only deprived us of our health and strength to cure ourselves, but of our
will to be healed by another ; and possessed us with such a frenzy that we
are friends to our madness, and enemies to those that would deliver us from
it ; we are all possessed with a legion of devils, that makes us cry out against
Christ before we be turned to him, Mark v. 7. It is this first poison diffus-
ing itself in the heart of Adam has made us all by nature a generation of
vipers, and infected our very tongues, that we cannot, being evil, speak that
which is good; that is, perfectly and spiritually good, as it is Mat. xii. 34,
1 0 generation of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things?' and
poisoned our souls at the very root, tbat not one grape of grace can grow
upon the thorn of nature. All the coin of our actions bears the impression
of the evil treasure in our hearts, Luke vi. 43-45.
(3.) "We may from hence see the groundlessness of any conceits rising in
u.s, of the power and freedom of our own wills to anything spiritually good.
* Triglaud, de Grat. p. 308.
236 chaknock's works. [John I. 13.
This conceit reigns in most men's hearts naturally"; it is a legacy left to our
natures by the will of Adam. The not submitting our wills to the will of
God, in a way of humble waiting upon him, is the source of the misery of
mankind ; such imaginations will creep up in our hearts, that our under-
standings can aspire to all knowledge, our wills spring up in grace, as natu-
rally as a clear fountain in pure waters. The cause of such conceits is the
ignorance both of the depth and largeness of the wound original sin hath
made in all our faculties. Paul, while a pharisee, without question was of
this mind, and cried up the liberty of the will as much as he cried down the
truth of the Christian religion; he was 'alive without the law once,' Rom.
vii. 9. But when he takes out the lesson of the sinfulness of natural con-
cupiscence, Rom. vii. 7, the experience of his slavery, and being sold under
sin, grew up with the notion of the extent of original corruption, and he
found himself a mere dead man, as may be observed in several passages in
Rom. vii. Every man is born with this conceit, since we find the only
peculiar nation God had in the world asserting it in the whole body of them,
in the face of God, Exod. xxiv. 3. When Moses told them all the words
and judgments of the Lord, all the people answered with one voice, 'All the
words which the Lord hath said will we do;' and ver. 7, 'All that the Lord
hath said will we do, and be obedient.' Not one man among them duly
sensible of natural slavery, nor making any application to God for grace to
keep them ; but as confident of the strength of their mutable wills as if they
had as much power as the first man in innocence. This vain confidence
hath its bitter root in the imagination of all Israel ; and that it may not
appear to be a sudden and rash passion, they assert it again more solemnly
upon second thoughts : ver. 7, ' All that the Lord hath said will we do, and
be obedient.'
[1.] It is a high piece of pride. To boast of a great estate, when a man
hath not a farthing in his purse, is very ridiculous, or for a slave to brag of
liberty, with his chains upon his hands and feet. What a vain self-reflection
is it when we are bound naturally in our sins, as a slave in his shackles,
with Satan's padlock upon us, till the Son make us free indeed ! John viii. 30.
It is the very moth of pride which ate out the beauty of Adam's garment,
who, whilst he would stand upon his own bottom, laid the scene of his own
ruin ; he affected to be his own conductor, and proved his own cut-throat ;
and aspiring to an independency on God, fell down into the dungeon of
slavery to, and dependency upon, Satan. It is a pride like that of Adam's,
an invasion of God's property, an affecting to be that by ourselves which we
can only be by Christ ; it is an arrogance like that of the Babel builders, to
think by this slime of nature to raise up a spiritual building as high as
heaven. We sin over again more formally the sin of Adam, by affecting an
equality with God.
[2.] It is a disparagement to God. It is an unquestionable idolatry, and
never yet practised, to set up any creature as the author of the temporal good
of the whole world. Is it not more to set up many thousands of free wills
as the authors of the spiritual good of the creature, to make every man's will
an idol ? Is the robbing God of the glory of his grace less criminal than the
divesting him of the glory of his outward work ? Or are the works of grace
in the soul more inconsiderable than those of nature ? It disparageth God's
grace ; it makes his grace subsequent, not preventing ; it makes the highest
spiritual work to be the seed of man, not the seed of God. If this conceit
takes place in your hearts, God is like to be without much praise from his
creature. Peter will be no more beholden to God than Judas, Paul no more
than Simon Magus ; both had the outward revelation, and so both owe a
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 237
praise to God ; but what further debt of praise did Paul owe to God, if his
regeneration sprang forth into being by the power of his own will, without
any further contribution from God than an objective proposal ? It takes off
the crown of glory from the head of Christ ; for though it will be acknow-
ledged that he bruised the head of the common serpent by the power of his
death, yet the destruction of the works of the serpent in our hearts, which
is our immediate happiness, was wrought by the seed of free will. It would
be strange that the apostle Paul should be so over- seen, to give such praise
to the grace of God manifested to him, if he had not been particularly be-
holden to that for the turning of his heart. By this God is beholden much
to the creature's will, in being a great cause of keeping up the interest of
God in the world, which had no footing, notwithstanding his revelation,
without the compliance of man's will, untouched by any supernatural grace.
Such a conceit of man's power seems to envy God the glory of his whole
grace. And such a bitter root of this, I doubt, may be one secret cause
that we are so heart-tied and tongue-tied in the praises of God for his grace.
[3.1 It takes away a great part of the glory of the Spirit's work in the
world. Was his convincing the world of sin and righteousness only external,
by the objective proposals of the word, and fitting the apostles for the pro-
pagation of that convictive revelation ? Was he to stand only as a spectator,
to behold which way the motion of free will would cast the balance ? Is he
to preserve grace in the heart ? and is there not more need of his creatine it
there, than preserving it after ? Is there more danger of the devil's quench-
ing the flame kindled in the soul, than there was of its first touch upon the
heart ? Is he a Spirit of grace only to propose it, not to work it ? The
Spirit makes no verbal proposal of it, that is by man ; if an inward proposal
barely by applying it to the understanding, has not man as much power to
do that, as to work it in his will ? How can it be a well of water springing
up to eternal life, if it works nothing efficaciously upon the heart ? This
secret pride and conceit in the heart may be a cause we make so few appli-
cations to the Spirit of God, taking little notice of him in our attempts.
[4.] It puts a bar to all evangelical duties. It makes us cleave to ourselves
rather than to God, and presume upon our own strength rather than reby
upon his. The heathens (as Seneca) asserted, that it was a silly thing for a
man to desire that of heaven which he had power to do without it. Why
should we go to him for renewing grace, when it is in our own power to re-
new ourselves ? May it not be said to us, as it was in another case, ' Why
trouble you the master ? ' As long as we think we can spin a righteousness
out of our own bowels, we will never go to Christ for a robe of his weaving,
though never so rich. And while we think we can rear a stately spiritual
building by our own skill, we shall never desire the art of another workman.
Our Saviour would have nothing to do with his fulness, if we stood in no
need of it ; and what need had we of it, if we could despatch this great
business of grace ourselves? This secret imagination in the heart is one
cause of the neglect of duties, especially prayer, or of a slightness and cold-
ness in it.
[5.] This conceit endangers a man's destruction, by encouraging a delay
of using the means necessary to this work in God's ordinary course. What
sensualist would not delay using means for repentance, who conceits he can
repent when he will, and that to will is in his own power ? This makes men
think they have a key to unlock heaven at their pleasure, and have the com-
mand of the treasuries of grace ; and therefore are afraid to attend upon
evangelical means, for fear they should be put upon serious reflections too
soon. The common sentiments of men are a sad evidence of this ; you shall
832 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
hear many acknowledge their weakness in other things, but not in this ; they
cannot leave such a coarse of sin, they cannot pray with so much affection,
yet their hearts are right ; they can repent and believe when they will ;
that is in their own power ; which makes them sluggish and careless at the
calls of God. But what a folly this is, let Solomon witness, who sets the fool's
cap upon such confidence ; ' He that trusts in his own heart is a fool,' Prov.
xxviii. 26 ; it is to trust in a weathercock that is mutable with every wind of
tamptation. To depend upon our wills, is to depend upon the oldest and
the most certain bankrupt in the world, that broke as soon as it was set up,
many ages since, and never recovered itself. Who told you, therefore, that
you can melt the stone within you at your pleasure ? that you can cast the
strong man out of your wills without a stronger than he ? But suppose the
grounds were rational, and that you had a power to cure yourselves ; the
consequent is very irrational, for that cause to delay it ; for what man in his
wits would endure a wound or deformity many years, because he can heal or
beautify himself at his pleasure in a moment ? Take heed therefore of such
fancies of your own power to regenerate yourselves, and upon that account
to neglect that which you have power to do ; but imitate Ephraim with all
speed, notwithstanding your cheating imagination, and cry out, ' Turn thou
me, and I shall be turned,' Jer. xxxi. 18.
(4.) It informs us, that regeneration is not wrought merely by moral
suasion, or only by exhortations ; then it would principally be the work of
the will of man. Our Saviour had a will to preach to all in Jerusalem, but
he had not a will to quicken all : John v. 21, ' the Son quickens whom he
will ; ' so that it depended upon his inward operation, not only upon his out-
ward exhortations. It is true there is a suasion in the ear by the word, but
the persuasion is in the heart by grace ; the suasion in the word may cause
some rational reflections as a moral cause, but no spiritual motion towards
God as a physical cause. Men are not disputed or exhorted, but created
into grace ; the proposal of a good by the understanding is not always em-
braced by the will, unless it be a good suitable and connatural to those
habits in the will. Where, therefore, there is no suitable habit planted in the
will, rational reflections in the mind and conscience are not like to prevail
much.
[1.] If it were only by suasion and exhortation, the most eloquent preach-
ing were like to do most good. Whereas it never was God's method to
found conversion upon the ' words of man's wisdom,' though ' enticing ' in
themselves, but upon the • demonstration and power of the Spirit,' 1 Cor.
ii. 4. The most eloquent preaching would then most fill the gospel nets.
And the reports of that rhetorical prophet Isaiah would have been soon be-
lieved, which were not so, because ' the arm of the Lord was not (alway)
revealed with them,' Isa. liii. 1. If any words, as words, were like to have
an edge to cut deep into the soul, they must be the words of our Saviour ;
since ' never man ' (even in the judgment of some of his enemies) ' spake as he
spake.' But though 'his lips were full of grace,' Ps. xlv. 2, most of his hearers'
hearts were empty of it under his ministry ; not the eloquence and pressing
reasons of Christ, nor the wrath of God revealed from heaven, can reclaim the
heart of man, without the power of grace. The Pharisees were prouder
under Christ's melting bowels, and the Jews harder under God's wrathful
blows, Isa. i. 5 ; neither hearing nor feeling will prevail upon hardened souls.
[2. J What bare exhortations can work upon a dead man ? Can a well
composed oration, setting out all the advantages of life and health, raise a
dead man, or cure a diseased body ? You may as well exhort a blind man
to behold the sun, and prevail as much. No man ever yet imagined, that
John I. 13.] the efficient of eegenekation. 239
the strewing a dead body with flowers would raise it to life; no more can the
urging a man, spiritually dead, with eloquent motives, ever make him to open
his eyes and stand upon his feet. Did our Saviour come out of his grave,
or could he ever have done it, by mere suasion, without the power of God to
raise him ? Eph. i. 19, 20. The working of mighty power is a title too
high for the capacity of mere moral exhortations. A mere suasion doth not
confer a strength, but suppose it in a man, for he is only persuaded to use
the power which he hath already.
> [3.] Doth not daily experience testify the contrary? Have you never
discoursed with some profane, loose fellow, so pressingly, that he seemed to
be planet-struck at every reasoning, shaken out of his excuses for his sinful
course, yet not shaken out of his sin ; that you might as soon have per-
suaded the tide at full sea to retreat, or a lion to change his nature, as
have overcom e him by all your arguments. Have you not seen many at a
stand in sin, by the force of some convincing reasons, return again to their
vomit ? Have not many tears at command in anything that concerns them-
selves, the loss of some estate, or some dear friend, but in the things of God,
in his dishonours, as dry as the parched earth ? That you may almost as soon
extract water out of a rock, as repentance for sin out of their stony hearts.
So that it is not the faint breath of man, or the rational considerations of
the mind are able to do this work, without the mighty pleadings and powerful
operations of that great Paraclete or Advocate, the Spirit, to alter the temper
of the soul.
[4.] There is no likelihood that any man in the wTorld would be renewed,
if it were only by moral suasion. Satan's logic would be stronger than
God's ; his arguments would more suit our imagined interest, and our real
enmity against God ; his persuasions would find more kindred in the prin-
ciples of our minds and habits of our wills to take fire by him, than the
suasory allurements of God, which will meet with nothing in our hearts
but contrariety to them. The deceitfulness of sin within us, and the subtilty
of Satan without us, both being active as well as persuading adversaries,
would fix us in our rebellion, without a contrary power, as well active as
exhortative ; and God would do no more towards our restoration than Satan
doth towards our destruction, since the devil can only propose to us, not by
any physical touch incline our wills. We are wholly inclined to him in our
own natures, in love with the knife that cuts our throats, and too fond of our
shackles ever to knock them off. The will is so enamoured with its corrupt
habit, that were this work left barely to self-will, and no other power em-
ployed in it than exhortative, not one person were every likely to come unto
God.
[5.] If it were wrought by suasion, the will would have the whole praise
of the work. For suasion or exhortation is nothing else but the proposing
arguments to the understanding ; but the motion, according to those argu-
ments, is wholly from the will, which hath a power to receive them or refuse
them.* God, indeed, would be the first speaker, but not the first agent ;
God would be only the assisting cause, as all moral causes are ; he would
only assist the motion of the will, not cause it. The motion of the will is a
physical act; if, then, the physical act be from the will, and God only the
moral cause, the will will be the greater sharer in the work ; for moral
causes are in vain without a physical effect in those things they work morally
upon : as all the reasoning of one man with another will be to little pur-
pose, if there be not a physical motion of the will of that person to comply
with the other's reasonings. If, therefore, the reasoning part be only from
* Parken'a Thes ; Ames, contra Gre vine.
210 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
God, and physical motion from man, the most debauched wretch, under the
preaching of the gospel, is as much beholden to God as the highest believer,
who had both the same suasions and exhortations ; for though the suasion
was from God, the persuasion was from their own wills. God only made
the revelation, and was afterwards a spectator, not an actor.
(5.) Information. We may draw a conclusion hence whereby to judge
ofthe truth of doctrines. Man cannot renew himself. Whatsoever doctrine
doth depress and humble man and advance the glory of God, is true, it
answers the main design of the gospel, which all centres in this, that man
is to be laid low, and God to be exalted as the chief cause. It pulls man
from his own bottom, and transfers all the glory man would challenge into
the hands of God ; it lays man in the dust at God's footstool. That doc-
trine which crosses the main design of the gospel, and encourageth pride in
man, is not a spark from heaven : ' No flesh must glory in God's presence,'
1 Cor. i. 29. The doctrine of justification by works is thrown down by the
apostle with this very argument as a thunderbolt : Rom. iii. 27, ' Where is
boasting then ? it is excluded by faith ;' that is, by the doctrine of the
gospel ; boasting would be introduced by ascribing regeneration to nature,
as much as it is excluded by denying justification by works ; the doctrine of
the gospel would contradict itself, to usber in boasting with one hand whilst
it thrust it out with the other. Our Saviour gave this rule long ago, that
the glorifying God is the evidence of truth in persons : ' He that seeks his
glory that sent him, the same is true,' John vii. 18. By the same reason
also in things and doctrines ; and indeed, Christ speaks it in relation to his
doctrine, as appears, vers. 16, 17. All truth gives God the pre-eminence in
all gracious works ; the first creation, the progress and top-stone, are the
works of this great Bezaliel, this mighty artificer, both the first draught and
the last line. To confound nature and grace together, is to join the creature
in commission with God, and make them co-heirs in the glory which is only
due to the only wise and almighty Creator.
Use 2 is for exhortation. 1. To the regenerate. If this doctrine be
true,
1. Then ascribe nothing to flesh. (1.) Not to yourselves. No more
praise is due to us than to gold for being melted by the fire and wrought by
the workman into a vessel of honour ; it is due to the skill of the artificer,
not to the vessel itself. When the reparation of human nature was to be
wrought by the gospel, wThen the crooked should be made straight, and the
rough places plain, then should flesh be as grass, when the Spirit of the
Lord should blow upon it ; yea, the people, those that are God's peculiar
ones, by reason of privileges, are grass, Isa. xl. 4, 6, 7, they should be
nothing in themselves, that God might be all in all : the Spirit of God blows
upon all their self-confidences. If God be the God of all grace, what share
have our wills in it then ? He calls, he opens the heart, he strengthens, he
perfects ; all the grace we have is his ' treasure,' 1 Peter v. 10. He first
delivers from Egypt ; preserves in the desert ; conducts to a footing in
Canaan. Grace triumphs in the whole work, from Dan to Beersheba, from
the beginning of the work to the end. What glory can belong to us ? We
will, it is true, but God gives that will ; we work, but God bestows and
stands by that power to work ; what have we then to do with the praise ?
It is ' in his light we see light,' Ps. xxxvi. 9. The rays whereby we have a
glimpse of him are not darted from us to him, but from him to us. The
light in the air springs not from itself, but from some other body enlighten-
ing it; how can any good be ascribed to us, where there is nothing but
insufficiency and defect? It is to belie the Lord, to entitle a work of
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 241
omnipotency to so infirm a cause ; it is worse than the pharisee, who, in
the midst of his boasts of his own moral righteousness, thought a tribute ot
praise due to God : ' Lord, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are,'
Luke xviii. 11. Shall we entitle God the author of our beings, and our-
selves the creators of our spiritual beings ? Is it less to have an elevation
of our faculties, and an animation of them by a new virtue, than to have
simply the faculties themselves ? If the creature be unable of itself to move
without a dependence on God in way of common providence, much more un-
able is it to move without dependence on God in a way of supernatural
vitality. The glory of the act is as little due to man as the glory of the first
habit.
Now, 1, review yourselves, consider what you were before regeneration,
what after it; and then, how can you ascribe anything to yourselves?
(1.) What you were before regeneration. Was not sin as deeply rooted
in you as any other, which made you as incapable to raise yourselves as the
wickedest man in the world ? Were you not prisoners in chains, captives
under locks and bolts, when grace first set up its standard for your recovery?
How thick was the darkness of your minds ? how stout the perversity of
your wills ? how impetuous the violence of your sinful affections ? Did
they not all conspire together to make as stout a resistance against the work
of the gospel as any others ? Can you then say, that because God saw you
more inclinable to grace than another, that he drew you ? You were created ;
did you bring clay enough to compose the least particle of flesh about you ?
You are new created ; what part of the new man was formed by your direction ?
Did you bring grace enough of yourselves to form one holy thought, or send
out one holy desire ? Did your own will single you out of that multitude of
degenerate men of better natures than yours, left still in their own nothing-
ness ? Was it nothing but your own will that planted you in the nursery
of the invisible church, that made you capable of a divine union ? Were
not other men's reasons as strong as yours ? the means they enjoyed
greater ? their moral disposition sweeter ? What was the reason their
wills did not bend themselves as well as yours ? What is the reason
they did not hold out their hands to catch this all-necessary grace ? Did
this noble birth cost none any pains but yourselves ? Was this goodly
fabric reared by your own wills ? Look on it ; methinks it is a piec*e too
comely and noble for human skill.
(2.) What are you since your regeneration ? What, do you find no rebel-
lion of the law in your members against the law of the mind ? Are there
not powerful allurements of the flesh ? Are your thoughts alway flying up
to God, and hovering about him ? Are you alway nimble in your praise of
him ? or not rather lifeless many times under the breathings of the Spirit ?
Why are you thus ? Did you first by your own force begin this noble con-
quest of sin ? And can you not by the same power make a better progress ?
Did you breathe a life into yourselves when you had not a spark, and can
you not blow up this spark into a greater liveliness ? Surely then this
work was not at first the birth of your own wills. Do you not yet find some
scale and thick matter upon your understandings that you cannot pick off ?
some darkness in your minds, as there is some in the air after it is en-
lightened ? Are there not obstructions in your wills ? no shackles upon the
executive power ? Can you not remove that darkness with that great light
you have ? nor unlock those fetters by the strength of your habitual grace ?
Can then the first powerful entrance of it, the fall of the first scale from the
understanding, be judged to be the work of your own hands ? or the first
VOL. III. Q
242 chaknock's works. [John I. 13.
teeming of your wills with grace to be the effect of your own power ? View
yourselves well in both states, and you will find no ground whereon to build
so much injustice towards God, and pride in yourselves, but must needs
acknowledge that God and not yourselves have wrought all your works in
you, Isa. xxvi. 12, not only your temporal advantages, which the church
there means, but your spiritual, and much more spiritual than temporal.
To stave off any ascribing to yourselves, consider,
[2.] He that ascribes it to his own will hath great reason to question
whether he be regenerate or no. He may well doubt whether he under-
stands or feels what it is, since those in Scripture who have been most ex-
perimented in it, and therefore are the most competent judges, have most
highly magnified the grace of God, and most deeply vilified themselves ;
they have given the glory of it so entirely to God that they have not let a
grain of it stick to their own fingers. Tbus David often, ' Thou hast quick-
ened me.' The apostle Paul owns his effectual call to be owing to the
• grace of God,' Gal. i. 15, and to an abundant ' grace in Christ,' 1 Tim.
i. 14; he was a persecutor, but his faith and love was from the abun-
dance of the grace of God, and that in Christ too, not from any thing in
nature. Peter is not behind him in the admiration of it : 1 Peter i. 3,
' Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to
his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again.' And it is that the church in
the times of the gospel prophesied of: Ps. c. 3, ' It is he that hath made
us, not we ourselves;' made us his people, as it follows, ' We are his people,
and the sheep of his pasture,' ' not we ourselves.' Whenever the naughti-
ness of their hearts hath been ready to launch out to self-praise, they have
turned the tide quickly to the grace of God. When Paul had owned grace
as the cause of his spiritual being, 1 Cor. xv. 10, and began to speak of his
labouring more abundantly than they, he flies back in haste, as one that bad
gone beyond his line, ' Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me ;'
another, ' Yet not I :' Gal. ii. 20, ' I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.'
There is no mention of any in Scripture that ever in this case did sacrifice
to tbeir own net.
[3.J If a man be regenerate, such a boasting of himself is very dangerous.
Though it may not rifle you of the new nature, yet by tbe just judgment of
God,* it may cloud the comfort of it. If such a man be renewed, this pride
is but a prologue of some dark veil to be drawn between him and the light of
God's countenance, between him and the sight of his own grace. A swelling
up in pride presageth a sinking down in desertion. If God be not owned by
you to be the God of all grace in you, he will not own himself to be the God
of all comfort to you. Grace follows humility, and some shrewd shock
attends spiritual pride ; it is such an idolatrous robbing God of his glory
(whereof he is most jealous), and giving it to another, that he will not let it
pass without a remark. The clouding of your grace will be the fruit of the
smothering of his glory. For since the main intendment of the gospel is to
humble, God will humble you if any grace be in you. If the Spirit of grace
hath breathed upon your souls to renew you, he will blow upon your grass
to consume it, Isa. xl. 7, he will pull down those proud thoughts and strong
holds, and cause your vain confidences to wither and come to nothing.
Ascribe it not therefore to yourselves ; be not so presumptuous, as, while
you allow God to be the author of the being and motion of a little fly, to cry
up your own wills as the chief cause of grace, a work more excellent than
the material world.
2. Ascribe nothing to instruments, either men or means. It is not of
the will of man, not another's will. Without the efficacious working of the
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 243
Spirit, the gospel itself is but as a dead letter, the Spirit only quickens it.
It is not outward teaching and blowing which of itself will kindle these
sparks ; an instrument cannot act without the strength of an agent to manage
it ; the chisel forms the stone into a statue, but according to the skill and
strength of the artificer moving it. It is not the breath of man, and a few
words out of his mouth, can produce so great a work as the new creation ;
this might be a reason why God chose so weak an instrument as man to
preach the gospel, to evidence that the great work was not from the weak-
ness of man but the power of God.
Exhortation 2. Let us be humbled under our own natural impotence and
inability, and keep up this humiliation. There is danger of the pharisee's
pride climbing up into the heart, even after regeneration. Renewed men
have instructions to humility above other men ; their sin may strike them
low, because it is the growth of their own nature ; their grace may keep them
low, because it is no plant of their own setting ; sin, because it is originally
theirs ; grace, because it is originally none of theirs ; it is no beam of their
own understanding, no stream from the fountain of their own will. If we
think believingly and fruitfully of Christ at any time, we cannot but think of
our own weakness, nothing in him but minds us of it ; our weakness to obey
the law was the cause of his coming ; our weakness to satisfy God was the
cause of his dying ; our inability to repair and support ourselves was the
cause of his fulness. His death minds us of our impotence to redeem our-
selves, his grace minds us of our impotence to renew ourselves. The more
we grow up in the new birth, the more deeply sensible shall we be of our
impotence. Oh, let this text be writ in our hearts, ' Not of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of man.'
3. Resolve nothing in your own strength. The power to believe and be
renewed is a power ' given,' not inbred, Philip, i. 29 ; our strength is depo-
sited, not in the cracked cabinet of our own wills, but in the treasures of
Christ. Our purposes are weak without grace to strengthen them, our reso-
lutions vanishing without grace to establish them. If we should be left to
the sails of our own faculties, without the breath of the Spirit to fill them,
we should lie wind-bound. The will can never in this life be so firm but the
allurements of the great tempter will make inroads upon us and overset us,
without the special grace of God to establish and strengthen us. As we are
not to do anything for our own glory, so we are not to do anything in our
own strength. As we must not be our own end, so we must not be our
own principle ; the power the best have is but derived, the stream must
know it is but a stream still. The actual exercise of Paul's ability grew from
strength in another hand, ' I can do all things through Christ strengthening
me,' Philip, iv. 14 ; all things by him, nothing by himself. When the Israel-
ites went out with God, no sons of Anak, no walls of Jericho, nor chariots of
iron could stand before them. "When they trusted in themselves, nothing
could be resisted by them. The devil was certainly none of the lowest rank
of angels ; he had a great clearness of gifts, yet he falls for cleaving to his
own will and strength, not to the grace of God. And Adam, in depending
upon himself, lost himself and his posterity. For us to undertake the govern-
ment of ourselves is like a ship without a pilot, to be dashed soon against a
rock. To lean on our own wisdom and will, is to lean on broken reeds,
deceitful supports ; self-confidence is the worm of grace, conceit of a spiritual
fulness in ourselves is the way to an emptiness of spiriiual comfort. Self-
will and self-wisdom are the great idols of the soul, and some little images of
them are in the hearts of the best men, which they are ready sometimes to
fall down before and worship ; they would oppose temptations themselves,
244 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
do duties themselves by the strength of habitual grace, without regard to
the strength of God, the great support of it.
4. Therefore live dependency upon God. Do you not find how apt you
are to stagger at every temptation ; how weak your wills are to good ;
how easily your purposes are broken, the thoughts of God few and distracted,
your motions heavy in divine ways ? Is there not, then, need of a constant
looking unto God, as they did upon the brazen serpent, for the healing of
our natures, while the wound remains imperfectly cured ? All bodies on
the earth, though they have a principle of motion in themselves, yet depen-
dency upon the heavenly bodies. If the motions of the heavens should
cease, that all motions in the earth would cease too is the opinion of philo-
sophers. Without dependence on the grace of God and fulness of Christ,
we sink into weakness and impotency, as a beam expires into duskiness upon
the clouding of the sun. It is God only can be a 'dew to Israel,' Hosea
xiv. 5. Think not of bringing forth the after-fruits of grace without his
influence, no more than you could plant in yourselves the first root of grace
without his power: the same breath of the Spirit must blow the fire up. as
well as kindle it. As by our own wills we should never turn to God, so
without the continuance of efficacious grace we should quickly start from
God. ' As you have received Christ, so walk in him,' Col. ii. 6. You
received him by faith, walk in him by faith. This is the reason of the dif-
ferent thrivings of one Christian above another, under the same means. One
endeavours to act upon his own bottom ; the other clings to the vine. Christ
knew the things of God by lying in the bosom of the Father ; we come to
know and do the things of God by lying in the bosom of the Son. All
natural effects, if taken off from the influence of their own cause, bj' which
they live and increase, lose their power and die. The soul separate from
God, by non-exercise of faith, loses its strength, become stiff and inactive.
How often do we return 1o our wonted coldness, bring forth lazy fruits, creep
like snails in *the ways of God, without the spur of quickening grace ! And
we want it because we do not seek it ; for though we be armed with the whole
armour of God, helmet, shield, breastplate, yet prayer and supplication must
be added as a mark of our necessary dependence : Eph. vi. 18, ' Praying
alway with all prayer and supplication.' Then will the Spirit endue us with
a fresh vigour, confirm our languishing wills, restrain the flames of natural
corruption, and excite the fear and faith of God in the heart.
2. The second branch of the exhortation, to those yet in a natural con-
dition.
1. Endeavour to be sensible of your natural impotence. Be deeply hum-
bled at the feet of God, strip yourselves (as much as in you lies) of the
conceitedness of reason and pride of will. Every man is born with high
conceits of himself and his own power ; it being a natural evil, should cost us
the deeper humiliations. Consider yourselves by nature under the dominion
of sin, the demerit of wrath, the curse of the law, the hatred of God, and a
feebleness to help yourselves in this wretched condition. View yourselves
often in the glass of the law, bring the spiritual word and the carnal heart
together, and behold the beauty of the one and deformity of the other ; let
all the nasty corners of the heart come under the examination of that purity,
and then let the carnal mind hang down at the thoughts of your inability to
frame yourselves according to a spiritual law. The view of our natural con-
dition cannot work regeneration in us, but it is some kind of preparation
towards it. ' The law is a schoolmaster to drive to Christ,' Gal. iii. 24. It
works not this grace, but it fires a man out of himself, shews him how much
he differs from the holiness of God, and is an occasion for casting about and
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 2-45
looking after some remedy, whereby he may be made like to God, and of
earnest crying for the showers of grace. Be sensible also of your contrariety
to the grace of God ; our wilfulness against it is worse than our emptiness
of it. God ' will teach the bumble his ways,' Ps. xxv. 9, those that are sen-
sible of their own insufficiency to guide themselves.
2. Make use of the power you have. Man (as hath been shewn) hath
some power by those restored relics of nature. There is no plea therefore
to lie snorting upon a bed of sluggishness. We must not expect a divine
assistance will fly to us from heaven while we play the sluggards. Though
God doth rouse up some on the sudden, before any previous act of their
wills, yet we must not expect God will use the same methods to all. Our
own power must be stiri-ed up and exerted as much as may be. To be faith-
ful in a little is the way to be made ruler over much. Though the top of
nature cannot merit grace, yet if nature struggles to come to the top it may
find an invisible hand helping it up step by step. The damnation of most
men will not be for the fault of their first parents, but for the abuse of their
own power, the perverseness of their wills, and neglect of what they might
have done towards the seeking of God. Though Moses had a promise of
victory over Amalek, yet Joshua must fight, and the Israelites stand to their
arms. God saves not men in ways encouraging their laziness. ' The slug-
gard desires and hath nothing ; but the soul of the diligent shall be made
fat,' Prov. xiii. 4. The sluggard hath nothing but lazy wishes, not active
endeavours. If it be not worth the having, why do you desire it ? If it be
worth the desiring, why not worth the seeking ?
(1.) Avoid those sins you have power to avoid. Every sin, though never
so little, doth increase our weakness, as every wound doth the distemper of
the body. It makes us weigh down towards the centre of sin. Every grain
cast into the scale makes it the more unable to rise, As a virtue which is
risen to that height that it cannot degenerate into vice is most worthy of
praise, so the vice that possesses the soul so deeply as to incapacitate it to
the doing good, being contracted by ourselves, is the more worthy of wrath.
(2.) Use the means appointed" by God. Though we are torches which
cannot light ourselves, yet we may bring ourselves to the word, which may
both melt and kindle us. Though the giving rain and the increasing the
fruits of the earth be from God, yet no man ever held ploughing, and sow-
ing, and pruning unnecessary. The work of grace is the work of the Spirit,
who is a ' wind which blows where it lists,' John iii. 8. But may we not
wait for those gales ? May we not spread our sails and watch for the suc-
cessful breathings ? How do you know but whilst you are waiting upon
God in an humble posture, God may unlock your hearts, and pour in the
treasures of his grace ? Acts x. 44, ' While Peter yet spake these words, the
Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.' If you will not harden
your hearts to-day, God may soften your hearts to-day : Heb. iii. 15, ' To-
day, if you will hear his voice.' These are the times wherein God parleys
with the soul, and inclines it to the happy surrender. Though the power is
God's, as the water is the fountain's, yet he hath appointed the channels of
his ordinances through which to convey it : ' Ministers by whom you be-
lieved,' 1 Cor. iii. 5. The gospel begets instrumentally, God principally,
1 Cor. iv. 15. God calls by the gospel, 2 Thes. ii. 14. As God is the
governor of the world, yet it is by instruments and second causes, which he
clasps together to bring about his own designs. He that doth not use these
means may fear that God will never work savingly upon him, for it is an
utter refusing any acceptance of this grace, or anything tending to it. This
is to be peremptory, never to do ourselves any good, or receive any from
246 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
God. Iii despising the means, you despise the goodness of God. As God
gave up the heathens to themselves, because they were ' unthankful,' Rom.
i. 21, for that light of nature and means which they had, so if we use the
means of the gospel with thankfulness to God, God may give himself up to
us. But by neglect of them we take the larger strides to destruction, and
the same dreadful sentence may be pronounced against us as against them
in Ezek. xxiv. 13, ' Because I have purged thee,' that is, offered thee means
whereby thou mightest have been purged, ' and thou wast not purged, thou
shalt not be purged from thy filthiness any more ; but in thy filthiness thou
shalt die.' The using the means afforded by God hath a common illumina-
tion, and a ' taste of the heavenly gift ' attending it, Heb. vi. 4.
[1.] Use the means fervently, with as much ardour as you set upon
anything of worldly concern ; do it with all your might, since the eternal
blessedness of your soul depends upon it : Eccles. ix. 10, ' Whatsoever thy
hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' Stir up your souls to hear and
meditate, as David doth to bless : Ps. ciii. 1, 2, ' Bless the Lord, 0 my
soul ; and all that is within me, bless his holy name.' Employ all your
faculties in this useful work ; bring your hearts as near to the word as you
can, screw up your affections to what you meditate upon, check your
hearts when they begin to rove. Consider your own particular case in
anything you hear; and let the word be as a delightful picture in the view of
your minds continually ; let every evangelical object excite your inbred
affections.
[2.] Use the means dependent!]) . Objective proposals are not useless,
because God hath ordained them ; though they are not always successful,
unless God doth influence them. The means do not work naturally, as a
plaster cures a wound, or a hatchet cleaves wood; nor necessarily, as fire
burns ; for then they should produce the same effects in all, as fire doth in
combustible matter; but as God pleases to accompany them with his grace,
and edge them with efficacy, they must be used with an eye to God, build-
ing with one hand, and wrestling with God with the other. Men speed best
in ordinances as they strive in prayer. There are promises to plead before
you come to hear: Exod. xx. 24, ' In all places where I record my name, I
will come unto thee, and bless thee.' The promise was made to the whole
nation of Israel, the visible church, therefore pleadable by every one of them ;
and fix it upon your hearts, that as the death of Christ only takes away the
guilt of sin, so the grace of Christ only takes away the life of sin, and the
death of nature.
3. Pray earnestly. Entreat God to send his grace; beg of him to issue
out a divine force, and a quickening powTer, to enlighten your minds, incline
your wills. Lie at his feet, groan, wait till this work be wrought in your
soul. How do you know, but while you are looking up to God, God may come
down to you ? Can a man be wounded, and not cry for plasters ? Can he
be shipwrecked and not cry out for some vessel to relieve him ? Let such
a voice frequently issue from you, ' "What shall I do to be saved ? ' Is there
no balm for a wounded soul, no hope for a distressed sinner, no city of
refuge for one pursued by wrath and vengeance ? Do you pray for daily
bread ? Why do you not for special grace ? Are there no rational pleas
you can urge ? Is there not a fulness of arguments in the word ? Why do
you not then use those arguments God hath put into your hands ? Why do
you not spread his own word before him? Put him in mind how his
thoughts were busy about the work of redemption, and that the regeneration
you desire of him was the great end of that, and a thing pleasing to him ?
Why do you not reason with God, to what purpose he sent his Spirit into
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 247
the world, but to do this work in the hearts of men which you are now soli-
citing him for ; and that you come not to beg any alms of him, but what he
freely offers himself ? You may daily read such arguments in the word,
where a revelation is made of them ; you may daily plead them : if you do
not, it is not your cannot, but your will not. Cry out of the blind eyes you
cannot unscale, the iron sinew you cannot bend, the false heart that will
not go right, and the fallen nature which cannot reach so high as a holy
thought. Surely God will not be deaf to the natural prayers of his rational
creatures put up to him with a natural integrity, no more than he is to the
cries of animals, to the voice of the lion seeking for his prey, into whose
mouth he puts, by his providence, what may satisfy it. God gives the Spirit
to them that ask him ; not to the idle, lazy, and peevish resister of him and
his grace. If you have power to regenerate yourselves, why do you not do
it ? If you have not, why do you not seek it ? Is the way of heaven shut
to you ; or rather, do you not shut your own hearts against it ? Have you
sought it earnestly, and can you say God denies it you? No man can say
so ; there is a promise for it : James iv. 8, ' Draw near to God, and he will
draw near to you ; ' he speaks it to sinners, as it follows, ' Cleanse your
hands, you sinners.' You can pray for other mercies, why not principally
for this particular determination of your wills to God, above all other things ?
Lord, give me to will and to do. Never leave off praying till God hath
crowned your petitions with success ; and be encouraged to seek to him, whose
great business in the world was to destroy the works of the devil, whose prin-
cipal work was the spiritual death of man. If you have such earnest desires
in your souls, that you would rather have it than the whole world, and
esteem it above all worldly wealth or honours, be of good comfort, some of
the rubbish of nature is removed ; the steams of such desires shall be welcome
to God, and the Spirit's commission shall be renewed to breathe further
upon your souls. Desire as vehement as hunger and thirst shall be satis-
fied, if our blessed Saviour's promise be true, who never deceived any, or
broke his word : Mat. v. 6, ' Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after
righteousness : for they shall be filled.' A fulness attends a sense of empti-
ness, accompanied with hungering desires. But I am afraid few people put
up their petitions to God for it ; that I may say, as Daniel of his nation,
' all this evil ' of unrighteousness and sin is ' come upon us ' by our depraved
natures ; ' yet made we not our prayer before the Lord our God, that we
might turn from our iniquities, and understand thy truth,' Dan. ix. 13.
4. Nourish every motion and desire you find in your hearts towards it.
Have you not sometimes motions to go to the throne of grace, and beg
renewing grace of God ? Do you not find such tugs and pulls in your con-
sciences ? Is there not something within you spurs you on ? Kick not
against it, nor resist it, no, nor smother any spark of an honest desire in your
hearts ; be constant observers of lessons, your natural consciences, or what-
ever any other principle set you. Natural notions are not so blotted, but they
remain legible ; would men be more inward with themselves, than abroad
with the objects of sense, which draw their minds from pondering that deca-
logue writ in their souls. There is not the wickedest man under the gospel,
but hath sometimes more bright irradiations in his conscience than at other
times, but they are damped by a noisome sensuality; he hath some velleities
and heavings, some strugglings against the solicitations of unrighteousness,
some assents upon the presenting of virtue ; for as grace is not always so
powerful in a good man as to stifle temptation, so neither is corruption so
powerful in a wicked man as always to beat back those motions to good
which rise up in his soul, whether he will or no. As the law of the mind is
248 chaenock's wokks. [John I. 13.
not always so sovereign in a gracious man, but that it is affronted by the law
of the members, so neither is the law of the memhers so absolute in a wicked
man, but that it is somewhat checked by the law of nature in the mind.
Are there not upon hearing the word, or reflecting upon yourselves, some
wishings, some inward velleities which partake of reason, and the nature
of that faculty which represents the necessity of it to you? As there is some
kind of weak knowledge left in us since the fall, there is also something of a
weak desire. Cannot these desires be improved and represented to God ?
Why is not the grace of God fulfilled in you ? Because you persevere not
in these desires, you quench the sparks of the Spirit, and willingly give
admission to Satan to chase them out. Shut not your eyes then against
any light, either without or within you, which may provoke God to withdraw
this grace from you. How do you know but, upon using the means, praying
earnestly, observing inward motions, God may give you an actual regenera-
tion ? The neglect of these is a just reason for God to refuse you any
further gift; and may take off all things which you may think to bring against
him in your own defence. The use of them hath been beneficial to many,
and no example can ever be brought, that God hath condemned any that
conscientiously used the means of salvation. Therefore I say again, if any
man use the means, pray earnestly for this grace, observe the motions of the
Spirit in him, he will not want a superadded grace from an infinitely good,
tender, and merciful God.
A DISCOURSE OF THE EFFICIENT OF
REGENERATION.
PART II.
Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God. — John I. 13.
Two doctrines were raised from these words.
1. That man, in all his capacities, is too weak to produce the work of
regeneration in himself.
This I have despatched, and now proceed to the
2d Doct. God alone is the prime efficient cause of regeneration.
It is subjectively in the creature, efficiently from God. Ezekiel's dry bones
met not together of their own accord, Ezek. xxxvii. 5, 6, or by chance, but
were gathered by God, and inspired with life ; and not only the last act of
life, but the whole formation of them in every part, he doth particularly own
as the act of his own power. And doing every part of it by degrees, they
should know, by that admirable work upon them, that he was God : ' I will
cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews
upon you, and will bring flesh upon you, and cover you with skin ; and you
shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.' This work doth as much
discover the glory of his deity, and speaks him God in a more illustrious
manner than the creation of the world. We know him to be the Lord Je-
hovah by his creation of the world ; but a clearer knowledge of him in his
power is added by his regeneration of the soul. The sinews, flesh, skin, all
the preparations to grace, are from God, as all the preparations of that mass
of clay for the breath of life in Adam were from the power of God, as well as
the living soul itself. Most do understand it of the recovery of the Jews from
the captivity of Babylon ; but certainly it hath a higher import, and respects
the time of the gospel, and the renewing of life in the soul of all the Israel
of God. (1.) Because the prophecy extends further than the two tribes cap-
tivated in Babylon ; for, verse 11, the bones are said to be ' the whole house
of Israel,' who despaired of ever seeing any good, complaining that their
bones were dried : ver. 11, • Our hope is lost, we are cut off for our parts.'
Which could not be rationally the complaint of the Jews, who had a promise
that, after seventy years' captivity, they should return, and therefore their
250 chap.nock's works. [John I. 18.
case was not so desperate. (2.) Because, verse 14, he speaks of ' putting
his Spirit into them;' meaning thereby that work he had spoken of in the
former chapter, Ezek. xxxvi. 7, which certainly, being a covenant of grace,
respected the times of the gospel. If it be said that it is meant of forming
the church, it must also be meant of forming every member of it, since
the least member of Adam was formed by God, as well as the whole body.
Certainly, if renewed men, after some great falls, having still the root of
habitual grace in them, cry to God, out of a sense of their own insufficiency,
for the creating a clean heart, as David doth, Ps. li. 10, ' Create in me a
clean heart, 0 God, and renew a right spirit within me ;' if he then, who
had this root remaining, and had some sparks which presently were blown
up upon Nathan's speech to him, cries out for a new creation, what need
hath he then of an almighty breath who hath not any warm ashes of grace
or any one string of a spiritual root in his soul ! Whatsoever, therefore, is
holy, good, and spiritual in us, we owe to the new-creating grace of God.
All graces are his p^ae/V/xara, his free donatives, over and above his common
largesses to nature, a present from his infinite liberality.
I shall shew,
I. That God is the efficient.
II. That it is necessary he should be so.
III. From what principles in God it flows.
IV. How God doth it.
V. The use of it.
I. That God is the efficient.
1. God doth always appropriate this work to himself.
(1.) In the first promise, Gen. iii. 15, 'I will put enmity,' &c. In which
promise is included the whole work of redemption, and new creating man
under another head, with another nature, which should not comply with the
designs of Satan, or gratify the great enemy of God and mankind by un-
ravelling the work of God, and subjecting himself to misery. It was neces-
sary to our happiness that the league between Satan and us should be broken,
that we should turn to God, hate the works of the devil, and join with the
interest which Satan endeavoured to overthrow. And God promises that
he would do it ; he challengeth it as his own work : ' I will put enmity ;'
he leaves it not to men or angels to begin this hostility. Every one, there-
fore, that is at a true variance with Satan is ' God's workmanship, created
in Christ,' by a second creation, as well as he was created to a natural life
in Adam by the first creation, and ' created to good works, that he may walk
in them,' Eph. ii. 10. That is, is fashioned by God to walk in ways con-
trary to those of Satan, which is the greatest enmity we can express to the
devil, who envied God a service from the holiness of Adam's nature. And
Satan having made that conquest, and gained man to be his friend, it is not
easy to conceive how any lower power could unfasten this knot, and set them
at variance, since the devil had both wit enough to humour man and strength
enough to keep him.
(2.) In the times of the gospel. No less than seven times I will he doth
affix to his promise of the covenant, as hath been observed before, Ezek.
xxxvi. 25-27. What seed was left to keep up the name of God among the
Jews was of his begetting : Rom. ix. 29, ' Except the Lord of Sabaoth had
left us a seed,' cited out of Isa. i. 9. Their standing was not their act, but
God's : and 1 Kings xix. 18, ' I have left me seven thousand, all the knees
that have not bowed to Baal.' Others were left to themselves ; these were
signally wrought upon by his grace. Others are but instruments ; God is
the principal agent in all the seed of the church scattered in the whole earth :
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 251
Hosea ii. 23, 'I will sow her to me in the earth,' alluding to the name
Jezreel, which signifies the seed of God. If ever the sons of Japhet/ dwell
in the tents of Shem,' it must be by God's ' persuasion,' Gen. ix. 27. The
word rendered enlarge signifies to allure. The Spirit of grace is of God's
effusion, Zech. xii. 10 ; it is God's pouring out a Spirit of grace on them
before their looking up to God. (Where, by the way, observe a signal tes-
timony of the deity of Christ ; ' They shall look upon me whom they have
pierced ;' he that pours upon them the Spirit of grace is he whom they
pierced, which was the Lord Jehovah, verse 8 ; for where in your Bibles
Lord is written in great letters, the Hebrew word there is Jehovah; the
highest name of God is here attiibuted to Christ.) And even in the last
times he will still be the only agent in it. When God speaks of the Jews'
dispersion, under which they are at this day, he owns this work upon their
hearts at last to be an act of his own power and of covenant mercy : Deut.
xxx. 6, ' The Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart,' &c, which some of
the Jews understand of the time of the Messiah. God will challenge this
work as his own right to the end of the world.
2. Christ appropriates it to God, and acknowledges it to depend only
upon his will. Had any other cause been in conjunction with God, our
Saviour would not have deprived it of its due praise, nor with so much
thankfulness and amazement admired the gracious pleasure of his Father
as he did, — Mat. xi. 25, ' At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee,
0 Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes : even so.
Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight,' — at that time, after he had
been discoursing of the judgments upon them for their refusal of the gospel,
worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. It was God's pleasure not to reveal it
to them, and God's justice to punish them for refusal, because they
wilfully refused it. The outward teaching was to all in the ministry of
Christ, the inward revelation only to few according to the good pleasure of
God. Christ was the outward teacher, but God the inward inspirer. That
others are not renewed by him is not because he cannot, for he is Lord of
heaven and earth, but because he will renew some and not others. Our
Saviour refers it here only to the good pleasure of God ; he had erred much
in ascribing it to God, if he had had the assistance of any other cause. Why
this part of the clay he had created was formed into the body of Adam and
not another, had no other cause but his pleasure ; why this part of corrupted
Adam is formed into a temple, a divine image, and not another, can be
ascribed to no other but the same cause. He that formed Adam in the
earthly paradise, forms every believer in the church, the spiritual paradise,
and neither hath a co-worker nor motive without himself.
3. The Scripture everywhere appropriates it to God. They are there-
fore called his saints, Ps. xxxiv. 9, as being sanctified by him as well as
belonging to him, 'his people,' 'the branch of his planting,' 'the work of
his hands,' peculiarly his, as being created for his glory, ' that I may be
plorified,' Isa. Ix. 21. Their fitness by grace for glory is the work of his
hands. The vessels of wrath are fitted for destruction, not by God, but by
themselves, Rom. ix. 22. But the vessels of mercy are prepared by him,
ver. 23, ' He had before prepared unto glory.' Adam lost himself, but who-
soever of his posterity are recovered are ' wrought by God for glory,' 1 Cor. v. 5.
It is observable that the apostle ascribes this in the whole frame of it to God :
1 Cor. i. 30, 'But of him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto
us wisdom, righteousness,' &c, because he would remove all cause of boast-
ing in the creature. He did not only set forth Christ at first as a principle
252 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
of righteousness, and redemption, and sanctification, but engrafted in him,
whosoever is in him, for the enjoyment of those privileges, and made him not
only in general to the world, but to us, in the particular application, a prin-
ciple of sanctification as well as righteousness. Union with Christ, en-
grafting in him, new creation, putting into another state, are all purely the
work of God. He hath no sharer in it. As Christ trod the wine-press
alone in the work of redemption, so God engrafts men alone into this vine.
As Christ was the sole worker of redemption, so is God the sole worker of
regeneration. In him we are created, but solely by God's skill ; Christ the
vine, and believers the branches, the one planted and the other engrafted by
the same husbandman, John xv. 1, 2 ; he only planted and dressed Christ
for us, he only plants and dresseth us in Christ. It is * by his own will,'
not any other, that ' he begat us,' James i. 18. ' Of his own will,' his own
good pleasure was the motive, his own strength the efficient. Hence he is
called ' the Father of spirits,' Heb. xii. 9, not so much (as some interpret
it, and that most probably) as he is the Father of souls by creation, as by
regeneration, which adds a greater strength to the apostle's argument for
submission to him and patience under his strokes. He keeps in his own
hand the keys of the heart, no less than the key of the womb, which was
alway acknowledged to be in the hands of God. It is with this prerogative
of God that Jacob silenceth Rachel, when she so impatiently cried out for
children, as if she had a resolution to kill herself if she had them not, with
this, ' Am I in God's stead ? ' Gen. xxx. 1, 2. He only opens the womb of
the soul as well as that of the body, impregnates it with grace, and brings
forth the fruit of holy actions, as Philo in his allegory descants upon the
place. The Jews perhaps meant no less in that saying in their Cabala,*
Abraham had not had Isaac if a letter of the name of God had not been
added to his name ; the power of God, a letter of his name, must go to
regeneration. It is appropriated to none but God in Scripture : to the
whole Trinity, without the conjunction of any creature ; to the Father as
the author, therefore called ' Our Father ; ' to Christ, as the pattern ; to
the Spirit, as the inspirer of that grace whereby we are made the sons of
God. The very heathen have acknowledged this ; some philosophers have
affirmed, that the great virtue, wherein they placed the happiness of man,
could not be had but by the favour of God, and all thought their heroes to
be born of their gods.
And the Scripture affirms that,
(1.) All preparations to this work, as well as the work itself, are of God.
The removing indispositions, and the putting in good inclinations, is the
work of the same hand ; the taking away the heart of stone, as well as the
giving a heart of flesh. He removes the rubbish as well as rears the build-
ing ; razeth out the old stamp and imprints a new ; destroys sin, which is
called the old man, and restores the new by the quickening of the Spirit.
The preparations of the dust of the ground to become a human body, had
the same author as the divine soul wherewith he was inspired.
(2.) All the parts of the new creature are of God. Faith, which is the
principal part of it, is < the faith of the operation of God,' Col. ii. 12 ; not
but that love and other graces are wrought by God, but in this grace, which
is a constitutive part of the new creature, God comes in with a greater
irradiation upon the soul, because it hath not one fragment or point in
nature to stand upon, carnal reason and mere moral righteousness being
enemies to it, whereas all other graces are but the rectifying the passions,
and setting them upon right objects. Yet all these, too, own him as the
* Nisi nomini Abraham, litera He addita fuisset, Abraham non generasset.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 253
author. Our knowledge of God is a light growing from his knowledge of
us ; ' we know God ' because we ' are known of him,' Gal. iv. 9. The
elective act of our wills is but a fruit of his choice of us : John xv. 16, ' You
have not chosen me, but I have chosen you ; ' our willing of him is a birth
of his willing us, our love a spark kindled by his love to us. God first calls
us my people, before any of us call him my Cod, Hosea ii. 23. The moon
shines not upon the sun till it be first illuminated by it. God first shines
upon us before we can reflect upon him ; he calls us before we can speak to
him in his own dialect ; our coming is an effect of his drawing, and our
power of coming an effect of his quickening. Every member in Adam was
a fruit of his power, as well as the whole body ; every line drawn in the
new creature is done by his pencil as well as the whole frame.
(3.) The acts of the new creature. God doth not only give us the habit
of faith, but the act of faith : Philip, i. 29, ' Unto you it is given in the behalf
of Christ, not only to believe, but also to suffer for his sake.' By believing
is meant the act of believing, as by suffering is meant not only the power of
suffering, but actual suffering ; as the fruits upon the trees at the first crea-
tion were created as well as the tree which had a power to bear. The very
attention of Lydia to the gospel preached by Paul was wrought by God, as
well as the opening of her heart, Acts xvi. 14. Our walking in his statutes
is a fruit of his grace, as well as the putting in his Spirit to enable us there-
unto. The very act of motion is made by the head and heart ; if there be
a failing of spirits there, if any obstruction that they cannot reach the indi-
gent part, the motion ceaseth. David acknowledged God his continual
strength in his holy pursuits, ' My soul follows hard after thee,' Ps. lxiii. 8.
But what was the cause ? ' Thy right hand upholds me.' His life and
power issued out from the right hand of God. The graces of God's people
stand in need of the irradiations of God, like the Urim and Thummim,
before any counsel could be given by them.
(4.) The continuance both of the power and acts are from God. Habitual
grace is called the • fear of the Lord ' put into the soul ; the continuance of
it is by his constant sustentation, it is that we may not depart from him,
Jer. xxxii. 40, ' from upon him,' from leaning upon him, or believing in
him, as the word vJJO imports. If that fear put in did once depart from
us, we should no longer cleave to God ; we stick to him only because he
ties us to himself, and cannot be continually with him unless he ' holds us
by his right hand,' Ps. lxxiii. 23. The grace that is wrought, as well as
the gospel which instrumentally wrought it, is ' kept by the Holy Ghost,'
2 Tim. i. 14 ; he begins every good work, and he performs it. He was the
sole active cause in the creation of the faculties, and the principal cause in
preserving them ; he is the sole cause of the elevation of the faculties, and
the preservation of them in that elevated state. As the virtue of the load-
stone is not only the cause of the first attraction of the steel, but of its con-
stant adhesion, therefore it is said : 1 Cor. i. 21, that ' God doth establish
us,' not hath done, to note the continual influence of his grace upon us.
It was the dropping of the two olive trees that constantly fed the lamps in
the candlesticks, Zech. iv. 2, 3. Take this new birth in all the denomina-
tions of it, it is altogether ascribed to God. As it is a call out of the world,
God is the herald, 2 Tim. i. 9 ; as it is a creation, God is the creator, Eph.
ii. 10 ; as it is a resurrection, God is the quickener, Eph. ii. 5 ; as it is a
new birth, God is the begetter, 1 Peter i. 3 ; as it is a new heart, God is the
framer, Ezek. xxxvi. 26 ; as it is a law in the heart, God is the penman,
Jer. xxxi. 33 ; as it is a translation out of Satan's kingdom, and making us
denizens of the kingdom of Christ, God is the translator, Col. i. 13 ; as it
254 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
is a coming to Christ, God is the drawer, John vi. 44 ; as it is a turning to
God, God is the attracter.
II. The second thing ; it is necessary God should be the efficient of re-
generation. He is, or none.
In regard of God.
1. As he is the first cause of all things. He is the creator of the lowest
worm, and the highest angel ; the glimmering perfections of the least fly, as
well as the more glittering eminencies of the angelical nature, are distinct
beams from that fountain of light and power. Shall not he then be the cause
of the divine motions of the will, as well as of the natural motions of the
creatures ? Every perfection in a rational creature, or any other, supposeth
that perfection to be somewhere essentially ; every impression supposeth a
stamp that made it, every stream a fountain from whence it sprang, every
beam a sun, or some lucid body from whence it darts. Whence should this
gracious work then be derived ? Not from nature, which is contrary to it ;
not from Satan, who is destroyed by it. It must be then from God, since
it must have some stable and perfect cause. He who was the cause of all
the grace in the head is also the cause of all the grace in the members. The
same sun that enlightens the heavens enlightens the earth. The grace that
Christ had was ' the gift of God,' John iii. 34, much more must it be his
gift to us, though we had souls as capacious as his. If the head derived not
his grace to himself, the members cannot ; for Christ being a creature, in
regard of his humanity, must necessarily be dependent ; for to make any
creature independent upon God is to advance it above the degree of a crea-
ture-state, and make it God's fellow, yea, to have a godhead in itself, as
being the first principle of its own being. To say any creature can move
to God, without being moved by God, or live without his influence, is to
make the creature independent on God in its operations ; and if it be inde-
pendent in its operations, it would be so consequently in its essence ;*
besides, if it be not created by him, it may subsist without him, it stands in
no need of his quickening. The believers in Scripture were very unadvised
then to pray to God for his quickening and establishing grace, if he were
not the enlivener and author of it. His power works in preservation as well
as creation, John v. 17, and whatsoever is dependent on him in preservation
is dependent on him in creation and the first framing. And if it doth not
depend upon him in preservation, it is not his creature, but it is a god. All
creatures have a dependence upon something immediately superior to them.
The moon receives her light and chief beauty from the sun, which else would
be but a dusky body ; the earth its influence from the heavens. In artificial
things the little wheels in a watch depend upon the greater, that upon the
string,! that in its motion upon the hand that winds it up. The higher any
creature is, the more immediately it depends upon God in its production ; the
waters brought forth the fish, but God himself formed man.
2. As he is the promiser of it. The divine promise is only fulfilled by
a divine operation, it is necessary then for the honour of his truth to be the
performer of it. All his promises concerning this matter run in that strain,
I will : Hosea ii. 19, ' I will betroth thee to me for ever ; I will betroth thee
to me in righteousness, in judgment, in loving-kindness, and in mercy : I
will even betroth# thee unto me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know the
Lord.' The Lord promise th by this of knowing him all gracious works upon
the soul, regeneration, faith, &c, for this knowledge is an effect of the
covenant which God promises in that great copy of it : Jer. xxxi. 34, ' They
shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.' It is not a simple
* Sicut quid se habet in operando, sic et in essendo. f Qu. ' spring ' ? — Ed.
John I. 13. J the efficient of regeneration. 255
abstracted knowledge, for so the devils know God, and Christ crucified, but
such a knowledge that implies faith and love, and a new frame of soul. It
is necessary his power should make good what his goodness hath promised.
It was not necessary any word of promise should go out of his mouth, there
was no engagement upon God to do it, but it is necessary this promise should
be performed ; though he were free before he promised, yet he is not free
after he hath promised, because his truth engageth him to perform it, and
perform it as his own act, as much as his mercy moved him to promise it
as his own act. As mercy made it, so his mercy is as pressing for the per-
formance ; and there comes in a superadded obligation from that of his truth
over and above his mercy, to perform it in the same manner he promised it,
and in all the circumstances of it. So that, supposing (which cannot be
supposed) that his mercy should repent of making it, he would not be true
if he did not perform it ; besides, it consists not with his truth not to per-
form that by himself which he hath promised by himself, nor with his wisdom
to leave that to an uncertain cause at the best, and, further, a cause utterly-
unable (as every creature is) to produce that which he had promised to do
with his own hand, as the cleansing the soul, pouring clean water upon it,
pouring out a spirit of grace, writing the law in the heart, which imply his
own act principally in this affair, in concurrence with the means he hath
ordained to that end. The performance of God's promise is as infallible as
the cause that made the promise. No power can perform that for another
which he promises himself to do ; for the thing itself may be done by another,
yet not being done by the party promising to do it, it is not truly done, and
in conformity to the promise made. If it were possible then to be done by
any but a divine hand, it would not be done truly, because God promises it as
his own act, and therefore the working it must be his own act in conformity
to his truth.
3. As he hath the foreknowledge of all things. It is necessary God
should foreknow everything future, and that shall come to pass. This is a
perfection necessarily belonging to God ; and to imagine the contrary is to
frame an unworthy notion of God, and infinitely below the great creator
and governor of the world. He therefore wills everything, for if he fore-
knew anything before he willed it in itself, or in its necessary causes, he
foreknew nothing. If he did not will it, how can it come to pass ? There-
fore he did not foreknow that it would come to pass. If he did foreknow
it, then he willed it, otherwise his foreknowledge depended upon an uncertain
cause, and he might have judged that to come to pass which never might;
unless the cause be determined by God, it is merely contingent. He willing
therefore a work of grace in such and such persons, did foreknow that h
would be wrought, because he did will that it should be, and his working is
done by an act of his will : Rom. viii. 29, ' Whom he did foreknow, he did
predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son.' The foreknowledge
of God being stable and infallible, and being in this case a foreknowledge of
what makes highly for the glory of all his attributes, can have no dependence
upon an uncertain and fallible cause, but upon a cause as stable as his fore-
knowledge, which is his will, himself. His foreknowledge of this is not a
foreknowledge of it in any created cause, but in himself as the cause ; be-
cause, as it will appear further, no created cause could accomplish it.
In regard of the subject of this new birth.
1. In regard of the subject simply considered, the heart and will of man,
none can work upon it but God, or have any intrinsic influence to cause it to
exercise its vital acts. Angels, though of a very vast power, cannot work
immediately upon the heart and will of any other creature, to incline and
256 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
change it, by an immediate touch. All that they can do towards any mov-
ing the will, is by presenting some external objects, or stirring up the inward
sensitive appetite to some passion, as anger, desire ; whereby the will is in-
clined to will something. But the stirring up those natural affections in an
unregenerate man, can never incline his will to good ; for being the affections
of the flesh, they are to be crucified. Angels also may enlighten the under-
standing, not immediately, but by presenting similitudes of sensible things,
and confirming them in the fancy ; but to remove one ill habit from the will,
or incline it to any good, is not in their power. God gave an angel power to
purge the prophet's lips with a coal from the altar, Isa. vi. 6, 7 ; but that
was done in a vision, and a symbol or sign only that his uncleanness was
removed. A coal could have no virtue in it to purge spiritual pollutions
from the spirit of a man. Neither can man change the will ; men by allure-
ments or threats may change, or rather suspend the action of another, as a
father that threatens to disinherit his son ; or a magistrate that threatens to
punish a subject for his debauchery, may cause a change in the actions of
such persons ; but the heart stands still to the same sinful points, and may
be vicious under a fair disguise. He only that made the will, can incline
and ' turn it as the rivers of waters ; the heart of the king is in the hands of
the Lord,' Prov. xxi. 1, and so is every man's heart kept in the hands of him
that created it, both cabinet and key.* No man knows the heart ; no, the
heart itself knows not everything which is in it. God knows all the wards
in the heart, and knows how to move it. If a man could turn the heart of
another, it could only be in one or two points ; it cannot be conceived how
he should alter the whole frame of it, make it quite another thing than it was
before. The spirit of man being ' the candle of the Lord,' Prov. xx. 27, not
to give light to him, but lighted by him, can only when it is out be re-
lighted, and, when it burns dim, be snuffed by the same hand. Or, suppose
for the present he could do this, it must be with much pains and labour,
many exhortations and wise management of him upon several occasions.
But to do this by a word, in a trice, to put a law into the heart in a moment,
and give the hidden man of the heart possession of the will, that a man
knows not himself how he came to be changed, this whole work bears the
mark and stamp of God in the forehead of it. Men may propose arguments
to another, and he may understand them if he hath a capacity, but no man
can ever make another have a capacity who is naturally incapable ; it is God
only can make the heart capable of understanding, he only can put a new
instinct into it, and make it of another bent ; it is he that renews the spirit
of the mind to enable it to understand what he doth propose, and elevates
the faculty to apprehend the reason of it.
2. In regard of the subject, extremely ill qualified. Can any question
the divinity of the work, when stones are made children to Abraham ; when
waters of repentance are drawn out of a hard rock ; Aaron's dry rod made
to bud and blossom, and bring forth fruit, Num. vii. 8 ; when souls deeply
allied to the kingdom of darkness are translated into the kingdom of light ?
To see habits strengthened by custom, in a consumption, and hearts filled
with multitudes of idols in several shapes, casting them out with indignation,
and flourishing with new springing graces, it is too great a miracle to be
wrought by the hand of any creature. Could anything but the arm of the
Lord change the temper of the thief upon the cross, to advance further in
the space of an hour in the kingdom of God, than all the apostles had done
in the three years' converse with their Master ;f to confess him, when one of
the most eminent of them had denied him ; to be more knowing in an instant,
* 3-s7ov Ig-ri nufclv ru; if<ux*s. — Athanas. t Moulin.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 257
than they had been in a long time ; and acknowledge his spiritual kingdom,
when they even after his resurrection, and just before his ascension, expected
a temporal one ? Acts i. 6, ' Wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to
Israel ? ' If a Socrates, or a Cato, or those braver lights among the heathen,
were turned to God, the interest of God in the work might upon some seem-
ing ground be questioned ; but when the leviathans in sin, drunkards, ex-
tortioners, adulterers, men guilty of the greatest contempt of God and tbe
light of nature, in whom lust had kept a peaceable possession in its empire
for many years, are thoroughly changed, who can doubt but that such
must indeed be ' washed and sanctified by the Spirit of our God ' ? 1 Cor.
vi. 11. What can this be but the will of God, since their hearts were so
delightfully filled with evil, that they had no room nor love for any holy
thought ? It is not conceivable that where sin hath made such a rout,
and cut and slashed all morality in pieces, things should be set in order
there, but by a power stronger both than sin and the law, from whence sin
derives its strength. It is no less than a divine miracle to renew an habi-
tuated sinner.
(3.) In regard of the nature of this new birth. It is a change of nature ;
a nature where there was as little of spiritual good as there was of being in
nothing before the creation. It is a change of stone into flesh ; a heart that
like a stone hath a hardness and settledness of sinful parts, a strong resistance
against any instrument, an incorporation of sin and lust with its nature.
Where the heart and sin, self and sin, are cordially one and the same, none
can change such a nature but the God of all grace, who hath all grace to
contest with all the power of old Adam. No man can change the nature of
xhe meanest creature in the world ; he may tame them, bring them to part
with some of their wildness, but he cannot transform them. If no man can
transform the lowest creature from one nature to another, much less can any
but God transform man into another nature.
This nature is changed in every believer; for it is impossible a man should
stand bent to Christ, with his old nature predominant in him, any more than
a pebble can be attracted by a loadstone, till it put on the nature of steel.
An unrighteous nature cannot act righteously, it must therefore be a God,
who is above nature, that can clothe the soul with a new nature, and incline
it to God and goodness in its operations. Now to see a lump of vice become
a model of virtue ; for one that drank in iniquity like water, to change that
sinful thirst for another for righteousness ; to crucify his darling flesh ; to be
weary of the poison he loved for the purity he hated ; to embrace the gospel
terms, which not his passion but his nature abhorred ; to change his hating
of duty to a free-will offering of it ; to make him cease from a loathing the
obligations of the law, to a longing to come up to the exactness of it ; to
count it a burden to have the thoughts at a distance from God, when before
it was a burden to have one serious thought fixed on him, speaks a super-
natural grace transcendently attractive and powerfully operative. Heavy
elements do not ascend against their own nature, unless they be drawn by
some superior force. To see a soul weighed down to the earth, to be lifted
up to heaven, must point us to a greater than created strength that caused
the elevation. These acts are supernatural, and cannot be done by a natural
cause ; that is, against the order of working in all things, for then the effect,
as an effect, would be more noble than its cause.
(4.) In regard of the suddenness of it. Peter and Andrew were called
when they thought of nothing but their nets ; and Paul changed by a word
or two, who before was not only unwilling, but rebellious. Some have gone
258 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
into a church wolves, and returned lamhs. This change comes upon some
that never dreamt of it, and hath snatched them out of the arms of hell ;
upon others who have resisted with all their might any motion that way, and
were never greater enemies to any, than to those that would check their sin-
ful pleasures with such admonitions ; and yet these have been on the sudden
surprised. What ground is there to ascribe any of this, but to a divine work ?
Many have dropped in unto a sermon with no intention to stay, who have
felt God's hook in their souls ; have leaped like fish out of their element for
a while, and God hath catched them in his hand. Have you never heard of
some who have gone to make sport with a convincing sermon, or to satisfy
lust with unclean glances, who bave been made prisoners by grace before
their return ? This quickness of the soul in coming to Christ was promised
to be the fruit of the gospel : Hosea iii. 5, ' They shall fear the Lord and
his goodness,' when they should ' seek the Lord and David their king.' The
word "1HD signifies not only to fear, but to hasten ; both significations may
be joined together in the sense of the verse. They shall make haste to fear
the Lord and his goodness ; surely the power that performs it, is the same
with the goodness which promised it. Thus some of the disciples have fol-
lowed Christ at the first call, and moved readily to him, as iron to the load-
stone. For a man that was at a great distance from God, and any affection
to him, to be filled on the sudden with a warm love and zeal for him, when
nothing of interest could engage him (and sometimes it hath been with loss
of friends, estate, }"ea, life too), is as great a discovery of a divine hand, as if
a fly were changed into the shape and spirit of a hero ; because a spiritual
change is more admirable than a natural ; and the more by how much the,
enmity, which was greater, is driven out, for a choice affection to rise up in
its stead. The season when such a work is wrought is more significant of a
divine force, when men have been in the heat and strength of the pursuit of
their sinful pleasures, being then torn out of the embracements of lust with
an outstretched arm of God.
(5.) In regard of the excellency of the new birth. Is it reasonable to think
that the image of God should be wrought by any other hand than the hand
of God, or the divine nature be begotten by anything but the divine Spirit ?
Since none but man can beget a child in his own likeness, none but God can
impart to a soul the divine nature. It is not a change only into the image
of God with slight colours, an image drawn as with charcoal; but a glorious
image even in the rough draught, which grows up into greater beauty by the
addition of brighter colours. ' Changed,' saith the apostle, 2 Cor. iii. 18,
• into the same image from glory to glory ; ' glory in the first lineaments as
well as glory in the last lines. Is it not too beautiful then, even in the first
draught, to be wrought by any pencil but a divine ? It is next to the for-
mation of Christ, for it is an initial conformity to him. God is the fountain
of all our good things. If ' every good and perfect gift comes from him,'
James i. 17, shall not the best of beings be the author of the best of works?
If believers are \ light in the Lord,' Eph. v. 8, they are no less light from
him and by him who is the ' Father of lights.' It is a ' heavenly calling,'
Heb. iii. 1, therefore a heavenly birth. The newT heart, the spiritual house
wherein God dwells, as well as in the heavens, was not made with a less
power and skill than the earth, which is his footstool, or the heaven, which
is his throne. If none be able to make God a footstool, much less a throne,
as Jerusalem, the church, is called in the times of the gospel, Jer. iii. 17.
(The embroideries and ornaments of the material tabernacle were not made
by common art, but by a Bezaleel inspired by the Spirit of God, Exod.
xxxi. 3) ; can any but himself rear up a temple for the God of heaven to
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 259
dwell in ? 1 Cor. iii. 9. Or is the spiritual house of God fit to be made by
any but by that God that dwells in it ? It was according to the image of
God that we were first created ; it is according to the image of Christ that
we are new created, Rom. viii. 29. Who understands the image of the Son
but the Father ? Who knows the Father but the Son, and he to whom the
Son will reveal him ? The new creature, according to the copy, can only be
wrought by him to whom the copy is only visible. It is for the honour of
God to allow him to be the framer of all creatures in the rank of beings. Is
it not a dishonour to him not to acknowledge him the framer of the new
creature in the rank of spiritual beings, since the later is more excellent than
the treasures of the earth or the stars of heaven, than body or soul; since
the image of God consists not so much in the substance of the soul as in a
likeness to God in a holy nature ? Eph. iv. 24. To be a righteous regene-
rate man is more excellent than to be a man ; the most glorious effect, then,
must have the most glorious cause. One beam of this divine image is too
excellent to be the workmanship of any but a divine hand. The very first
regenerate thought, to the last dropping off of impurity, is from the same
hand. The first drawing us from sin, much more the stripping us of it, is
more admirable than the drawing us out of nothing.
(6.) The end of regeneration manifests it to be the work of God. It is to
display his goodness. Since this was the end of God in the first creation,
it is much more his end in the second. What creature can display God's
goodness for him, or give him the glory of it, without first receiving it ?
Goodness must first be communicated to us, before it can be displayed or
reflected by us. The fight that is reflected back upon the sun by any earthly
body beams first from the sun itself. Both the subject and the end are put
together in Isa. xliii. 20, 21, ' The beasts of the field shall honour me, the
dragons and the owls : because I give waters in the wilderness, to give drink
to my people, my chosen. This people have I formed for myself; they shall
shew forth my praise.' The Gentiles shall have the gospel, who are beasts
of the field for wildness, dragons for the poison of their nature, owls for
their blindness and darkness. The waters of the gospel shall flow to them
to give drink to their souls. This people have I formed for myself. Even
beasts, dragons, owls, if formed for himself, they could not be formed but by
himself, who only understands what is fit for his own praise. How can such
incapable subjects be formed for such high ends, without a supernatural
power? So in Isa. lx. 21, ' The branch of my planting, the work of my
hands, that I may be glorified.' Planted by God, that God might be glori-
fied by them. As God only is the proper judge of what may glorify him, so
he is the sole author of what is fitted to glorify him. Nothing lower than the
goodness of God can instil into us such a goodness as to be made meet to
praise, serve, and love him ; such a holiness as may fit us to be partakers of
the inheritance of the saints in light, and enjoy him for ever. As infinite
wisdom formed us in Adam, and moulded us with his own hand to be a
model of his perfection, so are we no less his workmanship in Christ by a
second creation to good works, which, as they are ordained by the will of
God, so they are wrought in us by the skill and power of God ; what is
ordained positively by him and for him is wrought by him. The whole
world consists but of two men and their offspring : the first man, Adam, the
second man, Christ ; both they, and all in them, created by God. It is a
forming a creature for himself for his own delight. What delight can God
take in anything but himself, and what is like himself? Man in his best
estate is vanity. As his being is, so are his operations. Vanity, and the
operations flowing from thence, are no fit object for the delight of an infinite
260 chabnock's works. [John I. 13.
excellency and wisdom. What pleasure can he have in those things which
are not wrought by his own finger ? Who knows how to dress anything
savoury and pleasant to God but his own grace ? Can a finite thing touch
an infinite being to enjoy him without the operation of an infinite virtue ?
Can God delight in anything principally but himself, as he is infinitely good ;
or in other things but as they come nearest to that goodness ? Whatsoever
hath a resemblance to a superior being must be brought forth into that like-
ness by something superior to itself.
Now since the ends of this work are so high as to fit us for his praise, his
delight, and a fruition of him ; since it is to bring the interest of God into
the soul, set him up highest in the heart who before was trampled under our
feet, enthrone him as king in the soul, cause us to oppose all that opposeth
him, cherish everything that is agreeable to him, this must be his work or
the work of none.
(7.) The weakness of the means manifests it to be the work of God. How
could it be possible that such weak means, that were used at the first plan-
tation of the gospel, should have that transcendent success in the hearts of
men without a divine power ? That a doctrine attended with the cross,
resisted by devils with all their subtilty, by the flesh with all its lusts, the
world with all its flatteries, the wise with all their craft, the mighty with all
their power, should be imprinted upon the hearts of men ; a doctrine preached
by mean men, without any worldly help, without learning, eloquence, craft,
or human prudence, without the force, favour, or friendship of men, should
get place in men's hearts without a divine inspiration, cannot well be ima-
gined. If it be said there were miracles attending it, which wrought upon
the minds of men, it is true ; but what little force they had in our Saviour's
time the Scripture informs us, when they were ascribed to Beelzebub, the
prince of devils. Though miracles did attend it after the ascension of our
Saviour, yet the apostle ascribes not so much to them as the means, as he
doth to the 'foolishness of preaching; ' it was that which was the 'power of
God,' 1 Cor. i. 18; it was that 'whereby God saved them that believe,'
1 Cor. i. 21. But the greatest change that ever was wrought at one time
was at the first descent of the Spirit, by a plain discourse of Peter's, Acts ii.,
extolling a crucified God before those that had lately taken away his life,
those that had seen him die, a doctrine which would find no footing in their
reasons, filled with prejudice against him, and had expectations of a tem-
poral kingdom by him. Must not this change be ascribed to a higher hand,
which removed their rooted prejudices and vain hopes, and brought so many
as three thousand over at once? If there be ' diversities of operations, it is
the same God that works all in all,' 1 Cor. xii. 6. He conveys this
' treasure in earthen vessels, that the power might appear to be of God, and
not of men,' 2 Cor. iv. 7. Such weak means as earthen vessels cannot work
such miraculous changes. Therefore perhaps it was that the preaching of
•Christ in his humiliation had so little success attending it, that nothing
should be ascribed to the word itself, but to the power of God in it. To
evidence that success depended on the good pleasure of God, who would
not make his preaching in person so successful as that in his Spirit, which
appears by Christ's thanksgiving to his Father for revealing these things to
babes, and not to the wise : ' Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy
sight,' Luke x. 21. Have you never heard of changes wrought in the spirits
of men against their worldly interest, when they have been made the scorn
of their friends, and a reproach to their neighbours ? Can the weakness of
means write a law so deep in the heart, that neither sly allurements nor
blustering temptations can raze out ; that a law of a day's standing in the
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 261
heart should be able to mate the powers of hell, the cavils of the flesh, and
discouragements from the world, when there are no unanswerable miracles
now to seal the gospel, and second the proposals of it with amazement in the
minds of men ? The weakness of the means, and the greatness of the diffi-
culties, speaks it not only to be the finger but the arm of God, which causes
the triumphs of the foolishness of preaching. When the proposal crosses
the interest of the flesh, restrains the beloved pleasure, teacheth a man the
necessity of the contempt of the world, and that men should exchange their
pride for humility, the pleasure of sin for a life of holiness ; for a man not
only to cease to love his vice, but extremely to hate it ; to have divine
flights, when before he could not have a divine thought ; to put off earthly
affections for heavenly, and all this by the foolishness of preaching, it is an
argument of a divine power, rather than any inherent strength in the means
themselves.
(3.) The differences in the changes of men evidence this to be the work
of God, and that it is from some power superior to the means which are used.
As God puts a difference between men in regard of their understandings,
revealing that to one man which he doth not to another, so he puts a differ-
ence between men in regard of their wills, working upon some and not upon
others, working upon some that have known less, and not working upon some
that have known more, some embracing it, and others rejecting it. We
may see,
[l.J The difference of this change in men under the same means. One is
struck at a sermon, when multitudes return unshaken. Why is not the case
equal in all, if it were from the power of the word ? How successful is
Peter's discourse, closely accusing the Jews of the murdering of their Lord
and Saviour, which is the occasion of pricking three thousand hearts ? Yet
Stephen using the same method, and close application of the same doctrine,
Acts vii. 52, had not one convert upon record. While Peter's hearers were
pricked in their hearts, these gnashed with their teeth, ver. 54. The corrup-
tion of the former was drawn out by the pricking of their souls, the malice
of the latter exasperated by the cut of their hearts. What reason can be
rendered of so different an event from one and the same means in several
hands, but the over-ruling pleasure of God ? The reasons were the same,
set off with the same human power ; the hearers were many of the same-
nation, brought up in the reading of the prophets, full of the expectations of
a Messiah ; they had both reasons and natural desires for happiness, as well
as the other, yet the one are turned lambs, and the others worse lions than
before ; the bloody fury of the one is calmed, and the mad rage of the other
is increased. The grace of God wrought powerfully in the one, and lighted
not upon the other. Two are grinding at the same mill of ordinances, one
is taken and another is left. Man breathes into the ears, and God into what
heart he pleases.
[2.] The differences in the changes of men under less means. One is
changed by weaker means, another remains in his unregeneracy under means
in themselves more powerful and likely ; some are wrought upon by whispers,
when others are stiff under thunders. The Ninevites by one single sermon
from a prophet are moved to repentance ; the Capernaites, by many admoni-
tions from a greater than all the prophets, seconded with miracles, are not a
jot persuaded ; some remain refractory under great blasts, while others bend
at lighter breathings. One man may be more acute than another, of a more
apprehensive reason ; yet this man remains obstinate, whilst another becomes
pliable. Whence doth this difference arise, but from the will of God draw-
ing the one, and leaving the other to the conduct of his own will, since both
262 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
will acknowledge what they are advised to, to be their interest, to be true in
itself, necessary for their good, yet their affections and entertainment are not
the same ? Some of those Jews who had heard the doctrine of Christ, seen
the purity of his life and the power of his miracles, admired his wisdom, yet
crucified his person ; they expected a Messiah, yet contemned him when he
came ; when the poor thief who, perhaps, had never seen one miracle, nor
heard one sermon of our Saviour, believes in him, acknowledges him to be
the Son of God, whom he saw condemned to the same death with himself,
and dies a regenerate man under great disadvantages. A figure (saith one)
of all the elect, who shall only be saved by grace, and a clear testimony of
an outstretched arm of grace. Those that our blessed Saviour admonished
only as a doctor and teacher were unmoved, none stirred but those he
wrought upon as a creator.
[3.] Difference of the success of the same means in different places. How
various was the success of the apostles in several parts of their circuits !
Paul finds a great door of faith opened at Corinth, and in Macedonia, and his
nets empty at Athens ; multitudes flocking in at one place, and few at another.
He is entertained at Corinth, stoned at Lystra, Acts xiv, 19, in danger of
his life at Jerusalem, while the Galatians were so affected with the gospel,
that they could have ' pulled out their eyes' for him. The apostle was the
same person in all places ; the gospel was the same, and had a like power in
itself ; men had the same reasons, they were all fragments from the lump of
Adam : the difference must be then from the influence of the divine Spirit,
who rained down his grace in one place and not in another ; on one heart,
and not on another ; who left darkness in Egypt, while he diffused light in
Goshen.
[4.] Difference in the same person. What is the reason that a man be-
lieves at one time under the proposal of weak arguments, and not at another
under stronger ? It is not ex parte objecti, for that was more visible and
credible in itself, when attended by strong arguments, than when accompanied
with weaker. Perhaps God hath stricken a man's conscience before, and he
hath undone that work, shaken off those convictions ; he hath contended
with his maker, and mustered up the power of nature against the alarms of
conscience ; struggled like a wild bull in a net, and broke it, and blunted
those darts which stuck in his soul ; he hath afterwards been screwed up
again, and the arrow shot so deep, that with all his pulling he could not
draw it out. What but a divine hand holds it in, in spite of all the former
triumphs of nature f How come convictions at last to be fixed upon men,
which many a time before did but flutter about the soul, and were soon
chased away ? And God by such a method keeps up the honour of his grace
in men after regeneration, and teaches them the constant acknowledgment
of his power in the whole management. Do we not daily find that the same
reasonings and considerations which quicken us at one time in the ways of
God stir us not at another, no more than a child can a millstone ; that we
are quickened by the same word at one time, under which we were dull and
stupid at another ; and the same truth is deliciously swallowed by us, which
seemed unsavoury at another, because God edgeth it with a secret virtue at
one time more than another ? Hereby God would mind us to own him as
the author of all our grace, the second grace as well as the first. Upon all
these considerations this can be no other than the work of God. Can a
corrupt creature elevate himself from a state of being hated by God, to a
state of being delighted in by him ? Satan's work none can judge it to be ;
the destroyer of mankind would never be the restorer ; the most malicious
enemy to God would never contribute to the rearing a temple to God in the
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 263
soul, who hath usurped God's worship in all parts of the world. Good angels
could never do it, they wonder at it ; the wisdom of God in thus creating
all things in Jesus Christ is made known to them by it, Eph. iii. 9, 10. They
never ascribed it to themselves ; if they did, they could never have been good,
their goodness consisting in praising of God, and giving him his due. Good
men never did it ; the first planters of the gospel (whereby it is wrought)
always gave God the praise of it, and acknowledged both their own action,
and the success, to be the effect of the grace of God, and upon every occa-
sion admired it, Acts xi. 21, 23. It was ' the hand of the Lord' and ■ the
grace of God.'
III. The third general head, from what principles in God it flows, or what
perfections of God are eminent in this work of regeneration. What is
observable in the forming Christ in the womb of the virgin, is observable in
the forming Christ in the heart of a believer : grace to choose her to be the
holy vessel ; sovereignty to pitch upon her rather than any other of the
lineage of David ; truth to his promise in forming him in the womb of a
virgin, and one of the house of David ; wisdom and power in the formation
of him in a virgin's womb, above the power of nature; mercy bears the first
sway as the motive of the decree, but in a way of sovereignty to call out
some, and not others ; truth to himself obligeth, after sovereign mercy had
made the resolution ; wisdom steps in to contrive the best way to accomplish
what mercy had moved, and sovereignty had decreed ; holiness riseth up as
the pattern ; and power rides out for the execution. Mercy moves, so-
vereignty decrees, truth obligeth, wisdom counsels, holiness regulates, power
executes.
1. Mercy and goodness is a principal perfection of God, illustrious in
this work. • Born not of the will of man, but of God,' of the will of his
mercy. Plato thought that heroes were born l£ s'gwro; diu>v, the love of God ;
divine love brings forth an heroic Christian into the world ; all outward
mercies are streams of God's goodness, but those are but trifles if compared
with this. There is as much of God in imparting the holiness of his nature
as in imputing the righteousness of his Son. We are justified by Christ,
quickened by grace, saved by grace ; grace is the womb of every spiritual
blessing. To be delivered from places and company wherein we have occa-
sions and temptations to sin, is an act which God owns as the fruit of his
mercy : ' I brought thee out of the land of Ur of the Chaldees,' Gen. xv. 7,
an idolatrous place ; it is a greater fruit of his goodness to be delivered from
a nature which is the seed-plot of sin. ' He heals our backslidden nature,'
because he ' loves us freely.' It is therefore called grace, which is not only
goodness and mercy, but goodness with a more beautiful varnish and orna-
mental dress.
(1.) Therefore in this take notice of the peculiarity of mercy. Such a
goodness that not one fallen angel ever had, or ever shall have a mite of ;
neither did mercy excite one good thought in God of new polishing any of
those rebellious creatures ; mercy cast no eye upon them, but justice left
them to their malicious obstinacy. That the rivers of living water should
refuse to run in such a channel, or flow out of such a belly, to run in the
heart of a man more muddy ! As peculiar grace pitched upon the very flesh
of Christ, to be united to the second person, so the like grace pitches upon
this or that particular soul, to be united to the body of Christ. That
singular love which chose Christ for the head, chose some men in him to
be his members : ' Chosen us in him,' Eph. i. 4. And the anointing which
is upon the head is poured out by such a peculiarity of love upon the mem-
bers, not only by an act of his power as God, but by an act of appropriated
264 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
goodness, thy God, Heb. i. 9. God anoints his fellows with that holy
gracious unction, as their God, not only as God ; for anointing him as the
head, under that particular consideration, he anoints also his fellows, his
members, under the same consideration too, because he is as^well their God,
the God of the members, as well as the God of the head, for they are his
fellows in that unction; the difference lies in the greater portion of grace
given to the human nature of Christ. And the apostle Peter, 1 Peter i. 3,
intimates in his thanksgiving to God, that God begat us as tbe Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ : ' Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ ; ' the paternal affection he bears to Christ being the ground of the
regeneration of his people; the paternal affection first pitching upon Christ,
then upon others in him. Indeed, it is a peculiar affection. In his mercy
to the world, he acts as a rector or governor ; in that relation he proposeth
laws, makes offers of peace, urgeth thtm in his word, strives with men by
his Spirit, enduing men with reason, and deals with them as rational
creatures ; he uses afflictions and mercies, which might soften'their hearts, did
they not wilfully indulge themselves in their hardness. This is his rectoral
mercy, or his mercy as a governor, and as much as his relation of a governor
can oblige him to. If men will not change their lives, is God bound as a
governor to force them to it, or not rather to punish them for it ? But in
regeneration there is a choicer affection, whereby, besides the relation of a gover-
nor, he puts on that of a father, and makes an inward and thorough change in
some which he hath chosen into the relation of children. As a father, who
cannot persuade his son lying under a mortal distemper to take that physic
which is necessary for saving his life, will compel him to it, open his mouth,
and pour it in ; but as he is a governor of his servant, he will provide it for
him, and propose it to him. To do thus is kindness to his servant, though
he doth not manifest so peculiar an affection as he doth to his son. God
governs men as he is the author of nature ; he renews men as he is the
author of grace ; he is the lawgiver and governor ; it doth not follow that
where he is so he should be the new creator too ; this is a peculiar indulgence.
(2.) As there is a peculiarity of mercy, so there is the largeness of his
mercy and goodness in this work. It was his goodness to create us, but a
full sea of goodness made us new creatures : 1 Peter i. 3, ' Who according
to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again to a lively hope,' xara rbwokv
cbrou eXiog. His own mercy, without any other motive ; muah mercy,
without any parsimony ; not an act of ordinary goodness, but the deepest
bowels of kindness, an everlasting spring of goodness, an exuberancy of
goodness. The choice love he bears to them in election cannot be without
some real act ; it is a vain love that doth not operate ; one great part of
affection is to imitate the party beloved ; but since that is unworthy of God
to imitate a corrupt creature, he performs the other act of love, which is to
assimilate us to himself, and bring us into a state of imitation of him, endow-
ing us with principles of resemblance to him. It is abundant mercy to love
them ; it is much more goodness to render them worthy of his love, and
inspire them with those qualities, as effects of his love of benevolence, which
may be an occasion of his love of complacency. Worldly mercies do many
times, yea, for the most part (if you view the whole globe of the earth) con-
sist with his hatred, but this is a beam from a clear sun. At best other
benefits are but the mercies of his hand, this of his heart. In those he
makes men like'others of a higher rank, in this like himself.
[l.J It is a goodness greater than that in creation. It is more an act of
kindness to reform that which is deformed, than to form it at the beginning,
because it is more to have a happy than a simple being. To repair what is
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 265
decayed is a testimony of greater goodness than at first to raise it. Creation
is terminated to the good of a mutable nature, regeneration is terminated to
a supernatural good, and partaking of the divine nature. The creation was
an emanation of his goodness, never entitled the work of his grace. Man's
first uprightness was an impress of God ; his second uprightness is far more
pleasing to him, as being the fruit of his Son's death, wherein all his attri-
butes are more highlv glorified. It is a regeneration ' by the resurrection of
Christ,' 1 Peter i. 3; that being the perfection of it, includes his death,
which is the foundation of it, as the perfection of a thing includes the
beginning. God pronounced all the structures of the first creation good,
but not with those magnificent titles of his delighting in it, forming it for
himself, that it might shew forth his praise, which expressions testify a
greater efflux of his goodness in this second creation. Nor did Christ ever
say his delight was in that, or in that one man Adam, but in the sons of men,
of apostate Adam, as to be redeemed and renewed by him after their apostasy :
Prov. viii. 31, ' My delights were with the sons of men.' What sons of
men ? The exhortation, ver. 32, intimates it, those that are his children
renewed by him, that hearken to him and keep his ways. God pronounced it
good, but not his treasure, his portion, his inheritance, his seijullah, his house,
his diadem. All those things which he made, even the noblest heaven, as well
as the lowest earth, he overlooks and speaks slightly of them: Isa. lxvi. 1, 2,
1 All those things hath my hand made, and all those things have been,' &c,
to fix his eyes, E'ON, upon a contrite spirit, a renewed nature. He speaks of
them as things passed away, and is intent only upon the new creation;
values it above heaven and earth, and all the ceremonial worship. What is
the object of his greatest estimation partakes of a greater efflux of his good-
ness to make it so. And the apostle Peter aggrandiseth this abundant mercy
in regeneration, from the term, 'unto a lively hope ;' not such an uncertain
hope as Adam had when he was fullest of his mutable uprightness ; a living
hope, Wttiba. ^Sffav, that grows up more and more into life, till it comes to
an inheritance that fades not away as Adam's did. Surely there is more of
bowels in the Spirit's brooding over a sinful soul, to bring forth this beautiful
frame, than in brooding over the confused mass to bring forth a world.
[2. J All the grace and goodness God hath is employed in it. In the
creation you cannot say, all the goodness of God was displayed, as not all
his power nor all his wisdom : for as to his power he might have made
millions of worlds unconceivably more beautiful and more wisely contrived ;
for though there be no defect of wisdom and power, yet neither of those
attributes were exerted to that height that they might have been. So for
his goodness, he might have made millions of more angels and men than he
did create, with as (and more) illustrious natures ; for a man may conceive
something more than God hath displayed in the creation, as to the extensive-
ness of his perfections at least. But in this God hath displayed, as it may
seem, the utmost of his grace, for no man or angel can conceive a higher
grace than what God shews in this, of beginning in man a likeness to him-
self, and perfecting it hereafter to as high a pitch as a creature is capable of.
Therefore called 'unsearchable riches of Christ,' Eph. iii. 7. A further
good cannot be imagined or found out than what is there displayed. There-
fore the apostle Peter speaks of God as effectually calling us into his eternal
glory by Christ, under the title of ' the God of all grace,' 1 Peter v. 10,
which calling includes all preparation for glory. All grace doth not less fit
us for it, than call us to it ; there is more of grace in fitting us for it than
barely in calling us to it ; and the call itself hath more of grace in it than
the giving the possession of that inheritance you are called unto. It is not
266 chaknock's works. [John I. 13.
so high a favour in a prince actually to set his royal bride in the throne with
him, as to call her to and prepare her for so high a dignity. To prepare a
soul for it by regeneration is an act of pure grace ; to give it after a prepara-
tion for it, is an act of truth as well as grace ; nothing obliged him to the
first, his promise binds him to the latter. What if I should say, this re-
newing of us, and subduing our sins in us, is a greater act of grace than
a bare remission ! Micah vii. 18, 19, seems to favour it. To pardon us is
an act of his delightful mercy ; but to subdue our iniquities is an act of his
tenderest compassion. Mercy is there joined with pardon, and compassion
with subduing. And the latter expression, ' Thou wilt cast all their sins
into the depths of the sea,' may refer to both those acts of grace, against the
guilt and filth of sin.
[3.] The freeness of his mercy is manifest in it. It is as free as
election : Eph. i. 3, 4, ' Who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings' (of
which regeneration is none of the meanest), ' according as he hath chosen us
in him,' xaduiz s^sXs^aro. It is as free in the stream as it is in the fountain.
Jesus Christ is as freely formed in us, as we were freely chosen in him ; as
freely, quoad nos, as to us, not in regard of Christ, who merited the former
though not the latter. It is his own mercy, 1 Peter i. 3, ' his own will,'
James i. 18, not moved by any other, as we do many things by the will of
others when our own are not free, in which are mixed acts. It is in regard
of this freeness called grace. Supposing God would create man, and for such
an end as to enjoy blessedness, he could not create him otherwise than with
an universal rectitude, because, had God created him with a temper contrary
to his law, he had been the author of his sin. Some therefore call not the
righteousness of Adam grace, because it was a perfection due to his nature
upon his creation. But there was no necessity upon God to bestow new
creating grace, after he had stripped himself of the righteousness of his
first creation. And also supposing God will restore man to that end from
which he fell, and refit him for that blessedness, he cannot fit him other-
wise than by restoring him to that righteousness, as a means of attaining
that blessedness. Yet both these are free, because the original foundation
of both is free. God might choose whether he would create man when he
was nothing, and choose whether he would restore man when he was fallen.
Yet there is more freedom in this latter than in the former, in regard of the
measures of the new created righteousness, and in regard of the immuta-
bility of it, in regard also of demerit. Adam's dust, before creation, as it
could merit nothing, so it had an advantage above us that it could not lie
under demerit. But we, after the fall, are in a state of damnation, children of
wrath, so that regeneration is not a creating us from nothing, but recovering
us from a state worse than nothing. In regard that man was miserable, he
was capable of mercy; but as he was a criminal, he was an object of severity.
That is free mercy to renew any man by grace, when he might have damned
him by justice, to work him for glory when he had wrought himself for
damnation. The apostle therefore excludes all works whatsoever from any
meritoriousness in this case : Titus iii. 5, ' Not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the wash-
ing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.' I say, he ex-
cludes all works, because not one work, as good, was in being before the
renewal of the soul, for so verse 3 plainly implies, when he concludes all
men, himself too, in a state incapable of doing anything that was good ; the
honour of his truth indeed excites him to perfect it, but his grace only, with-
out any other motive, moves him to bestow it. All the grace you have in
regeneration sprung only from this ; the righteousness you are arrayed with,
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 2G7
the flames of love in your hearts, the flights of your faith, cost you nothing,
they were all the births of love. Goodness decreed all when you were
nothing, grace formed all when you were worse than nothing, your faith is
• the faith of God's elect,' Titus i. 1. New creatures were chosen to faith
by grace, and by the same grace was faith formed in the womb of the soul ;
electing grace preceded, renewing grace followed, the stream cannot be
merited when the spring was free. Regeneration is an accessory to election.
No man can merit the principle, therefore not the accessory.
2. As mercy and goodness, so the sovereignty of God is illustrious in
this work. ' Of God,' in the text, is ' of the will of God.' The covenant
runs in a royal style : * I will put my Spirit into them ; I will give a heart
of flesh,' of my own free motion and good pleasure, like the patents of
princes. God reserves this in his own power, to give to whom he pleases ;
Cameron saith,* that faith, which is a great constitutive part of regeneration,
was not purchased meritoriously by Christ's death ; and though Christ doth
give us faith as well as repentance, yet he doth that, not as considered as a
satisfier of God's justice in his. death, but as God's commissioner in his
exaltation, being empowered by God to give the conditions upon which they
agreed together in the first compact about the work of mediation, unto all
those that God had given him to satisfy for. Whether this opinion be well
grounded or no, I will not determine ; yet the making it depend solely upon
election, and to be given as a fruit of election, that hereby we may be par-
takers of Christ, makes it more fully depend upon the sovereignty of God.
God renews when he pleases : ' The wind blows where it listeth,' John
iii. 8. To some he affords means, to others not ; he deals not with every
nation as he dealt with Israel. In some, he works by means; to others, he
gives only the means, without any inward work ; it is his pleasure that he
works upon any one to will, his good pleasure that he gives to any one to
do : Philip, ii. 13, ' of his good pleasure.' Some hear the word, others the
Spirit in the word ; some feel the striking of the air upon their ear, others
the stamp of the Spirit upon their hearts. Who chose this rough stone to
hew and polish, and let others lie in the quarry ? Who frames this for a
statue, a representation of himself, and leaves another upon the pavement?
What doth all this result from, but his sovereign pleasure ?
(1.) No ultimate reason can be rendered for this distinction, but God's
sovereignty. We can render an immediate reason of some actions of God :
why the heavens are round, because that is the most capacious figure, and
fittest for motion ; why the sun is the centre of the world, as some think,
because it may, at a convenient distance, enlighten the stars above, and
quicken the things below ; why our hearts are in the midst of our bodies,
because they may more commodiously afford heat to all the members ; so
also, why God loved Adam, because he saw his own image in him ; why he
sends judgments upon the world, because of sin ; why he saves believers and
condemns unbelievers, because they receive the grace of Christ, those reject
it.f We have not recourse immediately to God's will for a reason ; the
nature of the things themselves affords us one, obvious to us. But no reason
can be rendered of other actions of God but his good pleasure. Why he
chose Abraham above other men, and delivered him from Ur of the Chal-
dees ; why Israel above other nations, since all other men and nations de-
scended from Adam and Noah, and they were in their natures equally corrupt
with others ; they were not in themselves better than others, nor other
nations worse than they ; so in Esau and Jacob, why the elder should serve
* Cameron, opera, p. 531, col. 1.
t Amiraut. Serm. sur. Phil. ii. 13, page 28, &c.
2G8 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
the younger, since they both issued from the same parents, lay in the same
womb, were equally depraved in their nature, had original sin equally con-
veyed to them by their parents : no reason can be rendered but the will of
God. So, if it be asked, why men are condemned, because they do not
believe.* Why do they not believe ? Because they will not. God hath given
them means and faculties. If you ask, why God did not give them grace
to believe and turn their wills, no other answer can be given but because he
will not. It is his free will to choose some and not others. Election is put
upon his pleasure : Eph. i. 5, ' Predestinated according to the good pleasure
of his will ;' and the making known the mystery of his will is put upon his
pleasure : Eph. i. 9, ' Having made known unto us the mystery of his will
according to his good pleasure.' As God regards us absolutely, it is rather
mercy than his good pleasure. Why hath he changed our wills ? Because
he loved us, and bare good will to us in his everlasting purpose, to which he
was incited by his own mercy. But if we compare ourselves with others,
and ask, why he renews this man and not that, then it is rather an act of
the sovereign liberty of his will, for there cannot be the result of any reason
from any thing else ; he pitches his compassion where and upon whom he
pleases. The apostle joins mercy and this sovereignty of his will together :
Rom. ix. 15, 'I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy ; and I will
have compassion on whom I will have compassion.' He is so absolute a
sovereign, that he will give no account of these matters but his own good
pleasure. Why he renews any man is merely voluntary ; why he saves
renewed men is just ; why he justifies those that believe is justice to Christ
and mercy to them ; but why he bestows faith on any is merely the good
pleasure of his will. The pharisees believed not, because they were not of
Christ's sheep, John x. 26 ; that is, they were not given to Christ by the
Father, as is intimated, verse 29. And the prosperity of those which are
given to Christ is resolved wholly into the pleasure of God : ' The pleasure of
the Lord shall prosper in his hand,' Isa. liii. 10. In all our searches into
the cause of this, we must rest in his sovereign pleasure ; our Saviour him-
self renders this only as a reason of his distinguishing mercy, wherein him-
self doth, and therefore we must, acquiesce : Mat. xi. 27, ' Even so, Father,
for so it pleased thee.'
(2.) He may well do so, because he is no debtor to any man in the way
of grace. There is nothing due to man but death ; that is his wages ; the
other is a gift : Rom. vi. 23, ' To you it is given to know the mysteries of
the kingdom of heaven, to them it is not given,' Mat. xiii. 11. Who shall
control him in the disposal of his own goods ? ' Who shall say unto him,
What dost thou ?' Grace is his own treasure ; if he gives the riches of it to
any, it is his pleasure ; if he will not bestow a mite on any man, it is no
wrong ; ' if any man hath given to him, it shall be recompensed to him
again,' Rom. xi. 35. It is not unjust with God to deny every man grace ; it
is not then unjust to deny a great part of men this grace : ' Who hath
enjoined him his way ?' saith Job ; or, ' Who can say, Thou hast wrought
iniquity ?' Job xxxvi. 23. He is not to be taught by man how to govern
the world, neither can any man justly blame him, if they judge aright of his
actions. Though every man is bound to endeavour the conversion of
others, and every good man hath so much charity that he would turn all to
righteousness if he could, and though the love of God is infinitely greater
than man's, it cannot be argued from thence that therefore God should renew
every man. f This charity in man is a debt he owes to his neighbour by com-
* Amiraut. Serm. sur. Phil. ii. 13, page 34, &c.
f Amiraut. Serm. de l'Evangilc, Ser. iv., p. 171, 172.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 269
munion of blood, upon which the law of charity is founded, which obligeth
him to endeavour the happiness and welfare of his neighbour ; but God is
free from the engagements of any law, but the liberty of his own will ; he is
under no government but his own ; he hath none superior, none equal with
him, to enjoin him his way, and to prescribe him rules and. methods. If he
gives any favour to man, it is his pleasure ; if man improves it well, God is
not indebted to him, and obliged to give him more, no more than a father is
bound to give his son a new stock, because he hath improved well the first
he hath entrusted him with ; it depends only upon his pleasure.
(3.) God's proceedings in this case do wholly declare it. In the first gift
of his people to Christ, he acted like a God greater than all in away of super-
eminent sovereignty : ' My Father which gave them me is greater than all.'
John x, 29. He acts as a potter with his clay ; he softens one heart, and
leaves another to its natural hardness. He converts Paul a persecutor, but
none of the other pharisees who spurred him on in that fury and commis-
sioned him to it ; he snatcheth some from the embracements of lust, while
he suffers others to run their race to hell. David, by grace, is made a man
after God's own heart, and Saul left to be a man after his own will ; some he
changeth in the heat of their pursuit of sinful pleasures, others he wounds to
death by his judgments. The reason of the latter is deserved justice ; the
reason of the other is undeserved pleasure. He chooseth the mean things of
the world to be highest in his favour, and passes over those that the world
esteems most excellent. ' Not many wise, not many mighty,' is his sove-
reign method. The amiable endowments esteemed by the men of the world
have no influence upon him. He acts in this way with his own people ; he
gives sometimes to will, when he doth not give presently to do ; he distri-
butes greater measures of grace to one than to another ; he sometimes
excites them by his grace, sometimes lets them lie as logs before him, that
he may be owned by them to be a free agent. And further, it must needs
be thus, because God doth not work in regeneration as a natural agent, and
put forth his strength to the utmost ; as the sun shines, and the fire burns,
ad extremum virium, unless a cloud interpose to hinder the one, or water
quench the other, but as an arbitrary agent, who exerts his power according
to his own will, and withholds it according to his pleasure. For there are
two acts of his sovereign will : one whereby he doth command men to do
their duty, promises rewards, and threatens punishment, but the subject is
to be disposed to do God's will of precept. Here comes in another act of
his sovereignty, whereby he wills the disposing such and such hearts to the
accepting of his grace, and doth will not to give others that grace, but
leave them to themselves. This we see practised by God almost in every
day's experience.
3. The truth of God is apparent in this work. Truth to his own pur-
pose : 1 Tim. i. 9, ' "Who hath called us with a holy calling, according to
his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Jesus Christ before the
world began.' Sovereignty first singles this or that man out ; and truth to
that firm and immutable counsel, and that resolve in his own mind, steps in
to excite his holiness, wisdom, and power, to make every such person con-
formed to the image of his Son. It was not from any truth respecting any
condition annexed to any promise he had made which he might find in the
creature, for the apostle plainly excludes it, ' not according to our work ' ; for
what motion can our work in a state of nature cause in God but that of
anger and aversion, arising from truth to his threatening, the condition
whereof is fulfilled by us, but not one mite of good fruit that could as a con-
dition challenge this great work at the hands of the truth of God by virtue
270 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
of his promise. His truth to his threatening would have raised up thoughts
of destroying men ; his truth to his purpose carried on his design of effectu-
ally calling them. It is not an engagement of truth to his creature, but of
truth to himself. So that if you ask why he hath called Peter, Paul, and
others, since many better conditioned than they have rejected the gospel,
the answer is, because he had so purposed in himself ; and he is faithful, and
cannot deny his own counsel, for that were to deny himself, and that eternal
idea in his own mind : 2 Tim. ii. 13, 'He is faithful, and cannot deny him-
self,' in regard of his purpose, in regard of his absolute promise. Truth to
his promise ; his promise to his Son, for so Titus i. 2 is principally to be
understood : ' In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised
before the world began.' There was a donation of some made to Christ, and
a donation of grace to Christ for them, deposited in his hands as a treasure
to be dispensed to every one of them in their proper time. His truth comes
in upon this double donative : a donative of grace to them in Christ, before
the world began, which would be but as a useless rusty treasure, if not be-
stowed upon those for whom it was entrusted in his hands ; a donative of
some, according to this purpose, to Christ, whose death, and resurrection,
and purchase, would be ineffectual, if those thus given were not in time
engrafted in him, and renewed by him, to be made partakers of all that which
he purchased and preserved for them. Jesus Christ was to have a seed by
covenant, a people to be conformed to his image. The issue then of forming
a people for his seed, is the effect of God's truth to Christ. And consequent
to this antecedent purpose in himself, and promise to Christ, he gives him
an order to bring in those that were thus designed to be his sheep, which he
calls his sheep by right of donation, before they were renewed : my sheep,
by right of gift from my Father, mine by right of purchase at my death, mine
by right of possession at their effectual call, these I must bring in ; not I
may, but I mast; and they shall hear my voice : John x. 16, ' Other sheep
I have ; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice ;' not they
may, but they shall be inclined to comply with my word and call. Satan and
their own lusts shall not hinder them from coming unto me, but they shall
be overruled by a powerful Spirit. So that there is truth to his purpose,
truth to his promise to Christ, truth to the depositum in Christ's hands,
truth to his word published, that he would give a new heart. So that what-
soever heart his work is wrought in, it is a manifest effect of the truth of
God to himself and his Christ. The gift of grace, in possession, is a neces-
sary consequent of that gift of it, in purpose, before the world began.
4. The wisdom of God appears in this work. The secrets of wisdom
shine forth in the great concerns of the soul in Christ, who is made wisdom
principally to us in our sanctification, as well as righteousness and redemp-
tion. Wisdom in the*imputation of righteousness, in the draught of sancti-
fication, and in the perfection of it in a complete redemption ; wisdom, like
thread, runs through every part of the web. The new birth is the great
wisdom of the creature ; by this he becomes wise, since the Scripture
entitles all fools without it. The inspiration of this wisdom can own no
other but divine wisdom for the author. It is his own wisdom ; for « Who
hath been his counsellor ? ' Rom. xi. 34. He works all things according to
the counsel of his own will, freely, wisely ; a work of his will, a work of his
understanding : Eph. i. 11, 12, ' Who works all things according to the
counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory,' that
the glory of the Father may shine out in us. If all things are thus wrought
with the choicest counsel, much more the rarest work of God in the world.
If all things are wrought with counsel, because he will have a praise from
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 271
them, much more that from whence he expects to gather the greatest crop
of glory. The bringing us to trust in Christ is for the praise of his glory ; a
glory redounds to him, because there is nothing of our own in it, but all his;
a farther glory redounds to him, because it is in the wisest manner. It is to
the praise and the glory of his goodness in the act of his will ; to the praise
of the glory of his wisdom in the act of his counsel. There was a mystery
of wisdom in the first secretion and singling out this or that person ; a
revelation of wisdom in the preparations to it, and formation of it. If there
be much of his counsel in the minute passages of his providence in the
lowest creatures, which are the subjects of that providence, much more
must there be in the framing the soul to be a living monument of his glory.
It is not a new moulding the outward case of the body, but the inward jewel
wrapped up from the view of men ; the spirit of the mind, which, being more
excellent, requires more of skill for the new forming of it.
(1.) The nature of the new birth declares it to be an effect of his wisdom.
It is a building a divine temple, a spiritual tabernacle, for his own residence :
' ye are God's building,' 1 Cor. iii. 9. Strength will not build a house with-
out art to contrive and proportion the materials ; skill is the chief requisite
of an architect. The highest pieces of art come from the most excellent
idea in the creature. The beautiful fabric of grace is modelled by the
wisest idea in God ; that which is glorious in the erection, supposeth excel-
lent skill in the contrivance. Every renewed man is a ' lively stone :' 1 Pet.
ii. 5, 'Ye also as lively stones,' every one of you polished and carved by
the wise Creator for an everlasting statue. It is he that hath ' wrought us
to the self-same thing,' 2 Cor. v. 5, zartgyaad/xsvog ; polished us and curi-
ously wrought us, who were rough stones, covered with the rubbish of sin.
As a wise builder, he lays the foundation in sound habits, whereon to raise
a superstructure of gracious actions. The counterpart in the heart is no
less a fruit of his wisdom than the law in the tables of stone ; wisdom in the
first framing the law, wisdom also in the deep imprinting of it. That which
enlightens the eyes, and makes wise to salvation, can be entitled to no other
original cause than divine wisdom. The soul is a rational work of God.*
Surely, then, that which is the soul of the soul, the glory of the creature,
the preparation for happiness, more pleasing to God than the brightest
nature, than the natural frame of the highest soul, that which is the plea-
sure and delight, must be the fruit, too, of infinite wisdom. Bare effects of
power are not the immediate objects of God's special delight.
(2.) The means of it declare it to be a fruit of his wisdom. Christ the
exemplar hath the treasures of wisdom ; grace copied from it is part of
those treasures. The gospel, the instrument, is ' the wisdom of God,' as
well as ' the power of God,' 1 Cor. ii. 7. Divine skill framed the model,
reared the building, no less sows the seed in the heart. What did partake
of wisdom in the contrivance, progress, all the parts and methods of it, par-
takes of the same in the inward operations of it upon the soul.
(3.) The manner of it speaks it to be so. In regard of the enemies he
hath to deal with, there must be prudence to countermine the deep and un-
searchable plots of the powers of darkness. As there is the strength of sin
within, the might of Satan without, as fit subjects for his power, so there are
the stratagems of Satan, the subtleties and deceits of the flesh, as a fit occa-
sion for his almighty skill against hellish policy. In regard also of his working
upon the soul, he works upon those that are so contrary to his design with-
out imposing upon their faculties ; he moves them according to their
physical nature, though contrary to their moral nature ; he makes us do will-
* Nyssen. toin/ia %iov x«j//*«Y
272 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
ingly what we would not ; be so tunes the strings that they speak out will-
ingly what naturally they are most unfit for. The Spirit acts wisely in the
revealing to us the knowledge of Christ, as Eph. i. 17, ' The spirit of wis-
dom and revelation in the knowledge of him,' which may note the manner of
his acting in the revelation, which is the first work of the soul, as well as the
effect it doth produce, though I suppose the effect is principally meant.
Some question the wisdom of God in acting so upon the will as not to leave
it to its own indifference in this change. What reason is there to question
his wisdom ? Do not the angels in heaven admire God's wisdom as well as
his grace, who hath immutably fixed them to that which is good ? Do they
question the wisdom of God for so happy a confirmation of them against
that indifference which destroyed some of their fellows by creation ? But is
there not an evident art in this work, to make the will willing that had no
affection to this change ; to fit the key so to all the wards that not one is
disordered ; to move us contrary to our corrupt reason, yet bring us to
that pass to acknowledge we had reason to be so moved ; to move our
faculties one by another as wheels in a watch ; to present spiritual , things
with such an evident light as engageth our understandings to believe that
which they would not believe before, and our wills to embrace that which
our affections gainsay ? It must therefore be a fruit of divine skill since it
is a fruit of divine teaching, John vi. 45.
(4.) There is a greater wisdom in it than in the creation of the world.
The higher the work riseth, the more of skill appears. It is a divine art to
make man to live the life of plants in his growth, the life of beasts in his
sense, the life of angels in his mind ; more it is then to make him live the
life of God in his grace. Man in his body partakes of earth, in his soul of
heaven, in his grace of the heaven of heavens, of the God of heaven. The
grace in the new birth is nearer the likeness of God than the figure of men
in the first birth. God therefore doth more observe the numbers and mea-
sures in the second creation than he did in the first. Man was the most
excellent piece in the lower creation, therefore more of art in the framing of
him than in the whole celestial and elementary world. The glorious bodies of
sun, moon, and stars had not such marks upon them. The nearer resem-
blance anything hath to God, the more of wisdom as well as power is
signified in the make of it.
5. The holiness of God is seen in this work. The day of God's power
breaks not upon us in the change of our wills, without his appearance in
' the beauties of holiness,' Ps. ex. 3. The Spirit is called a spirit of holi-
ness, not only as he is the efficient, but as he is the pattern, and like fire
transforms into his own nature ; for that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
The law in the tables of stone was an image ; the law in the heart is an
extract of God's holiness. Our first creation in a; .mutable state was accord-
ing to his own image, Gen. i. 26. Our second creation is more exactly like
him, in a gracious immutability. The holiness in Christ's human nature
was an effect of the holiness of God ; the holiness we have then in resem-
blance to Christ, must be a fruit of the same perfection. If we are renewed
according to his image, it must be according to his holiness. To be merci-
ful and just, is to have a moral image ; to be holy, is to have a divine. The
apostle intimates this in his exhortation, we must be holy in serving him,
because he was holy in calling us : 1 Peter i. 15, ' As he which hath called
you is holy, so be ye holy,' &c. In this respect, God calls himself, not only
a holy one, but the holy one of Israel: Isa. xliii. 15, 'I am the Lord your
holy one, the creator of Israel, your king.' v He is not only holy in himself,
but displays his holiness in them, by an act of a new creation. By creator
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 273
is not meant, his being the creator of them, as he is of all, even of wicked
men and devils ; but implies a peculiar relation to them, as distinguished
from others. He is the creator of devils, holy in his actions towards devils,
but not their holy one by any inward renovation, or consecrating them to
himself, as he is the holy one of Israel. As he is a God in covenant, he is
our God, therefore our God as he is a holy God, as well as he is a powerful
God, communicating the one as well as the other in a covenant way ; there-
fore the prophet Habakkuk joins them both together, ' 0 Lord my God,
my holy one,' Hab. i. 12. His holiness is no less necessary for the felicity
of his people, than his mercy and power. What happiness could his mercy
move, his wisdom contrive, or his power effect, without the communication
of his holiness? Mercy could not of itself fit a man for it, nor power give a
man possession of it, without holiness attiring him with all those graces
which prepare him for it. God, as sovereign, chose us ; as merciful, pardons
us; as wise, guides us; as powerful, protects us; as true, makes good his
promises to us ; but as holy, cleanseth us from our old habits, makes us
vessels of honour, filled with the savoury and delicious fruits of his Spirit,
his pleasant things. The implantation of grace in the heart, is no less an
effect of his holiness, than the preservation of it is, which our Saviour inti-
mates, when in his petition for it he gives his Father rather the title of holy,
than of any other attribute: John xvii. 11, ' Holy Father, keep through thy
own name.'
6. The power of God appears in this work. ' Since the world began was
it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind,' John
ix. 32 ; neither was it ever heard that any man could open the understand-
ing of one that was born dark. Everything that pertains to life and godli-
ness, of which regeneration is not the meanest, is the work of divine power :
2 Peter i. 3, ' According as his divine power hath given to us all things that
pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who hath called
us to glory and virtue ; ' glory and virtue, by a hendiaclis, for a glorious
virtue ; and the apostle adds, that this calling was an effect of a glorious
power ; it is not sig, but btu, through glory and virtue ; the same preposition
bia, which, as joined with knowledge, is translated through; as much as to
pay, through a glorious virtue or power, both agirr} and virtus signifying
valour and strength in their several languages. When God hardens a man,
he only withdraws his grace. But a divine virtue is necessary for the cure of
our hereditary disease. There is no great force required to cut a dead man,
but to raise him requires an extraordinary power. We may as well deny
this work to be a new creation, a resurrection, as deny it to be an act of
divine power. There is a word that calls ; there is also a power to work :
1 Thes. i. 5, ' Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power,
and in the Holy Ghost ; ' that is, the power of the Holy Ghost. There was
not only grace in the word, to woo, but the power of the Holy Ghost in it,
to overcome the heart. There is not only an act of an almighty Spirit, but
an act of his almightiness. The hand of the Lord created the world, ' the
heavens are the work of his fingers,' Ps. viii. 3 ; but grace is the work of
1 his arms,' Isa. liii. 1. It may be said of the first grace in the new birth,
as it was of Pieuben, Gen. xlix. 3, it is his ' might, the beginning of his
strength, and the excellency of his power.' Though ministerial gifts were
as excellent as Paul's, whose preaching was with demonstration and power,
and who knew the readiest ways to men's hearts, if a man ever did, yet ' the
excellency of the power was of God ; ' and when he brandished his spiritual
preapons, they were only 'mighty through God,' 2 Cor. x. 4. Though the
274 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
declaration was his, yet the working was Christ's, Rom. xv. 18 ; none of his
people are willing, till the day of his power, Ps. ex. 3.
(1.) It is as great, yea, greater power, than that put forth in creation.
It is as great ; it is the introduction of another form, not in a way of any
action or fashion, but in such, a manner as was in the creation, that is, by
the mighty operation of God ; otherwise it could not be called a new creature,
though it might be called a new thing. You call not that which is made by
the art or power of man, as a watch, a clock, a house, a new creature ; for
there is nothing of creation in them, but art and industry, setting the pieces
of matter, created to their hands, together in such a form or figure. But
this is called a new creature, not so much in regard of the newness of the
thing, but in regard of the power that wrought it, and the manner of working
it, being the same with that of creation. And being termed so, it implies the
exerting an efficacious power ; for creation is not wrought by a cessation of
action (which would be in God, if the will were only the cause of it) but the
employment of an active virtue.* God doth not hold his hand in his bosom,
but spreads it open, and applies it to an efficacious action. Since it is a new
creation, it implies a creator, and a creative power ; creation cannot be with-
out both. It is a greater power expended in regeneration than in creation ;
more power morally in this, than physically in that. One word created the
world ; many words are combined for the new preparation of the heart. It
is easier to make a thousand glasses, than to set together one that is dashed
in pieces. It is easier with God to make a world [quoad nos, as to our con-
ception, for all things are alike easy with God), and create thousands of men
with his image, as bright as Adam's, than to bring that into form which is
so miserably defaced.
[1.] First, In regard of the subject, sin hath turned man into a beast, and
omnipotency only can turn a bestial man into angelical and divine. There
is a less distance between the least dust and the glorious God, than there is
between the holy God and an impure sinner ; sin and grace are more con-
trary to one another, than aliquid and nihil, something and nothing. A
straw may with less power be made a star, than a corrupted sinner be made
a saint. In creation, God was only to put in nature, here he is to 'put off
one that is strong, and to bring in another altogether strange and new; it is
hard to bring a man off from his old stock, and as hard to make him nakedly
to trust Christ. It is more difficult to make a man leave his sin, than to
change his opinion, since men are more in love with habitual wickedness,
than with any opinion whatsoever. In regard of the indisposedness of the
soul. There is some foundation for a natural religion, there being general
notions of God and his attributes, which would administer some conclusions
that he was to be feared and reverenced ; and according to these notions
many checks of conscience, which would induce men to some moral behaviour
towards God. But in the setting our hearts right to God, and creating them
in a mediator, there was not the least dust in nature to build upon. In the
creating of Adam's body, there was some pre-existent matter, the dust of
the ground, whereof his body was by a divine power made and organised ;
but we meet with no pre-existent matter for the formation of the soul, which
made him a rational creature ; that indeed was the breath of God, not engen-
dered by any concurring cause in nature. There is no pre-existent matter in
the creature, of which this image is formed, though there be a pre-existent
subject to receive the impression of it ; it is not the rearing anything upon
the foundation of nature, but introducing a nature wholly new, which speaks
almightiness. In regard of the contradiction in the subject. The stream
* Aniyraut. Serin, sur Phil. ii. 13, p. 20.
John I. 13. J the efficient of regeneration. 275
of man's natural reason, the principles of self, whereby he is guided, run
counter to it; there is a pride of reason which will not stoop to the gospel,
which in man's wisdom is counted foolishness. Man is an untamed heifer,
a wild ass that snuffs up the wind, full of hatred to the ways of God, guided
by gigantic lusts, which make as great a resistance as a mountain of brass ;
stoutness of heart, strong prejudices against the law of God ; fierceness of
affection, drinking iniquity like water ; universal madness, resisting the
spirit, hare-brained imaginations ; frowardness in the will, forwardness to
evil, perversity against good ; can anything, less than an almighty power,
make a universal cure ? It is more easy to make men stoop to some victo-
rious prince, and become his vassals, than to bring men to a submission to
God and his laws, which they entertain with contempt and scorn. JYothiiif/
obeyed God's word in the creation ; though it contributed not to his design,
yet it could not oppose him ; it could not swell against him, because it was
nothing. But every sinner is rebellious, disputes God's commands, fortifies
himself against his entrance, gives not up himself without a contest. This
pride is hereditary, it bore sway in the heart ever since Adam's fall, and hath
prescription of as long a standing as the world to plead for possession.
What but infinite power can fling down this pride at the foot of the cross,
make the heart strike its swelling sail to Christ, and become nothing in itself,
that Christ may be all life in him, and all righteousness to him ? It is only
possible to God to make a camel, with this bunch on its back, pass through
a needle's eye ; no less than divine power can bring down these armies of
opposite imaginations, which have both multitude and strength (and no
man knows either their number or strength), and the whole frame of contra-
diction against the grace of Christ. Our Saviour intimates this creative
power in that thanksgiving to his Father : Matt. xi. 25, ' I thank thee, 0
Father, Lord of heaven and earth,' &c. Christ, in all his addresses to his
Father, used attributes and titles suitable to the business he insisted on.
The revelation of divine knowledge to babes, the moulding their hearts to
receive it, was an act of God as he is Lord of heaven and earth, putting
forth an infinite power in the forming of it. If God were the author of grace
in the hearts of those babes, persons better disposed, and nearer the king-
dom of heaven, as he was Lord of heaven and earth, then there must be
some greater power than that of the creation of the world put forth to con-
quer the wise and prudent, whose wisdom and prudence stands armed in the
breaches of nature to beat off' the assaults of the gospel.
[2.] In regard of the opposition of the present possessors. The chasing
out an armed devil, that hath kept the palace in peace so long, must be by
a power superior to his own, Luke xi. 21, 22. This great Goliath hath his
armour about him, hath had long possession and dearest affections ; the im-
pulses of natural concupiscence take his part ; he hath his alluring baits,
his pleasing proposals ; the world and the flesh are linked with him in a
league to hinder the restoration of the soul to Christ, and the restoration of
God's image to the soul. A threefold cord is not easily broken. It must be a
power superior to those three great powers in conjunction, that must bind the
strong man ; and casting him out, and spoiling his goods, are acts of power,
Mat. xii. 29. Satan is too strong to be easily cast out, and the flesh loves
him too dearly to be easily divorced from him ; he is never like to lay down
his arms by persuasions ; though all the angels in heaven should entreat him,
he would not give up one foot of his empire. Nay, though what God doth
propose hath a greater weight of goodness, pleasure, and profit in itself,
than what those three great impostors can offer, yet, since reason is weak,
and mightily corrupted under the conduct of sense, which hath an alliance
276 chaknock's works. [John I. 13.
with Satan's proposals, and first sucks them in, it is not like to meet with
any entertainment, as being against the interest of the flesh ; and the will
being backed with two such powerful seconds, as Satan and the world, to
assist it in its refusals. Indeed, if he that is in the regenerate, were not
greater and more powerful than he that is in the world, they would not be
able to resist his allurements and subtilties, 1 John iv. 4. The triumphs of
Christ at his ascension declare his power in his acquisition ; with a strong
hand he broke the chain of sinners, and ' led captivity captive ' before he
gave gifts to men, Ps. lxviii. 18. He doth the like in giving grace to the
heart ; he rides upon his white horse in the power of almighty grace, when
he conquers the enmity in the soul, as well as when he overcomes the ene-
mies of his church, Rev. vi. 2.
(2.) It is a power as great as that which wrought in the resurrection of
Christ. It is considerable how loftily the apostle sets it out : Eph. i.
19, 20, 'And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who
believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in
Christ when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand
in heavenly places.' Exceeding greatness of his power, vKigQaWov, with an
hyperbole, according to the working or efficaciousness of his mighty power,
noting the infusion of faith in the soul by a powerful impression, ' according
to the working of the might or strength.' One word was not enough to
signify the great power working : it is strength with a greater edge upon it ;
as when a man would fetch a mighty blow, he stirs up all his strength, sets
his teeth an edge to summon all his spirits to assist his arm. The power of
God in creation of nature is never in the whole Scripture set forth so mag-
nificently as his power in the creation of grace is in this place. The apostle
picks not out any examples of God's power in his ordinary works, or that
power in lesser miracles which exceeded the power of nature, to illustrate
this power by. He doth not say, It is that power whereby we work miracles,
or speak with tongues : no ; neither is it that power whereby our Saviour
wrought such miracles when he was in the world. It is a more illustrious
power than the giving sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the
deaf, yea, or life to a putrefied carcase ; this is an extraordinary power.
But yet this gracious power is higher than all this, for it is as great as that
which wrought the two greatestaniracles that ever were acted in the creation,
as great as the raising Jesus Cnrist perfectly dead in the grave, and having
the weight of the sin of the world upon him ; and as great as that power,
which, after the raising of him, set him in his human nature at his right
hand, above principalities and powers, above the whole angelical state ; as
much as to say, As great as all that power which wrought the whole scene
of the redemption, from the foundation-stone to the top-stone. It is such
an unconquerable power, whereby God brings about all his decrees which
terminated in Christ. Some say this power is not exercised in the begetting
faith, but in the faithful after faith is begun. It is very strange that a less
power is necessary to beget, than to preserve a thing after it is brought into
beincr. And the same power is requisite to raise the heart of the morallest
man under heaven out of the grave of corrupted nature, as well as those that
are furthest in their dispositions from God. As, had not our Saviour had
the weight of the sins of men upon him, had he been dead but an hour or
two, lain in the grave with a litle loose or light sand cast upon him, it would
have required infinite power to have restored him to life. The apostle men-
tions this in other places, though not so highly as in this : Rom. vi. 4,
' That like as Christ was raised up by the glory of the Father, even so we
should walk in newness of life.' It must be understood thus. Even so we,
John I. 13. J the efficient of regeneration. 277
being raised up by the glory of the Father, should walk in newness of life.
And it may be partly the meaning of the apostle Peter, 1 Peter i. 3, ' Who
hath begotten us to a lively hope by, or through, the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead,' not only as the foundation of our hopes, but by a
power conformable to that which raised Christ from the dead. I would only
by the way note, that this infers a higher operation than merely an exhorta-
tion and suasion ; for would any man say of a philosopher that had taught
him morality, that he had displayed in him the exceeding greatness of his
power, only upon the account of advising and counselling him to reform his
manners, and live more soberly and honestly in the world ? Our Saviour
esteemed this one thing greater than all the other miracles he wrought, and
declared himself to be the Christ more by this than by any other. When
John sent to know who he was, he returns no other account than the list of
his miracles : ' The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the
deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached,' Luke
vii. 20. That which brings up the rear as the greatest is, ' the poor Buuyys-
'/^Zp\rai are evangelised ;' it is not to be taken actively of the preaching of
the gospel, but passively, that they were wrought upon by the gospel, and
became gospelled people, transformed into the mould of it, else it would bear
no analogy to the other miracles ; the deaf hear, and the dead were raised ;
they had not exhortations to hear and live, but the effects were wrought in
them ; so those words import not only the preaching of the gospel to them,
but the powerful operation of the gospel in them. This greatest miracle in
the catalogue is the only miracle our Saviour hath left in the world since
the cessation of all the rest.
I have insisted the longer upon these perfections in God apparent in this
work.
1. To stir up every renewed person to a thankful frame towards God,
that he should engage his choicest attributes for the good of a poor creature.
To what purpose did the apostle so long and so highly speak of the power
of God in raising them from a spiritual death, but that they should acknow-
ledge it, and admire God for it ? It cannot but raise high admirations and
adorations of God, to consider how mercy moved for them, sovereignty
called them out, wisdom modelled them, holiness cleansed them, and power
framed them.
2. To stir up deep humility. It is a pfain declaration of our miserable
estate by nature, and the difficulty of emerging out of it, impossible for any
creature to effect. Had not God been infinitely merciful, wise, holy, true,
and omnipotent, and put forth his power to free men from a slavery to sin,
not a man had been able to escape out of it ; and these two, admiration of
God, and humiliation of self, are the two great acts of a Christian, which
set all other graces on work. Mercy speaks us very miserable, wisdom de-
clares us fools, holiness unclean, and power extremely weak.
3. How mightily will it give a ground to the exercise of faith ! lie that
is deeply sensible of this work of holiness and power in him, cannot but
trust God upon his deed, as well as before he did upon his word. As you
go to the promises without you, consider also the counterpart of the pro-
mise within you, and the efficacy of that power which wrought it. You
have a ground of faith within you ; the power extends to every one wherein
this work is wrought : ' What is the exceeding greatness of his power to
us- ward who believe ;' this the apostle speaks to all the believing Ephesians.
4. Therefore look much into yourselves by way of examination, to ob-
serve the actings of God's wisdom, holiness, and power within you. The
want of this makes many gracious persons live disconsolately. Paul was
278 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
certainly diligent in his observation, since he speaks so feelingly and expe-
rimentally of it. It is the way to answer Satan's objections, silence unbe-
lieving thoughts, when you can trace the steps and operations of them in
you ; it would make you strive for an increase of this work of regeneration, that
you may feel in yourselves more evidences of the holiness and power of God.
5. Those that want it may well despair of attaining it by themselves and
their own strength. Divine wisdom and power are exerted in this work, and
men may as well think themselves able to raise a dead man, yea, Christ
from the grave, and set him at the right hand of God, as do this by their
own strength. If we want an eye or a hand, all the creation cannot furnish
us with either. How can any power but that which is infinite give us an
eye to look to Christ within the veil, and a hand to clasp him in heaven ?
6. It directs men where to seek it, and to seek it earnestly. At the hands
of God, since infinite wisdom, holiness, and power, are necessary for the
production of it. With earnestness, because it is so transcendent a work,
hath so many perfections of God shining in it, that creature-strength and
wisdom is utterly unable to frame and raise it ; and with hopes too, if they
earnestly seek it, since God hath hereby declared himself infinitely loving,
in the combination of so many attributes for the effecting of it. Plead, there-
fore, the glory of God in these his attributes, and if God give you a heart
to seek it, it is a probable argument he will give you that grace which he
hath given you a heart to desire.
IV. Quest. How God doth this ?
1. This work is secret, and therefore difficult to be described. The effects
are as obvious to a spiritual sense, as the methods of it obscure to onr un-
derstandings ; secret as the original of winds, sensible as the sound and
bluster of them, John iii. 8. If a dead man were raised, he would not know
the manner how his soul returned into the body, how it took its former
place, and made up a new union, yet he would know that he lives and moves.
A gracious soul knows that he was carnal, and now spiritual ; blind, and
that he now sees. He finds strength instead of weakness, inclinations to
good instead of opposition, sweetness in the ways of God instead of bitter-
ness. The methods of grace are obscure as those of nature : Eccles. xi. 5,
' Who knows the way of the spirit, or how the bones grow in the womb of
her that is with child ? even so thou knowest not the works of God who
makes all.' The manner of the formation of Christ in the soul is as undis-
cernible as the formation of a child, or the manner of Christ's conception in
the womb of the virgin, both vrhich are fearful and wonderful ; as it is said
of the first, Ps. cxxxix. 14; ' Who can declare his generation?' Isa. liii. 8;
that is, the generation of Christ, either in his person or in his people. We
cannot give a satisfactory account of the natural motions of our souls, how
one faculty commands another, how the soul governs the several parts of
the body, what the nature of the action of our mind is in contemplation and
reflection, how our wills move the spirits in the body, whereby the members
are acted in their motion, and the functions of life performed. Much more
undiscernible are the supernatural methods of the Spirit of God. We know
ourselves heirs to the corruption of the first Adam by the inbeing of it, the
light of the grace of the second Adam discovers itself in the soul, but the
manner of the descent of either is not easily to be determined. The load-
stone's attracting of iron is the best representation of this work; the soul,
like that, moves sensibly, cleaves strongly to God ; but wherein this virtue
consists, how communicated, both in that of nature and this of spirit, dazzles
the eye of reason.
2. Yet this is evident, that it is rational ; that is, congruous to the es-
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 279
sential nature of man. God doth not deal with us as beasts, or as creatures
destitute of sense, but as creatures of an intelligent order.* Who is there
that believes in Christ in such a manner as heavy things fall to the eartb,
or light things fly up to tbe air, or as beasts run at the beck of their sen-
sual appetite, without rule or reason ? If the Spirit of God wrought so upon
man, this were to lay our faculties asleep, not to act them, but to act only
upon them ; this were to invert the natural order by creation, to raze out
the foundations of virtue, and deny the creature the pleasure of his condition,
who, according to such a manner of operation, could not understand his own
state, no more than a brute can the harmony of music, or the pleasing variety
of colours. But grace perfects our souls, possesseth them with new prin-
ciples, moves one faculty by another, like the motions of the wheels in a
clock or watch ; like the common course of providence, wherein he orders
all affairs according to the dependence of them one upon another by crea-
tion, without making any inroad upon the natural rights of any creature,
but preserving them entire, unless in some miraculous action. He diffuseth
a supernatural virtue into the soul, not to thwart it in that course of work-
ing he appointed it in the creation, but to move it agreeably to its nature
as a rational being. As the sun conveys a celestial virtue upon the plants,
drawing them forth by its influence according to their several natures, so
the Holy Ghost introduceth a supernatural principle into men, whereby they
act as reasonable creatures in a higher strain. What methods our Saviour
used in the first declaration of the gospel, he uses in the propagation of it
in the hearts of men. The same reason that is used in writing the inden-
ture is used in writing the counterpart. He might, by his omniscient wis-
dom, have found the way to the secretest corner of every man's heart, and
by his power have set up what standard he pleased in every part of the
castle, without proposing the gospel in the way of miracles and arguments ;
but he transacts all that affair in such a manner, that men might be moved
in a rat:'onal way to their own happiness. He required a rational belief,
as he gave rational evidences : John x. 37, ' If I do not the works of my
Father, believe me not ;' that is, the works that none but one empowered
by God could do. God, that requires of us a reasonable service, would work
upon us by a reasonable operation. God therefore works by way of a spi-
ritual illumination of the understanding, in propounding the creature's hap-
piness by arguments and reasons, and in a way of a spiritual impression
upon the will, moving it sweetly to the embracing that happiness, and the
means to it which he doth propose ; and indeed without this work preceding,
the motion of the will could never be regular.
God doth this by a double work.
1. Upon the understanding.
2. Upon the will.
1. Upon the understanding. The opening the eyes precedes the conver-
sion from darkness to light, in God's operation as well as in the apostles'
commission, Acts xxvi. 18. The first appearance of life, when God raiseth
the soul, is in the clearness and distinctness of its knowledge of God, Hos.
vi. 2, 3. And the apostle, in his exhortation to the Romans, tells them
the way for the transformation of their souls was by the renewing of
their minds : ' Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds,' Rom. xii.
2. The light of the sun is seen breaking out at the dawning at the day, be-
fore the heat of the sun be felt. As the action of our sense is to sensible
objects, so is that of our soul to spiritual. Our eye first sees an object before
our hearts desire it, or our members move to it ; so there is an apprehen-
* Amytaut. dc predcst., cap. xii. p. 149.
280 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
sion of the goodness of the thing proposed, before there be any motion of
our wills to it ; so God begins his work in our minds, and terminates it in
our wills. In regard of this, as a state of nature is set forth under the term
of darkness, so a state of grace is often termed light, that being the first work
in the new creation, as it was the first word of command in the old, ' Let
there be light,' 2 Cor. iv. 6, Col. iii. 10, and is therefore called a renewing ' in
kndwledge,' or unto knowledge or acknowledgment, avaxumv/xivov tig stiy-
vusiv. If you consider the Scripture, you will find most of the terms whereby
this is set forth to us have relation to the understanding. The gospel itself
is called knowledge, Luke i. 77, wisdom, 1 Cor. i. 30. What faculty in
man is appointed for the apprehending of a science to gain wisdom, but the
understanding ? That whereby we receive the gospel is called ' the spirit
of the mind,' 'the eyes of the understanding' and ' sight,' which is put be-
fore believing : John vi. 40, ' Every one which sees the Son, and believes on
him.' The work of grace is called 'revelation,' Gal. i. 16, ' illumination,'
Eph. i. 18, ' translation from darkness to light,' ' opening the heart.' The
action of our minds being enlightened, is called ' comprehending, Eph. iii,
18, and 'knowledge,' 2 Peter i. 2. All respect the understanding as the
original wheel which God primarily sets in order,* from whence he doth in-
fluence secondarily all the other faculties which depend upon its guidance,
God preserving hereby the order which he instituted in nature. Therefore,
when the understanding savingly apprehends the deformity of sin, the will
must needs hate it ; when it apprehends the mercy of God, and the beauty
of holiness, the will must needs love him ; and the higher the degrees of this
saving illumination are in the mind, the stronger and firmer are the habits
and acts of grace in the will. This illuminative act of the Spirit is before,
prior natura, the other of inclining the will, for the understanding is first
exercised about the word, as verum, true, before the will is concerned in it as
good. The understanding takes in the light of the gospel, which, by the
working of the Spirit, is reflected upon the will, whereby it is changed into
the image of Christ, whose gospel it is : 2 Cor. iii. 18, ' Beholding as in a
glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image.' The first
act is of the mind, which is the eye of the soul ; where the apostle intimates,
that the whole progress, as well as the first change, is wrought in this manner.
This is wrought,
1. By removing the indisposition and prejudices which naturally are in
the mind. As a wise physician which orders his medicines for the removing
of the principal humour. Chains of darkness must be broken, films upon
the eye must be removed, which hinder the act of vision ; for what the eye
is to the body, that the understanding is to the soul. The darkness of igno-
rance is promised in the covenant to be scattered : ' They shall all know me,
from the least to the greatest of them,' Jer. xxxi. 34. This being a law in
the inward parts, the eye must be cleared to read it, as well as the heart
cleansed to obey it. The object being spiritual, requires a spiritual disposi-
tion in the faculty for the reception of it. This is called in Scripture a giving
eyes to see, and ears to hear, Deut. xxix. 4, and the revealing things not
only by the word, but by the Spirit, 1 Cor. ii. 10, which, in regard of rectify-
ing the reasons and judgments of men, is called a ' spirit of judgment,' Isa.
iv. 4, ' and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof,
by the spirit of judgment, and the spirit of burning :' a spirit of judgment, as
it is light in the understanding, removing the darkness ; a spirit of burning,
as it is heat in the heart, thawing the hardness. It reduceth the mind into
a right order, and teacheth it to judge between truth and falsehood, between
* Testard de natura, Ac. Thcs. 233, 234.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 281
good and evil, the want of which is the cause of sin ; whence sins are called
ayvo7}/j,ara, Heb. ix. 7, errors, as arising from error in judgment. Since the
mind is filled with fogs, and incapable to perceive the splendour of divine
truths, God acts upon the mind by an inward virtue, causing the word pro-
posed to be mixed with an act of faith, which he begets in the soul, whereby
if, apprehends the excellency of that state presented to it in the gospel. As
there is a manifestation of his name in the word, so there is an operation of
his grace, an internal teaching by God, as well as an external by the gospel ;
the proposal of the word by man, the opening and fitting the heart by God :
John vi. 45, ' Everyman that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, comes
unto me.' Christ taught all by his ministry, the Father only some by his
Spirit. Learning of God goes before coming to Christ, and those two acts
are plainly distinguished : Isa. vi. 9, 10, ' Hear and not understand.' The
lock of their minds was to be opened, as well as that of their ears ; the pro-
phet's voice could unlock the one, the Spirit only had the key of the other.
Men may enlighten as moral causes, God only as the efficient cause, to root
out the inward indisposition. The Sp:rit also removes the prejudices against
Christ as undesirable, against holiness as troublesome ; takes down the
strength of corrupt reasonings, pulls down those idols in the mind and false
notions of happiness, out-reasons men out of their inward thoughts of a
happiness in sensual pleasures, pride of life, mammon of honour or wealth,
which are the root of our spiritual disease, and first to be cured. In this
there is a manifest difference between the working of Satan and the operation
of God ; he sets his battery against the affections, because the entry is there
easiest ; God breaks in upon the understanding, which, being the chief fort,
will quickly be a means to reduce the lesser citadels. And when the work
begins in removing the blindness, it is the way to a true conversion ; when
it begins only in the affections, it is a prognostic of a quick starting aside.
In an outward exhortation, God acts suitably to our nature, since we are endued
with understanding and will ; but in acting upon us within, he doth remedy
the vice of our nature, since our reason and will are corrupted.
(2.) It is wrought by bringing the mind and the object close together.
Sight is produced in a blind man by drawing off the scales from his eyes, and
the recourse of spirits to the eye necessary for sight ; besides this, there
must be outward light, and objects coloured by that light ; and from the eye
so disposed within, and the thing discovered without, ariseth the action of
sight.* So from the preparation of the understanding, and the application of
the object, ariseth this action of spiritual vision. There is a double open-
ing, one of the gospel, the other of the understanding ; our Saviour did both,
he 'opened the Scriptures,' Luke xxiv. 32, and 'opened their understand-
ings,' ver. 45, that there might be a mutual entrance, that the word might
dwell in their hearts, and their hearts have admission into the word. The
Spirit shews the great things of the gospel to the soul : John xvi. 14, amy-
yi7.it, ' He shall receive of mine, and shew it unto you,' not in general, but
bring them near to them, to make them view ' and know the things that are
freely given to them of God,' 1 Cor. ii. 12, the benefits of the death and
resurrection of Christ. He repeats them again and a»ain, that there may be
an evidence in the mind that they are the royal gifts of God. There is a
knowledge, before this work of the Spirit, but as of things at a distance.
Many know the things proposed in the gospel, but they know it not as a
glorious gospel, nor see the wonders in this law, till the Spirit brings that
and the faculty close together. As a man may discern a statue or picture
at a distance, but till the eye and the objects meet close together, it cannot
* Amvraut. Strm. sur Phil. ii. 13, p. 75.
282 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
discern the beautiful workmanship upon them with any affection to them.
Not that a man knew nothing, or knows new reasons of those things which
he knew before ; but there is a nearer, and therefore clearer, representation
of them, which is demon fit ratio ostensiva, whereby he knows them in another
manner than he did before. As a man may know the promises before, but
they were not brought so near to him as to taste them ; taste being an addi-
tion to knowledge, whereby a man knows that sensibly which before he only
knew notionally. It is one thing to know a mechanical instrument, and
another to know it in the operation of it, when it is applied to its proper use.
It is like a man that hath his understanding more cleared by seeing mathema-
tical demonstrations, and lines drawn, than by all the rules of art in his head.
(3.) By fixing the mind upon the subject so closely presented. The
Spirit settles that light and the object so in the mind, that it can no more
blow it out than puff out the sparklings of a diamond, or than an artist
endued with the habit of some art can divest himself of his skill. Many
men have some convictions of truth, but flashy and uncertain, and which
slip from their minds. But when the Spirit opens the heart, it holds the
object to the mind, and the mind to the object ; starts one holy thought
after another about the truth it hath darted in, makes the mind peer about
it, and take notice of every lineament of that truth that we eye, and those
thoughts lie down, rise up, and walk with us. When Lydia's heart
was opened, she ' attended to the things spoken by Paul,' Acts xvi. 14, her
whole heart cleaved to them. In this respect the Spirit is a remembrancer,
making the soul ponder and beat over again with all intenseness of mind
the goodness and truth of those things in the gospel which are brought unto
it, that the heart is, as Paul was, ' bound in spirit to Jerusalem,' Acts
xx. 22. The thoughts of that journey did so haunt him and follow him, as
the shadow doth the body, that no arguments of friends, nor fear of danger,
could divert him ; the soul is bound by them, one consideration overtaking
another, and all at work beating upon the mind. Hence consideration is
put before conversion : Ezek. xviii. 28, ' Because he considers and turns
away from all his transgressions.' And it is called the ' ingrafted word,'
fastened to the soul as a graft to the stock ; when the heart is opened by
the Spirit, the word is inserted in and bound to it, and at last the heart
becomes one with the word, and grows up with it.
(4.) By bringing the soul to an actual reasoning and discourse upon the
sight of the evidence. God convinceth the judgment with reasons proper
to evidence the truth and goodness of what he doth propose, and that with
pregnant and prevailing demonstrations, which give a competent satisfaction ;
therefore called the ' demonstration of the Spirit and power,' 1 Cor. ii. 4,
that is, a spiritual and powerful demonstration. When the eye is opened,
and the revelation made, and held close and fast to the soul with a divine
demonstration, that this is the only means to elevate him to a high condition,
and at last bring him to a blessed immortality, the understanding is moved
to compare the force of those arguments, and consequently judgeth that
true which before it counted false and foolishness, and comes by the help of
this spiritual light to reason spiritually, and spiritually to discern the pro-
position made to it. It compares its natural state with the happy state
offered to it, its own ignorance with that light, its own misery with that
mercy. God will not have man, that is so far above a beast, do anything
without reason ; for this would be to do it brutishly, though the thing done
were never so good, When men act as men, they follow the judgment of
the best reason they can. And shall man, that was created a rational
creature, be renewed without reason, when the very work is to advance him
John* I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 283
to the true state of a reasonable creature, and his reason is enlightened by
the Spirit, that it may rightly judge of the demonstrative arguments it offers
to him ? Is there not as much reason for the guidance of the will in the
highest concern, as for the conduct of it in affairs of a lower sphere ? Man
was first endued with reason, that he might rationally serve God ; and his
depraved reason is reformed, that he may rationally return to God. If,
therefore, he act like a man in other things, he doth not surely act like a
brute in this ; but the Spirit excites that reason he hath enlightened to
judge of those excellent things he doth propose, and the strength of the
arguments he backs them with, which are so clear and undeniable that they
cannot be refused by a mind divested of those indispositions which drew
out before a contempt of them. The change in the will being an election
and choice, cannot be made without convincing and satisfying reasons which
induce it to that choice, and justify the election it hath made. That can
hardly be called faith, when a man believes that which he doth not think
upon the highest reason was his duty to believe.* And indeed what man
is there that cannot allege some reason why he is induced to this or that
act ? God moves men by presenting things to the understanding under the
notion of good, honest, profitable ; and when the understanding is enlight-
ened to judge of things in some measure under the same notion that God
proposeth them, a man's own reason cannot but upon a view of them assent
unto them, and that assent is followed with a change, according to the
degrees of that illumination, if it be a saving one. Upon this account that
our own reason is excited to judge of the proposal, our faith can no more
be said to be a human faith, or the work to proceed from our own power,
than it can be said to be sensitive because it comes by hearing; for though
faith depends upon hearing and reasoning, as upon natural powers, yet the
light whereby the faculties are acted is wholly supernatural, and from the
Spirit of God.
(5.) Hence follows a full conviction of the soul. Both the knowledge of
its own misery, and the amiableness of the gospel offer, whence issues a
weariness under the one and desires for the other. By this enlightening,
the soul sees sin in its empire, God in his wrath, Satan in his tyranny, and
the hardness of the stone within him ; he sees the law accusing, sin
triumphing, heaven shut and hell open, God ready to judge him, and his
soul every way deplorable. He sees also in the gospel how Christ hath
expiated sin, answered the demands of the law, stills the clamours of con-
science, satisfied the justice of God by bearing his wrath ; hereupon the
soul closes with Christ, and is born again. Here are heaps of sin that
cannot be numbered, on the other side are riches of mercy that cannot be
reckoned ; there is sin to damn, here is a Christ to save ; heaven and hell,
sin and Christ, damnation and salvation, are presented in their proper
colours, and pressed upon the understanding, which beholds all by a clear
iight. And thus, by the illuminative virtue of the Spirit, the soul is laid at
God's foot in a sense of its misery, and then drawn into Christ's arms by a
sense of his grace. This is wrought by a convictive persuasion, for so the
word tXiyxiiv signifies, John xvi. 8, which causes both a sight of sin and a
sense of righteousness, and produceth a full assent in the understanding.
2. The next faculty wrought upon is the will. The will is inclined, as well
as the understanding enlightened, whereby spiritual things are approved with
a spiritual affection ; the same hand that darts light into the mind, puts heat
into the will. After the act of understanding hath preceded in a serious
consideration, and thorough conviction, the act of the will, by virtue of the
* Stillingfluet.
284 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
same Spirit, follows in a delightful motion to the object proposed to it ; it is
conducted by light, and spirited by love ; the understanding hands the
object to the will, as necessary to be embraced, and the arms of the will are
opened to receive it, as the eyes of the mind are to behold it.
For the understanding of this, take these propositions.
Prop. 1. There seems to me to be an immediate supernatural work upon
the will, as well as upon the understanding : not that the understanding is
only enlightened, and the will follows the dictate of that without any further
touch of the Spirit upon it ; but the will, as it is the will, and therefore
cannot be forced, there is need of a moral cause which may determine it
according to its nature, and draw it by the cords of a man. When a master
instructs a youth in his trade, he doth it by arguments morally ; when he
holds his hand with the instrument in it, and directs the motion, he acts
physically ; so doth the Spirit exhort us to spiritual motion, telling us in-
wardly which is the way, that we may walk in it, and take our wills by the
hand, as it were, and lead them in the way they are to go. A nurse's
tongue and exhortation is not enough to make a child to go, because of the
weakness of its limbs ; nor the light in the understanding sufficient to move
the will, wherein there is an habitual weakness and contradiction. How
did God work up the wills of the Egyptians to lend their jewels to the
Israelites, but by some immediate touch.* Their reason might have fur-
nished them with many more arguments against it than it could for it.
They knew the Israelites had been highly injured, and that very lately, too;
that they could not but have a deep sense of their oppression, and intentions
of revenge, as far as their power extended. They knew that the Israelites
prepared for flight, and might more than conjecture that they intended never
to return or send their jewels to them ; for what need had they of so many
goods barely to sacrifice in the wilderness ? How were their wills thus
bended against so many arguments against this action, and without any
strong reasons to move them to consent to such a desire of the Israelites ?
How must this be but by the efficacious power of God, not forcing their
wills, but taming their fierceness, softening them by a secret instinct, and
exciting them to a grant of the Israelites' request ? The apostle saith, God
' gives to will.' If there were not a particular act upon the will, it had
better been said, God gives to understand and know, and man to will and
do. After the evidence set up in the understanding, there is a secret touch
upon the will, opening and enlarging it to run the way that is proposed in
an excellent and charming manner. As the power of God raiseth every
part of Christ, so the same power raiseth every faculty of the soul ; it was
also a physical power, since mere exhortation would never have effected it.
(1.) The Scripture intimates this in the terms whereby it signifies this
work to us, as creation, resurrection, regeneration, new birth, all which denote
some physical operation distinct in each faculty in the new creation, as there
was in the first; not only the law in the mind to direct, but the heart of
flesh to comply, is God's act. The fleshy heart is wrought by him, as well
as the knowledge of the mind lighted by him. In generation something is
removed, another thing introduced ; in regeneration then of the will,
there is consonant to that an eradication of corrupt habits, and an implan-
tation of gracious ones. It is called a ' giving a heart,' a ' circumcision of
the heart to love God,' Deut. xxx. 6. Love is an act of the will, though it
supposeth a knowledge of the amiable object in the understanding. If faith
be principally in the will, as I think it is, as to consent ; and the words
leaning, resting, coming rather note an act of the will than an act of the un-
* Ducat, de Imag. Dei, lib, ii. cup. 4, p. 32.
JOHN I. 13.J THE EFFICIENT OF REGENERATION. 285
derstanding; there is then an operation of God upon the subject, viz. the will,
in the implanting of it.
(2.) The will is corrupted as well as the understanding. The works of
the flesh issue from both ; if the corruption were only in the understanding,
then that being removed, the will would be regenerated. As in a watch, if
the fault be only in one wheel, that being mended, the whole frame is recti-
fied ; but if there be a flaw in all, the mending of one, though the principal
one, which moves the rest, will not set every wheel right, without a parti-
cular application of art to restore them to their due frame. Was not original
righteousness subjectively in the will as well as in the mind ? Did not a
stoutness in the will succeed in the place of that righteousness, as well as
darkness in the place of light ? Must not there then be a habit of mollify-
ing grace bestowed upon the one as well as a habit of enlightening truth set
up in the other ; an inclination to good in the will, and an aversion from
evil, as well as the knowledge of both '? The corrupt proneness in the will
is the cause that it is easily excited to evil by the persuasion of the devil and
the world ; and is there not need of an inward rectitude in the will to bias
it to a free embracing and close adherency to the good proposed to it bv
God, that his grace may be efficacious in every part ? This work is a
quickening a man under a universal spiritual death ; the will was dead, as
well as the mind dark, which must have life instead of its deadness, as the
other hath light instead of its darkness ; and if they be two distinct faculties,
then there are two distinct acts of the Spirit, though they depend one upon
another. There is no less power requisite to make us spiritually willing than
to make us spiritually knowing, since the corrupt habits in our wills are
rather stronger than the prejudices in our understandings ; therefore there
seems to be a distinct act in removing the resistance from the one as well as
expelling the darkness from the other. As the Spirit takes away the wisdom
that was sensual, earthly, and devilish, so it divests the will of that disposi-
tion whereby it was enamoured on that devili«h wisdom of the flesh, and
makes it willing to cut off the right hand and right eye, to deny sin, which
is the very self, and engage in an irreconcilable quarrel against all that which
engrossed its choicest affections.
(3.) If the understanding hath such a power, by virtue of its illumination,
without an act also of the Spirit upon the will, and a particular application
of the understanding to the will, and the will to the understanding, v\hy did
not Adam's will follow his understanding ? His understanding was clear,
without darkness ; his affections first made the rebellion ; sense was the
leader, and the will the follower. Eve's understanding was not silent under
the temptation of Satan ; her knowledge was actuated in that speech, ' God
hath said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die,'
Gen. iii. 3. She cites the word, her understanding must needs concur with
it, unless it were corrupted and darkened before the fall. Where lay the
resistance ? In the affections, and the will which sided with them. Why
may not the will, possessed with those evil habits, resist the understand ing
imperfectly restored to its primitive light, as well as Adam's will did where
there was no scale or film upon the eye of his soul ? And likely his affec-
tions had kept their due order, if the will had preserved its due dependence
upon reason, and its sovereignty over the sensitive part. Do we not find
that our wills are oftener in contradiction to the true sentiments of our un-
derstanding, and in conjunction with the affections, than in a due subordina-
tion to the one and commanding over the other ? Is it not frequently seen
that men of much light, knowledge, and gifts of reason, answer not the end
of that illumination, and are without a will to turn to God? Besides, since
286 oharnock's works. [John I. 13.
corruption came in by the way of the affections, when the understanding was
clear, how can regeneration of the will come in by the illumination of the
understanding, without a particular operation upon the will and affections ?
If it be said, the will follows the dictate of the understanding, why
did it not so in Adam ? If we were perfectly restored, as Adam was in in-
nocency, without the grace of God in our wills, as well as light in our under-
standings, we were not like to keep up in due order.
(4.) God in his other creatures gives not only a light and fancy in nature,
but endues them with such principles that incline them to their motion, as
connatural to them. Why, then, shall we not think, since the will is an
habitual power, that when the will is moved to supernatural ends, it is en-
dued with such a supernatural habit, whereby it may be sweetly and readily
moved to the chief good as its proper object ?* Are there not corrupt habits
in the will, which the Scripture calls ' lusts,' and ' the works of the flesh,'
Gal. v. 19-21, which the Spirit mortifies as well as those of the mind '?
Why not, then, gracious habits set up in the room of the other in this
faculty as well as in the other ?
(5.) If there were not a physical operation and habits in the will, what
would become of infants, who cannot in that state be renewed without such
a kind of working ? They are not capable of moral exhortation, we cannot
conceive any other way the Spirit hath to work upon them, but by such a
physical operation, putting habits into their wills, whereby they are renewed
and sanctified ; they are capable of the habit, though not of the act. We
never find our Saviour spending any exhortations upon infants, but he took
them in his arms and blessed them, and told us that of such is the kingdom
of heaven ; and if the kingdom of heaven be of such, there is some operation
upon them different from this method of working only upon their under-
standing.
(6.) If there were not some operation of the Spirit upon our wills, regene-
ration and conversion would be more our work than God's. If the Spirit
terminates his working only upon the understanding, and the will be moved
by the understanding alone, without any conjunction of the Spirit in the
work upon the will, then the Spirit doth not immediately concur to the
chiefest part of regeneration, but as it illuminates the mind ; for the chief
part of renewing grace is in the will ; so it would be more our work than
God's, if the moral only were his, and the physical operation only ours. It
was in a less affair than this, wherein David blessed God for the people's
willingness, offering so freely, acknowledging it indeed the people's act, but
by God's overruling their wills, 1 Chron. xxix. 13, 14.
(7.) God is all in all in glory : 1 Cor. xv. 28, ' When Christ shall have
delivered the kingdom to his Father, God then shall be all in all ; ' all in
their understandings, all in their wills ; he shall be the immediate cause of
all things, and govern and dispose all things by himself, and for himself ;
binding the souls of all the glorified by everlasting ligatures to himself ; all
in all to the glorified, all light in their understanding, all love and delight in
their will, objectively, efficiently. What efficacy he hath in glory, shall we
deny him in grace in every particular faculty ?
Prop. 2. Yet this work, though immediate, is not compulsive and by
force. It is a contradiction for the will to be moved unwillingly ; any force
upon it destroys the nature of it; if it be forced, it ceaseth to be will. It is
not forced, because it is according to reason, and the natural motion of the
creature; the understanding proposing, and the will moved to an embracing ;
the understanding going before with light, the will following after with love.
* Ferrius, cap. xxxii. p. 496.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 287
The liberty of the will consists in following the guidance of reason ; to have
a liberty to go against it, is the greatest misery of the creature. That is
properly constraint, when we are compelled to work contrary to the natural
way of working ; there is no constraint by force, but there is a kind of a
constraint by love, because the Spirit accompanies this operation with so
much efficacy, that instead of that sadness we should have in a thing we
were forced unto, there is an unspeakable joy and contentment in the soul ;
it not being possible to taste so much of the love of God, to be delivered
from so fearful a condemnation, to be brought to so glorious a hope, without
being seized upon with much pleasure and delight. God changeth the incli-
nation of the will, but doth not force it against its inclination ; the will,
being a rational faculty, cannot be wrought upon but rationally. Since the
main work consists in faith and love, it is impossible there can be any force ;
no man can be forced to believe against his reason, or love against his will,
or desire against his inclination. Belief is wrought by persuasion ; no man
can be persuaded by force. It cannot be conceived, that the will should
will against the will. No man can be happy against his will, all happiness
consisting in a suitableness of the object to the faculty ; those things that
in themselves are the greatest pleasures of the world, if they please not a
man, cannot confer any happiness upon him. The Spirit never works
thus, because ' where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,' 2 Cor. iii. 17 ;
he destroys not the liberty, but reduceth it to will more nobly than before.
Besides, the liberty of the will doth not stand in indifference to this or that
thing, for then the will would lose its liberty every time it hath determined
itself to any one thing, because after the determination it would be no longer
indifferent to the other. But the liberty of the will consists in being carried
out according to the dictate of the practical judgment, and not by a blind
instinct. God doth not deal with us as stones and logs, or slaves, whom
the whip makes to do that which they hate in their hearts ; but conducts us
in ways agreeable to our nature; he calls, saying, 'Seek you -my face;'
and inclines the will to answer, ' Thy face, Lord, I will seek,' Ps. xxvii. 8.
That God who knows how to make a will with a principle of freedom, knows
how to work upon the will, without entrenching upon, or altering the essen-
tial privilege he bestowed upon it ; he that formed us, as a potter doth his
vessel, knows very well the handles whereby he may take hold of us, with-
out making any breach in our nature.
Prop. 3. It is free and gentle. A constraint, not by force, but love,
which is not an extrinsic force, but intrinsic and pleasant to the will ; he
bends the creature so, that at the very instant wherein the will is savingly
wrought upon, it delightfully consents to its own happiness ; he draws by
the cords of a man, and by a secret touch upon the will makes it willing to
be drawn, and moves it upon its own hinges. It is sweet and alluring ; the
Spirit of grace is called ' the oil of gladness ; ' it is a delightful and ready
motion which it causes in the will ; it is a sweet efficacy, and an efficacious
sweetness. At what time God doth savingly work upon the will, to draw
the soul from sin and the world to himself, it doth with the greatest willing-
ness, freedom, and delight follow after God, turn to him, close with him,
and cleave to him, with all the heart, and with purpose never to depart from
him : Cant. i. 4, ' Draw me, and we will run after thee.' Drawing signifies
the efficacious power of grace ; running signifies the delightful motion of
grace ; the will is drawn, as if it would not come ; it comes, as if it were
not drawn. His grace is so sweet and so strong, that he neither wrongs the
liberty of his creature, nor doth prejudice his absolute power. As God
moves necessary causes, necessarily ; contingent causes, contingently ; so
288 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
he moves free agents freely, without offering violence to their natures. The
Spirit glides into the heart by the sweet illapses of grace, and victoriously
allures the soul : Hosea ii. 14, ' I will allure her, and speak to her heart ;'
not by crossing, but changing the inclination, by the all-conquering and allur-
ing charms of love, as a man doth that person whom he intends for his
spouse ; for to that he alludes, because in the latter part of the chapter, he
speaks of the consummation of his marriage with the church : ver. 16, ' In
that day thou shalt call me Ishi.' In what day ? In the day that he should
allure her, and speak to her heart. God puts on the deportment of a lover
in changing the frame of the will. The Spirit is as one that leads the way
into truth (the Spirit ' shall guide you, odrjyrinti, into all truth,' John xvi. 13) ;
not drags ; he opens the heart, not by a forcible entry, but as a key that
fits every ward in the lock. The attraction of the will is much like that of
iron by the loadstone, which had no motion of itself till the powerful emis-
sions of the loadstone's virtue reached it, and then it seems to move with a
kind of voluntariness ; there is no force used, but a delicious virtue emitted,
which doth, as it were, both persuade and enable it to join itself to its beloved
attracter. There is a secret virtue communicated by God, which, as soon
as it toucheth the soul, puts life and delightful motion into it, which before
lay like a log. It embraceth Christ as its portion, and passes a decree,
that it will keep his words : Ps. cxix. 57, ' Thou art my portion, 0 Lord :
I have said that I will keep thy words.'
Prop. 4. It is insuperably victorious. What the mouth of God speaks,
what his will purposeth, his hand doth fulfil, 1 Kings viii. 24. It is not a
faint and languishing impression, but a reviving, sprightly, and victorious
touch. As the demonstration of the Spirit is clear and undeniable, so the
power of the Spirit is sweet and irresistible; both are joined, 1 Cor. ii. 4.
An inexpressible sweetness allures the soul, and an unconquerable power
draws the soul ; there are clear demonstrations, charming persuasions, and
invincible efficacy combined together in the work. He leaves not the will in
indifference.* If God were the author of faith only by putting the will into
an indifference, though it be determined by its own proper liberty, why may
not he also be said to be the author of unbelief, if by the same liberty of this
indifference it be determined to reject the gospel ? For in the same manner
God is author of one motion of the will as well as of the other, if he doth no
more than leave the will in an (equilibrium. This irresistibleness takes not away
the liberty of the will. Our Saviour's obedience was free and voluntary, yet
necessary and irresistible. He could not sin in regard of the hypostatical
union, yet he had a greater aversion to sin than all the angels in heaven.
Is not God freely and voluntarily good, yet necessarily so ? He cannot be
otherwise than good, he will not be otherwise than good. So the will is
irresistibly drawn, and yet doth freely come to its own happiness. The
soul is brought over to God, and adheres to him, not by a necessity of com-
pulsion, but of immutability. As the angels necessarily obey God, not by
compulsion, but from an immutable love. A sinner is necessarily a servant
to sin, a regenerate man necessarily a servant to God ; both by a kind of
necessity of nature. Our main business, then, is to see what new enlighten-
ings there are in our minds by the Spirit in the gospel, what tastes and
relishes we have of divine truths, how our wills are allured to a sincere and
close compliance with the proposals of God in the gospel, what vigour is in
them. This is God's method, to work first upon th« understanding, then
upon the will. That work which begins first in the affections, without
light dawning and breaking in upon the mind, and growing up by con-
* Amyraut. Serm. de l'Evangil. Ser. vi. pp. 316, 317.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 289
sideration and inquiries into the gospel is to be suspected, and is not like to
be durable.
Tbis is the Scripture method, and every regenerate person may find it
more or less in himself.
V. The use is,
1. For instruction.
(1.) If God alone be the author and efficient of the new birth, then it
doth instruct us how insufficient a good education of itself is to produce this
work in the soul, and how unfit to be rested on, without a furtber work. I
doubt many may rest upon a religious education, without searching and in-
quiring into themselves what further work of God hath been wrought upon
them. God hath entrusted parents with a power of instructing their chil-
dren, but reserves the power of renewing grace to himself. If parents may
set the object before them, God only can give them a spiritual eye to discern
it ; if they may inform the understanding, a divine touch only can bend the
will ; if they may lay the wood of spiritual lessons together, yet the fire to
kindle them in the heart, and consume the lusts, must descend from heaven.
Education may correct, but not extirpate the malignity of nature ; good in-
struction, meeting with an orderly constitution, may sow the seeds of moral
virtue, and restrain natural corruption, but not weed that out of our nature,
or plant the root of grace, any more than the skilful management of a beast
can change its natural inclination, though it may curb it. The folly bound
up in the heart of a child is too strong for the wisdom of man, and is wholly
to be expelled by the wisdom which comes down from heaven, set up in the
heart by Christ, who is the wisdom of the Father. The little stars of pre-
cepts glittering in the mind, cannot make the young plants sprout up with
their heads towards heaven, without the influence of the sun. Christ, the
Sun of righteousness, fixed in the soul by the Spirit, can do more than all
the stars of moral instructions in the world. Timothy had as religious in-
struction from his religious mother and grandmother as any in the world,
both being believers, 2 Tim. i. o ; yet Paul calls him his ' own son in the
faith,' 1 Tim. i. 2, as having ' begotten him in the gospel.' Those instruc-
tions did not beget him, though they might facilitate the evangelical work
which was wrought by the gospel in Paul's ministry. Therefore the apostle
manifestly distinguisheth between instructors and fathers : 1 Cor. iv. 15,
' Though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have you not many
fathers : for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.' He
distinguisheth their instructions from Christ, the efficient cause, and himself
through the gospel, the instrumental cause. Yet such instruction is not to
be neglected when children are capable ; God may set home that by the gos-
pel, which hath been sucked in in younger years. Men may as well turn
their backs upon the hearing the word, because it is insufficient without
the operation of the almighty grace. Instruction and prayer should go hand
in hand together ; but take heed of resting upon a good education.
(2.) It instructs us that regeneration doth not depend merely upon the
word, if God alone be the efficient cause of it. It depends upon the inward
efficacy of the Spirit. Had it depended upon the power of the apostles, or
the outward demonstration of the word, they would have converted all that
they had preached to, they would not have suffered any to have remained
obstinate against the gospel ; charity would have obliged them to the exer-
cise of their power ; and their power would have made their charity effec-
tual. As God doth seldom work without means, so means can never work
without God. David had the law of God in his hand, but could not learn it
VOL. III. T
290 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
without God's teaching ; therefore he prays, Ps. lxxxvi. 11, ' Teach me
thy way, 0 Lord : I will walk in thy truth.' And in many places of the
119th Psalm he takes notice, that all spiritual knowledge comes from God,
though in the way of his precepts : ver. 98, ' Thou through thy command-
ments hast made me wiser than mine enemies' ; and ver. 104, ' Through thy
precepts I get understanding.' While we use the means, our eye should
be upon God. Thomas had his fingers upon our Saviour's wounds, but his
thoughts upon Christ's divinity : ' My Lord, and my God.' Food maintains
the body, but by virtue of the soul animating it, and enabling it to concoct
that food. The Spirit of God is the soul of the gospel, and of all means, to
make them efficacious ; and with this power of the Spirit the weakest means
can effect more than the greatest means without it, which, indeed, can pro-
duce little or nothing. Peter's sermon, Acts ii., was but short, but improved
by the Spirit to the conversion of three thousand souls. Means can do
nothing of themselves to change the heart. When the disciples had two
ordinances representing the death of Christ, i. e. the passover and the
Lord's supper, pride, the great enemy to regeneration, put up its head
above water ; they quarrelled ' who should be greatest,' Luke xxii. 24.
(3.) There is no reason to confide in our own purposes and resolutions, or
any strength of our own, if God alone be the efficient cause of regeneration ;
for it depends not -upon our resolves without the grace of God. Satan fears
not our vows ; he knows, without grace they are but as light feathers, easily
to be puffed away by him ; but sparks, which, without his breath, the flood of
corruption in our souls would extinguish as soon as they begin to appear.
How can our resolves without grace renew us, when Peter's resolve, with his
inherent grace, could not defend him ? who, after his boasting, when cer-
tainly he sincerely meant what he said, fell so shamefully, that he stood in
need of a new conversion. How soon do we, after a transient awakening,
fall to nodding in our spiritual sleep ? If grace be not present with us to
cure our lethargy, our purposes are as empty sails hoisted by us ; the breath
of the Spirit only fills with a full gale for motion. We can never ' stedfastly
look into heaven, and see the glory of God,' unless we be ' full of the Holy
Ghost,' Acts vii. 55. Stephen's eye would have been twinkling, had not the
divine Spirit fixed it. How soon w^ill a slight blast of a temptation shake a
building, which hath no other foundation but the moveable sand of our own
purposes, when as slight a temptation shook the image of God out of Adam
with all its brightness, who was built with God's own hand, with a power
also to keep himself ! Adam could not be without purposes of obedience
when he heard the precept, yet with a slender temptation came tumbling to
the dust, and fell as low as hell. A vain confidence in our own resolutions
is so far from being a cause of this spiritual birth, that it is rather a hin-
drance, and part of the pride of nature, that must be demolished, and to be
reckoned as one of the eldest things among these old things that are to pass
away. Trust not, therefore, to yourselves ; look up daily for the divine
influence ; lean not to your own understanding, though in part enlightened ;
confide not in your own wills, though in part inclined to the best things ;
pursue nothing in your own strengih.
(4.) It is an injury to God to associate any thing with him in this work,
which he challenge th as his own production. Would it not be a disparage-
ment to deny him the sole efficiency in one of the noblest works of his wis-
dom and holiness ? That he who wrought the comely fabric of the first
creation by his power and wisdom, without a co-partner, or deputing any of
the highest angels to bring the world into form, should not have the honour
of a work which bears the stamp of a higher wisdom and power than the
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 291
whole creation ! That he who contrived the models of the little creatures
in the world, should leave this to the foolish contrivance of any creature !
Why should we imagine that the divine image, upon whom the highest
blessedness of the creature depends, should be of so little value in the judg-
ment of God's infinite wisdom, as to be turned over from the care of so wise
a workman, to the capriciousness of a light and uncertain will, more blind
■ and mutable than Fortune the heathen goddess ? It is more (we have heard)
to frame so excellent a piece as the new creature is, out of the rubbish of
sin, than to frame the whole celestial and elementary world out of a rude
mass of matter ; since there is a greater gulf to be shot between corruption
and grace than between nothing and the beautiful structure of heaven and
earth ; and, therefore, we may less disparage him, in denying him the title
of creator of the world, than that of the creator of a new heart, since he hath
promised by his own mouth to do it with his own hand. The apostle can-
not be charged with ignorance, but knew what he said in that comprehensive
thanksgiving for ' all spiritual blessings in Christ ;' if all, then one of the
highest, the new creation, is not intended to be left out of the roll of spi-
ritual blessings, associating none with God, as the principal, but Christ as
the Mediator, conveying this grace by his Spirit, according to the orders of
the Father : ' Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ,'
Eph. i. 3.
(5.) See from hence how excellent a thing it is to be born again, if God
be the sole efficient of it ! Whatsoever God is the author of in his ordinary
works, is excellent in its kind ; they are all the effects of his will ; this is an
effect of his gracious will. Other generations are by the will of man, wherein
the will of God concurs with them ; this is solely by the will of God, without
any concurrence of the will of man in the first work, called therefore by way
of excellency, 'the faith of the operation of God,' Col. ii. 12, not a gift
conveyed by angels, but his Spirit. A grain of grace of God's planting is
more worth than millions of gold of man's getting ; a more worthy gift than
all the gold of Ophir, which God gives to men by their industry, who shall
never see his face ; but this by his own Spirit in order to glory. It is a royal
gift he reserves in his own hands, to bestow upon those that were his
favourites in his eternal purposes ; it grows not in every man's ground,
neither is it sown in every man's field. The soul is more excellent than the
body, not only in respect of its nature, but in respect of its immediate
author. God is called particularly, 'The Father of spirits,' not of bodies,
though he is so ; but in the production of bodies he acts by the hand of
nature, in the production of the soul by his own hand. In that work he acts
by the intervention of second causes ; in this, without serving himself of any
other efficient cause but his own will. If the soul, as being the only work
of God, is therefore more excellent, then certainly a new-born soul is more
excellent than anything in the world, in regard God is the author of it in a
more peculiar manner, by the operation of his choicest affections.
(6.) If God be the efficient of regeneration, then there is a necessity of
the influence of God in all the progress of grace. It is yet imperfect, the
same hand that planted it must also water and dress it. There is a tough
sinew left in man's will, which makes him halt after he hath the new name
of Israel put upon him ; a weakness of faith, a coldness of love, a faintness
of zeal. What he is the creator of, is nursed by his providence ; what he is
the new creator of, is fostered by a succession of grace. The scripture there-
fore appropriates all to him : he is the God that calls us, the God that
anoints us, the God that carries us, the God that establisheth us, the God
292 charxock's works. [John I. 13.
that keeps us, and the God that perfects us. He is the author of grace in
its first issue, its fruitful sproutings, its delicious ripenings; it depends upon
him in creation, preservation, augmentation, as well as Datural things
depend upon him in all their progressive motions, from one degree to
another, as the author of nature. When nature was most unspotted, grace
was necessary to preserve and fix it in that state. Adam needed the assist-
ance of grace with the embellishments of nature. The same power that
inspires us with life, inspires us with a perpetual continuation of it. If the tide
that turns the stream of the river desert it, and return to its own channel,
the river will return to its natural current. Our hearts will decline, our life
languish., unless fed by that supernatural efficacy which did first produce it.
The plants cannot grow merely from their own internal form, nor trees bring
forth their pleasant fruits without the influence of rain and sun, feeding and
hatching their innate spirits, and drawing them out to make a show of them-
selves in flowers and fruits ; and when they are brought forth,. they stand in
need of the same rain to fill them, the same sun to ripen them.
(7.) If God be the efficient, &c, we see whither we are to have recourse
in all ,the exigencies of the new creature ; to whom, but to the author of
those beginnings of eternal life ! God is all, in all parts of this glorious
work : ' The God of all grace, who hath called us into his eternal glory,
make you perfect, strengthen, stablish., settle yon,' &c, 1 Peter v. 10.
There is need of preserving, strengthening, increasing, quickening, and per-
fecting grace.
These you need, and these must be sought, and will be had from the same
goodness and power by which you were new born.
[1.] Preserving.grace.
First, God onlyean give it. There is a necessity of it ; as God rears it, so
he only can keep it from pining away. Plants will writher if the rain do not
descend ; ,the flame will be extinguished if fuel be not added. There is as
much a necessity of a constant influence to keep up this new nature, as
there is of the sun to preserve the horizon from that darkness which would
invade it upon the turning its face to other parts of the world. The per-
petual duration of renewing grace is not essential to grace, for then Adam
and the angels had stood by virtue of their grace, for nothing ever loseth its
essential property ; but it is by an additional grace, distinct from the first
grace wherein our regeneration doth consist, as the preservation of the
creatures in their natural beings is by an act of God distinct from his
creative act. The first grace God gives now is a bounty to his creatures,
but it is further an obligation upon himself, not as it is grace, or as it is his
own work, for Adam's grace which failed was wrought by his fingers, in-
spired by his breath, but as it is a new covenant grace which alters the
condition of it. God's finger writ the law in the heart, and his breath can
only blow the dust off, that would fill the engraved letters.
Secondly, God will preserve it. Job would argue with God, and ask him,
' Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands ?'
Job x. 3. Is it agreeable to his goodness and wisdom to slight and neglect
the work of his own heart; not a fruit of his common liberality to the
creation, but a choice fruit of his redeeming love ? His common love, as he
is the author of nature, preserves the old creation ; much more his special
love, as he is the author of the new nature, will preserve the new creation.
His general goodness made the world, but his gracious goodness formed the
soul ; the one is more splendid than the other, therefore the effect more
durable. Mercy compasseth the godly about, Ps. xxxii. 10, like bulwarks
that surround a city for its defence, against the assaults of spiritual enemies.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 293
A higher providence attends man than other creatures, because he is of a
more noble constitution ; upon the same account a higher providence must
attend the new creature, as being far more noble than mere man. God
embraceth all creatures in his arms with a common love as creatures ; he
lays the new begotten ones in his bosom by a special love. His power too
is to be considered. He will not want a power to preserve that which he
did not want power to new create. The power being the same that raised
Christ from the dead, which raised any from their natural condition, will
have the same issue, since it never suffered Christ to return to the grave
again, neither will it suffer any new born soul to return to a spiritual death.
Every new creature is the Father's by purpose, and by actual traction ; they
were his before they were Christ's. The Father draws them to Christ ; and
the power of Christ will be as eminent to preserve them, as the power of
the Father was to draw them. "Why were the creatures brought, by that
instinct God put into them, into Noah's ark, but to be preserved from the
destroying deluge ? Why did he take pains to write the law anew in the
heart, if he would suffer it to be dashed out again ? If he would not pre-
serve his own work, why did he not let the soul lie wallowing in its old filthi-
ness, and forbear the expense of those fresh colours he hath new drawn his
image with ? It seems to be a greater power to take off all that load of
sin which lay upon you, than to preserve you from having so great a burden
again upon you. It is not reasonable to think that God should be at so
much cost, only to restore man to Adam's mutable condition, whereby to
incur a greater condemnation.
[2.] Strengthening grace. This we need, as well as preserving grace. It
is God that strengthens us in the inward man ; by that strengthening grace
the new ereature can do all things, without it nothing. Through him we
are more than conquerors over principalities and powers, Rom. viii. 37, 38.
Strength to mount up to heaven as an eagle, to run our race without weari-
ness, to walk without fainting, to combat difficulties without sinking fears, is
only to be had by waiting upon the Lord, who is the fountain whence all
these flow, Isa. xl. 31, and by his grace confers a supernatural fortitude :
Isa. xl. 31, « But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles : they shall run, and not be weary ;
they shall walk, and not faint.' Look not therefore for strength in your new
nature; look for it in God, in that Spirit which first renewed you, since that
glorious power is imparted to strengthen you, which was at first employed
to new-create you. This was the matter of the apostle's prayer for the
Colossians, and this should be ours: Col. i. 9, 11, ' Strengthened with
all might, according to his glorious power.' There is much weakness in
us, a medley of lusts, an army of enemies, but the way is open for us to that
glorious power, to endue us with a new vigour, which first seized upon us
with an insuperable efficacy ; our shattered and weakened sins shall not be
able to resist that glorious power now, which they could not stand the shock
of when they were in their full strength. ' God will be a sun and a shield,'
Ps. lxxxiv. 11, a sun to dispel our darkness, a shield to secure us from darts ;
a sun against the allurements of the world, defeating them by a charming
light ; a shield against the affrightments of the world, overpowering them by
an irresistible force ; the sun that gave us life, the shield that secures our
strength. The glorious power which we need in our progress lies in the
same arm which wrought our deliverance, and from thence must be fetched.
It is only by him that we have strength to tread down the wicked one's
temptations, and those fiery darts are made as ashes under the soles of our
feet, Mai. iv. 3.
291 chaenock's works. [John I. 13.
[3.] We need increasing grace; and that is from God. The increase de-
pends upon him, as well as the first planting. When we want it, he is the
fountain from whence we must draw it ; so did the disciples, Luke xvii. 5,
' Increase our faith,' or add to us faith, B^otffles yi/mTv. Every new spring,
fresh bud, spreading blossom, is an addition by his influence. When we
have it, we must acknowledge his sole hand in it ; so the apostle did when
he saw the growth of the Thessalonians' faith, and the abounding of their
charity : 2 Thes. i. 3, ' We are bound to thank (sv^aoiffnTv 6<pri\o/Aiv) God
always for you, because that your faith grows exceedingly.' He did it by
obligation : no such tie had lain upon him had God left them to increase it
themselves. The new fruits you bear is from his new purging, as the first
power to bear was from his planting, John xv. 2. If you would thrive, it
must not be by your own, but by the increases of God ; ' God gives the in-
crease,' both in the outward administration and inward operation of the
gospel, 1 Cor. iii. 7. Faith, in every assent, is conducted by that power
which first settled it in the heart, and without it cannot commence any higher
degree. As every spark of spiritual life is by his kindling, so every sparkling
of that spark is by his blowing. Look for it at God's hands, beg of him to
write that law deeper, which bis fingers first engraved in your hearts. It is
God's being ' a dew to Israel ' makes him grow up in beauty as ' the lily and
the olive tree,' in strength ' cast out his roots as the cedars of Lebanon,'
Hosea xiv. 5-7. If you would grow up as calves of the stall, you must lie
under the healing wings of the Sun of righteousness : Mai. iv. 2, ' Unto
you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in
his wings,' &c. That Sun which by his beams conveyed into you a spiritual
life, can only by the same heat influence you to a taller growth. Every
drop of the knowledge of his will till you come to be filled, every mite of
wisdom and spiritual understanding, is to be drawn from him only, Col. i. 9,
both the additions of knowledge and the deeper impressions and lively
sproutings of what we know.
[4.] Quickening grace. This also we need. As our life, so the liveliness
and activity of grace depends upon the divine influence ; a divine motion is
necessary to elevate our souls to those actions which are supernatural ; our
grace depends upon God in actu secimdo, as well as actu -prima. As God
first puts a nature into creatures (in the exercise as well as the being) and
then quickens them by his providential concurrence in those acts suitable to
their nature, which acts are therefore natural to those creatures, so by a
gracious concurrence he doth quicken the new nature in the soul to the
exerting of gracious operations, according to that nature he hath endued it
with. As he tunes the strings by his skill to fit them for a divine harmony,
so he enlivens them by his touch to make what music he pleases ; even-
heavenly prayer, every gracious groan, every start of spiritual affection, is
from the Spirit tuning, quickening, assisting against infirmities and deadness.
There must be a continued drawing to make a continued running. ' Draw
us, and we will run after thee,' Cant. i. 4. It was the church, the gracious
church, the spouse and dove of Christ, yet sensible of her own inability to
quicken her pace to new communion with Christ, without fresh communica-
tions first from him. There is a bias in the soul to direct it in a right
motion ; there must be a hand without to put it upon that motion ; Christ
must ' put his hand in at the hole of the door ' before a lazy soul, though
gracious, will stir at his call, Cant. v. 3 ; or as a child, which hath a prin-
ciple of motion, must be assisted and quickened by the nurse before it can
move a step. Grace is more prevalent to keep us from sin than excite us
to holiness, yet neither can be done by it without new quickenings ; our
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 295
motion is in him and by him, as well as our life, spiritually as well as
naturally : Acts xvii. 28, ' In him we live, mpve, and have our being ;' the
old stock must have continual supply. ' Without Christ we can do nothing,'
John xv. 5 ; without him we cannot have grace in the plant, nor grace in the
fruit. As the soul excites the spirits in the eye to an act of vision, — if
they be not quickened by their governor, though things be before our eyes
they see nothing, — so the Spirit of God excites, as it were, the spirits of
grace to their particular acts, faith to apprehend and love to work. The
goodness that made the promise guides the hand of the soul to fasten upon
it : Ps. cxix. 49, ' Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou
hast caused me to hope.' As God makes the promises, so he makes the
meeting between the soul and the promise ; every motion proceeds from
God's touch upon the heart enlarging it, therefore our dependence must be
upon God's grace : Ps. cxix. 32, ' I will run the way of thy commandments
when thou shalt enlarge my heart.' I will run, not by my own strength,
but by the hand of God enlarging and enlivening my heart. Indeed, if God
did not give to act as well as implant the habit, he would give no more to us
in the new covenant than he gave to Adam in the old, who had a power to
do, but not the act of doing ; his power was from God, but the act of obe-
dience depended upon himself, and for want of actual abedience he fell. "We
see whence we must derive our quickenings ; we want them because we ex-
pect them from the new nature in us, not from the author of that nature,
and the concurrence of his grace with it, and depending upon habitual more
than actual grace is the cause of our having many a slip. We are as dead
lumps, notwithstanding all the grace we have, if God did not cause a free
life to spring up in us by successive breathings.
[5.] Perfecting grace is only from God. He is the finisher of what he is
the author of, Heb. xii. 2, and in our spiritual warfare supplies us with new
recruits, till the combat end in victory, and the victory in triumph. He will
come ' as the former and the latter rain,' Hosea vi. 3: as the former rain
to open the womb of the earth, and the latter rain to ripen the fruits of the
earth. As he hath laid the foundation of mount Zion, so he will perform the
whole work in it ; he fulfils the work of faith with the same power wherewith
he begins it, 2 Thes. i. 11. The power which caused the resurrection of
Christ caused his ascension ; he had his forty days upon the earth, after his
resurrection, before he was taken up to glory. There is a continuance of a
believer in the world after his resurrection from a spiritual death, but the
same power which caused his spiritual resurrection will as surely cause his
heavenly ascension. That arm that brought him out of Egypt will conduct
him to the limits of Canaan, the flourishing pastures of the promised land.
Grace is the first gift, glory is the latter ; glory follows upon the heels of
grace: ' He will give grace and glory,' Ps. Ixxxiv. 11. Grace to fit for
glory, and glory to reward his own grace ; all grace till it ends in glory.
God must be sought and depended on for this ; we cannot will our perfec-
tion without grace, as we cannot will our regeneration without grace ; God
gives the will, the progressive as well as the initial will. Then seek only
to God, depend upon him only, for the warmth of his goodness, to bring
those chickens to perfection which he hath gathered under his wing ; his
affections are not tired, it is a pure disinterested love mingled with no defects ;
his wisdom and power is no less able to perfect than his love is to incite
him to it.
Use 2. The second use is of comfort.
Is God the author of regeneration ? He that is the God of all grace is
the God of all comfort too. Where he is the one, he will be the other. As
296 chabnock's works. [John I. 13.
he creates the soul to good works, so he creates it to heavenly consolations.
When God acts as a God of justice toward sinners, he appears as a terrible
God in his punishments ; when he acts towards saints as a God of grace, he
appears as a comforting God ; he fills the one with all terrors, prepares the
other for all comforts ; he calls you by a new creation into his eternal glory,
and sends therefore some sparkles of glory into the soul here. Are you born
of God? You approach in excellency as near to Christ as a creature's
capacity will admit. Christ was his natural begotten son, believers his
spiritually regenerated children. Christ is ' the first born,' but 'among many
brethren,' Rom. viii. 29; that Christ 'that sanctifieth, and we that are
sanctified, are all of one,' Heb. ii. 11 ; of one nature, say some ; of one
Father, say others; therefore ' he is not ashamed to call them brethren;' one
nature doth not so much make us brethren as one father. Christ was not
regenerated, but generated ; he stood not in need of the other, because the
first generation failed not ; neither could he, being God ; he is the exact
image of his Father's person, and so particularly of all his attributes, because
he partakes of his essence. Believers are the living images of God's holiness,
not partaking of all his attributes, but of that.
Particularly,
(1.) God will rejoice in his own work. If he rejoiced in the first planting
of his image at the creation, he will no less rejoice in it at the restoration ;
and with more gladness embrace the son that is returned from death to life,
by returning from his debauched course, than that son that remained with
him all the while. Why doth he renew the face of the earth by the mission
of his Spirit, but that he may rejoice in his works ? ' Thou sendest forth
thy Spirit, they are created : and thou renewest the face of the earth. The
glory of the Lord shall endure for ever : the Lord shall rejoice in his works,'
Ps. civ. 30, 31. If God shall in time rejoice in the earth, wherein he had
little joy after the creation of it, and soon repented of his work, he will re-
joice in the noblest work, in the frame of his image, which, next to Christ,
makes all other works of the lower creation pleasant to him. He ' creates
Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy,' and he will rejoice in the new
creation of his people, in the people he hath new created, Isa lxv. 18, 19.
(2.) He will destroy all enemies to his own work. How will his love
pierce into every part, and employ his power in destroying the enemies of
his work ; whip buyers and sellers out of his spiritual temple, cast out all
their remaining rubbish ; let not his house be always a den of thieves, that
shall rob God of his glory, and his temple of its beauty ! That God that
can raise men five thousand years ago dead as easily as one dead the last
minute, can remove all the bands of corruption, though never so strong. If
he hath raised you from death, he will lift you up from all the remainders of
death ; the grave-clothes which yet remain about you, shall be in time untied,
as well as the soul unloosed from the principal bands of death. Though
there be in you a ' spirit that lusteth to envy,' as well as a spirit that lusts
to love, yet • God gives more grace,' James iv. 5, 6. Lusts will down, corrup-
tions fall in time before his grace, darkness must hide its hated head, when
that word breaks louder from his lips, ' Let there be light.' The promises
of a thorough sanctification belong to you, as well as the promises of a per-
fect remission. If God be the teacher, no matter what the scholar is ; if God
be the workman, no matter what the matter is ; if God be the guardian, no
matter what the enemies are ; nothing is too rugged for his skill, or too hard
for his power.
(3.) He will order all things for the good of his own work. ' They shall
not labour in vain ; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord,' Isa.
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 297
lxv. 23. He did not want grace to restore them, he will not want comforts
to support them. Their very afflictions shall be ordered to preserve the work
of his own heart in them ; and while he prunes and cuts, he will purge away
the luxuriant corruptions, that his vine may be more beautiful and delicious.
And if he doth chasten you sharply, it is that you may be nearer ' partakers
of his holiness,' Heb. xii. 10.
Use 3. The third use is of exhortation.
1. To the renewed.
(1.) Walk humbly. Swell not big, as if your own power had procured it,
let not pride spread its sails in your souls. Consider, you are creatures still,
though new creatures. As God put into you whatsoever you have of natural
existence, so he hath put into you whatsoever you have of spiritual ; you are
dust still by your natural creation, though new formed by the Spirit. There
is nothing of grace, no act of grace, but you receive mediately or immediately
from God. You opened not your own eyes, nor thrust back the lock of
your own hearts, nor can call one spark of that spiritual life you have, your
own creature; it moved not at your beck, obeyed not your orders; it is when
God saith Go, that it goes, and Do this and that, Settle upon this or that soul,
and it doth it. How humble should you be, since grace doth nothing in any
but by God's order, not your own. God works in us, we add nothing to
God. The melted wax receives the stamp from the seal, but the wax adds
nothing to the seal. ' What hast thou that thou hast not received ? ' 'If
thou didst receive it, why dost thou boast as if thou hadst not received it ? '
1 Cor. iv. 7. Grace is God's communication to you, not yours to yourselves.
What is received, is not your own work, but another's gift ; were it desert,
we had reason to boast ; but being a gift, we have no reason to grow big.
Lie therefore before him in your own nothingness. Renewing grace first
lighted upon you when you were humble; and grace in its increase nourishes
when the soul is in the same posture.
(2.) Ascribe all tbat you are, as renewed creatures, to God. Ascribe it
wholly to him ; let self rub off every filing of this gold from its own fingers.
' Not unto us, not unto us, 0 Lord, but unto thy name be the praise,' Ps.
cxv. 1. The repetition removes the glory far from themselves. If praise
be comely for an upright person, it is most comely in the greatest cause that
can happen to him, Ps. xxxiii. 1. Account yourselves therefore nothing,
and God and grace all ; and let no shoutings be heard in your souls while
God is rearing up the divine temple, but those of Grace ! Grace ! Zech. iv. 7,
both in the foundation and superstructure, till he comes to the top stone.
Your breathing after God is but the effect of his breathing after you ; the
moon hath no light of herself, but what she receives from tbe sun ; nor any
creature a spark of grace, but what is derived from the Father of lights.
God's purity is as the sun, your grace as a beam from tbat sun, not primitive
in your nature, but derivative from God. Were it not from grace, Saul had
never been Paul, nor Peter a penitent, nor Mary a convert, nor Zaccheus a
Christian, nor hadst thou ever been brought to the sweetness of a spiritual
life, or advanced to the state and comforts of another world. Did you will
to run till mercy moved your wills and spirited tbe feet of your souls ? Your
will, your race, was nothing; God's grace was all, Piom ix. 16. Was it not
his word of command, Let there be life ? Was it not his invincible power
battered down the strongholds of sin ? Oh seriously think, 0 Christian, that
dry and desert heart of thine could never have been mollified and watered
by rocky nature, nor virtue ever bud and blossom in that barren soil, unless
the soil were mended, as well as the plant fixed, by some powerful hand.
Bless God, therefore, since had it not been for him, you had never been
298 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
humbled, never been renewed, never reached so high as a holy desire, or a
penitential tear, but lain till this day, and for ever, bemired in fallen nature.
That you may know what reason you have to bless God with the highest
praises, consider,
[1.] What your obligation is, how great ! What good would your crea-
tion have done you since your fall without a new creation by the same hand ?
It must have rendered you miserable without this, and could never have ren-
dered you happy but by the intervention of this. Without this you might
have been his sons and daughters by creation, and devils by corruption.
The heathens were God's offspring, as they were rational creatures, Acts
xvii. 28, and the devil's children, as they were corrupt creatures. You
might have had the image of God in a glimmering reason, without his image
in a divine holiness. Was it not a greater obligation to restore that with
kinder circumstances which you had wilfully thrown away, when it was in
no wise due to you, than it was at first to bestow it ? There was something
like debt at first ; supposing God would create a rational creature, integrity
and innocency was naturally due to it, in regard of the holiness and wisdom
of God, unless he would have been the author of the creature's sinfulness ;
but since that voluntary defection, the restoration was in no sort due, there-
fore the obligation greater. If God had created a thousand worlds, and
given you the lordship of them for some millions of years, had this been
such a kindness as to afford you a new nature, whereby you will be eternally
happy in a likeness to God and enjoyment of him? As the work of redemp-
tion, so this of regeneration, darkens the glory of the work of creation ; since
more of grace, wisdom, power, holiness, are the springs of it, the obligation
must be far greater ; the difference is as great as between heaven and earth.
Will you not bless God for making you creatures, for recovery from a fit of
sickness ? Is the obligation less in delivering you from a spiritual death ?
Is not the reason of blessing God greater for the second creation than the
first, since it is the same skill adoms you with his image in the new creation,
which beautified man with that image at the first ?
[2.] Was there not as much unfitness in you as in the worst of men by
nature ? Not one good disposition grew upon nature, but all was the work
of preventing grace. Could, then, the iron gates of your hearts fly open of
themselves V Or could any else but a God break them open ? Was not
your nature carried as violently to sin as any, perhaps not into such brutish
sins as others, yet more refined and devilish ? If you did not launch out
into the grossest sins, you owe your preservation to restraining grace. That
Socrates was better and wiser than another, was from God, in the acknow-
ledgment of a heathen, who saith he was chosen to virtue, Kara roZ ©sou
yjipo-oviav, by the divine suffrage. Were your strings better ? Sure they
were of God's tuning. Man was not more unfit for a natural being before
God created him, than the best man in the world was for a spiritual being,
till God wrought him with his own finger. Was not the worst in the world
naturally as fit for it as yourselves ? Did any better thing dwell in your
flesh than in theirs, to give grace entertainment ? Did not grace at first
make its way, conquering, and to conquer, and not one blow struck by you
to facilitate the victory ? Nay, were you not so far from having a grain of
grace by nature, that there was nothing but opposition and rebellion against
the Author of it ? Did you not want everything to make you lovely in God's
eye ? Nay, did you not hate him while he had a love of benevolence towards
you ? And have you not reason to bless him then, that he would not dis-
dain to look upon you, such an impure and rebellious creature ? Perhaps
your case was the same with hers, Hos. ii. 5, who said, ' I will go after my
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 299
lovers.' She decreed to follow^her idols, and was resolved not to be reclaimed ;
but God resolved otherwise, ver. 6, 7, who would not leave her till he had
made her change her base and unworthy resolution for better : ' She shall
say, I will return, &c.' And was it not a happy resolution in the divine
breast, not to suffer you to run mad and furiously to hell ? "What an irre-
coverable condition had you been in if God had not spake a powerful word,
' Hitherto thou art gone, but no further shalt thou go !' Were you not once
in your blood, and pitied by no eye, when God said, Live ? And can you
not wonder at the mercy of his lips, and raise your notes above an ordinary
strain ? Read over the records of the first work upon thy heart, and see if
anything were written there with thy own finger. The very sense of thy
own wretchedness was God's writing on thy heart ; thou wast weighed in
the balances and found wanting ; lighter than vanity, nothing of thy own to
concur with God, but folly and misery.
[3.J If grace found thee unfit and rebellious, there could then be nothing
of the least desert ; and this should make you cast a wondering eye at the
greatness of God's kindness. Man's voluntary defection, without any vio-
lence offered to him, had rendered him unworthy of any recovery ; you did
no more deserve it than the worst devil, who shall never have one line of it
drawn upon him. Not one previous disposition, not one sigh or groan for
it, could be discerned, much less the draught itself. Your true earnings
were nothing but that death you lay under. The unloosing any band of it,
or knocking off any fetter, was merely free grace. Is there not, then, reason
to bless the Lord, when an undeserved power hath been put forth to new
create you, when a deserved power might have buried you for ever under
your own ruins ? Suppose you had been the most exact moralists in the
world, the supernatural grace of the new birth could not be deserved by you,
because nothing can be merited but by an act as excellent as the reward.
No man can merit by any act a thing of a greater value than the act itself ;
but this grace is of another order, and far superior to any moral natural work.
Indeed, upon covenant, if a man doth such a thing, he shall have such a
reward ; the thing promised may be challenged upon the performing the con-
dition, but cannot be said to be merited, because the act was inferior to the
reward in the true value of it ; but this grace could neither be merited nor
challenged at God's hand upon a condition, since he had made no promise
in this kind to give you a right to such a demand. It is one thing to be
capable of it, another thing to have a just right. A sinner in the state of sin
is capable of being changed, but not capable of having a right to that change.
Well, then, you could never deserve such a mercy ; and will you prize it and
bless God for it ?
[4.] Since you did not deserve it, no, nor the proposals of it, consider what
a condition you had been in had God left you to yourselves, or put your wills
only into an indifference. Had it been by a mere suasion, or a naked propo-
sition of the truth, I suppose you are so sensible of the mutability of your
wills, that you might well believe you should scarce have complied with God.
Your security at best had been but as good as Adam's, who had his pause but
not his velle. What furious passions and devils in your souls were set against
him ! and had you been left to your own choice, you would not have stirred
one foot to follow his chariot. If you did ' purify your souls in obeying the
tiuth,' it was ' through the Spirit,' 1 Peter i. 22 ; and all the faith you have
was from the same fountain, Acts xviii. 27, ' which believed through grace.'
Put it to yourselves : Do you think your hearts were not so stout, that
nothing but divine grace could mollify them V Do you think there would
have been any heat or warmth in you unless God had kindled the flame ?
300 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
Can you imagine your frozen hearts would have melted but by a divine
breath ? It was happy for you that God would put your wills beyond an in-
difference, and deal with you by the same power as he dealt with Christ, not
leaving him or you in a doubtful state between life and death. How happy
was it for you that God would be conqueror, and surmount your resistance,
tame your force, scatter your counsels, level your mountain, and bring your
fierceness under the yoke ; that he would not wait your choice and leisure,
but make the event certain ; that he had mercy on you, because he would
have mercy ; that he would turn the stream of your hearts by the over-
mastering tide of his grace, and overpower the flesh in the chief parts of your
souls, and secure the rational powers of mind and will for himself ! How
glad may you be of the loss of that indifference that secures your happy
estate for ever ! Who that is in favour with a prince would not willingly
have his will fixed to please him, and dread nothing more than such an
indifference, whereby he might hate his prince and lose his favour ?
[5.] Is there not reason you should bless God, when he hath dealt thus
graciously with you, and not with many others in the world ; why any of
you should be raised up to a spiritual life, when you see many others near
you stretched out in a spiritual death ; why one upon the same bench and
not another ; why one should be gathered with his arm, and another left to
the jaws of the devouring lion ; why you should have any choice fruit grow
in any of your hearts, when thorns and briers grow in every hedge ? That
God should have afforded you means of regeneration, and not to most others
in the world, is a ground of blessing and praise ; much more that he should
afford you the grace of regeneration, and not to many others under the same
means. He hath not dealt so with every nation in giving them the means,
Ps. cxlvii. 19 ; he hath not dealt so with every person in giving them the
grace. That wind that blows where it listeth hath left other dry bones to
remain dry still, passed by others more civil and of sweeter conversations ;
drawn his image in one, and left others to tumble down to hell in the like-
ness of Adam, wherein they were born ; overlooked one that was not far
from the kingdom of heaven, and laid hold on another that was many leagues
further from Christ. The Spirit of God only makes this distinction : he will
pour out his grace in Galatia and Macedonia, and not suffer it to be known
in Bithynia : Acts xvi. 6-8, ' And they essayed to go into Bithynia, but the
Spirit suffered them not;' cause it to rain in one city, on one person, and
not on another ; call one out of the grave, and leave others under the bands
of death and in the dregs of human nature. You see your calling, and you
may see how distinguishing it is, ' not many wise after the flesh, nof many
mighty,' 1 Cor. i. 26. Can you see this and not bless the caller, the
renewer? A less favour wrought so much upon David's heart that he would
bless God in spite of mocks and scoffs, 2 Sam. vi. 21 . Oh rich discriminating
grace ! Where any are peculiar monuments of grace, they should have pecu-
liar notes of praise. What reason can others have to bless God, if such should
have no hearts to bless him for so great a mercy ? All are under God's will
of precept, all are under his will of promise, if they perform that precept ; but
all are not under his will of purpose, to give them strength to perform that
precept.
[6.] It is to be considered, too, with what pains and patience God
wrought this work in your hearts. You may best know what ado God had
with your hearts before they were thus formed according to his will. Were
they not as clay to the potter, which needed much tempering before they
were fit for use ? Did God find that pliableness in you that the devil
found ? Had he a cordial welcome at the first proffer ? Do you not remem-
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 301
ber resistance enough to make you for ever ashamed that ever you should
put the blessed God to that toil ? And yet you know not the thousandth part
of that resistance God knew was lodged in your nature. Do you not re-
member how he met you at every turn, hedged up your perverse way with
thorns, before he could be admitted to speak a word to your heart ; how
he answered one objection after another, whereby you would have stifled his
work ? Can you remember this, and not admire the mercy that took such
pains with so unprofitable a heart ? It is called a resurrection, but it is
more. Before the resurrection of the body, one part of man lives and waits
for reunion though the body be crumbled into very dust ; but there is no life
in you naturally : so little in you to take part with God, that even that
which is the glory of man, his mind, and reason, and wisdom, were in arms
against this work, as well as the sensitive and brutish part ; for ' the carnal
mind was enmity against God,' Rom. viii. 7. What was your language to
God at first, but like that of the hellish spirit in the man in Luke iv. 34 :
' What have we to do with thee ? ' Yet he dealt with you as the sun with
the earth, which scatters the mists it sends out to choke its light, and spreads
its warm wings over the face of the world. So doth God; though men
offend him with the steams of their sins, and uncivilly command him to de-
part from them, yet he leaves them not till he hath made them willing that
he should do them good.
[7.] The work itself requires admiration and blessing in regard of the ex-
cellency of it. It is more admirable than all the miracles of nature ; the whole
world can no more compare with it than a dunghill can equal the worth of a
rock of diamonds ; all blessings which make you happy spiritually and eter-
nally are wrapped up in it. What can God give greater than his own
nature ? What are you capable of more than what he hath done and will
do upon that foundation ? If God had only given thee knowledge, thou
mightest have been a devil for all that ; but the new nature makes you
equal with angels. What man or angel could you be born of with so great
advantage as to be born of God ? There is no higher being to be born of.
What can he do more than thus to beget you ? You are new-born accord-
ing to that image after which his only Son was eternally begotten ; conceived
by that Spirit whereby Christ was conceived in the womb of the blessed
Virgin ; raised by the same almighty hand whereby the great pattern of the
new birth was raised from the dead. It is the highest elevation of human na-
ture to be united to the Son of God, and to be made like to that glorious image.
Greater gifts cannot be than these two, Christ to descend to partake of human
nature, and the creature elevated to partake of the divine. If you will not
loudly bless him for this, what can God do that shall deserve your praise, since
a greater he cannot confer, more full of the spirits of his favour towards you ?
[8.J May there not be some circumstances in your particular new birth
that may raise your hearts to blessing and praise ? Perhaps thou wert
' born in a day,' as his promise is of a nation, Isa. lxvi. 7, 8, and without
those racking pains which attend the new birth of many. He did not take
thee by the throat, nor arrest thee with legal terrors, but breathed upon thee
with a gentle wind ; conceived and formed thee in a little space of time, thtit
thou wert within the prospect of heaven before thou thoughtest thyself out
of the suburbs of hell, and brought thee forth a man-child before thou didst
imagine thyself to be delivered. Was it not mercy to renew thee without
worrying thee ; to melt thee by a gentle fire of love, not break thee piece-
meal by the hammer of wrath, that thou should scarce discern the lance
from the balsam, and the wound from the plaster ? Perhaps he arrested
thee in a full course of sin, in some desperate career, when some plot was
302 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
laid for a high piece of wickedness. It had been an act of his power hadst
thou been brought up in some religious family, tutored in the ways of re-
ligion by a choicer education ; but perhaps God took thee from the very
steams of hell, when thou hadst not one thought of him, and he might have
let thee alone as well as he did others of thy companions. It had been ad-
mirable power to turn clear water into wine, but more to turn stinking and
putrefied water into a generous wine. Do not the visible characters of
mercy and power in such a case call for more praise at thy hands ? Can any
other cause have a pretence to put in for a share in thy acknowledgments ?
[9.] You are not without many examples to move you to this acknow-
ledgment. Our Saviour himself could not regard the centurion's faith with-
out astonishment. He wondered at that in his humanity which he wrought
himself by his divinity, Mat. viii. 10. And when Peter professeth his faith
in him by acknowledging him to be the Son of God, Christ presently owns
his Father as the author of it : Mat. xvi. 17, ' Flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.' Angels sang both
at the first and second creation, and shouted for joy when the corner-stone
thereof was laid, Job xxxviii. 6, 7. When they saw its beautiful order, they
then shewed themselves to be the sons of God indeed, in glorifying their
Father for his incomparable works. The second creation being more glori-
ous than the first, is not celebrated by them with fainter shoutings ; if God
hath then hallelujahs for you, it is fit he should have hallelujahs from you.
If angels speak loud, it is not fit you should speak low ; it is their con-
cern, as they are God's friends and servants ; your concern, as you are his
workmanship, of his own carving. The saints in all ages of the church have
led the way in this acknowledgment. The elders, made kings and priests on
earth, in a conquest of Satan and their own hearts, crowned with a blessed
grace, cast down their crowns at the feet of God : Rev. ix. 11, ' For thou
hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created,' both
the present new creation and the old. ' Thou hast loosed my bonds,' Ps.
cxvi. 16. What follows ? « I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving.'
And God's renewing David's youth like the eagle's, his changing him into a
new man, saith Jerome, is one argument of David's praise, Ps. ciii. 5.
Add to this, heathens * have acknowledged it to be the work of God ; one
examining the reason why Homer calls virtuous men dlovg, answers, Because
goodness was not a wrork of art, but egyon A/oj. If divining and mystical
knowledge be Stitp nvi evrnnitcf., by divine inspiration, shall we say of virtue
it is hyov rzyjris ^v»;r$js, the work of man's art ? Where do you find any like
Nebuchadnezzar, gazing upon the divine formation in his own heart, and
proudly crying out, ' Is not this great Babylon which I have built ? ' Doth
such language drop from a David's mouth ? No ; but ' thou hast quick-
ened me.' Or from Paul ? No, ' by grace I am what I am.' Every inch,
every spark, every joint of the new man is from grace.
[10.] If you do not acknowledge it to God, and bless him for it, you
may justly suspect you are not born of him. It is the nature of true grace
to reflect back upon God, as it is of a sunbeam shining upon a wall to reflect
back upon the sun. Blessing God for it, is a character of a renewed man. It
is an evidence of the ruin of the contradiction of nature against God, when
man can strip himself of all, and own God the prime fountain of what he
is and hath. If a man boast of his being the cause of a new birth in him-
self by any work of his own, it is a shrewd sign he is not renewed, because
by such boasting he crosses the main end of the gospel, which is to stain
the pride of man, and debase him to the dust from all grounds of glorying
* Max. Tyr. Dissert, xxii. pp. 211, 216. Plato saith, men are Qua poi°a ayuSu.
John I. 13. J the efficient of regeneration. 303
in himself, How jealous was the apostle in this case, and therefore backs
his assertion again and again, that he might beat man's hands off from
fingering anything of God's glory : Eph. ii. 5, ' By grace you are saved ;'
again, vers. 8, 9, ' and that not of yourselves : it is the gift of God.' Once
again, ' Not of works.' And the reason why he is thus earnest, was per-
petually to discountenance self-confidence, • lest any man man should boast.'
The design of God in all gospel dispensations, is to pull away the stool
whereon the flesh sits to glory : 1 Cor i. 29-31, ' That no flesh should glory
in his presence.' It would seem strange that the new birth, a main gospel
work, should be wrought without promoting a gospel end. To have a new
birth, and such a flourishing pride, opposite to the end of it, is a contra-
diction. If the doctrine of faith doth exclude boasting, as Rom. iii. 27,
boasting is ' excluded by the law of faith,' the grace of faith also will exclude
it ; where the new birth is wrought, pride, the great enemy to it, will surely
be captivated. We are then something in and by God, when we are most
nothing in ourselves.
Well, then, be much in the work of praising God, who shined into thy
heart when it was dark, and sealed instruction to thee ; who took away the
stony heart, and introduced one of flesh in the room ; who manifested a
day of power in the night of your weakness. Can you, dare you, to ascribe
it to yourselves ? Let God then have the praise. It is our fault we are
more in complaints of what we want, than acknowledgments of what we
have. Oh, rob not God of his deity, pretend not yourselves partners with
him in the least of the stock. The more you return the glory of his grace,
the more will he return the comfort of it to you ; the more you give him that
glory he is so jealous of, the more he will give you that grace he is so
liberal of.
(3.) A third duty for those that are renewed. Acknowledge God in all the
changes you see in others. Miracles must be regarded. It is greater for
the apostles to act with new hearts than to speak with new tongues ; greater
than to stop the sun in its course, which would set all the world upon an as-
tonished gaze. Shall any such miraculous work be done in our view, and we
6tand only as stupid spectators, and not render to God that glory which is
due to him for his choicest work ? As the sight and consideration of the
material creation kept up the notion of the being of God as creator, so the
consideration of his works upon the souls of men will quicken thy sentiments
of God as a new creator. One is an argument to prove the power of his
essence, the other an argument of the power of his grace. Noah doth not
bless Shem first for that act of filial duty shewed to his father, but blesses
God as the author of that modesty Shem had shewn in covering his father's
nakedness : Gen. ix. 26, ' Blessed be the God of Shem.' When a great
number were turned to Christ, Barnabas presently cast up his eye to the
grace of God, 'he saw the grace of God,' Acts xi. 21-23. Let every
Lazarus you see raised from the grave raise up your faith to a higher eleva-
tion, and dress it in a jubilee attire. When you see a new temple reared to
God, own it as the Lord's doing, and let it be marvellous in your eyes.
(4.) Be content with every condition your new creator shall cast you into.
Discontent at any of God's dispensations doth ill become one whom God
hath new begotten to a glorious inheritance. What can he do more than
he hath done, and what he will do upon that foundation ? All that he acts
is to further that which he hath so powerfully and mercifully begun. What
son would repine at the losing a rattle, as long as he is born to a never-
fading inheritance ? If grace hath put forth a power to new create you, it
will not use that power otherwise than for your good. It may contradict
304 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
your carnal desires, not your spiritual interest. Well may any man be con-
tent with the jewel that is left, though the casket be lost. All things are too
light if put into the balance with the new birth : the dearest husband or
wife, the sweetest children or friends, the most nourishing inheritance ; study,
therefore, contentment in the worst condition upon this ground ; you know
not how soon you may be put to practise all your skill. Do you not see the
heavens gathering blackness over your heads ? A new birth, that allies us
to God as his children, will be of more force to settle us, than calamities
can be to discompose us ; for never was child so dear to an earthly, as a
new created soul is to its heavenly Father.
(5.) Walk worthy of the author of it. A verbal acknowledgment will
signify little without a real imitation of the virtues of him ' that hath called
you out of darkness into his marvellous light,' 1 Peter ii. 9. A holiness is
to be expressed by you, like the holiness of that God who hath renewed
you. Let no devilish or brutish carriage be yoked with a divine birth,
indeed it cannot ; the bespotting corruption of the world will not agree with
the regeneration of the soul ; the stains of the flesh are inconsistent with
the purity of the new nature. Belial and Christ, God and Satan, are not
joint begetters ; Satan's impure breathings upon you should not be admitted
to mix with the breath of God. A new nature by grace must not imitate
a brutish nature by sin ; a soul born of God must not be fashioned accord-
ing to the world. If you differ from the world in your nature by grace,
differ from the world also in your carriage by holiness. It is uncomely for
one born of God to be taken with the foolish, flaunting pride of the world,
more than the pattern God hath set him ; that is, to imitate beasts, not a
heavenly Father. The world is little, nothing, vanity in the eye of God ; so
should it be in the eye of a divinely begotten soul. Use the world as tra-
vellers an inn, to lodge, not to dwell in, to accommodate you in your journey
to that Father of whom you were born. Let a heaven-bom nature be
attended with heavenly flights, longing for that happy state wherein nothing
but the divine nature shall be seen in you, as nothing but fire is seen in
melted gold.
(6.) Mourn for your imperfections. Give God his due, and grieve for
your defect in paying him his own. The soul in creation comes pure out of
God's hand, but it is poisoned by the flesh, and the impurity in the sensi-
tive part of man. Though your grace be from God, yet your imperfections
are from yourselves. The waters that run through sulphur and alum mines
flow from the sea, but the ill taste and scent are communicated by the
matter it mixes with in its passage. God is the author of your faith, but
not of the weakness of your faith ; the author of your love, but not of the
coldness of your love ; the author of your zeal, but not of the faintness of
your zeal. Chide your hearts, therefore, for your weakness, as Christ did
his disciples for their slowness in faith. ' Eejoice with trembling,' Ps.
ii. 11, rejoice in what you have, and mourn for what you want and come
short in. Keason you have, since there is too much of the power of nature
remaining with our best grace, so that it may be said of it, as Lot of Zoar,
What grace hath enclosed is but a little one.
Exhort. 2. To those that are not born of God. You see at whose hands
you are to seek it. God was the first contriver of the gospel, the first
preacher of the gospel, the sole artist in any gospel operation. No man can
come except the Father draw him ; not some men, but no man ; every man
must therefore seek to this great attracter. It is a vanity of human nature,
that every man loves to be aurohibaxroc, his own teacher ; and no less a
vanity it is, that every man loves to be avroyhvurog, his own begetter. Men
John I. 13.] the efficient of regeneration. 305
glory in the knowledge they get without a teacher, and no less glory in any
change they can hammer out without a spiritual Father. As he that scorns
to be taught by another shall surely have a fool to his tutor, so he that
thinks to gain spiritual life by himself, shall be sure to have death for
his quickener. No man would seek life from death, or light from darkness,
and the best natural man is no better. The glory of the Lord must rise
upon us, before we can rise out of our death in sin : ' Arise, and shine, for
thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee,' Isa. lx. 1.
(1.) Seek it only at the hands of G-od. It is not to be had by outward
rules, but divine influence ; the streams of life must come from him, since
with him only is the fountain of life : Ps. xxxvi. 9, ' I will give a heart of
flesh ;' I alone, without any other co-ordinate cause, either man or angel.
He only hath the key of the heart, as well as that of the womb ; confide
not in yourselves. Adam was a root to convey sin and death, but no root
to convey spiritual life. Corruption comes by propagation from him, grace
only by spiritual regeneration from God. Would any wise man seek for
water in a desert, or for grace from himself, who is naturally a dry wilder-
ness '? What toad, naturally full of poison, ever made himself sweet and
wholesome ? As Christ was by the grace of God made partaker of our nature
in his incarnation, so by the same grace only can we be made partakers of
his nature by regeneration. We are naturally weeds ; if ever we be flowers
in God's garden, the transformation must be God's act alone.
Seek it of God. But,
[1.] In the use of means, not abating anything of thine own industry.
Seek, while God offers it ; hold your mouth under the fountain while it runs.
Moses hewed the tables, but God wrote the law. God promised David and
Gideon victory, but not with their hands in their pockets, but their arms
and armies about them. Moses must fight with the arms of Israel, but pray
to the God of battles and victory. We must with one hand use the direc-
tions God hath given, and lift up the other in spiritual supplication for suc-
cess upon them. Therefore let not the doctrine of God's being the cause of
the new birth encourage your laziness and sloth. This sloth among men
Chemnitius thought to be the occasion of Pelagius his error, who, seeing the
laziness of Christians, thought to correct it by making them think highly of
their own strength ; but that was a dangerous extreme.
[2.] "Yet let your eye be solely upon God in the use of them, since all the
means in the world cannot do it without him. Unless God pull up the flood-
gates, no water of life can stream into the soul ; means can no more of them-
selves cast out death than the disciples could cast out some devils ; but
Christ was able to do what they could not. All the angels in heaven and
men upon earth have not been able, these almost sis thousand years, to make
one fly ; yet all the angels and the whole frame of the world were made by
God in six days. Men speak to the sense, God to the heart ; they to the
understanding, and God into it ; men argue with the will, and God persuades
it. All the clamours of the whole nation of the Jews, yea, of all the men
in tbe world, would not have made Lazarus stir out of the grave, had not
our Saviour spake the word, ' Lazarus, come forth." How often do the clouds
of heaven drop upon men, yet they still remain as a dry chip, their stony
hearts perhaps moistened with some transient flashy affections, but not mol-
lified into flesh. Pray therefore to God, before the use of any means., Lord,
breathe life so powerfully upon me, that I may walk before thee, and never
find myself again in a natural winding-sheet. Let thy voice, Lord, be heard
and felt by me as the voice of thy Son was by Lazarus. To use means with-
VOL. III. u
306 charnock's works. [John I. 13.
out a seeking to God for his blessing, is to be exercised in divine institutions
■with an atheistical spirit. He is an atheist that expects nourishment from
his meat without God's benediction, and he no less that runs to means with-
out lifting up his heart to God, thinking to get grace conveyed by the means
without God's operation.
(2.) Direction. Plead much with God from the glorious attributes he honours
in this work. Lord, here is a subject for thy power to work upon. God
made the heavens when there was nothing but a rude mass ; he brought forth
the sun, moon, and stars, with all their glory, out of the barren womb of
nothing. Is thy heart worse than nothing, more contradictory to God than
nothing? It is so. Assume an argument from hence: Lord, here is a
subject for thy power above what was manifested in creation ; there is not a
more tough heart in the world than mine ; lose not the opportunity of dis-
playing the greatness of thy power, since there is scarce a heart more stout
and unwieldy than mine is. Lord, hestow a vital principle upon me; thou
didst it to the lifeless body of Adam ; thy power will be more magnified in
the breathing upon a lifeless soul of a son and daughter of Adam. In the
same manner plead his wisdom and holiness. Plead also the enmity thy sin
hath against him, the wrong it hath done him, in spoiling the creation, chang-
ing the end of it, hindering thee from thy natural duty, and that it is not
for the interest of his glory to let sin bear such a sway and dominion, and
usurp his room in one who would fain be another man.
(3.) Be deeply sensible of the corruption of thy nature ; the want of this
is the cause there is so little sense in men and women of the absolute neces-
sity of the grace of regeneration, and a change of nature. Therefore labour
to see yourselves in a forlorn condition by spiritual death. Look upon your
great fall as a son of Adam, a slave of Satan, and possessor of a hellish
nature, and at a vast distance from God and happiness.
(4.) Grieve not the Spirit in any of his operations. Quench not the sparks
of the Spirit in any previous preparations and dispositions to this new birth.
Be pliable to his breathings ; hoist up your sails to receive his gales ; when
he knocks, open thy heart as wide as may be, push it to the furthest point,
that there may be no remora; let all the house be free for his triumphant
entrance. Since thy strength is too weak for it, beg of him at such a season
to break it open; set upon pra}rer at such a season, and leave not till you
have prayed your ^spirits up and your resistance out. How ungrafleful and
foolish is it to grieve that Spirit, who offers to form you into a new birth,
and bring the life and joy of heaven into your heart! This is the only
means to recover the loss you had by the fall of Adam, and surmount all the
misery of it. Seek to him; he that can gather the dust of your bodies, if
blown to the further part of the world, and knit it together, can overcome
the filthy and deadly noisomeness of your souls ; he can make a barren wil-
derness to become pools of water, a lump of vanity a garden of pleasure, a
heap of rubbish to sprout up a new-born sun. If you would therefore be
animated with a spirit of life, you must approach the beams of the sun,* and
lie under the rich and enlivening influences of it.
* 'Eyyiirx; reus ax-rlffi rr,; Sjot»t«j. — Basil.
A DISCOURSE OF THE WORD,
THE INSTRUMENT OF REGENERATION.
Of his own will beyat he us, with the word of truth, that we should be a kind
of first-fruits of his creatures. — James I. 18.
I have chosen this text to treat of the instrument of the new birth.
The apostle having advised them (verse 13, ' But let no man say when
he is tempted, I am tempted of God : for God cannot be tempted to evil,
neither tempts he any man') not to charge God as the author of any temp-
tation to evil, shewing it to be contrary to the nature of God, who is infinite
goodness and righteousness ; for as he cannot be tempted with evil, so
neither can he tempt any man ; and declaring the true cause and spring of
all evil to be inherent in ourselves, even that lust which is riveted in our
nature, which he calls our own lust, — verse 14, ' But every man is tempted,
when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed, ' — he takes occasion
from thence to shew the order of sin's working. Sin is first conceived by
that original corruption in our nature, and formed and brought forth into
action ; and when it is finished, and grows into a habit, it ' brings forth
death,' verse 15. To remove this error, which some in those days had
sucked in out of a natural self-love that man hath to excuse himself, and
remove the cause of sin far from him, the apostle shews that God is the
author and fountain of all the good we have : ver. 17, ' Every good gift and
every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights,
with whom is no variableness, nor shadow of change.' God being the in-
finite Father of lights, who hath no eclipses or decreases, no shadows or
mixtures of darkness, but alway shines with a constant and settled bright-
ness, of this goodness hath given a great evidence, in conferring the choicest
mercy upon us, even a new begetting through the gospel, and thereby the
relation of children to him, that we might be consecrated to him as the first
fruits and a peculiar portion. Of his own will, f3ov\ri0elg ; by his mere motion,
induced by no cause but the goodness in his own breast. (1.) To distinguish
it from the generation of the Son, which is natural, this voluntary ; of his
own will, not naturally, as he begat his Son from eternity. (2.) Not neces-
sarily, by a necessity of nature, as the sun, to which he had compared God
before, doth enlighten, and enliven, when matter is prepared to receive his
quickening beams; but by an arbitrariness of grace. (B.) Not by any obli-
308 chahnock's works. [James I. 18.
gation from the creature ; the will of God is opposed to the merit of man.
The new creation answers to election ; the first purpose was free, the
bringing that purpose to execution is free ; whatsoever obligation there is,
results not from the creature, but from himself, his own immutable nature,
which hath no variableness, nor shadow of change. ' Begat us,' a<xixvr,<siv,
or brought us forth ; for the same word airoxvu, ver. 15, is translated,
' brings forth.' ' By the word of truth,' a title given to the gospel both in
the Old and New Testament : in the Old, Ps. xlv. 4, ' And in thy majesty
ride prosperously, because of truth,' or ' upon thy word of truth ;'* in the
New Testament, Eph. i. 13, ' In whom you also trusted, after you heard the
word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.' So 2 Cor. vi. 7, and 2 Tim.
ii. 15. And it is called truth by way of excellency, as paramount to all
other truth. (1.) Either, by an Hebraism, the word of truth ; that is, the
true word. (2.) Or rather, by way of eminency, as containing a higher
truth, more excellent in itself, more advantageous for the creature, than any
other divine truth ; wherein the highest glory of God, the sure and ever-
lasting happiness of the creature, is set forth ; a word which he hath ' magni-
fied above all his name,' Ps. cxxxviii. 2.
And called the word of truth.
1 . In regard of the author, truth itself ; and the publisher, he who was
' the way, the truth, and the life.'
2. In opposition to all false doctrines, which can never be the instruments
of conversion ; for error to convert to truth, is the same thing as for dark-
ness to diffuse light, or water to kindle fire.
3. In opposition to the windy and flashy conceits of men, which can no
more be instrumental in the begetting a Christian, than mere wind can beget
a man.
4. In opposition to the legal shadows ; the gospel declares the truth of
those types. Both the law and prophecy were but as a dim candle ' in a
dark place,' 2 Peter i. 19, but this as a sun shining out at noonday. All
other discourses did stream to this as their great ocean, wherein they were
to be swallowed up. The law was the word of truth, but referred to the
gospel as the great end of it. This contains the whole and ultimate purpose
of God, for saving men by Jesus Christ, and in him enriching them with all
spiritual blessings, and not by the works of the law ; and thus the Spirit,
which enlightens and seals instruction upon our souls, is called ' the Spirit
of truth,' John xiv. 17, as it is called a Spirit of holiness, as it makes us
holy ; a Spirit of grace, as it makes us gracious, or as it declares the grace
of God. Some by the word of truth understand Christ, the essential and
uncreated Xoyog, Word, as it is understood by some in 1 Peter i. 23, 25,
' By the Word of God, which lives and abides for ever ; and this is the Word
which by the gospel is preached to you.' Possibly it may be meant of
Christ, who by the gospel is declared and preached to be the mediator be-
tween God and man, appointed to raise up those that are given to him.
Others by the word there, mean the will of God of giving grace in Christ,
which is manifest in, and expressed by, the gospel. But here it is evidently
meant of the gospel, because of the inference the apostle makes: ver. 19,
' Be swift to hear ;' that is, prize the word, wait upon the means with all
readiness ; ' slow to speak,' to utter your judgment of it, or be wise in your
own conceit, whereof a readiness to speak peremptorily in divine truth is
sometimes an evidence ; ' slow to wrath' and passion, which hinder any
profit by the word. ' That we should be a kind of first fruits of his crea-
tures ;' the chief among his creatures. The first fruits were the best of
* I11DN "Q"l b])> uPon the word of truth.
James I. 18.] the instrument of regeneration. 309
every kind to be offered to God, whereby tbey acknowledged God's gift of
them, and desired his blessing upon them, and were given as God's peculiar
right and portion. It was commanded in the law, Deut. xviii. 4. It was a
custom among many of the heathens. To offer them was a token of thank-
fulness ; not to offer them, was accounted a sign of atheism and profaneness.*
The new creature is God's peculiar portion taken out of mankind ; and it
bespeaks duty too : being consecrated to God by a new begetting, they should
serve God with a new spirit, "new thankfulness, new frames.
We see here,
1. The efficient of regeneration, God ; ' he,' the Father of lights.
2. The impulsive or moving cause, 'his own will.'
3. The instrumental cause, ' with the word of truth.'
4. The final cause, ' that we may be a kind of first fruits.'
The doctrine I am to handle is,
Doct. That the gospel is the instrument whereby God brings the soul forth
in a new birth.
The Scripture doth distinguish the efficient and instrumental cause by the
prepositions ex, or i£, and Bid. "When we are said to be 'born of the Spirit,'
it is, John iii. 5, la mzvparog ; 1 John iii. 9, v. 1, ix &iov ; never Bid
vvevfiarog, or Bid 0sov ; but we are nowhere said to be born of the word, or
begotten of the word, but Bid Xoyov, by or with the word, 1 Peter i. 23 ;
and Bid svayyf/.iov, 1 Cor. iv. 15, I have begotten you 'through the gospel.'
The preposition ex or s^, usually notes the efficient or material cause ; Bid, the
instrumental or means by which a thing is wrought. Sin entered into the
heart of Eve by the word of the devil, grace enters into the heart by the
word of God ; that entered by a word of error, this by a word of truth : ' Ye
are clean through the word I have spoken to you,' John xv. 3, whereby our
Saviour means the word outwardly preached by him, for it is the word
spoken by him. Not that it had this efficacy of itself, but as an instrument
of their sanctification, rendering them ready to every good work. The holi-
ness, therefore, which it begets, is called the holiness of truth, Eph. iv. 24,
opposed to the sTidvfiiai rjjj dndrris, ' lusts of deceit,' ver. 22. Lusts grow
up from error and deceit, and holiness of the new man grows up from truth.
The gospel administration, in regard of the effects of it, is called ' the king-
dom of God,' Mark i. 14; it erects the kingdom of God in the world and in
the hearts of men, and called the regeneration : Mat. xix. 28, ' Ye which
have followed me in the regeneration ; ' the gospel administration being a
creating of 'new heavens and a new earth,' Isa. lxv. 17. This is the trium-
phal chariot, wherein Christ rides majestically to the conquest of hearts : Ps.
xlv. 4, ' And in thy majesty ride prosperously, because of truth,' nDSIQT "7V,
a psalm the Jews themselves understand of the Messiah. The word of his
truth is the support of his kingdom, whereby he awes sinners into submis-
sion. Peace from heaven, and the health of our nature, is ' the fruit of the
lips,' though of God's creation, Isa. lvii. 19. It is like the dew or mist
which watered the ground, and prepared the earth for the formation of
Adam's body, into which God breathed afterwards a living soul, Gen. ii. 6. 7.
I. For explication, take some propositions :
1. It is not the law that is this instrument. The law, taken in general
for the legal administration prescribed to the Jews, was instrumental for
renewing, because there was a typical gospel in that Judaical administration :
Heb. iv. 2, 'For to us was the gospel preached as well as unto them.' They
were evangelised, 'EuayyeX/ff.aevo/, as the word signifies. The Judaical admi-
nistration was compounded of law and gospel : the moral law, as a covenant
* Apulcii Apolog. p. 291.
310 charnock's woeks. [James I. 18.
of works ; the ceremonial law, representing the covenant of grace. The law
of God, or gospel among them, is said to convert the soul, Ps. xix. 7. But
the law, taken as a covenant of works, was not appointed for renewing the
soul, otherwise what need had there been of enacting another law for that
work?* And those that say the law is instrumental in conversion, or in-
flaming our affections to obedience, say that all the benefits by it are to be
ascribed to the covenant of grace in Christ. It is true, the law considered
in itself is preparatory to cast men down, and shew them their distance from
God and contrariety to his command ; but the law without the gospel never
brought any man to Christ. Whatsoever it doth in this case is not of itself,
but by the mingling the gospel with it, which spirits it to such an end.
Though the law did not encourage sin, yet it gave no help against it, but
left the soul under the dominion of it, which is evident by the apostle's
inference : Rom. vi. 14, ' Sin shall not have dominion over you ; for you are
not under the law, but under grace.' Hence the property of the law, which
is meant by « the letter,' 2 Cor. iii. G, is to kill, but ' the Spirit ' gives life ;
that leaves under the severity of justice, after sin had entered ; but the
spiritual administration, wherein the Spirit works, is to quicken and renew
the soul, and make it able to get above the guilt and power of sin. The
apostle, therefore, wholly excludes the law: Gal. iii. 2, 'Received you the
Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith ?' that is, the word
of faith, as the gospel is called, Rom. x. 8. By Spirit is meant, saith Calvin,
the grace of regeneration, as by faith is meant the doctrine of faith. I might
have preached (as if the apostle had said) the works of the law till my lungs
had been worn out, and the renewing Spirit would never have entered into
you by that fire, but it descended upon you in the sweet gospel dew. The
gospel is therefore called the ' ministration of the Spirit,' and the ' ministra-
tion of righteousness,' 2 Cor. iii. 8, 9. It is the chariot or vehiculum wherein
the Spirit rides, the proclamation by which it is declared, the channel through
which it is conveyed. The law discovers the righteousness of God as well
as the gospel ; but that demands a righteousness from the creature, the
gospel confers a righteousness upon the creature ; the law shews us God's
righteousness in his nature, the gospel shews us God's righteousness in his
nature and grace. The law is a hammer to break -us, the gospel God's oil
to cure us ; the law makes sin live and our souls die, — Rom. vii. 9, ' When
the commandment came, sin revived, and I died,' — the gospel makes sin die
and our souls live ; the law awakens the lion, the gospel lets out his blood.
At the best, the terrors of the law do chain up our furious affections, but the
sweetness of gospel mercy changeth them. The law prepares the matter,
the gospel brings the new form. That was appointed for the rule of our
walk, not for the restoration of our life. And they are the promises of
mercy which are the motives to return ; rebels will not submit to their
prince as long as they know they shall have no quarter.f Hue and cry
makes the thief fly away the faster. By the ' great and precious promises,'
we 'are made partakers of the divine nature,' 2 Peter i. 4. The promises
of the law being conditional, belong not to us without fulfilling the condition,
of which we are incapable of ourselves. The law, therefore, since the fall, is
destructive, the gospel restorative, and the promises of it the cords whereby
God draws us.
2. The gospel is this instrument. It is an instrument to unlock the prison
doors, and take them off the hinges ; strike off the fetters, and draw out the
soul to a glorious liberty. It is by the voice of the archangel men shall rise
in their bodies ; it is by the voice of the Son of God in the word that men
* Burges, Vindicise Legis, p. 202. f £*r Preston.
James I. 18.] the instrument of regeneration. 811
rise in their souls. Nothing else ever wrought such miraculous changes. To
make lions become lambs, Isa. vi. 6, Hosea iv. 13 ; beloved idols to be cast
away with indignation ; to make its entrance like fke, and consume old lusts
in a short time : these have been undeniable realities, which have created
affection and astonishment in some enemies as well as friends. It hath a
more excellent instrumentality in it than other providences of God, because
it is a higher manifestation. Every creature conducts us to the knowledge
of God, by giving us notice of his power, wisdom, and goodness, Rom. i. 20.
The declaration of his works in the world is instrumental to make men seek
him, Acts xvii. 27. Every day's providence declares his patience, every
shower of rain his merciful provision for mankind, Acts xiv. 17, every day's
preservation of the world under a load of sin manifests his mercy. The
heavens have a tongue, and the rod hath a voice ; the design of all is to
lead men to repentance, Rom. ii. 4. If these, therefore, be some kind of
instruments upon the hearts of considering men, the gospel being a discovery
superior to all these, in manifesting not only a God of nature, but a God of
grace, must be designed to a choicer and nobler work. The heavens and
providence are instruments to instruct us, this to renew us.
It is an instrument ; but,
(1.) It is not a natural instrument, to work by any natural efficacy, as
food doth nourish, the sun shines, or the air and water cools, or as a sharp
knife cuts if it be applied to fit matter. If it were thus natural, it would
not be of grace. Though the shining of the sun, or the healing by a plaster,
are acts of the goodness and mercy of God, yet the Scripture calls them not
by that higher title of acts of grace. If the operation were natural, the
gospel would never be without its effect wheresoever it were preached ; as
the sun, wheresoever it shines in any land, doth both enlighten and warm.
Our Saviour then would have had more success, since the gospel could not
have greater natural efficacy than from his lips ; yet the number of his con-
verts were probably not much above five hundred, for so many he appeared
to after his resurrection, 1 Cor. xv. 6, when many thousands in that land
heard his voice, and saw his miracles. Christ, who was alway able to
give himself success, would not, perhaps for this among many other reasons,
to advance his spiritual above his corporal presence, and to prevent any
thoughts of any natural virtue in the word, without the power of the Spirit
working by it. Every day teaches us. that though many see the glass of
the gospel, yet few see the glory of God in that gospel. Were it natural,
then, that all that hear it were not renewed, would be more miraculous than
that any are ; as it was more a miracle that the sun should stand still in
Joshua's time, against its natural course of motion, than that it moves every
day in the heavens. If it were a natural instrument, it must then have
life in itself; but how can the voice of a man, or the words and syllables in
a book, be capable of receiving spiritual life, which they must have before
they can naturally convey it to others 7* Were it a natural instrument, it
would have the same effect upon the soul at one time as at another. But
doth not daily experience witness, that the word shines at some particular
times upon the soul with a clearer ray than at other times, that such a soul
hath thought itself in another world (as it were), and that too when it hath
been much clouded by the weakness of the instrument declaring it? Lastly,
were it natural, the wisest men, men of the sharpest understandings, could
not resist it ; no man can hinder the sun's shining upon him, when he is
under the beams of it ; it would warm him whether he would or no ; yet have
not such been the most desperate opposers of it in all ages of the world, as
* Vid. Baxt. Best, Part i. p. 160.
312 charnock's works. [James I. 18.
well as in the times of the apostles? It is not then a natural, but a moral
instrument, which will follow afterwards, when we come to consider how it
works.
(2.) It is the only instrument appointed by God to this end in an ordinary
way. God bath made a combination between hearing and believing, Rom.
x. 14, 17, so that believing comes not without hearing. The waters of the
sanctuary run only through the channels of the gospel ; the mines of grace
are found only in the climates of the word. Why doth not air nourish ?
Because God did not set that, but meat, apart for such an end. Though God
could by his almighty power bless air to this end, yet in an ordinary way he
hath fixed bis blessing on these natural causes of his own ordaining. God
hath appoiated second causes for natural operations ; if we would be warm,
God hath appointed fire and sun to warm us ; he could do it immediately, by
spreading a lively heat in every member, as well as he gave at first a power
to fire to burn ; but he uses natural instruments in natural effects, and like-
wise spiritual instruments in spiritual productions. God may flow in an
extraordinary way upon the soul by a divine breath without any instrument,
as he did immediately upon the prophets, or as he gave light to the world
the three first days of the creation without a sun, but since only by the sun
and stars. But God seems here to have fixed his power : Rom. i. 16, the
gospel is ' the power of God to salvation ; ' not that his power shall alway
attend it, but that he will exert his power, at least ordinarily, only by it ; no
other organ through which the wind of the Spirit shall blow, no other sword
which the Spirit shall manage but this, Eph. vi. 13. Though our Saviour
prayed upon the cross for some of his greatest enemies, who had their hands
embrued in his precious blood, though he was heard, yet his prayer was not
answered but through Peter's ministry, to grace the first spiritual discovery
of the gospel. Nothing else can have that efficacy. Had every man in
Israel made a brazen serpent, and looked upon it when they had been stung,
they might have looked till they had groaned their last, before they had met
with any cure, because only one was of God's appointing. To a cast of an
eye upon that, he had only promised his healing virtue, in that only then
he had lodged his power.
(3.) It is therefore a necessary instrument.
[l.j In regard of the reasonable creature there must be some declaration.*
God doth not ordinarily work but by means, and doth not produce anything
without them which may be done with them. God doth not maintain the
creatures by a daily creation, but by generation ; he maintains that faculty
of generation in them by the means of health and nourishment, and that by
the means of the fruits of the earth, and doth all this according to the ordi-
nance he fixed at the creation, when he appointed every kind of creatures
their proper food, and bestowed his blessing upon them, ' Increase and multi-
ply.' So according to the method God hath set of men's actions, it is neces-
sary that this regeneration should be by some word as an instrument, for
God hath given understanding and will to man. We cannot understand any-
thing, or will anything, but what is proposed to us by some external object ;
as our eye can see nothing but what is without us, our hand take nothing
but what is without us, so it is necessary that God by the word should set
before us those things which our understandings may apprehend, and
our wills embrace. Now we believe things as we conceive them true, or not
believe them as we conceive them false. We love, desire, delight in things,
as we conceive them honest or profitable ; we hate, we refuse, or grieve, as
we conceive them dishonest, or troublesome, or hurtful to us ; whatever we
* Amyraut Serra. sur Phil. ii. 13, pp. 68, C9, &c.
James I. 18.] the instrument of regeneration. 313
are changed by in our understandings, wills, and affections, is represented to
us under some of these considerations. To make an alteration in us accord-
ing to our nature of understanding, will, and affection, it is necessary there
should be some declaration of things under those considerations of true, good,
delightful, &c, in the highest manner, to make a choice change in every faculty
of the soul, and without this a man cannot be changed as a rational creature ;
he will otherwise have a change he knows not why, nor to what end, nor upon
what consideration, which is an unconceivable change in a rational creature.
[2. J It is necessary the revelation of this gospel we have should be made.
There is a necessity of some revelation, for no man can see that which is
not visible, or hear that which hath no sound, or know that which is not
declared. There is also a necessity of the revelation of this gospel, since
faith is a great part of this work. How can any man believe that God is
good in Christ, without knowing that he hath so declared himself ? Since the
Spirit takes of Christ's, and shews it to us, there must be a revelation of
Christ, and the goodness of God in Christ, before we can believe. Though
the manner of this revelation may be different, and the Spirit may renew in
an extraordinary manner, yet this is the instrument whereby all spiritual
begettings are wrought ; the manner may be by visions, dreams, by reading
or hearing, yet still it is the gospel which is revealed ; the matter revealed
is the same, though the formal revelation or manner may be different.
Paul's regeneration was by a vision, for at that vision of the light, and that
voice of Christ, I suppose him to be renewed, because of that full resignation
of his will to Christ, Acts ix. 6, yet the matter of the revelation was the
same, that Christ was the Messiah, for so Paul understands it, in giving him
the title of Lord. Though God may communicate himself without the
written word to some that have it not, yet according to his appointment, not
without a revelation of what is in that word.
[3.J This necessity will further appear, if we consider that it always was
so. Adam and Eve were the first after the fall wherein God did constitute
his church, whose regeneration and conversion were wrought by that promise
of the seed of the woman made to them in paradise ; God surely putting an
enmity in the heart of those to whom this first promise of an enmity was
made, upon which promise a sacrifice followed, which some ground on Gen.
iii. 21, ' God made them coats of skins' of beasts, which the word TlV signi-
fies, and is never taken in Scripture otherwise than for the outward skin of
a beast. And, indeed, it is not likely that 129 years should be between the
promise and the first sacrifice, for some think Abel was killed by Cain in
the 129th year after the creation ; for it is certain 130 years after the creation
Seth was born, Gen. v. 3.* And this is confirmed, Heb. ix. 32, ' Neither
the first testament was dedicated without blood.' The first testament was of
ancienter date than the Jewish service ordained by Moses ; and some cere-
monies, as sacrifices, and distinction of clean and unclean beasts, were in use
before, Gen. viii. 20, so that there seems to be a sacrifice representing the
Messiah, for the dedication of the first testament, which Adam had received
from God and transmitted to Abel, wdiom he taught the way of sacrificing.
What regeneration Adam had was by this word of the gospel. Had not Adam
believed it, he would not have delivered it to Abel ; and Abel had not sacri-
ficed, unless he had been taught so by his father, or immediately by God ;
but most likely by his father, because God doth not use extraordinary means,
when ordinary will serve. And Abel was regenerate, for it is said • by faith
he offered' this sacrifice, Heb. xi. 4 ; and it was faith in Christ, faith in the
promised seed, for all of them in that catalogue, Heb. xi., did eye Christ by
* Cloppcnburgh dc sacrific, p. 13.
314 charnock's works. [James I. IB.
faith, as well as Moses, of whom it is particularly expressed, ver. 26, that
' he esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of
Egypt.' Considering all this, it is evident, that the ancient restoration was
hy the revelation of Christ and the gospel as the only necessary means.
Abraham, it is likely, had some external word in his father Terah's family,
by tradition from the patriarchs, and had the revelation of the promise made
to him by God, Gen. xviii. 19. And it was wrought then in an ordinary
way by instruction ; for, for that Abraham is commended; and no doubt but
Isaac and Jacob did the same, so that all aloDg this change of the heart
was wrought by a declaration of the word of the gospel.
(4.) It seems to be the standing instrument of it to the end of the world.
Some indeed think the conversion of the Jews shall not be by the declara-
tions of the word in a way of preaching and instruction, as the Gentiles
were brought in, but by a visible appearance of Christ, which they ground
upon Zech. xii. 10, « They shall look upon him whom they have pierced,'
they shall see Christ in the clouds as pierced by them ; and understand
Paul's conversion by an extraordinary light shining round about him, and a
voice from heaven, to be a type and pattern of God's manner of the future
conversion of the Jews, which is intimated, 1 Tim. i. 16, that the mercy he
obtained was ' a pattern for them which should hereafter believe on him to
life everlasting.' Whether this be so or no, yet however the conversion is
by a revelation of that which is the matter and substance of the gospel, it
is the revelation of Christ himself; and if, like Paul's conversion, by a voice,
as well as by sight, by instruction as well as apparition ; but it seems to me
to be the perpetual standing means of regeneration. The fruits of our
Saviour's ascension shall endure to the end of the world, and the enduing
men with gifts for the building him a spiritual house is a great end of
his ascension, Ps. lxviii. 18, compared with Eph. iv. 8, 9, ' Thou hast
ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive, thou hast received gifts for
men ; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord might dwell among them.'
He receives gifts upon his ascension, for the subduing and changing the
hearts of the rebellious, that they may be a fit habitation for God, who dwells
in them by his Spirit ; these gifts being the fruit of so glorious an ascension,
and a rich donative to him for the accomplishment of his undertaking in the
world, and being given for the smoothing, polishing, and fitting rude stones
to combine together for a temple for the Lord to dwell in (which is the reason
why he keeps up the world). As long therefore as God hath a temple, and
any stone to polish, these gifts will remain in the ministry of the word, and
be exercised in order to so great a building ; and we may infer also by the
way, that it is not likely that God doth dwell in any, but such who are so
subdued and formed by the ministry of the word, which is the fruit of
Christ's ascension. It seems also to have an ancienter date, and founded
upon the covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son. All
that prayer in the 17th of John seems to me to run upon those articles agreed
on between them. Those that were given to Christ were given to keep his
word : John xvii. 6, ' Thou gavest them me, and they have kept thy word.'
Which word was given to Christ by God in order to be given to them : ver. 8,
' I have given them the word which thou gavest me.' And in his prayer
for their sanctification, ver. 17, he seems to intimate that this was the ordinary
method then subscribed to by both, and the settled means of sanctification ;
he doth not only propose his desire for their sanctification, but the means,
'through thy truth,' and specifies what he means by truth, 'thy word is
truth.' And what he did here pray for, for them that were then with him,
he did for all that should hereafter believe, ver. 20 ; and though this be
James I. 18.] the instrument of regeneration. 315
meant of a further sanctification of those that were already regenerate, yet it
will, I think, evidently follow that if the word by agreement between the
Father and the Son be the instrument of every degree of sanctification, it
must be also of the first ; since there can be no faith, but refers to the object
believed, and the ground why it is believed, whence ' belief of the truth ' is
joined with the ' sanctification of the Spirit,' 2 Thes. ii. 13; besides, ver. 20,
all belief for the future was to be through the word, ' through their word.'
Let me add another inference from this ; what an excellent argument is this
to plead in prayer, before you go to hear or read the word ; Lord, was not
this an article of agreement between thee and thy Son ? Was not this the de-
sire of our Saviour, who knew the best means of sanctifying ?
[5.] It is necessary, by God's appointment, for all the degrees of the new
birth, and all the appendixes to it. When God shews his own glory for a
further change, he represents the species of it in the glass of the gospel :
2 Cor. iii. 18, ' Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed
into the same image, from glory to glory.' It is the ministration of the
Spirit in all the acts of the spirit. If the Spirit quicken, it is by some gospel
precept; if it comforts, it is by some gospel promise; if it startles, it is by
some threatening in the word. Whatsoever working there is in a Christian's
heart, it is by some word or other dropping upon it. If any temptation
which assaults us be baffled, it is by the word, which is the sword of the
Spirit. The life of a Christian is made up of increasing light, refreshing
comforts, choicer inclinations of the heart towards God. By the same law
whereby the soul is converted the heart is rejoiced, and the eyes further en-
lightened : Ps. xix. 7, 8, ' The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the
soul, making wise the simple, rejoicing the heart, enlightening the eyes.' The
Spirit makes the word not only the fire to kindle the soul, but the bellows to
blow ; it is first life, then liveliness to the soul. It is through the word he
begets us, and through the word he quickens us : ' Thy word hath quickened
me,' Ps. cxix. 50, 93. It is by the word God gathers a church in the world ;
by the same word he sanctifies it to greater degrees, Eph. v. 26. It is the
seed whereby we are born, the dew whereby we are refreshed. As it is the
seed of our birth, so it is the milk of our growth, 1 Peter ii. 2. Faith comes
by hearing, and salvation after faith by the ' foolishness of preaching,' 1 Cor.
i. 21. It helps us after we have believed through grace, Acts xviii. 27. Our
fruitfulness depends upon our plantation by this river's side. The influence
of other ordinances depends upon it. Sacraments that nourish and increase,
are not efficacious, but by virtue of the word ;* they have their dependence
on the word, as seals upon the covenant. The word is operative without
sacraments ; sacraments are not operative without the influence of the word,
they are only assistants to it. This quickens and increaseth habitual grace,
as well as it was the instrument first to usher it into the heart : Eph. v. 26,
' That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.'
As God will have the mediation of his Son honoured in the whole progress
and perfection of grace as the meritorious cause, the efficacy of the Spirit as
the efficient cause, so he will have the word in every step to heaven honoured
as the instrumental cause ; that as Jesus Christ is all in all, as the chief, so
the word may be all in all as the means. As God created the world by the
word of his power, and by the word of his providence bid the creatures in-
crease and multiply, so by the word of the gospel he lays the foundation, and
rears the building, of his spiritual house.
4. As it is not a natural instrument, but the only instrument appointed by
God, and therefore, upon these and upon other accounts, a necessary instru-
* L'lakc's Covenant Sealed, p. 213.
316 charnock's woeks. [James I. 18.
ment, so it is an instrument which makes mightily for God's glory. The
meaner the appearance of the instrument, the more evident the power and
skill of the workman. It would be miraculous for a man to raise up another
from death, by a composition of medicines syringed down the throat, but a
greater miracle to raise him by speaking a word. In the new birth there is
nothing sensible to man but the word, the other causes are secret ; like the
wind, you know not whence it comes, nor whither it goes. The instrument
being weak in itself, none can claim any share with God in the glory of the
work. But were there a natural strength in the means, much of the honour
would be pared from God, and assumed by the creature. It is like the
trumpet in the right hand of Gideon's soldiers, and a pitcher with a lamp in
the left. Upon the blowing of the trumpet and the breaking of the pitcher,
the enemies fled ; and God would have the means but small, but three hun-
dred of thirty-two thousand, that Israel might not vaunt, and say, Mine own
arm hath saved me, Judges vii. 2. It had not been so admirable for Samson
to have killed so many with a sword or spear, or if the walls of Jericho had
fallen flat by the force of some battering engine ; but it was wonderful to see
them tumble at the blast of ram's horns. Is it not the same to see strong-
holds, high thoughts, Goliath-like corruptions, and spiritual death itself, fly
before the voice of the word ? To see a man like the Babel-builders, swell-
ing and rearing up his own confidences against God, to have all the former
language of his soul confounded by a word ; to think of other objects, speak
in another strain, descend from self to dust, deny pleasure, embrace a cruci-
fied Christ ; that carnal reason should be silenced, legions of devils driven
out, a massy Dagon fall before an ark of wood, that hath nothing in it but
the rod of Aaron and the pot of manna : in such weak means is the power
of God exalted, and no other cry can reasonably be heard but • This is the
Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.' So it was more glorious for
our Saviour to turn many of the Jews to him after his death than in his life,
to bring them to believe by a word, upon a person they had crucified as a
malefactor, than if he had brought them to believe while he was attended
with a train of miracles. The power of his miracles might seem in their eyes
to be extinct with his death, since he that delivered others did not deliver
himself from the hands of his murderers. He now honours both his own
words and their faith, in bringing them to believe by the preaching of men,
who did not believe by the word from his lips, attended with the seals of so
many glorious miracles.
5. Consider, as it is an instrument, so but an instrument. God begets by
the word ; the chief operation depends upon the Spirit of God. No sword
can cut without a hand to manage it, no engine batter without a force to
drive it. The word is objective in itself, operative by the power of the
Spirit ; instrumental in itself, efficacious by the Holy Ghost. The word of
Christ is first spirit and then life : ' The words that I speak unto you, they
are spirit, and they are life,' John vi. 63. The word is the chariot of the
Spirit, the Spirit the guider of the word ; there is a gospel comes in word,
and there is a gospel comes in power, 1 Thes. i. 5. There is a publishing
of the gospel, and there is the ' fulness of the blessing of the gospel,' Kom.
xv. 29. There was the truth of God spoken by Peter and Paul, and God in
that truth working in the heart : Gal. ii. 8, ' He that wrought effectually in
Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me to-
wards the Gentiles.' The gospel in itself is like Christ's voice ; the gospel
with the Spirit is like Christ's power raising Lazarus ; other men might have
spoke the same words, but the power of rising must come from above. It is
then successful when an inward unction drops with the outward dew, when
James I. 18.] the instrument of regeneration. 317
the veil is taken from the heart, and the curtain from the word, and both
meet together, both word and heart ; when Christ kisseth with the kisses of
his mouth, and the man embraceth it with the affections of his heart. The
light in the air is the instrument by which we read, but the principle of that
light is in the sun in the heavens. The word is a rod, a breath, but effica-
cious in smiting and slaying the old man, as it is the rod of Christ's mouth,
the breath of his lips, Isa. xi. 3 ; a rod like that of Moses to charm us, but
as it is the rod of his strength, Ps. ex. 2 ; a weapon, but only < mighty
through God,' 2 Cor. x. 4 ; a seed, but brings not forth a plant but by the
influence of the sun. The word hath this efficacy from the bleeding wounds
and dying groans of Christ. It is by making his soul an offering for sin that
he sees the travail of his soul in his new born creatures. By his blood are all
the promises of grace confirmed ; by his blood they are operative. The word
whereby we are begotten was appointed by God, confirmed by Christ, and
the Spirit which begets us was purchased by the same blood. To conclude :
the word declares Christ, and the Spirit excites the heart to accept him ; the
word shews his excellency, and the Spirit stirs up strong cries after him ;
the word declares the promises, and the Spirit helps us to plead them ; the
word administers reasons against our reasonings, and the Spirit edgeth
them ; the word shews the way, and the Spirit enables to walk in it ; the
word is the seed of the Spirit, and the Spirit the quickener of the word ; the
word is the graft, and the Spirit the engrafter ; the word is the pool of
water, and the Spirit stirs it to make it healing.
II. Quest. How doth the word work ?
1. Objectively, as it is a declaration of God's will, as it doth propose to
the understanding what is to be known, in order to salvation hereafter and
practice here, as it doth declare the purpose of God to save only by Jesus
Christ the Mediator, and by him to deliver us from sin, Satan, and whatsoever
is contrary to everlasting happiness ; and thus is significative of something to
our minds and understandings. The Spirit gave us an eye to see, and the
word is the light which discovers the object to the eye. The Spirit gives us
an organ, but something must be proposed for that organ to exercise itself
about, otherwise there is no use of the understanding in any rational opera-
tion ; which certainly there is, for though the object is supernatural, and the
inward work upon the mind supernatural, yet the proposal of the object to
the mind is made in a rational manner. The word doth objectively propose
life and death in a way suitable to the nature of man, that he may rationally
choose life : ' I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing,
therefore choose life,' Deut. xxx. 19. Both the blessings of the gospel and
the curses of the law are presented in the word, that the one may be chosen,
the other avoided. The word is proposed under various notions : as true,
and so it is the object of the speculative understanding ; as good, so it is the
object of the practical understanding and will ; as profitable, so it is the
object of the appetite and affections. When it is received into the speculative
understanding, it is a preparation to the new birth ; when it is received into
the practical understanding and will, it is the new birth. It discovers the
wonders in God's own heart, his Son, and his promise ; the Spirit demon-
strates it, and gives power to embrace it. It first presents the promise, and
then answers the pleas the stubborn heart makes against it, yet by the same
gospel ; it fetches demonstrative arguments from that quiver to satisfy a
cavilling understanding, and motives from thence to overcome a resisting
will ; it silenceth the fears, points to the way, excites the soul to an accept-
ance of Christ, all by this gospel, and so draws us, as a man draws a child,
by presenting some alluring object to him. The Spirit immediately himself
318 oharnock's works. [James I. 18.
touches the soul, but by the word, as an instrument proposing the object,
and drawing out the soul into an actual believing. The two chief parts of
the word are,
(1.) The discovery of our misery by nature. The heart is ripped open,
our putrefied condition in our blood evidenced, our deplorable state unfolded,
and thereby the conscience awakened to sensible reflections. It dissects the
heart, discovers the secret reserves, unravels the thoughts, pursues sin to its
fastnesses, and pulls and brings it out, as Joshua the kings to execution :
1 Cor. xiv. 25, ' And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest, and so
falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you
of a truth.' It opens sin to the very bowels, discovers the inward filth,
takes off its beautiful disguise, its silken covering, and shews the running
ulcer under it. It discovers the forlorn estate by nature, and the insuffi-
ciency of flesh and blood to inherit the kingdom of God.. Let the
word be whispered by the Spirit in the ears of a ruffling sinner, and the
curtains which obscured his sin from his eye drawn open, that he may
see what a nest of devils he hath, what astonishment will it raise in him !
How will he stand amazed at his own folly ! How will he loathe that self
which before he so vehemently loved !
(2.) A second discovery is of the necessity and existence of another bot-
tom. It discovers our misery by nature, and our remedy by Christ, the
plague brought upon the world by the first Adam, the cure brought to the
world by the second. It proclaims a peace concluded between God and the
humbled sinner, by his Son, the great ambassador, confirmed by his blood,
assured by his resurrection. It shews him the fountain of death in his sin,
the fountain of life in Christ, the free streams and gracious communications
of it. The promise discovers the gracious nature of God, his kindness to
man, the openness of his arms to receive him, and thus bring the soul off
from itself to the foot of God and the bottom of the cross. When the word
like fire and the heart like tinder come close together, the heart catcheth the
spark and bums. From the word reconciliation and peace step out and
meet the soul, it finds the kisses of Christ's mouth inspiring it with life, the
box of the gospel promises broke open, the window of the gospel ark opened,
and the dove flying out of it into the desert heart. The word proposeth
things as they are in reality, and the soul knows things as it ought to know,
1 Cor. viii. 2. It understands the unavoidable necessity and the infallible
excellency of the things proposed ; it sees the rocks and shelves wherein the
danger lies, and a compass whereby to steer, a road wherein to lie safe at
anchor ; whereupon he relents for his sin, is astonished at divine kindness,
rejoiceth at the promise as before he trembled at the threatening, and hath
far other thoughts of God than he had before, in which act divine life is
breathed into the soul.
2. The word seems to have an active force 'upon the will, though the
manner of it be very hard to conceive. It is operative in the hand of
God for sanctification. The petition of our Saviour, John xvii. 17, ' Sanc-
tify them through thy truth, thy word is truth,' seems to intimate more
than a bare objective relation to this work ; it both shews us our spots
and cleanseth them. It is a seed. Seed, though small, is active ; no
part of the plant retains a greater efficacy ; all the glory and strength
of the plant, in its buds, blossoms, and fruit, are hidden in it. The
word is this seed, which being settled in the heart bjr the power of the
Spirit, brings forth this new creature. It is a glass that not only repre-
sents the image of God, but by the Spirit changeth us into it, 2 Cor.
iii. 18. A sword that pierceth the heart, Heb. iv. 12, yea, ' sharper
James I. 18.J the instrument of regeneration. 319
than a two-edged sword, dividing asunder the soul and spirit.' It is a fire
to burn. The Spirit doth so edge the word that it cuts to the quick,
discerns the very thoughts, insinuates into the depths of the heart, and
rakes up the small sands from the bottom, as a fierce wind doth from
the bowels of the sea. It is God's ordnance to batter down strongholds.
Though it be not a natural instrument to work necessarily, yet it is
likened to natural instruments, which are active under the efficiency of
the agent which manages them ; and this also, in the hands of the Spirit,
works mighty effects. The ■ sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the
truth ' are joined together, one subordinate to another, 2 Thes. ii. 13.
The Spirit efficiently infusing holy habits ; the word objectively and
actively — objectively, as outwardly proposed ; actively, as inwardly in-
grafted ; — it at least excites the new infused gracious principle, and produceth
our actual conversion and believing. As the pronouncing excommunication
in the primitive times filled the person with terror ; and no question but
upon the same account the authoritative pronouncing the pardon of sin by
the apostles, though only declarative, might have a mighty operation upon
the soul in filling it with joy ; yet both, as managed by the Spirit, concurring
with his own ordinance. So that the word is mighty in operation as well as
clear in representation ; for an activity seems to be ascribed to it by the Scrip-
ture metaphors. The chief activity of it is seen in that likeness which it pro-
duceth in the soul to itself. Seeds have an efficacious virtue to produce
plants of the same kind with that whose seeds they are ; so the word pro-
duceth qualities in the heart like itself. The law in the heart is the law in
the word transcribed in the soul ; a graft which changeth a crabbed stock
into a sweet tree, James i. 21 ; like a seal it leaves a likeness and impression
of itself; it works a likeness to God as he is revealed in the gospel, for we
are changed into the same image. What image ? The same image which
we behold in that glass, 2 Cor. iii. 18 ; not his essential image, but the
image of his glory represented in the gospel for our imitation. The word is
the glory of God in a glass, and imprints the image of the glory of God in
the heart. It is a softening word, and produceth a mollified heart ; an en-
lightening word, and causes an enlightened soul ; a divine word, and engen-
ders a divine nature; it is a spiritual word, and produceth a spiritual frame;
as it is God's will, it subdues our will ; it is a sanctifying truth, and so
makes a sink of sin to become the habitation of Christ. To conclude : this is
certain : the promise in the word breeds principles in the heart suitable to
itself; it shews God a father, and raises up principles of love and reverence;
it shews Christ a mediator, and raises up principles of faith and desire.
Christ in the word conceives Christ in the heart ; Christ in the word, the
beginning of grace, conceives Christ in the soul, the hope of glory.
III. The Use. 1. Information.
1. How admirable, then, is the power of the gospel ! It is a quickening
word, not a dead ; a powerful word, not a weak ; a sharp-edged word, not
dull ; a piercing word, not cutting only skin deep, Heb. iv. 12. "What wel-
come work doth it make, when a door of utterance and a door of entrance
are both opened together ! It hath a mighty power to out- wrestle the prin-
cipalities of hell, and demolish the strongholds of sin in the heart. It is a
word of which it may be said, as the psalmist of the sun, Ps. xix. 6, * His
circuit is to the ends of the earth, and there is nothing hid from the heat
thereof.' No part of the soul is hidden from a new birth by the warm beams
of it, when directed by God to the soul. What a powerful breath is that
which can make a dead man stand upon his feet and walk ! If you should
find your faces, by looking in a glass, transformed into an angelical beauty,
320 charnook's works. [James I. 18.
would you not imagine some strange and secret virtue in that glass ? How
powerful is this gospel word, which chaugeth a beast into a man, a devil
into an angel, a clod of earth into a star of heaven !
(1.) It is above the power of all moral philosophy. The wisdom of the
heathens never equalled the gospel in such miracles ; the political govern-
ment of the best states never made such alterations in the hearts of men.
How excellent is that gospel which hath done that for the renewing of mil-
lions of souls, which all the wit and wisdom of the choicest philosophers
could never effect upon one heart ! All other lectures can do no more than
allay the passions, not change them ; bring them into an order fit for human
society, not beget them for a divine fellowship ; not draw them forth out of
a principle of love to God, and fix them upon so high an end as the glory of
God that is invisible. This is the glorious begetting by the gospel, which
enables not only to moral actions, but inspires with divine principles and
ends, and makes men highly delight in the ways they formerly abhorred.
What are a few sprinklings of changes moral philosophy hath wrought in the
lives of men, to the innumerable ones the gospel hath wrought, which were •
such undeniable realities, that they were never openly contradicted by any
of the most violent persecutors of the Christian religion, and were alway the
most urged argument for the truth of the gospel in the ancient apologies for
it ? How long may we read and hear mere moral discourses, and arrive no
hi°her than some reformation of life, with unchanged hearts : have sin beaten
from the outworks, yet retain the great fort, the heart !
(2.) Above the power of the law. The natural law sees not Christ, the
Mosaical law dimly shews him afar off ; the gospel brings him near, to be
embraced by us, and us to be divinely changed by him. The natural law
makes the model and frame of a man, the Mosaical adds some colours and
preparations, and the gospel conveys spirit into them. The natural law
begets us for the world, the Mosaical kills us for God, and the gospel raises
up to life. The natural law makes us serve God by reason, the Mosaicaljby
fear, and the gospel by love. It is by this, and not by the law, those three
graces which are the main evidences of life are settled in the soul. It be-
gets faith, whereby we are taken off from the stock of Adam, and inserted in
Christ ; hope, whereby we flourish ; and love, whereby we fructify. By
faith, we have life ; by hope, strength ; by love, liveliness and activity. All
these are the fruits of the gospel administration.
(3.) Its power appears in the subjects it hath been instrumental to change.
Souls bemired in the filthiest lusts, have been made miraculously clean ; it
hath changed the hands of rapine into instruments of charity, hearts full of
filth into vessels of purity ; it hath brought down proud reason to the obedi-
ence of faith, and made active lusts to die at the foot of the cross ; it hath
struck off Satan's chains, and snatched away his captives into the liberty of
God's service ; it hath changed the most stubborn hearts. The conversion
of a great company of those Jewish priests that were most violent against it
and the author of it, is ascribed to the power of the word : Acts vi. 7, ' And
the word of God increased, and a great company of the priests were obedient
to the faith.' How many were raised to life by Peter's sermon ! More
souls turned than words spoken upon record. It subdues the will, which
cannot be conquered but by its own consent. Light can dart in upon the
understanding whether a man will or no, and flash in his face though he
keep it in unrighteousness. Conscience will awaken and rouse them, though
men use all the arts they can to still it. The will cannot be forced to any
submission against its own consent ; the power of the gospel is seen in the
conquest of the will, and putting new inclinations into that.
James I. 18.] the instrument of regeneration. 321
(4.) The power of it is seen in the suddenness of its operation. In a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, like the change at the last resurrection :
1 Cor. xv. 51, 52, ' We shall all be changed, in a moment, at the last
trampet.' How have troops of unmastered lusts fled at the voice of the
gospel trumpet, like a flock of frighted birds, and left their long-possessed
mansion ! How have the affections, which have sheltered so many enemies
against God, been on the sudden weary of their residence, and abhorred what
they loved, and loved what the moment before they abhorred ! How have
welcome temptations been upon this sudden change rejected, a despised
Saviour dearly embraced, a furious soul tamed, a darling self crucified, and
a soul open to every temptation strongly fortified against it ! How frequent
are the examples, in the first times of Christianity, of men that have been
almost as bad as devils one dajr, one hour, and joyful martyrs the next; and
as soon as ever they have been begotten by it, asserted the power of it in
another new birth by flames !
(5.) And this hath been done many times by one part, one particle of the
word. One word of the gospel, a single sentence, hath erected a heavenly
trophy in a soul, which all the volumes of the choicest mere reason could
never erect ; one plain scripture hath turned a face to heaven that never
looked that way before, and made a man fix his eye there against his carnal
interest. One plain scripture hath killed a man's sins, and quickened his
heart with eternal life ; one word of Christ, remembered by Peter, made him
weep bitterly, and two or three scriptures, pressed by the same Peter upon
his hearers, pricked their hearts to the quick. How hath hell flashed in
the face of a sinner, out of a small cloud of a threatening, and heaven shot
into the soul from one little diamond spark of a promise ! A little seed of
the word, like a grain of mustard seed, changed the soul from a dwarfish to
a tall stature ! This the experience of every age can testify.
(6.) And this power appears in the simplicity of it. Savonarola* observes,
that when he neglected the preaching of the Scripture, and applied himself
to discourses of philosophy, he gained little upon the hearts of people ; but
when he came to illustrate and explain the Scripture, the minds of people
were wonderfully inflamed and excited to a serious frame ; and that when
he discoursed in a philosophical manner, there was a non-attention, not
only of the more ignorant, but the more learned sort too ; but when he
preached Scripture truths, he found the minds of men mightily delighted,
stung with divine truth, brought to compunction, and a reformation of their
lives, which shews, saith he, the power of the word, acting more vigorously
than all human reason in the world. And indeed Scripture, and Scripture
reason, is the wisdom of God ; all other reason is the wisdom of man. God
will depress man's wisdom and advance his own. It works as it is ' the
word of God which lives and abides for ever,' 1 Peter i. 23. To wrap a fine
piece of silk about a sword, or gild a diamond, is to hinder the edge of the
one, and the lustre of the other.
2. Information. The gospel is then certainly of divine authority, since
in this ' God hath set a tabernacle for the Sun ' of righteousness to move in,
as the heavens are the tabernacle for the material sun, Ps. xix. 4. That
word that raises the dead, must needs be the word of no less than God.
Our Saviour's discovery of men's thoughts argued his deity. The word's
discovery of the inward workings of the heart, and the alteration it makes
there, evidenceth a divine stamp upon it. God would never have made a
lie so successful in the world, or blessed it in making those alterations in
* Triumph. Crucis, lib. ii cap. viii. p. 100.
VOL. III. X
322 charnock's works. [James I. 18.
men, so comely in the eye of moral nature, so advantageous to human
society, as the principles it instils into the minds of men are. A lie would
never have been blessed to be an instrument of so much virtue and truth ;
it would not consist with the righteousness of God's government, or his
goodness and truth as governor, to bring the hearts of men into so beauti-
ful an order by a deceitful gospel. What word ever had such trophies !
What engine ever battered so many strongholds ! If the lame walk by the
strength of it, if the dead are raised by the power of it, if lepers are cleansed
by the virtue of it, if impure souls are sanctified, dead souls enlivened, are
we to question its divine authority ? Should a word work such wonderful
effects for so many ages, that had no stamp of divine authority upon it ?
Would all those witnesses be given by God to a mere imposture ? Let the
victories it hath gained evidence the arm that wields it. What sword was
used at the first conquest of the world through grace, but this of the Spirit ?
How soon was the devil, with all his heap of idols, fain to fly before it ! How
soon was the devil, with all his pack of lusts, forced to leave his habitation
in the hearts of men ! Is not that of divine authority that so routs the
enemies of God, puts sin to flight, expels spiritual death, breaking the bands
of that worst king of terrors ; that had skill to find out sin in its lurking
holes, and power to dispossess that, and introduce spiritual life into the soul ?
Can tbat be a thing less than divine, that restores man to his due place as a
creature respecting his Creator, referring all things to his glory ; that im-
plants the love, fear, hope of God in the mind ; that makes man, of a miser-
able corrupt creature, to become divine ; that roots out the vices of hell, and
stores the soul with the virtues of heaven ? Can such a gospel be termed
less than a divine word of truth ? If there be any word that can so change
the nature, and transform wolves into lambs, let it have the honour and due
praise when it is found out ; but whatsoever the atheism of the world is,
that never felt the powerful efficacy of it, you surely that have felt it a mighty
weapon to conquer the devils that once possessed you, and an instrument to
new beget you when you lay in your blood, should entertain no whisper
against the divine authority of it, but count it the power and wisdom of God,
as, indeed, it is in itself, and in its effects upon souls, Rom. i. 16. It is
said there to be ' the power of God to salvation .' Upon that account the
apostle was not ashamed of it ; neither should we, but conclude as the same
apostle saith, ' If I be not an apostle, yet to you I am an apostle.' So if the
gospel be not in itself the gospel of God, surely it is so to you who have been
renewed.
3. Information. It shews us the reason why the gospel is so much opposed
by Satan in the world. It begets those for heaven whom he had begotten
for hell. It pulls down his image and sets up God's ; it pulls the crown off
his head, the sceptre from his hand, snatches subjects from his empire,
straitens his territories, and demolisheth his forts, breaks his engines, outwits
his subtilty, makes his captives his conquerers, and himself, the conqueror,
a captive ; it pulls men ' out of the kingdom of darkness, and translates
them into a kingdom of light,' Col. i. 13. And all this, as it is a word of
truth, opposed to his word of deceit, whereby he hath cheated mankind and
deceived the nations ; that we may well say of him, as the apostle of death,
' 0 death, where is thy sting ?' 1 Cor. xv. 55. 0 hell, where is thy sting ?
0 Satan, where is thy victory ? This slays Satan and revives the soul.
4. We see then how injurious they are to God, who would obstruct the
progress of the gospel in the world ; that, as the papists, would hinder the
reading and the preaching of the word. Whose seed are they, but the seed
of that dragon, that would as well hinder the new birth as devour a divine-
James I. 18.] the instrument of regeneration. 323
begotten babe ' as soon as ever it were born,' Rev. xii. 4. Such would
hinder the greatest and most excellent work of God upon the souls of men,
would have no spiritual generations for God in the world. Such envy Christ
a seed, and God a family ; they would despoil him of a family on earth,
though they cannot of a family in heaven. In banishing the word, they
would banish the grace of God out of the world, and leave no place in a
world drowned with ignorance, where this dove should set her foot. Those
that would take away the seed, would not have a spiritual harvest, but re-
duce souls to a deplorable famine, lock them up in the grave, and keep them
under the bands of a spiritual death.
5. It informs us, that the gospel shall then endure in the world, as long
as God hath any to beget. Men may puff at it, but they cannot extinguish
it ; it is a word of truth, and truth is mighty, and will prevail. It was a
mighty wind wherein the Spirit came upon the apostles, to shew not only the
quick and speedy progress of the gospel, as upon the wings of the wind, but
the mighty force of it, that men can no more silence the sound of the gospel
than they can the blustering of the wind. It shall prevail in all places, where
God hath a seed to bring in, a people to beget. Those given to Christ shall
come from far: ' from the east,' Isa. xlix. 12, ' and from the west, and from
the land of Sinim' (now, I think, called Damiata, in Egypt). The word,
being the instrument, shall sound everywhere, where he hath sons and
daughters to beget for Christ. As long as Christ doth retain his royalty,
' his mouth shall be a sharp sword,' Isa. xlix. 2. That is the first thing
concluded on between God and Christ, before they come to any further
treaty, which is expressed in that chapter. As Christ shall be his salvation
to the ends of the earth, so shall the word be the instrument of it to the end
of the world : the ' polished shaft ' is ' hid in his quiver.' As he is a light
to the Gentiles, so the golden candlestick of this gospel wherein this light is
set, shall endure in spite of men and devils. Since his promise of a seed to
Christ stands sure, the word, whereby he begets a generation for him, is as
sure as the promise, and shall not return void : Isa. lv. 11, ' but it shall
accomplish that which he pleases, and it shall prosper in the things whereto
he sent it.' Xever fear then the removal of the gospel out of the world,
though it be removed out of a particular place, since it is a word of truth,
and an instrument ordained to so glorious an end.
6. It is a sign, then, God hath some to beget, when he brings his gospel
to any place. He hath a pleasure to accomplish, and it shall not return
unto him void. Prosperity is entailed upon it for the doing the work whereto
he sent it. Since then it is appointed an instrument, in the hand of the
Spirit, for a new begetting, it will be efficacious upon some souls where it
comes ; for the wise God would not send it, but to attain its main end upon
some hearts. God never sends his word to any place, but it is received and
relished by some as the savour of life. It looseth the bands of spiritual
death in some, and binds them harder upon obstinate sinners ; to them that
perish it is the savour of death. In every place the gospel was savoury to
some : 2 Cor. ii. 14, 15, ' God made manifest the savour of his knowledge,'
by the apostles, ' in every place.' Wherever this seed is sown, the harvest
hath been reaped, either more or less. It is fruitful at Corinth, for there
God had much people, Acts xviii. 10. It is not fruitless at Athens, though
the harvest was less ; most mocked, but some believed, and but one man of
learning and worldly wisdom, Acts xvii. 32, 34. When God sends John in
a way of righteousness, if the pharisees believe not, God will make a con-
quest of publicans and harlots : Mat. xxi. 32, ' John came to you in the way
of righteousness, and you believed not : but the publicans and harlots believed
824 charnock's works. [James I. 18.
him.' The net of the gospel is not cast wholly in vain, but from the time
of its coming, to the time of its removal, some souls have been catched,
though not of the most delicious fish, yet of the worst sort.
7. It informs us, what an excellent thing is a new birth ! The end is more
desirable than the means; this is the chief end of all the ordinances of God
in the world. The gospel had never been revealed but for this intent ; this is
the design of the Spirit's operation in any gospel administration. All the
lines of the word are to draw the lineaments of grace in the heart. This
must be a noble and excellent thing, for which chiefly the oracles of God
sound in the world, for which so great a light is set up in the gospel. All
the love of Christ breathes in the gospel ; the whole Testament is sealed by
his blood ; the perpetual workings of the Holy Ghost, the preaching of the
word, the celebration of the sacraments, are in subserviency to this end ; the
one to make us live, the other to make us grow. How unconceivably excel-
lent is that, how valuable in the eye of God, how advantageous to the happi-
ness of men, that is, the design wherein so many divine operations meet !
8. What a lamentable thing is it, that so few should be new begotten by
the word of truth ! How many are there among us that understand not
what a new begetting and birth is, no more than Nicodemus when he dis-
coursed with our Saviour ! What a deplorable thing is it that the word
should be preached, and so little regarded ! that not only an hour's, but
many years' discourses should pass away (as the psalmist speaks of our
lives) ' like a tale that is told ! ' Ps. xc. 9. How miserable is that man that
hath the objective cause of the new birth, without the effective ! It is the
word of truth. What will become of you, if you prefer a word of error before
it ; if you prefer the devil's killing suggestions before God's reviving
oracles ? What doth the word of truth move you to, but to a new birth ?
Why will any man struggle against it ? Every resistance of the word is a
resistance of God himself. It is God hews by the prophets, Hos. vi. 5 ; it
is God offers to beget by the word ; every reluctance then against the word,
is a reluctance against God. The word will either bring in a new form of
grace, or a new form of torment. If the inworking of the one be rejected,
the inworking of the other cannot be avoided; it will either cut the bands of a
spiritual death, or cut the sinews of our souls. That piece of timber that
hath not its knots cut off for the building, shall be cut in pieces for the fire.
A new life waits for them that obey the gospel ; an endless death for them
that reject it ; they that obey not the gospel, know not God, 2 Thes. i. 8.
And what is reserved for such, but revenging flames in another world ? It
would be happy for such, that they had never heard of a renewing gospel.
Every gospel discourse that might have been the cause of a spiritual life, and
a divine cordial, if sucked in, rejected, will be abitter drug in that potion
which shall be drunk in an eternal fever.
9. Hereby you may examine whether you are new begotten. It is the
word of truth whereby God begets. In this word he opens the glory of his
grace, and through this he conveys the power of his grace. The conquests
of Christ were to be made by the word, and it was so settled at the first
constitution of him as Mediator and Redeemer : Isa. xlix. 2, « He bath
made my mouth like a sharp sword.' It was by this the hearts of men
were to be conquered. And what heart is not subdued by the sword of
his mouth, is not subdued by the power of his arms. Some word or
other was the instrument to beget you (I speak of people grown up). The
apostle's interrogation is a strong negative. There is no believing with-
out hearing, Rom. x. 14. Hearing goes before believing ; he lays it down
as a certain conclusion from his former arguing : ' So then faith comes by
James I. 18.J the instrument of regeneration. 325
hearing, and hearing by the word of God.' Tf you conclude yourselves new
begotten, how came you by it ? Is it by the word, or no ? That is God's
ordinary means. If you be not renewed by this, it is not likely you are
renewed at all ; no other instrument hath God ordinarily appointed to this
end. Afflictions may plough men for it, but the word is the only seed that
renews the face of the earth. All false notions or presumptions of the new
birth must be brought to this touchstone ; it is a misshapen and monstrous
birth, that is not by a seed of the same kind ; the law in the heart hath no
seed of the same nature with it to engender it, but the law in the word, that
word which we properly call gospel ; the word of truth, not the word of phi-
losophy, which is a word of uncertainty ; God's word, not Plato's word. If
a thousand beasts had been consumed by common fire, not one of them had
been an holocaust, a grateful sacrifice, unless consumed by the fire of the
altar which came down from heaven. Moral wisdom is not that fire, hath
not that eminent descent from heaven ; it is not that speech from heaven
whereby our Saviour is said yet to speak, Heb. xii. 25. A little spark kindled
by the voice of Christ from heaven, from whence he yet speaks in the gospel,
is more worth than all the bonfires in the world, kindled by the sparks of
moral wisdom. Those qualifications which grow of their own accord, without
the word, are like the herbs which sprout in wild places without any tillage,
which are of a different kind than what are planted and watered in a garden,
and overlooked by the care of man. If your dispositions you boast of were
not planted by the word, how fair soever they may look, they are but a wild
kind of fruit ; therefore, it concerns you to look back upon yourselves, think
what word it was whereby you were begotten. If no particular word can be
remembered, if your regeneration were wrought insensibly in your younger
years, examine what suitableness there is between the word and your souls,
whether your hearts are turned into the nature of it. The measures of grace
are according to the measures of the word._ If you cannot remember the first
glorious entrance of it, you must see for the rich dwelling of it. An inhabi-
tant may enter into our houses unseen, but he cannot dwell there without our
knowledge ; the lines of the word will be seen in the heart, though the par-
ticular pencil whereby they were wrought may not be remembered.
10. It instructs ministers how to preach. It is the word of truth, the
gospel, that must be the main matter of our preaching ; and those things in
the gospel that have the greatest tendency to the new begetting men, and
working this great change in them, and driving it on to greater maturity.
The instrument of conversion is not barely the letter of the word, but the
sense and meaning of it, rationally impressed upon the understanding, and
closely applied to the conscience. The opening the word is the life of it,
and the true means of regeneration. If any man would turn his servant or
child from a course of sin, would he discourse to them of the nature of the
sun and stars, their magnitude, motions, number, and qualities ? This would
be nothing to the purpose ; his way would be to shew them the deformity
and clanger of their sin. The word of truth is God's instrument, and it
should be ours ; what is the end of the word, should be the end of our preach-
ing. It was through the gospel the apostle begat the Corinthians ; not
that the preaching of the law is excluded, but it must be preached in order
to the gospel as a preparation to it. Whatsoever in the word of truth dcth
prepare for the new birth, produce it, cherish it, preserve it, centre in one
and the same end. How careful and industi'ious should we be to beget
children to God, that we may present them, and say, ' Here am I, and the
children, which thou hast given me.' The new birth will be your joy, and
crown, and you will be ours, 1 Thes. ii. 19, 20. Aaron's sons are called the
326 charnock's works. [James I. 18.
generations of Moses, as -well as Aaron, Num. iii. 1, though none of his
natural sons are reckoned ; Aaron's by natural generation, Moses's perhaps
by a spiritual regeneration and instruction.
Use 2. Of exhortation.
1. Highly glorify God for the word of truth, which is so great an instru-
ment. How thankful should we be for an invention, to secure our estates
from consuming, houses from burning, bodies from dying ! The gospel, the
word of truth, doth much more than this : it is an instrument to beget a soul
for God ; an instrument whereby God makes himself our Father, and us his
children. It is but an instrument ; let not the glory be given to the instru-
ment, but to the agent. As it is an instrument, let it have part of your affec-
tions, but nothing of the glory that belongs to God ; love the truth, but glorify
and bless the God of truth, that hath ordained it to be so excellent an instrument.
(1.) Bless God in your hearts. [1.] That ever you had the word of truth
made known to you. How many millions sit in a spiritual darkness, with-
out so much as the means of a new begetting ! Millions never heard the
sound of it, nor ever will. [2.] Much more that it hath been successful to any
of you. Have you any thing in your spirits that bears witness to the truth
of ft ? When you read or hear it, do you find something of kin to it in your
souls, and feel something within you rise up and call it blessed ? How should
you read and hear it, with eruptions of thankfulness to God for it, hearty
embraces for it, and fervent ejaculations to God to work more in you by the
power of it ! Why hath the word grappled with any of our souls, and not
with others ; arrested any of you in a course of sin, and left others to walk
in their own ways, to run down silently like the streams of a river, till swal-
lowed up in an ocean of death ? The apostle Paul heard the voice, others
with him only a sound of words, Acts ix. 9, 7, xxii. 9 ; some have heard
a sound of words, without the voice of God in it, while others have heard a
divine voice in a human sound. The wind hath blown upon many, God in
that wind only upon few ; some have received air, whilst others have received
spirit and life ; some have only the body of the word, while others feel the
spirit and power of it in their hearts. Shall not God be glorified for this ?
Had it not been for him, and his Spirit, words had been only words and wind
to all as well as to some.
(2.) Glorify God in your lives. As you feel the powTer of it in your hearts,
let others see the brightness and efficacy of it in your actions. The new
born creature should principally aim at the glory of God, since the instrument
whereby he is begotten was first published for the ' glory of God in the
highest,' Luke ii. 14. What is produced by the efficacy of such an instru-
ment must have the same end, viz. the glory of God in the practice of holi-
ness. A holy gospel imprinted can never leave the heart and life unholy.
A gospel coined for the glory of God, when wrought in the heart, can never
suffer the soul to aim chiefly at self, but at the great end for which the
gospel was first discovered. The gospel of holiness and truth in the heart
will engender sincerity and holiness in the life.
2. Prize the word of truth, which works such great effects in the soul.
Value that as long as you live, which is the cord whereby God hath drawn
any of you out of the dungeon of death. Never count that foolishness by
which God hath inspired you with the choicest wisdom ; and never count
that weakness which hath made any of you of dead, living ; and of darkness,
light ; and of miserable, happy by grace. If a soul be worth a world, and
therefore to be prized, how precious ought that to be which is an instrument
to beget a soul for the felicity of another world ! How should the law of
God's mouth be better to us than thousands of gold and silver ! Ps. cxix.
James I. 18. J the instrument of regeneration. 327
72. How should we prize that word whereby any of us have seen the glory
of God in his sanctuary, the glory of God in our souls ! When corruptions
are strong, it is an engine to batter them ; when our hearts are hard, it is a
hammer to break them ; when our spirits are imposthumated, it is a sword to
cut them ; when our hearts are cold, it is a fire to inflame them ; when our
souls are faint, it is a cordial to refresh them, it begins a new birth and main-
tains it. It is the seed from whence we spring, 1 Peter i. 23, the glass
wherein we see the glory of God, 2 Cor. iii. 18. By the waters of the sanc-
tuary, we have both meat for nourishment, and medicines for cure, from the
tree that grows by its streams : Ezek. xlvii. 12, ' The fruit thereof shall be
for meat, and the leaf for medicine.' Have a great regard to it, keep it in
the midst of your hearts, for it is life, Prov. iv. 21, 22.
3. Pray and endeavour for the preservation and success of the word of
truth. Were there a medicine that could preserve life, how chary should
we be in preserving that ? The gospel is the tree, whose leaves cure the
nations, Rev. xxii. 2. It was a blessing God endued the creatures with,
when he bid them increase and multiply, Gen. i. 22. It was an evidence
that he intended to preserve the world. If the gospel get ground in the hearts
of men, it is an evidence it shall continue in spite of the oppositions of men
or devils.
4. Wait upon God in the word. Where there is a revelation on God's part,
there must be a hearing on ours. Sit down therefore at the feet of God, and
receive of his words, Deut. xxxiii. 3. (1.) Despise it not ; he that contemns
it never intends to be new begotten, since he slights the means of God's ap-
pointment ; he that intends an end, will use all means proportion ably to his
desires for that end ; he that contemns it never was renewed. Habitual grace
being wrought by it, cannot, but in its own nature, have a great affection to
it, He that loves Christ cannot but love all the methods of his operations.
(2.) Despise it not because it is but an instrument : say not, because God
is the chief agent, therefore you need not come to the word. Our Saviour
knew that ' man did not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds
out of the mouth of God,' Mat. iv. 4. Did he therefore neglect means for
preserving his life ? Because God gives the increase, should not the hus-
bandman plough and sow ? If God doth not work upon you by the means,
you can have no rational hopes he will do it any other way. What though
ministers can only speak to the ear ? John Baptist could do no more, whose
ministry was notwithstanding glorious, in being the forerunner of Christ.
To neglect it, therefore, is to double-bar your hearts against the entrance of
grace, and slight the truth which Christ brought down from the bosom of
God.
(1.) Never did God appoint any other way but this. Miracles were never
appointed but as attendants upon this. Miracles come after teachings in the
great gifts to the church, 1 Cor. xii. 7-10. First, the ' manifestation of the
Spirit,' ' the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge,' then ' gifts of heal-
ing and miracles.' Miracles are ceased, as being not absolutely necessary ;
but the ministry of the word will last to the end of the world. By the pro-
phets God brings souls out of a state of bondage, and by the prophets he
preserves them in a state of grace : Hosea xii. 13, ' By a prophet the Lord
brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he preserved.' Miracles
and the resurrection of one from the dead, was never appointed under the
legal administration, but Moses and the prophets, Luke xvi. 13. These were
the ordinary means, and if these did not work, miracles were inefficacious.
(2.) God never made any promise but in this way. God promised to
circumcise their hearts to love him with all their soul, but in the way of
328 charnock's works. [James I. 18.
hearing his voice, and observing his statutes, Deut. xxx. 6, 10, 11. He
meets souls only that remember him in his way, Tsa. lxiv. 5. And to the
preaching of the gospel only, our Saviour promised his presence to the end
of the world, Mat. xxviii. 20 ; the promise is perpetually and immoveably
throughout all ages of the world fixed to this command. The promising his
presence to the preaching of the gospel, implies that his presence shall be
enjoyed only by attendance on the gospel. The gracious workings of the
Spirit are by this, they are the words of Christ brought to remembrance by
him, whereby he doth so mightily operate.
(3.) No other way did God apparently work by formerly. In the time
when God did especially manifest himself to his people by visions, dreams,
and apparitions of angels, and in those ways made revelations to them, he
converted not any either from a state of nature, or from a particular fall, but
by the word. Manasseh's conversion was by the word of the seers, 2 Chron.
xxxiii. 18 ; nor was David reclaimed after his fall by an immediate vision,
but by the ministry of Nathan ; Peter by a look, which revived the word
spoken to him, Luke xxii. 61. The angel that attended the eunuch, Acts
viii. 26, made no impressions upon him, but was ordered to direct Philip
thither to explain to him the mystery of the gospel ; and the Spirit particu-
larly orders him to go* near the chariot, ver. 29, but makes no impression
upon him but by the ministry of the word. An angel is sent to direct Philip,
but Philip is sent to discover Christ. An angel is sent to Cornelius, not to
preach the gospel, but to direct him where to send for a teacher, Acts x.
3, 5, 6, the Spirit prepares Peter to go, vers. 19, 20, and likewise prepares
Cornelius for his reception ; God prepares the jailor by an earthquake, but
renews him not but by the ministry of Paul, Acts xvi. 26, 32. In the times
of the gospel there was first to be a teaching of God's way, before a walking
in his paths, Isa. hi. 3. The arm that made heaven and earth makes the
new heart and new spirit, but by a word as well as them. The net of the
gospel is only appointed to catch the fish ; though the fish that had the
tribute-money in its mouth was immediately for the service of Christ, yet he
would not use his power to bring it to the shore, without Peter's casting out
the net. Christ first brings souls to the net, and by the net to himself.
(4.) God hath always blessed this more or less. Moses' rod in Moses his
hand hath wrought miracles, Christ's rod in the Spirit's hand hath wrought
greater ; the new creations have been always by it, and the after-breathings
of the Spirit through it. By this he makes men righteous, holy, sincere, in
a way of eminency, as the morning light which increaseth to a perfect day,
and no longer as a morning cloud which quickly vanisheth, Hosea vi. 5,
which some understand of a gospel promise mixed with that discourse. How
hath the light of the beauty and excellency of God, flashing upon the under-
standing from the glass of the gospel, filled the will and affections of many
with desire and love to that glory it represents, and that state it offers ! The
very leaves of it, the profession, hath healed nations, and brought human
societies into order, and the fruit of it hath been the cure of many a soul.
Wait therefore for the falling of this fruit. Grace is a beam from the Sun
of righteousness, but darted through the medium of gospel air ; a pearl
engendered by the blood of Christ, but only in the gospel sea. It hath not
been without its blessing to others, it hath raised men from death to life.
Is the virtue of the seed expired ? or the strength of the Lord grown feeble ?
If ever therefore you would have the image of God in inward impressions of
prace, and outward expressions of holiness, you must look for your trans-
formation in and by the gospel. All the other knowledge in the world can-
not give a man a right notion of the new birth, much less produce it. Look
James I. 18.] the instrument of regeneration. 329
not after enthusiasms, nor expect it in new ways ; ' to the law and to the
testimony,' ways of God's appointment. The Jews could not expect an
angel to bring them soundness of limbs, but by the pool ; nor we the Spirit
to infuse grace into us, but by the word. It is from the mercy- seat only
God speaks to Israel; wisdom's gates are the places where to expect her
alms, Prov. viii. 34. Wait therefore upon the word, wherein the Spirit of
God travails with souls.
Quest. How shall we wait upon the word, so as that we may be new
begotten by it ?
1. Wait upon the word frequently. Be often in reading and hearing, and
meditating on it. Men set upon these works as if they were afraid they
should be new born too soon, or prejudiced in their concerns and content-
ments in the world, as if they feared the mighty wind of the Spirit should
blow away their beloved dross too fast, as if it were a matter of mdifferency
to be like their Maker. If you had gold not thoroughly refined, would you
not cast it again and again into the fire ? If filth not wholly purged, would
you not use the fountain again and again ? Those that are m the sun are
coloured and heated by it, and have things more visible ; those that are much
in the word, see more of the wonders, feel more of the warmth, receive deeper
impressions, are endued with the grace and holiness of truth, have a purer
flame in their affections for heaven. How do you know but an opportunity
missed, might have been the best market ? How do you know but the Spirit
might have joined himself to the word, as Pbilip to the eunuch's chariot,
while he was reading ? ' While Peter yet spake those words (it is said), the
Holy Ghost fell upon all them which heard the word,' Acts x. 44. What
words ? Even the marrow of the gospel, ver. 43, ' that through his name,
whosoever believes in him shall receive remission of sins.' God may have a
portion ready for us, and we go without it, because we are not ready to receive
it. We must not expect a raven to bring us food upon a bed of sluggish-
ness. Do it the rather, because you may live to see such times, wherein
Bibles may be as much shut as they are now open, wherein (as in former
times) you may be willing to give a large parcel of your goods for one chapter
of it. We read of some that have given a load of hay for one chapter of St
James. Be frequent in waiting upon the word.
2. Let your hearts be fixed upon that which is the great end of the word.
New begettings are the end of the gospel. Come, then, with minds fixed
upon this end, and desires for it. Regard it not as a mere sound of words,
but as an instrument of the noblest operations in the soul. If this be the
great work of the gospel, we ought to read and hear it, with desires to be
enlivened where we are dead, quickened where we are dull, be made new-
creatures where we are yet but old, taller creatures where we are yet but ot
a low stature ; not only to have our understandings instructed, but our hearts
changed ; to inquire after God to behold the beauty of the Lord, Ps. xxvii. 4,
that we may be transformed into it ; to look for God, who is in the word
of a truth, for the kingdom of God comes nigh to you in the gospel. That
was the word that Christ, when he sent his disciples out first to preach, bid
them speak unto men, Luke xii. 9. Men usually get no more than they
come to seek. He that goes to market, intending only to lay out his money
upon some trifle, returns for the most part with no better commodity. Zac-
cheus got upon the tree to meet with Christ, and so noble an end wanted not
an excellent success ; that day came salvation into his house, Luke xix. 9.
When the Jews did not mind the end of sacrifices, and regarded not the
things God principally looked for in them, God slighted them, and they went
without any divine operations upon their souls by them, Isa. i. 11, 13, 14.
830 charnock's works. [James I. 18.
When our ends suit the gospel, then are we like to feel gospel influences.
We come with wrong ends, and, therefore, return with unchanged hearts ; we
come for a sound, and go away with no more. One end therefore in coming
should be to gain this new begetting, or increase the growth of the new
creature ; our ends are not else conformable to the ends of God in it ; there-
fore, as the earth sucks in the rain, and the roots in the earth attract it unto
themselves that they may bring forth fruit, so should we open our hearts to
receive the showers of the word with an aim at a new birth, or a further
growth. As this is finis opens, so it should be finis operant™.
3. Mind the word in the simplicity of it, and that in it which tends to
that end. Some men are more taken with colours than truth, more ena-
moured with words than matter, fill themselves only with air, and neglect
the substance. Such are like those that are pleased with the colours of the
rainbow, more than with the light reflected, or the covenant of God repre-
sented by it. No man is renewed by phrases and fancies ; those are only as
the oil to make the nails of the sanctuary drive in the easier : in Eccles.
xii. 11, < Acceptable words,' joined with ' words of truth,' are as the * fast-
ening of the nails,' both ' given by one shepherd.' Words there must be to
make things intelligible ; illustrations to make things delightfully intelligible,
but the seminal virtue lies not in the husk and skin, but in the kernel ; the
rest dies, but the substance of the seed lives, and brings forth fruit ; sepa-
rate, therefore, between the husk and the seed. The word doth not work as
it is elegant, but as it is divine, as it is a word of truth. Illustrations are
but the ornaments of the temple, the glory of it is in the ark and mercy-
seat. It is not the engraving upon the sword cuts, but the edge ; nor the
key, as it is gilded, opens, but as fitted to the wards. Your faith must not
stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God, 1 Cor. ii. 5. It is
the juice of the meat, and not the garnishings of the dish, that nourishes.
Was it the word as a pleasant song, or as a divine seed, that changed the
souls of old, made martyrs smile in the midst of flames ? It was the know-
ledge of the excellency of the promise, and not worldly eloquence, made them
with so much courage slight gibbets, stakes, executioners ; they had learned
the truth as it is in Jesus.
4. Mind the word as the word of truth. Take it not upon the account of
persons, value it for its own sake, as it is a word of truth. It is neither
Paul nor Apollos, but God that gives the increase. Value it not by men ; it
is no matter what the pipe is, whether gold or lead, so the water be the water
of life ; the word hath an edge, because it is the word of God, not because it
is whetted upon this or that grindstone. Some will scarce receive a truth,
but from one they fancy ; as if a man should be so foolish as to refuse a
medicine which will preserve his life, because it is not presented to him in
a glass which he hath a particular esteem of. To receive or refuse any truth
upon the account of the person, is a sign of carnality, and the way to remain
carnal ; upon this account the apostle pronounceth the Corinthians again and
again carnal, 1 Cor. iii. 4. Despise not the meanest instrument. Our
Saviour in his agony was comforted by an angel, much more inferior to him
who was the Lord of angels, than any minister can be to a hearer. Mr
Peacock, being fellow of a college, in great despair, when some minister had
been discoursing with him, and prevailing nothing, offering to pray with him,
No, says he ; dishonour not God so much, as to pray for such a reprobate.
A young scholar of his standing by, answered, Surely a reprobate could not
be so tender of God's honour ; which words prevailed more to the bringing
him to believe than all that the other had spoken. When men turn their
backs upon the word, because the mouth doth not please them, they turn
James I. 18.] the instrument of regeneration. 331
their backs upon God, John xiii. 20, and perhaps upon their own mercy.
When any have respect to the man more than the word, God will leave thern
to the operation of the man, and withdraw his own.
5. Attend upon the word with an eye to God. Look not for the new
birth only from the word. It was the folly of the Jews to think to find life
in the Scriptures without Christ ; life in the letter, without the original of
life, John v. 39, 40. ' Except the Lord build the house' (that is the temple),
• they labour in vain that build it,' Ps. cxxvii. 1. Without God all our en-
deavours to build a spiritual temple are like the strivings to wash a blacka-
more white. No believing the word, though preached a thousand times,
without God's revealing his arm, Isa. liii. 1. It is not the file that makes
the watch, but the artist by it. No instrument can act without the virtue
of some superior agent. It is the altar that sanctifies the gold, and Christ
that sanctifies the ordinances. Paul may plant by his doctrine and miracles ;
Apollos may water by his affectionate eloquence ; but God alone can give
the increase by his almighty breath. Man sows the seed, but God only can
make it fructify. The richest showers cannot make the ground fruitful, but
as instruments under God's blessing. It is not said the prophets did hew
them, but God by his prophets, Hosea vi. 5. Then have your eyes fixed
upon God. It is the word of his lips, not of man's, whereby any are snatched
out of the paths of the destroyer, as well as kept from them. Man's teach-
ings direct us to Christ ; God's teachings bring us to Christ ; man brings the
gospel, at most, to the heart, the Spirit only brings the gospel into the
heart ; man puts the key in the lock, God only turns it, and opens the heart
by it ; man brings the word of truth, and God the truth of the word into
the soul ; man brings the objective word of grace, God alone the attractive
grace of the word. If where there is already the new birth, the soul must
be fixed on God for further openings, much more where it is not yet wrought.
David had an excellent knowledge, yet cries out for the opening of his eyes
to see the wonders in God's law. It is God only can knock off the fetters
of a spiritual death, and open the iron gates, that the King of glory may
enter with spiritual life. If any, therefore, will regard the word more than
as an instrument, as a partner with God in his operation, he may justly
leave you to the weakness of that, and deny the influx of his own strength.
Therefore let the word be attended with prayer.
(1.) Before you wait upon God in any ordinance, plead with him as Moses
did in another case, ' To what purpose should I go, unless thy presence go
with me ?' What can the letter do without the Spirit, or words without that
powerful wind to blow them into my heart ? None can have life by the
bread of the word, without the blessing of God. As man brings the graft,
desire God to insert it. As God hath promised gifts to his church, so he
promised his own teachings: Heb. viii. 11, 'All shall know me, from the
least to the greatest.' Urge God with his own promise, desire him to open
his mouth, and to open your hearts ; his mouth to breathe, and your hearts
to receive. When men overlook God, he makes a separation between the
word and his own quickening presence. The end doth not necessarily arise
from the means ; and, therefore, in the use of them, there must be a fidu-
ciary recourse to the grace of God. In the time, too, of waiting upon God,
let there be ejaculations ; let your hearts be continually lift up to God ; let
your expectations be from him. We should be like Jacob's ladder ; though
the feet stand in Bethel, the house of God, our heads should reach to heaven
in all our attendances.
(2.) After you have been at the word. God is the great seer, Christ the
great prophet ; we should go to him for the repetition of things upon our
332 chaenock's wokks. [James I. 18.
hearts ; we may have that wind afterwards by prayer, which we felt not so
stiff at hearing. The operations of truth, as well as the knowledge of it,
are best fetched out upon our knees by earnest prayer. How do you know
but, while you are praying, the fire may descend from heaven, and transform
you into a divine likeness ? Thus you will make God the Alpha and Omega
of his own ordinances, in your acknowledgment of him, as well as he is so
in himself.
(3.) Rest not in bare hearing. ' Look for God in the ordinances as he is
the living God, who lives in himself, and gives life to men and means : Ps.
lxxxiv. 2, ' My soul longs for the living God ;' there is a strength and glory
of God to be longed for in the sanctuary ; no means are to be rested in or
used, but as to lead to such an end for which they are fitted. To rest in
the word heard, or read, is to make that our end, which God hath appointed
only as the means. The word is sweet, but as it is the pipe through which
God and his image, God and his grace, which is sweeter and higher than all
ordinances, stream to the soul. Rejoice in the word, but only as the wise
men did in the star, as it led them to Christ. The word of Christ is precious ;
but nothing more precious than himself, and his formation in the soul. Rest
not in the word, but look through it to Christ.
6. Attend upon the word submissively. It is not the hearer, but the
humble hearer, shall find the power of the word working in him ; as it is
not the speaking a prayer, but the wrestling and struggling of the heart with
God in prayer, receives a gracious answer. The humble are the fittest sub-
jects for grace, those that lie upon the ground with their mouth close to the
pipe. ' He gives grace to the humble.' Resign yourselves up to the word,
struggle not against the battery it makes, nor the wind that blows ; receive
every stroke till you see the frame of the new creature. Let a silence
be imposed upon the flesh, and self bowed down to the dust, while Christ
the great prophet speaks. Be not peevish, nor expostulate with God's
sovereignty, as they did : Isa. lviii. 3, ' Wherefore have we fasted, and thou
seest not ? Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no know-
ledge ?' Acknowledge God a free agent, submit to his sovereign pleasure.
A truly humble bow to God will prevail more than all the saucy expostula-
tions of proud flesh. In hearing the word, pick not here a part, and there
a part, as suits your humour, but consider what really is God's will, and
submit to it. Cornelius was of this resigning temper when the Spirit de-
scended upon him : Acts x. 33, ' We are here present before God, to hear
all things that are commanded thee of God.' An humble soul, saith Kempis,
by the grace of God, understands more the reasons of eternal truth in a trice,
than a man that hath studied many years in the schools, because he hath the
operations of them in his heart.
7. Receive the word with faith. I mean, not the faith which is a part of
the new creature, but an assent. There is a rational belief that it is the
word of truth, which is in many men that have no justifying faith. Actuate
this. The believing the word to be so, to be the word of God, is the first
step to the receiving advantage by it. No man will ever comply with that
which he believes not to be true, or believes not himself to be concerned in.
It is said by the apostle, Heb. iv. 1,2,' The word profited not, because it
was not mixed with faith.' There wras truth in the word, but no firm assent
to it in their hearts. There can never be a full compliance with Christ, in
order to a new birth, if there be not first an assent to the word. Where
there is a defect in the first concoction, there will also be a defect in the
second and third. If you do not believe with Naaman, that the waters of
Jordan are appointed by God for this end, and not those of Abana and Phar-
James I. 18.J the instrument of regeneration. 333
par, you will never be rid of the spiritual death, no more than he would
have been of his leprosy. You never see God in his sanctuary, nor feel God
in his power for want of this. Surely as this made our Saviour suspend the
power of his miracles, by the same reason it makes him suspend the power
of his word : Mat. xiii. 58, ' He did not many mighty works there, because
of their unbelief.' If men did believe there were a place where they might
enjoy all earthly delights in a higher measure, at an easier rate, how ambi-
tious would they be of putting themselves into a state to enjoy them ? If
men did believe the report of the gospel, would they not be full of great
undertakings for the enjoyment of the proffers of it ? But the gospel, more
is the pity, hath not naturally that credit with men that a fiction hath.
8. Observe much the motions upon your hearts while you are attending
upon God. If the sails be not skilfully ordered to catch and hold, and make
the best improvement of the wind that blows, much of the wind will pass be-
side it, and the ship lag many leagues behind, or lie wind-bound a long time
before it receive a like gale. God hath particular seasons : Heb. iv. 7, ' To-
day if you will hear his voice.' Sometimes the Spirit is more urging than at
another time, and sends his motions thicker upon the heart ; let those times
be observed, and when there are motions on the Spirit's part, let there be
compliance on yours. Catch a promise when the Spirit opens ; bind your-
selves to an observance of the precept when the Spirit shews it ; let God's
drawing be answered with the soul's running ; observe what precious oil is
dropped through the golden pipes upon the heart, and spill it not ; take notice
of what sparks light upon you, and lose not the warmth they may convey to
your hearts ; what beam of light breaks in, let it not be puffed out by a
temptation or diversion ; observe what is afforded to make your hearts burn,
and your corruptions and sinful inclinations cool. Regard not so much your
affections, as what touches are upon your wills. Affections may arise from a
natural constitution of the body, some tempers being more easily excited to
exert affections than others, yet they are not always, nor altogether, to be
disregarded, nor are they always to be looked upon as ciphers; but, espe-
cially, see what influence the word hath upon the understanding and will
chiefly, as well as upon the affections. Judge of yourselves by the inward
power and might, by the breakings in of the light, and the sprightly strain
of your wills. The might of the Spirit works in the inner man, Eph. iii. 16 ;
not in a part of the inner man, but in every faculty. See what compunction
there is in your souls, what strong desires in the will. Bare affections are
but like a sponge, which will by a light compression let out that water which
it so easily sucked up. Men may ' receive the word with gladness ' without
having any root of spiritual grace, Mark iv. 16, 17. When men regard only
particular affections, they usually sit down in those sparks of their own kind-
ling, and look not after a thorough change. Or if you find such affections,
see whether those affections are raised rather by the truth than the dress ;
whether they be kindled by the consideration of those attributes of God, his
mercy, goodness, wisdom, holiness, which have a great hand in the new
birth ; whether by the deep consideration of our Saviour's death and resur-
rection, the great designs of the gospel; whether the motion be orderly, first,
understanding, then will, and afterwards affections. This is a genuine flame,
kindled by a fire which comes down from heaven, working upon all the parts
of the soul. A bare work upon the affections is rather a strange and carnal
fire. Observe, therefore, what tender blades bud and shoot forth in the
higher faculties of your souls.
9. Press the word much upon your hearts after hearing. How great is
the neglect of this application of the word of truth ! Men will spend hours
334 charnock's works. [James I. 18.
in hearing, and not one minute in serious reflections ; as if the word in their
ears, or a receipt in their pockets, could cure the disease in the heart. This
is the worm at the root of all our spiritual advantages. What is only dashed
upon the fancy, or lightly coloured, may soon be washed off. The soil must
be made tenacious of the seed by the harrow of meditation, which hides it in
the heart, and covers it with earth ; for want of being laid deep, and banded
by serious meditation, the seed takes no root, because there is not much
earth about it, Mark iv. 5, 6, 16. How can food nourish your body, unless
t be concocted by natural heat ? or spiritual food enliven you, unless con-
cocted by meditation ? The shepherds, after they had heard the news of
Christ's incarnation from the mouth of the angel, reflected upon their duty,
Luke ii. 14, 15. Words must be kept some time upon the mind, and rolled
over and over again, before they can work any sensible change, because the
heart naturally hath an averseness to God and his word ; as the strongest
physic must be in the body some time, and be wrought upon by the stomach,
before it can work upon the humours. How do you know, but while you are
musing, a divine fire may sparkle in your souls, and Christ rise in your hearts ?
Grapes must be pressed to get out the wine that will cheer the heart. Put
the question to your soul, in every part you can remember, as our Saviour
did to Martha, John xi. 25, 26, ' I am the resurrection and the life. Be-
lie vest thou this ?' There is such a thing as the new birth : believest thou
this ? It is necessary to be had : believest thou this ? God only can work
it : believest thou this ? And so for every divine truth. Leave not thy soul
to its vagaries, hold it on to the work, press it to give a positive answer
whether it believe this or that truth. Put not yourselves off with a slight
answer to the question, but examine the reasons of your belief of it. Look
upon yourselves as really concerned in the word you hear, otherwise it will
no more affect you than if you should tell an ambitious man, gaping after
preferment in England, of a wealthy place fallen in Spain, which will not
engage his thoughts, as being out of his sphere and at too great a distance.
To have a listlessness to such duties, or any spiritual duty, after hearing the
word, which is the food of the soul, shews a great corruption within, as the
heaviness in the body, and corrupt vapours in the mouth, shew the badness
of concoction.
10. Labour to have the savour of truth upon your spirits, as well as the
notions of it in your heads. The kingdom of God consists not in word, but
in power; the new birth consists not in a bare notion, but in spiritual savour.
The highest notional knowledge comes far short of experimental ; the know-
ledge a blind man hath of light and colours, by hearing a lecture upon it, is
but mere ignorance to the knowledge he would have if his eyes were opened.
Endeavour to have the savour of Christ's ointments, Cant. i. 3, and inward
sense exercised, Heb. v. 14. The apostle distinguisheth knowledge and judg-
ment, Philip, i. 9. Knowledge is a notion in the head, judgment, or aUd^n,
is the sense or savour of it in the heart. What a miserable thing is it to
spend our lives without a taste ! Knowledge is but as a cloud that intercepts
the beams of the sun and doth not advantage the earth, unless melted into
drops, and falling down into the bosom of it ; let the knowledge of the word
of truth drop down in a kindly shower upon your hearts, let it be a know-
ledge of the word heated with love.
I might have added more ; bring plain hearts to the word, put off all dis-
guises. Moses took off his veil when he went into the presence of God.
Bring not flesh and blood as your counsellors ; these are no friends to a new
birth. And come with love ; love makes the strongest impressions upon the soul.
It might here be also worth the inquiry, why so few are renewed by the
James I. 18. J the instrument of regeneration. 335
word of truth in this age ; why the gospel has no more powerful effect
among us, as in former ages ? It is a wonder to see a man begotten by the
word, as it was a wonder for the woman to bring forth a man-child, Rev. xii.
When our Saviour was brought into the temple, not a man but Simeon knew
knew him ; no question but many pharisees, doctors, and gentlemen were
walking there, but none but Simeon knew him, to whom he was revealed,
Luke ii. 22, 25 ; the rest looked upon him as an ordinary child. Formerly
men flocked to Christ as the doves to the windows. The sword of the Spirit
was never unsheathed, but it cut some hearts ; the word seems now to have
lost its edge and efficacy, which ought to be considered and laid to heart.
Many causes may be rendered ; I will only hint a few.
(1.) Taking religion upon trust. Old customs are hardly to be parted
with : ' Every man will walk in the name of his God,' Micah iv. 5. To root
out false conceptions in religion, which either education, fancy, or humour
have rooted, is very difficult.
(2.) A conceit of the meanness of the word, whereby there is a secret con-
tempt of it, and so a formal and customary use of it.
(3.) A conceit of men, that they are new born already. Many think their
condition good, because of their civil honesty. Though that be a very comely
and commendable thing, yet security in it kills its thousands. Many, be-
cause they are free from the common pollutions of the world, and possessed
with many amiable virtues, never consider how much their hearts are stored
with an enmity against God. Such count their righteousness their gain, and
think it a sufficient bribe for God's mercy.
(4.) A conceit that to be new born is but to change an opinion. A change
of opinion may look like faith, as presumption doth, but it is not faith. The
devil holds some men in the chain of sublimated speculations, which hinder
the working of the most spiritual and influential truths.
(5.) Pride of reason, frequency of disputes. It is a rational age, an age
overgrown with reason, and the Scripture tells us, ' Not many wise,' &c.
The truths of God are very much turned into scepticism.
(6.) The common atheism that so much prevails among us. How should
men regard a discourse of the new birth, a begetting to God, when they
scarce believe there is a God at all, but their own lusts, to be like unto '?
How should they be wrought upon by the word of God, that scarce believe
there is any God to reveal a word, and that there is no word of God ?
(7.) Hardness of heart, occasioned (through the just judgment of God) by
the frequency and unprofitable hearing of the word. The word is most
operative when it comes first into a nation or town. When the heart is not
broken by hearing the word of truth, it becomes more hardened and compact
in sin. Many other reasons might be rendered, but I have held you too
long upon this subject.
A DISCOURSE OF GOD'S BEING THE AUTHOR
OF RECONCILIATION.
All tilings are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and
hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation ; to wit, that God was in
Christ reconciling the xcorld unto himself. — 2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
These words are small in bulk, but great in mystery ; it is tbe beads of the
gospel in a nut- shell ; the most sparkling diamond in the whole golden ring
of Scripture. It comprehends the counsels of eternity and the transactions
of time. A wonder in heaven, God bringing forth a man-child to be a pro-
pitiation for sin, which was the Jews' stumbling-block and the Gentiles' scoff,
1 Cor. i. 23, 24 ; but wherein the wisdom and grace of God's counsel in
heaven, and the power of his actions on earth, clearly shine forth in the face
of Jesus Christ. The Jacob's ladder, the upper part fixed in heaven, and
the lower foot standing upon the earth. Angels descended on that ; God de-
scends to man by this in acts of wisdom and grace, and man ascends to God
in acts of faith and love.
If there be any mystery in Christianity more admirable than another, it
is this of reconciliation. If any mystery in this mystery, it is the various
and incomprehensible engagement of the Father in it, in and through Christ.
If anything in Scripture sets forth this mystery in a few words like a picture
in a little medal, it is this which I have read, wherein the apostle gives us a
short but full and clear account of the doctrine of reconciliation, which is
the substantial part of the gospel.
There is a double reconciliation here and in the following verse expressed.
First, Fundamental ; at the death of Christ, whereby it was obtained.
This is the ground of God's laying aside his anger ; this is reconciliatio Ugalis
or de jure.
Secondly, Actual or particular, when it is complied with by faith. This
regards the application of it, when God doth actually lay aside his enmity,
and imputes sin no more to the person. Which consists of two parts.
1. The proclamation of this: ver. 20, ' We pray you in Christ's stead,
be ve reconciled to God,' declaring God's willingness to take men into
favour. This is the declaration of reconciliatio de jure, or the right of recon-
cilement. The gospel contains the articles of peace, and the counsels and
methods of God about it. It is the copy of God's heart from eternity.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 337
2. Particular acceptance, which is on our part an acceptance of the terms
of reconcilement, on God's part an acceptance of us into his favour, and a
non-imputation of our sins to us, which the apostle calls, Rom. v. 11, the
receiving the atonement ; this is the accepting the atonement, the ground of
reconciliation on man's part, and the application on God's part.
The first, viz., the proclamation of it to us, is God's promise to us, the
other is the performance ; the one is God's gracious favour to us, the other
is God's gracious act in us. Christ is the cause of both these reconcilia-
tions : of the fundamental reconciliation by his death, of our actual reconci-
liation by his life ; the one by himself in person, the other by his deputy the
Spirit.
God. God is taken here by some* ovoiubug, for the whole trinity, Christ,
'oix.ovofAix.uis, as mediator.
Others, f and more likely, understand by God the Father, to whom re-
conciliation is ascribed per modwn appropriations, as he is the fountain of
the divinity, as the fathers use to call him. J As the Father is the principal
person wronged, and declaring his anger against us, the reconciliation is
principally made to him ; in which sense we are said to have ' access to the
Father,' Eph. ii. 18, through Christ, and by the Spirit. The Son brings us
to the Father, and the Spirit directs us to the Son. Christ takes away God's
enmity to us, and the Spirit takes away our enmity to God. As the first
creation is appropriated to the Father, so is the second also. The apostle
having described the new state of things, ver. 17, tells us, ver. 18, that ' all
things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ ;' that
this new state is of God, who is no less the creator of the second state than
of the first. Adam, the common head of God's appointment, by his falling,
overthrew himself and his posterity ; God therefore appoints another head
to reduce men again to himself. What is here called reconciling, is called,
Eph. i. 10, ' gathering together in one,' avaxi<pa\aiu)o'ao-6ai. God would gather
them together to himself under one head, as they had been separated from
him under one head.
God ivas in Christ. Some make this expression to signify no more than
by Christ, ver. 18 ; or for Christ's sake : Eph. iv. 34, ' As God for Christ's
sake hath forgiven you.'
But the expression notes something more than for Christ's sake. In actual
pardon, Christ is the moving cause by his intercession, as well as the meri-
torious cause by his propitiation : 1 John ii. 2, ' If any man sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who is a propitiation,'
&c. But the first purpose of reconciliation, and the appointing Christ as
the medium for it, had no moving cause but the infinite compassion of God
to his fallen creature. Christ was not the moving cause of this, though he
be the meritorious cause of all the effects of it, and laid the foundation of an
actual reconciliation by being the centre of the agreement between the justice
and mercy of God. God's anger was appeased by the death of Christ, but
God was the first author of this propitiation, appointing this method of re-
storing the creature, and this person, or Jesus, to do it.
God ivas in Christ. It may be meant of the Trinity : the Father was in
Christ constituting and directing, the Son was in Christ by personal union,
the Spirit was in Christ gifting him for this work of reconciliation ; but I
would rather understand it of the Father.
Being in Christ is not meant,
* Forbes Instr. Hist. lib. i. cap. 19. f Ibid. cap. 20.
J Tinyn rod uUu- — Nazian. Biorn; Unya.7«. i *arii£, ratione originis et principii.
VOL. III. Y
338 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
1. Of that essential inness or oneness whereby the Father and the Son are
one in essence. Or as a father of the flesh and his son are said to be of the
same nature, disposition, and likeness, whereby we say the father lives in the
son, in the lineaments and temper of the son, whereby he resembles the father.
It is true, the father and the son have the same nature, the same perfections
and divine excellencies ; so the Father is in the Son without any respect to
reconciliation. He is so in the Son in creation also ; he is so also one with
the Spirit. But this notes some singular manner of inness in Christ, which
is not in the third person, or in any else.
2. Nor in regard of that affection the Father bears to Christ. He is
indeed in a peculiar manner in Christ in regard of love, more than in all
believers besides. He loved him as the head, believers as the members.
This is common to believers with Christ, though not in the same degree.
3. But it notes some peculiar manner of operation in Christ as me-
diator. Redemption was not the work only of the Son ; the Son wrought
it, the Father directed it ; the Son paid the price, the Father appointed
him to do so, received it of him, accepted it from him, and accounted it to
others through him, which is that we are bound to believe, as Christ tells
the Jews, John x. 38, ' that you may know and believe that the Father is in
me, and I in him ;' John xiv. 20, ' I am in my Father.' The Father is in
Christ by way of direction, support, and influence, and Christ in the Father
by way of observance, obedience, and dependency. As the world was in
Christ as in their surety and head, satisfying God, so God is in Christ as in
his ambassador, making peace with the world. All things that Christ acted
and managed in this work are to be referred to God as the prime author.
The world. The world properly signifies the frame of heaven and earth,*
and all creatures therein, joined together by an exact harmony, order, and
dependence upon one another ; but in the Scripture is chiefly understood
of mankind, the top of the lower world and end of its creation. It is frequent
in all writers to put the place for the inhabitants ; and it is taken for the
most part for the corrupted world, the world fallen under sin and wrath, and
opposing God : John i. 10, ' The world knew him not.' And when God
takes some out of the world, he calls them not by the name of the world,
but his church. And those that he brings out of tbis sinful condition, he
is said to bring ' out of the world,' John xv. 19, and to choose ' out of the
world,' John xvii. 6. The world is fundamentally reconciled, there being
a foundation laid for the world to be at peace with God, if they accept of
the terms upon which this amity is to be obtained ; or all ages of the world,
those before the coming of Christ in the flesh as well as those after,
1 John ii. 2.
Reconciling. The greatest controversy lies in this word, whether by it
be meant God's reconciliation to us, or our laying down our enmity against
God. Socinus and his followers say God was not angry with man, he was
reconciled before, but that this place is meant of affection towards God,
because it is said we are reconciled to God, and not God to us.
But learned men have cleared this.f The phrase in heathen authors of
men's being reconciled to their gods, is always understood for appeasing the
anger of their gods, and escaping those dreadful judgments either actually
inflicted or certainly threatened from heaven. By reconciliation of us to God
in this place cannot be meant our conversion, or any act of ours.
1. Because the reconciliation here spoken of was the matter of the
apostles' discourses and sermons, and the great argument they used to con-
* Daille, Sermon sur Jean iii. 16.
f Grotius de satisf., cap. 7, p. 143, 146. Owen against Biddle, cap. 29.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 339
vert the world to G-od. If, then, that sense ware true, it would be an imper-
tinent argument, unworthy of those that Christ called out to be the first
messengers and heralds of this redemption. The sense of their discourse
would run thus : God hath already converted you, therefore be converted to
him ; as it is nonsense to exhort a man to do that very act which he hath
already done.
2. This reconciliation doth formally consist in the non-imputation of sin
to men. Now this is God's act, not the creature's. ' Not imputing sin '
and ■ forgiving sin ' are the same thing, Rom. iv. 7, 8 ; therefore the recon-
ciliation itself is an act of God. If G-od were to be brought into our favour
as a person offending, we should be said rather not to impute God's supposed
offences to him, and not to charge him with that which was the ground of
our hatred of him.
The apostle tells us that God doth not impute the trespasses of the world
to them emphatically, as Grotius* observes, but he doth to another whom
he had made sin for them : ver. 21, ' For he hath made him to be sin for
us, who knew no sin.' And the apostles were sent about the world to testify
this benefit, that men might give credit to God, and turn to him.
And upon the declaration of this doctrine, that God had in Christ laid
aside his anger for their sins, and having punished another for them, would
not punish them if they embraced by faith what was proposed to them,
they besought men that they would lay aside their enmity against God, as
he declared himself willing to lay aside his enmity against them, and had
testified this by sending his own Son to bear their punishment.
There is a like place with this : Rom. v. 6, 10, ' If, when we were ene-
mies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being
reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.' If Christ died for sinners to make
an atonement for them, it was then to procure God's well-pleasedness with
them, because they had offended him. But if he died to bring God in
favour with us, then his death was an atonement for God, and to expiate
God's offences, who never was, nor can be, guilty of any towards his creature.
But it is evident j the reconciliation there mentioned, as well as in the
text, was antecedent to conversion, and therefore is not the same with the
conversion of the creature.
1. Because otherwise the apostle's argument would have little validity
in it, for it proceeds a majori, * much more, being reconciled by his death,
we shall be saved.' If God were so infinitely kind to us as to turn away
his anger from us by the death of his Son when we were yet enemies, how
much more tender will he be of us since he hath taken us into favour,
and we are actually converted to him !
2. The effect of this reconciliation is a saving from wrath by the blood
of Christ : ver. 9, ' Much more, being justified by his blood, we shall be
saved from wrath through him.' Therefore this reconciliation must be- by
appeasing that wrath under which we should otherwise have fallen.
And the effect of it is to have peace with God: ver. 1, 'We have peace
with God ;' whereas, if it were meant of God's being brought into our
favour, it should have been said, God hath peace wdth us, and that God
hath access to us.
3. Justification is the effect and consequent of this reconciliation. And
this Crellius confesseth, \ Juxtificatio est efectus reconciliationis. But this is
the act of God, Rom. iv. 5, Rom. viii. 33.
» Grotius de satisfac, cap. 7, p. 146.
t Grotius de satisfac, cap. 7, p. 143, &c.
\ Kcspon. ad Grotius de satisfac, cap. 7, p. 391.
840 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
4. Reconciliation is here attributed to the death of Christ as a distinct
cause from that of conversion : Rom. v. 10, ' If, when we were enemies, we
were reconciled to God by the death of his Son ;' that is the reconciliatio
impetrata, which in the second expression of our actual or applied recon-
ciliation is ascribed to the life of Christ or intercession, that being the end
for which he lives in heaven, Heb. vii. 25.
5. We are said to 'receive the atonement,' Rom. v. 11, which is the
same with 'receiving forgiveness of sins,' Acts x. 43. But to receive con-
version is a phrase not at all used in Scripture. When a man turns to the
east, no man saith he receives turning to the east. Besides, if it were meant
of bringing God into our favour, it were more proper to say God received
the atonement, and not we.
6. If by reconciliation* were meant our bending our hearts to love God,
there could not be any sufficient reason rendered why the sanctification of
the heart should be laid down by the apostle as the end of this reconciliation,
as it is Col. i. 22, ' Yet now hath he reconciled, in the body of his flesh
through death, to present you holy and unreprovable in his sight.' For
nothing can be both medium and finis sui ipsius, its own end and means too.
By reconciliation is meant the whole work of redemption. The Scripture
hath various terms for our recovery by Christ, which all amount to one
thing, but imply the variety of our misery by sin, and the full proportion
of the remedy to all our capacities in that misery. Our fall put us under
various relations ; our Saviour hath cut those knots, and tied new ones of
a contrary nature. It is called reconciliation as it respects us as enemies,
salvation as it respects us in a state of damnation, propitiation as we are
guilty, redemption as captives, and bound over to punishment. Reconcilia-
tion, justification, and adoption differ thus : in reconciliation, God is con-
sidered as the supreme Lord and the injured party, and man is considered
as an enemy that hath wronged him ; in justification, God is considered as
a judge, and man as guilty ; in adoption, God is considered as a father, and
man as an alien. Reconciliation makes us friends, justification makes us
righteous, adoption makes us heirs.
This verse then represents to us the doctrine of redemption under the
term of reconciliation. In it we have,
I. The principal author and spring of this reconciliation, God.
II. The immediate efficient or the meritorious cause of it, Christ.
III. The subjects, God and the world : ' the world to himself.'
IV. The form of this reconciliation, or the fruit of it : ' not imputing
their trespasses unto them,' not charging them with their crimes.
V. The instrumental cause of actual reconcilement, the ministry of the
word.
The observations we may take notice of are these : —
First, Reconciliation by Christ is the foundation of the regeneration of
nature : ver. 17, 18, ' All things are become new, and all things are of
God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.' The design of
God was to reduce us to happiness, which was not to be done without the
satisfaction of his justice. Christ by his death satisfies that ; in his life is a
model of our sanctification. -God is first the God of peace before he be the
God of sanctification : 1 Thes. v. "23, ' and the very God of peace sanctify
you wholly.' The destruction of the enmity of our nature was founded upon
the removing the enmity in God. There had been no sanctification of our
natures had there not been a redemption of our persons, no more than for
devils, who remain unholy because they remain unreconciled. Besides, since
* Camero, Prselect., p. 142, col. 2.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 341
God hath been at peace with us he will sanctify 'us, that the actual peace
may be preserved by the weeding out the remainders of the enmity in our
natures. It is as he is a God of peace that he conquers any of our spiritual
enemies. He will never engage in the bruising Satan under our feet till he
be our reconciled God in Christ : Rom. vi. 20, * the God of peace shall
bruise Satan under your feet."
Secondly, God doth not act principally as a Creator, but as a reconcilable
God ever since the first promise. All blessings flow from him as standing
in that relation. All his providences in keeping up the world, the fruitful
showers, the enjoyments of the sons of men in the world, are upon the
account of the Mediator, wherein he hath declared himself a reconciling
God. He acts towards the world as a reconciling God, towards believers as
reconciled. He is reconcilable as long as he is inviting and keeps men alive
in a state of probation. But he is not reconciled but to those that accept
of the way of reconciliation which he hath wrought in his Son, and accord-
ing to the methods whereby he wrought it. The relation of a Creator cannot
cease while there is any creature ; but if God should act towards the world
only as Creator, the dissolution of the world had been long ago, because the
law of the creation had been transgressed. But he acts as a ' faithful
Creator,' 1 Pet. iv. 19, as a Creator according to the promise of the new
covenant, which his faithfulness respects.
Thirdly, And that which I only intend, is this,
I. Doct. God is the great spring and author of our recovery. Or God
was principally engaged in the whole undertaking and effecting of our
redemption and reconciliation by Christ. God was the first mover in those
acts whereby the first foundation-stone was laid and the building reared.
All was begun by his order, and managed by his direction and influence :
2 Cor. v. 18, ' All things are of God, who hath reconciled,' i. e. all things
are of God in this reconciling act. The whole Trinity is concerned in it.
Each person acts a distinct part. The glory of contriving is appropriated to
the Father, as he that made the first motion, counselled Christ to under-
take it, sent him in the fulness of time, and bruised him upon the cross,
making his soul an offering for sin. The glory of effecting it is ascribed
to the second person, both in the satisfactory part to the justice of God, and
also in the victorious part, the conquest of Satan. The glory of working the
conditions upon which it is enjoyed, and the applying it, is attributed wholly
to the Spirit. The story of the creation seems to intimate some other work
to be done in the world by God besides that work of creation which God the
Father made at that time : Gen. ii. 2, ' And on the seventh day God ended
the work which he had made, and rested from all his work which he had
made ;' and ver. 3, ' and rested from all the work which God created and
made ; ' thrice repeated, He rested from that work which he had made, he
made no more of that kind and nature. But a rest he could not find ; he
rested from it, but not in it ; there was a work of a nobler strain behind to
be made by him for his rest. He foresaw how soon he should be disturbed
by the entrance of sin ; and though he rested from making any more crea-
tures of that sort, yet he had works of grace to make afterwards, more
wonderful than those of nature. He had a further display to make of his
gracious perfections, which could not be deciphered on the face of that
creation ; but a work there was remaining wherein he intended to bring forth
the glory of his divine excellency which yet lay hid. This is the highest
draught of divine wisdom and goodness ; therefore if the Father created all
things wherein his wisdom and goodness appears in a shadowy manner,
drawn with fainter colours, he would have no less hand in this, wherein his
342 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
wisdom was to appear without a veil, in its full lustre and eternally durable
colours, when this material world shall pass away : Eph. iii. 10, ' A mighty
variety of wisdom,' <ro\w7rbj'xi\o; <so<pia, which delights the Creator and
amazeth the creature ! He would no less have a hand in the second crea-
tion of all things by Christ than he had in the first, since a greater glory was
to redound to him as reconciling than as creating, by how much it is more
excellent to give man a happy being than to give man a bare being. God
is therefore said to be the ' head of Christ,' 1 Cor. xi. 3, as Christ is the
head of man. As man was made to declare the glory of Christ, so is Christ
formed to declare the glory of God. As all influences the members receive
in point of direction and motion are from the head, so all the influences
Christ had were from God, as the head directing and moving him. As the
head counsels what the members act, so God counsels what Christ acts.
God brings forth this Mediator as his divine image, and diffuseth all his per-
fections in and through him before the eyes of men, and thought it a work
too worthy to be contrived by any but himself, and transacted by any but
his Son. God only sent him to make it, and called him back to himself as
soon as ever he had finished it.
We shall consider,
1. What reconciliation is, and wherein the nature of it consists.
2. That God the Father is and must be the prime cause of this.
3. Wherein the agency of the Father appears, and by what acts it is
manifested in this transaction.
4. The use.
1. First, What reconciliation is.
(1.) Reconciliation implies that there was a former friendship. There
were once good terms between God and man ; there was a time wherein
they lovingly met and conversed together. Man loved God and was beloved
by him, till he left his first love and broke out into rebellion against him.
God pronounced all his creatures ' good,' and man at the last * very good,'
with an emphasis. A God of infinite goodness could not hate his creature,
which was an extract of his own image. Man had the law of God engraven
upon his heart, and therefore could not in that state hate God, while he was
guided by that law of righteousness and exact goodness in himself. Thus
was man God's favourite above all creatures of the lower world, styled his
son, Luke iii. 38 ; but how quickly did he prove a parricide, and a quarrel
was commenced between God and him ! Now, reconciliation is piecing up
of a broken amity, and a reglutination of those affections which were dis-
joined. And the miracle of this reconciliation made by God in Christ excels
the former friendship ; that might be broken off, as we find by woful experi-
ence it was. This as to some acts and fruits may be interrupted, not
abolished ; as the beams of the sun may be clouded, but the influence of
the sun cannot be eclipsed. Then God and man were not so closely united
but they might be parted ; now God and the believer are so affectionately
knit that they cannot be separated.
(2.) Reconciliation implies an enmity and hatred, or at least a disgust on
one or both sides. Adam was created in a state of God's favour, but not
long after his creation he apostatised to corruption ; by his creation a child
of God's love, by his corruption a child of God's wrath. While he stood,
he was the possessor of paradise and heir of heaven ; when he fell, God seals
a lease of ejectment, and man becomes an heir of hell ; he turns rebel, and
joins with Satan, God's greatest enemy. God took the forfeiture of his pos-
session, turns him out of house and home, and hinders his re-entrance by a
flaming sword turning every way to keep his fingers off from the tree of life,
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 343
Gen. iii. 24, or hope of felicity upon the former score. Man invaded God's
right of sovereignty, and God, of a sovereign Father, becomes a punishing
judge. Man falls into sin, and wrath falls upon man; sin separated between
God and him, and unsheathed the flaming sword. Thus are heaven and
earth at variance. The hatred is mutual : God hates men, not as his crea-
tures, but sinners ; man hates God, not as God, but as sovereign and judge.
Man turned off God from being his Lord, and God turned off man from
being his favourite ; man vents his serpentine poison against God, God
pours out his wrathful anger on man. On man's part this enmity is by sin;
on the part of God (1.) from the righteousness of his nature, since he cannot
behold iniquity without indignation, Hab. i. 13. As he cannot but love
goodness, so he cannot but hate iniquity, Ps. v. 5, 6. He hates and abhors
all the workers of iniquity. He hates the sins of his saints, though not their
persons ; he hates the persons of wicked men, not primarily, but for their
sin. (2.) From the righteousness of his law made against sin, whereby he
cannot but according to his veracity punish it. His curses must be executed,
his law vindicated, and his justice satisfied; truth and fidelity to his law,
his nature, his justice engageth him. Since there is nothing of the life of
God in us naturally, there can be nothing of the love of God to us ; for what
affection can the Deity have to brutishness, and infinite purity to loathsome-
ness ? Now, there having been such an enmity, man is properly said to be
reconciled. Good angels cannot properly be said to be reconciled, because
there was no difference between God and them. It is a question, because
believers are said to be reconciled, and reconciliation implying a former
hatred, Whether God hated believers before their conversion ? In answer
to this,
[1.] To say God hated them fully before, and loves them now, would
argue a mutability in God, which the apostle excludes : James i. 17, he is
*. the Father of lights,' who is so far from having any real change, that he
hath not ' a shadow ' of it. If he did not love his elect before Christ died
for them, and loves them afterwards, then there is a change in his will ; for
to love them is nothing else but to will eternal life to them, and for God to
hate any is not to will eternal life to be their inheritance. If God did so
hate his elect before Christ's death as to will that they should not inherit
eternal life at all, and after Christ's death did will that they should, his will
would then be inconsistent and changeable. If God chose them from eternity,
he loved them from eternity; if he chose them in Christ as their Head, Eph.
i. 4, he loved them in Christ as their Head ; he could not choose them to
eternal life in those methods without loving them. As he loved Christ the
Head before he died for those that were to be bis members, so he loved those
that were to be his members before they were actually ingrafted in him. As
he loved Christ as Mediator before he was actually sacrificed, so he loved his
chosen ones before they were actually reconciled. When Christ came to re-
concile, he came to do God's will; and when any soul is actually reconciled,
it is not a change in God's will, but the performance of God's eternal will.
[2.] There is a change in the creature, but that doth not imply a change
in God. It is not a new will in God, but a new state in the creature. The
creation adds no new relation or accident, but a change and effect in the
creature. And as the schools generally determine, it is one thing mutare
wokmktteM, another thing velle mutationem ; as a master commands a servant
this work one day, another work another day, the master changeth not his
will, but wills a change in his work; or as some illustrate it, as a physician
prescribes his patient one sort of physic one day, another kind of physic the
next, the physician doth not change his will, but will a change. As a man
344 chabnock's works [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
hath a mind to adopt a poor child to be his son, affection is the ground of
this resolution ; but he lets him for a while run about in rags, and seems
to take no notice of his misery, yet at length takes him, and clothes him,
and adopts him. There is a change in the state of this child, but not in the
affection, the original of it. There was a change in the prodigal when he
returned, but not in the father when he embraced him : ' My son which was
lost is found,' it was a new finding of the son, but not a new affection in the
father.
Well, but how may God be said to love or hate believers before their actual
reconcilation, since he is the author of it '?
[1.] God loves them with a love of purpose. God loves them with a love
of purpose or election, but till grace be wrought, not with a love of accepta-
tion ; we are within the love of his purpose as we are designed to be the ser-
vants of Christ, not within the love of his acceptation till we are actually the
servants of Christ : Rom. xiv. 18, ' serveth Christ,' and is ' acceptable to
God.' They are alienated from God while in a state of nature, and not
accepted by God till in a state of grace. There is in God a love of good
will and a love of delight, amor benevolentia, sen evdoxiag, amor complacentia
seu suuziffriag. The love of good will is love in the root, the love of delight
is love in the flower. The love of good will looks upon us afar off, the love
of delight inns itself in us, draws near to us. By peace with God we have
access to God, by his love of delight he hath access to us. God wills well
to them before grace, but is not well pleased with them till grace. Christ
is the effect of his love of benevolence and compassion to relieve us, which
love ordered Christ as the means, John hi. 16; but Christ is the cause of
that love of friendship wherewith God loves us. A king hath a kindness
for a prisoner in his bolts, and sends some to clothe him ; but he hath no
delight in him to think him fit for his embraces, till he be delivered, both
from his fetters and his filthiness. An elect person is not simply beloved
before his actual reconciliation, because he hath no gracious quality which
may be the object of that love. Neither is he simply hated, for if so, how
could he have any gracious habits infused into him whereby he may be made
the object of delight ? It cannot be denied but that God intends to bestow
supernatural gifts upon those he hath chosen, else wherein doth his love
consist ? And it cannot be conceived how a simple hatred can consist with
such an intention. He loves them to make them his friends, and after
reconciliation he loves them as his friends. It is love in God to make an
object for his love. God loves an object qualified with grace, therefore to
qualify an object so as to make it lovely, argues love in God to that object
he so qualifies ; love in intention before the qualification. Hatred could
never be the foundation and cause of that qualification ; yea, the gift of
Christ, which is the effect, doth suppose the love of God which is the cause.
God indeed was angry with all mankind, but it was an anger mixed with love ;
he was angry, but yet willing to be appeased. A pregnant example of this,
which may give us an understanding of it, we have from the mouth of God
himself: Job xlii. 7, 8, 'My wrath is kindled against thee' (speaking to
Eliphaz), ' and against thy two friends. Therefore take unto you now
seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for
yourselves a burnt-offering.' There is a cloud upon God's face, but his
mercy as the sun peeps out behind the cloud ; as he acquaints them with
his anger, so he shews them the way to pacify it. Though his wrath was
kindled, yet he is not so ready to inflame it as he is to have it quenched by
the means he prescribes them, wherein Job was a type of Christ, whose
sacrifice God only accepts as well as appoints. There is no love of com-
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 345
placency either in the persons or services of any, but as considered in Christ
the reconciler satisfying the justice of God. When an elect person is in-
grafted in Christ, that love which was bubbling in the fountain from eternity
flows out in the streams.
[2.] God doth hate his elect in some sense before their actual reconcilia-
tion. God was placable before Christ, appeased by Christ. But till there
be such conditions which God hath appointed in the creature, he hath no
interest in this reconciliation of God ; and whatsoever person he be in whom
the condition is not found, he remains under the wrath of God, and there-
fore is in some sense under God's hatred.
First, God doth not hate their persons, nor any natural or moral good in
them. Not indeed the person of any creature, for as persons they are his
own work. The creation was good in God's eye at the first framing, and
whatsoever of goodness remains is still affected by an unchangeable Being,
for infinite and unbounded goodness cannot hate that which is good either
naturally or morally. Christ loved that morality he saw in the young man.
God loves their moral qualities, and they are the common gifts of his Spirit,
and qualities wherewith he hath endowed them ; as their primitive natures
were good, so what approaches nearest to that nature hath some tincture of
goodness, and therefore hath some amiableness in the eye of God. But he
took no pleasure in them, neither in their persons nor services, as acceptable
to him, without the Son of his love.
Secondly, God hates their sins. Sin is always odious to God, let the
person be what it will. God never hated, nor ever could, the person of
Christ, yet he hated and testified in the highest measure his hatred of those
iniquities he stood charged with as our surety. The father could not but
hate the practices of a prodigal, though he loved his person. God loves
nothing but himself, and other things as they are like himself, and in order
to himself; therefore God must needs hate whatsoever is contrary to his
immaculate purity, and different from his image. He hates the sins of
believers, though pardoned and mortified ; though his mercy pardons them,
his holiness can never love them ; though the punishment be removed from
the person, yet the nature and sinfulness is not taken from the sin. Much more
doth God hate the sins of his unconverted elect, which are neither pardoned
nor mortified. If he hates sin in its weakness, much more in its strength.
He hates their sins objectively, that is the object of, and the only object of,
his hatred ; their persons terminative, as the effects of his wrath do ter-
minate in their persons. Though sin is the object of God's hatred, as being
a contrariety to his holy law, yet it is not the object of his wrath, but the
person sinning ; actions are not immediately punished, neither can, but the
persons so acting. In that respect God may be said to hate the persons of
men, and of his elect before conversion, as the effects of his wrath do ter-
minate in them.
Thirdly, God hates their state. Though God loves morality in men, yet
that doth not include the acceptation of their persons, or of their moral acts,
or any love to their state. Though Christ loved the young man's morality,
yet he could not love his state, since it was at some distance from the king-
dom of heaven, though not so great a distance from it. The elect before
their conversion are in a state of enmity, a state of darkness, a state of
ignorance, and a state of slavery ; and that state is odious to God, and
makes them uncapable, while in that state, to ' inherit the kingdom of God.'
1 Cor. vi. 9-11, ' Such were some of you,' such sinners, and in such a state
of sin that could not inherit the kingdom of God. A man that hath a love
to a beggarly child, and doth intend to adopt him, he loves his person, but
346 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
hates his present state of nastiness and beggary ; and when he doth actually
adopt him, changeth his state, his relation, and divests him of his filthiness.
The state of the elect before actual reconciliation is odious, because it is a
state of alienation from God ; whatsoever grows up from the root of the old
Adam cannot be delightful to him.
Fourthly, God hates them as to the withholding the effects of his love. We
call the effects of God's grace grace, and the effects of God's wrath urath. So
God may be said to hate an elect person before his conversion, because, being in
that state a child of wrath, the wrath of God abides on him, and the curses of
the law are in force against him. As God is said to repent, when he withholds
those judgments and effects of his anger which he had threatened against a
nation, so God may be said to be angry and to hate, when he pours out
vials of wrath, and also when he withholds the fruits and proper effects of
love.
(3.) Proposition as a caution. Though God be the prime author of this
reconciliation, yet no man is actually reconciled to God till he doth comply
with those conditions whereupon God offers it. ' God was in Christ ' when
he was ' reconciling the world ;' we must be in Christ if we be reconciled to
God : he in a way of direction, we in a way of dependency. Till a man doth
believe, though God hath been reconciling the world in Christ, yet he is not
under the actual peace with God, though under the offers of this peace.
1 The wrath of God abides ' on him, as well as the offers of peace are pro-
posed to him, otherwise what need had the apostle to beseech men to be re-
conciled to God, upon the account that he was in Christ reconciling the world
to himself, if there were not something to be done by us in order to it: ver. 20,
' We pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.' To what purpose
should we be exhorted to lay down our arms, discard our enmity, offer up
our weapons, if nothing were to be done on our parts. It is true, God is in
Christ ' reconciling the world, not imputing their trespasses unto them.' But
to whom ? To all the world without any distinction ? Though the offers are
made to all, yet while men accept not of them, sin will be imputed to the
unbelieving world. Shall we think God will recede from his anger till we
recede from our sins 1 What rebels can be said to be reconciled to their
prince till they observe the conditions in his proclamation ? Christ cannot
present men friends till by faith they are united to him ; for though there be
an accomplishment of the general reconciliation in the death of Christ, yet
there is no benefit accruing to us till full union by faith. Much less can man
be said to be reconciled from eternity ; the apostle cuts off that conceit : Col.
i. 21, ' Yet now hath he reconciled ;' now, not before. If it were from eter-
nity, the Colossians were never enemies to God ; if always reconciled, the
apostle speaks a falsehood, for to be enemies and friends at the same time
implies a contradiction ; to be reconciled from eternity, and yet but now, are
inconsistent. Alas ! we come into the world with the badge of God's wrath
upon us, and our backs turned upon God. The first thing we do is to kick
against him. Reconciliation in the decree is from eternity ; but we cannot
more properly be said to be reconciled from eternity because of that, than
to be created and born from eternity, because decreed to come upon the
stage of the world in time. Reconciliation in the purchase is temporary ; we
were reconciled meritoriously at the time of Christ's death, but no more
actually reconciled than we can be said to be born when Adam was created,
because we were in him as a cause. Reconciliation particular and actual is
temporary ; we have then God appeased towards us, when we can by faith
hold upon his Son upon the cross, and with a hearty sincere faith plead the
wounds made in Christ's sides, the sorrows in his soul as a propitiation for
2f Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 347
sin, an atonement of God's own appointment. It is not sin but the sinner
is reconciled. God will hold an eternal antipathy to sin, as sin doth to God;
God will never be pacified towards' sin, though he will towards the sinner.
He is in Christ reconciling the world, not sin in the world, to himself ; let
none, therefore, build false conceits upon this doctrine. We must dis-
tinguish between reconciliation designed by God, obtained by Christ, offered
by the gospel, received by the soul.
(4.) This reconciliation on God's part in and by Christ is very congruous
for the honour of God, and absolutely necessary for us.
[l.J For the honour of God.
First, For the honour of his wisdom. Had not a mediator been appointed,
mankind had been destroyed at the beginning of his sin, God had lost the
glory of his present works, and his wisdom would seem to lie under a dis-
paragement in publishing a rest from his works and pronouncing them good,
when the very same day (as some think) they should be sullied with an uni-
versal spot, and the choicest part of the lower creation turned back upon
God, and all the other creatures employed to base and unworthy ends, below
their creation and contrary to the honour of their Creator. Without the
appointment of a reconciler, the honour of God in creation had been im-
paired, the creation had been in vain. No creatures could have attained the
true end of their creation, since man, whom they were designed to serve,
had apostatised from the service of his and their Creator ; they could not be
employed by him in that state for the service they were ultimately intended
for.
Secondly, For the honour of his truth and justice. Since God had de-
creed and enacted that whosoever sinned should die, God must either, upon
man's sin, destroy him to preserve his truth and justice, or neglect his own
law, and turn it upside down for the discovery of his mercy. These things
were impossible to the nature of God ; he must be true to himself, just to
his law. If justice then should destroy, what way was there to discover his
mercy. If God should restore man to his friendship without any considera-
tion, where would be the honour of his justice, the firmness of his truth in
his threatening ? The wisdom of God finds a way for the honour of both,
whereby he preserves the righteousness of his law and the counsel of his
mercy, not by changing the sentence against sin, but the person, and laying
that upon his Son as our surety, which we by the rigour of the law were to
endure in our own persons, whereby justice was satisfied with the punish-
ment due to the sinner, and mercy was satisfied with the merit due to our
Saviour.
[2.] Necessary for us. Necessary since all men had breathed in the con-
tagion of Adam, had his corrupt blood, and the poison of the old serpent dif-
fused in their veins ; and being thus enemies to God, became subject to wrath
and the eternal malediction of the law. Necessary at the very first defection ;
had there not been an advocate to interpose, we cannot conceive how, accord-
ing to the methods of the established law, God could have borne one moment
with the world. There was as much necessity for some extraordinary remedy
against the biting of the old serpent as against the bitings of the fiery ones
in the wilderness, which could not be cured by any natural means. They
must have inevitably perished under their venom, and man under his. If
we come to God in ourselves, what are we but as criminals before a judge,
stubble before fire ? God is infinitely good, i. e. infinitely contrary to evil ;
and if to evil, then to us, who think, speak, act nothing but evil. The jus-
tice of God upon man's sin required that man should endure an infinite
punishment ; and because he could not endure a punishment intensely infinite,
318 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
by reason of the limitedness of his nature, as a finite creature, therefore he
was to endure a punishment extensively infinite in regard of duration, whereof
he was capable by reason of the immortality of his soul. Since things stood
thus, the fallen creature could not be restored to felicity till some way were
found out to restore the amity, with a full satisfaction to both, that God
might, without any dishonour to himself and his law, rejoice in his creature,
that the creature might with a firm security rejoice again in God. The
will of God* is an evidence of the necessity of it. Why did God ordain it
if it had not been necessary ? The natural inclination and will of Christ as
man was contrary to it ; for he in the flesh desired this cup might pass from
him. How, then, should the infinite wisdom of God, the infinite affec-
tion to his Son, put him upon that which was so ignominious, and the
infinite wisdom of the Son consent to such an event, without an apparent
necessity ?
2. Second thing. That God the Father must needs be, and is, the
author of this reconciliation.
1. That God must needs be the author of this work. Reconciliation in
all the parts and degrees of it, in all the model and frame of it, is his act*
The first invention of this way, the first proposition, the last execution and
acceptation, owns him for the author. To him we must needs owe the
contrivance, declaration, and accomplishment. If God be the first cause in
all things, he is the first cause in the highest of his works. Nothing comes
to pass in time but what was decreed in eternity, If anything were done
which he did not first know, he were not infinitely wise ; if anything were
done which he did not first will, positively or permissively, he were not
infinitely supreme and powerful. All things are wrought by his counsel,
which is the act of his understanding ; all things are wrought by his will,
which is the act of his sovereignty, Eph. i. 11. By God in Scripture
sometimes is meant the Father, by way of eminency, because he is the foun-
tain of the Deity: Eph. i. 3, 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ.'
(1.) No creature could be the original author of this work.
[1.] All human nature could not first invent it. The whole wisdom of
Moses and the Jewish nation in the wilderness could not find a remedy
against the bitings of the fiery serpents, which indeed were so venomous
that they were absolutely mortal. And if they were the presteres, as the
Greeks call them, which word signifies the same that the Hebrew doth,
bunting serpents, no remedy was found against their venom for many ages
after. In the time of the Romans' f flourishing, the poison suddenly inflamed
the blood, puffed up the skin, disfigured the countenance, deprived them of
the shape of men, with the benefit of life ; an exact representation of the
misery of man by the fall. No remedy could be found in nature against
this evil in the figure, no more can any against the evil represented by it ;
neither the languishing law of nature, nor the sickly philosophy of the
heathens, could ever find a cure. The reconciliation of God to man was too
stupendous a work for the joint wit and wisdom of man to arrive at. Man
was so plunged in the sink of lapsed nature, that he knew not how to desire
it ; so amiable were his dreams of happiness in his rebellion, that he had
no mind to cherish any thoughts of it. He was so furious in his unjust
war against God, that he had no will to accept of any such motion. The
world was filled with all unrighteousness, and men were ' haters of God,'
Rom. i. 29, 30. By all their wisdom they knew him not, 1 Cor. i. 21.
No mind to know God, no will to be at peace with him. Had the wisdom
* Daille, Sermon sar Resarrec, p. 226. t Lucan. Pharsal., lib. ix.
2 Cor. V, 18, 19.J god the author of reconciliation. 349
of the world been sensible of their deplorable condition, could it have con-
trived a way for the glorifying his mercy without invading the rights of his
justice, they might have dreamt of a pardon from his mercy as the supreme
governor. But how would the contentment of his justice, as eminent a per-
fection in God as that of his mercy, and the stability of his truth in his
threatening, have insuperably puzzled them ? The difficulty lay not upon the
point of mercy; every day's sun, and every seasonable shower were rich dis-
coveries of this. But there was no direction in the other case, to be read
in the whole manuscript of nature. The heavens declare the glory of God
as creator, not as reconciler ; they discovered his glory, not any way of en-
trance into it. Had they had thoughts of accomplishing it by a surety
between God and them, where could they have pitched upon one worthy of
God's acceptance ? If they could have found out and proposed one, what
tie was there upon God to accept any other offer for the offenders but to
exact it of their own persons ? What man could have thought of such an
extensive love as the reconciliation, not of one or two particular men, but
of the world, by so strange a means as the death of God's own Son ? We
read, indeed, of some one or two of the heathen philosophers that declared an
impossibility of the world's reformation without God's taking flesh, but
none imagined anything of the death of the Son of God ; no, not the Jews,
but here and there one of their rabbis, long before his coming. Oh the
immense grace of God, to discover that to us in his gospel, which all the
wisdom of fallen nature might have fruitlessly studied to eternity ! As no
man can frame an universal law, accommodated to the several states and
tempers of all the men in the world, and to those notions of fit and just in
the minds of men, but God, who knows what he hath engraven upon men's
minds ; so none but God can know how to find a way of redemption that
may answer the glory of all his attributes, and the pressing urgency of men's
necessities.
[2.] But might not the unblemished wisdom of angels, out of pity to man-
kind, have found out a way of reconcilement ? They knew much more of
God than man ; they knew the wonders of his goodness, yet had seen many
of their own order drop into hell under his wrath. They might know that
the devils, a stronger nature, could not satisfy God for their offence, much
less man, the weaker nature. They would never have stood gazing upon
it with astonishment when it was revealed, had it been so obvious to their
clear and comprehensive reasons. The greatest learning they have in it is
by the church : Eph. iii. 10, ' To the intent that now, unto the principali-
ties and powers in heavenly places, might be made known, by the church,
the manifold wisdom of God.' Objectively, not efficienter. It was a mystery
hid in God, and only in him ; not an angel seems to have had any thoughts
of it till the revelation of it was made to the church. Now, not before ; all
the angels in heaven were ignorant of it, and probably understood not the
meaning of the first promise in paradise till the coming of Christ in the
flesh. Yea, after the revelation, those intelligent spirits have not a perfect
knowledge of the whole scope of the gospel state, for, 1 Peter i. 12, they
* desire to look into ' those things they could never be inventors of, or con-
suiters in, that which they did not understand. Well, then, angels and
men may admire it when revealed, but not before imagine it ; they may ap-
plaud it, but never contrive it. Which of them could presume to nourish
such a thought, that the Father should call out his eternal Son to be a tem-
porary sufferer, to veil his divinity with the rags of an afflicted humanity ?
What, then, was impossible to the approved wisdom of men and angels,
must only be ascribed to the wisdom and grace of God.
350 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
(2.) God the Father mnst needs be the principal in this business.
[1.] The order of the Trinity requires it. There is an order in the opera-
tion as well as the subsistence of the three persons. As the Son is from
the Father in order of subsistence, so the actions of the Son are from the
Father in order of motion and direction. The Son is sent by the Father,
not only as man, but as God; for the Spirit, that hath only a divine
nature, is said to be sent by the Father and the Son. The persons are all
equal : Philip, ii. 6, ' Christ ' thought it no robbery to be equal with God ;'
yet one operation is appropriated to the Father, another to the Son, another
to the Holy Ghost, in regard of order ; and the Father, as he is the fountain
of the Deity, is the fountain of all divine operation. As the sun is the foun-
tain of its beams, so it is the fountain of all the operation of its beams. All
things are of the Father, by the Son. He ' created all things by Jesus
Christ,' Eph. iii. 9. He reconciled us unto himself by Christ, 2 Con v. 18.
All things of the Father as the fountain, by the Son as the medium.
There is a priority of order in the divine paternity upon the account of
generation, and this order is observed in the divine institutions. Baptism
is first in the name of the Father, then of the Son, then of the Holy Ghost,
Mat. xxviii. 19. Now, it is most congruous, that as the Father was the
original of our Saviour's person, so he should be of his office ; as he was
God of his substance, so he should be mediator of his will ; the Father first
sets the copy, after which the Son writes. John v. 19, * The Son can do
nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do, for what things soever
he doth, those also doth the Son likewise.' All operations begin first from
the Father ; this place the ancient fathers understood of Christ as the second
person, not as mediator. If the first motion come from Christ, the order of
working in the Trinity would be inverted ; the Father would then do what he
sees the Son do ; the Son would be the director, the preceder, and the Father
the follower ; the Son would go before in proposal, and the Father follow
after in consent. God would not then be the God of order in heaven.
Besides, the love of the Father would not then be the principal cause of our
redemption, upon which the Scripture everywhere placeth it, but the love of
the Son. Nay, if the authority of constituting the mediator were not in the
Father by way of order, there could be little or no testimony of his love since
the fall of man. To imagine, therefore, any other root of our redemption,
is to contradict the order in the trinity. But this is agreeable to our con-
ceptions of things, as far as we can apprehend such mysteries. The Father
from himself, Christ from the Father, the Spirit from both ; so the Father
contrives this, and is pleased with it, as being the exactest model of his love,
wisdom, and justice, and the highest act of love he could shew to his Son.
The Son consents to it, and is pleased with it, as being the highest act of
love he could shew to his Father, and to men, in being their reconciler, and
to angels in being their head. The Spirit is pleased with gifting him, as being
the greatest demonstration of his power to gift Christ for so great a work,
therefore the Spirit is said to ' rest upon him,' Isa. xi. 2. Not only noting
the continuance of the Spirit on him, but the satisfaction the Spirit should
have in his employment, as much in gifting Christ for it, as Christ in under-
taking and managing the work.
[2.] If the Father were not principal in it, the undertaking a reconciliation
could not of itself be valid.
First, There had been an injury to the Father in undertaking it without
his full consent at least. The Father is the principal party injured, and
was therefore to be consulted with in that which concerned his own right.
He is also the governor of the world. It is not convenient that a public
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 351
work should be undertaken in a nation without the consent of the chief
magistrate, who may else make it frustrate. When princes of equal dignity
are at war, none undertakes the composing of the quarrel, till both parties
accept of the mediation. But here is the supreme Lord of the world and
ungrateful rebels at variance ; the chief governor unjustly wronged. Now,
every man would judge it a presumption for any to offer terms of peace to
his enemies, and undertake the satisfaction of himself without his own con-
sent in the case.
Secondly, The Father could only by right appoint the terms upon which,
and the way whereby, this reconciliation should be made. The Father beiDg
the law-maker could only dispense with his law, and judge what satisfaction
was tit for the vindication of it. The law ran in that strain, that the party
sinning should die. Had the letter of the law been exacted, every man had
been a stranger to salvation ; the right, therefore, of waiving the letter of
the law, while he maintained the reason and substance of it, belonged to the
Father. As the supreme Governor, too, he could only transfer the punish-
ment from the offending party to another that was willing to stand under the
penalty in his stead. Since creation is appropriated to the Father, and sin
entered upon the world immediately after the creation, it was God as a
creator was principally injured. The first sin struck more immediately at
the Father, as creator ; unbelief at the second person, the Redeemer ; and
a despiteful contempt of Christ, after the manifestation of him by the Spirit,
and the motions pressing upon men, is called the sin against the Holy
Ghost. Christ intimates this when he saith, ' They have both hated me
and my Father ; ' i. e. me now, as well as my Father before. Now they
shew a particular hatred to me by unbelief, as well as they have done to my
Father formerly by idolatry. The Father, therefore, only had the right to
appoint the way of reconciliation according to his good pleasure ; since he
was chiefly dishonoured, he is fittest to prescribe the method which he judges
most convenient for the restitution of his honour. As all his attributes were
wronged by sin, so it was fit all his attributes should be glorified in recon-
ciliation of his enemies. It was not fit that glory he is so jealous of should
be entrusted in any hands but by his own will ; and his prescribing all the
ways of vindicating and illustrating it, and the glorifyiDg of himself, was his
end in appointing Christ to this work : Isa. xlix. 3, ' Thou art my servant,
0 Israel, in whom I will be glorified ; ' and the glory of God seems to be
a name whereby Christ is called : Isa. lx. 1, ' The glory of the Lord is risen
upon thee.' Since, therefore, a greater glory was his end in redemption than
barely in creation, he had as much a right to be principal in the miracle of
restoration as in that of creation.
Thirdly, The Father was not obliged, nor could be obliged by any to
entertain any thoughts of a reconciliation. He might, without any prejudice
to his goodness, have demolished this defiled world, and by his power reared
another wherein to shew forth the glory of his immense perfections ; he might
have made good the law upon the person of every sinner, much less was he
bound to accept of any surety ; he might have exacted the satisfaction at the
hands of the criminal before he would have been reconciled. Being sove-
reign, it was at his liberty whether he would be appeased or no towards
rebels. If he was willing to be appeased, he might have chose whether he
would have admitted of any surety to stand in their place. When Beuben
offered Jacob his two sons as a pledge for Benjamin, Gen. xlii. 37, Jacob
was not bound to receive this offer, but at his liberty whether he would take
them or no. Nor was Naboth bound to part with his vineyard for a better
than his own upon Ahab's offer, 1 Kings xxi. 2, 3. No man is bound to
352 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
part with his propriety in his goods, or his right over his prisoner ; but if a
price be agreed upon, he is then bound by the rules of commutative justice
to set the prisoner at liberty.
Fourthly, Therefore if the Son of God himself had been incarnate, and
died for the world without the Father's call and mission, the Father was not
obliged to accept it as the price of our redemption. For all things without
a call are of themselves invalid, and depend only upon the will of the per-
son to whom they are related for their acceptation. God's institution con-
fers validity upon any things. Could the brazen serpent ever have cured the
bitings of the fiery ones had not God fixed it as a remedy ?
Three things go to the establishing the reconciliation : 1. The dignity of
the person reconciling ; 2. The valuableness of the satisfaction he offers ;
3. The call of the person injured, or the acceptation of it.
The two first makes the merit sufficient, the third only makes it accepted.
Had Christ endured all the torments of the cross, the acceptation of him for
us might not have been, had not the Father's constitution of him for that
purpose preceded his undertaking. Though the death of Christ had an
intrinsic value, and therefore was in itself acceptable, yet the consent of the
Father only made it accepted ; he ' made us accepted ' in Christ, Eph. i. 6 ;
therefore our acceptation depends first upon the acceptation of Christ. The
strength, therefore, of it in Scripture is put upon God's well-pleasedness with
him, ' This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' And upon
God's call of him, Eph. i. 9, it was his will, the ' good pleasure of his will,'
and ' purposed in himself ; ' it rose up in his own heart and mind. Though
the satisfaction of Christ derives not its virtue of meriting from the grace of
God, yet it derives its acceptation from the grace of God. The grace of
God, and the merit of Christ, relate to one another as the cause and the
effect, the antecedent and the consequent. The merit of Christ is the cause
of our actual favour with God, but the merit of Christ is not the first spring
of it ; for it is subordinate to the general grace of God, which orders it as a
means of that reconciliation which he purposed in himself. In short, it is
like this case : when a man desires the goods of another, and offers him as
much as they are worth, and more, though what he offers hath an intrinsic
value to compensate the possessor for those goods, whether the person aocept
of that offer or no, yet the acceptation of it depends purely upon his will,
and the sum hath no validity to purchase what is desired without the will of
the present possessor.
First, If the Father had been obliged to receive any satisfaction, it must
be from the person offending. No obligation can be conceived incumbent
upon him to receive it from a person wholly innocent, though it were of
infinite value, because none can transfer over the right of another but he
whose right it is.
Secondly, Had not the Father fully agreed to this, I do not see how
Christ could have made a compensation by his sufferings. Had he
assumed a body, and laid down that body, and courted death, had that been
justifiable without a call ? The humanity of Christ was a creature, and
therefore obliged by the law of nature, as creatures are, to preserve itself.
All men are bound to do so, unless God calls them to lay down their lives,
who is the supreme Lord of life and death. Suppose our Saviour might
have laid down his life intentionally as a compensation for us, what could
he have undergone in his humanity but a temporal death ? Was it not
more we were to suffer ? Was not the wrath of God due to our souls ? The
soul was the chief offender, the soul then ought to be the principal sufferer.
If God therefore had not appointed Christ for those ends, the wrath of God
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 353
could not have been inflicted upon the soul of Christ, for who shouM have
inflicted it ? Had it been just with God to have loaded a person with his
wrath, who was innocent from any actual or imputed crime both in his own
person and transferred from others ? His mere bodily sufferings could not
have been a recompence for the sin of the soul. The order of things fairly
lies thus : man being unable to satisfy God for himself, nor any creature
being sufficient to satisfy God for them, the Father calls the Son to take
upon him the human nature, and by satisfying his justice for sin, restore us
to happiness. The Father's call, and his own voluntary consent, make him
capable of having our sins transferred upon him, and bearing them in his
own body on the tree. And Christ lays it upon the commandment re-
ceived from his Father, together with his own free consent : John x. 18, 4 1
have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again. This
commandment have I received from my Father.' He had an authority to
lay down his life, he had also a promise of restoration of it by his resur-
rection. And to this end he had received, not only an invitation, but a
command, which gave him full authority to die, and a ground also to plead
the validity of it, for the ends designed by it. Therefore had he not
received such a command, he had had no authority to lay down his life ;
no more than Abraham had authority to sacrifice Isaac of his own head, neither
could he have challenged any acceptance of it for man at the hands of Gor1.
Thirdly, The Scripture doth ground the merit of Christ upon the grace of
God. It is called the ' gift of God,' and ' the gift by grace, which by Christ
hath abounded to many,' Rom. v. 15, 16, &c. Some bring this place to
prove the absolute efficiency of Christ's merit, had he laid down his life
without the appointment of the Father, because, as the sin of Adam had
demerit enough to condemn the world, so the righteousness of Christ had
merit enough to save the world. But the question is, whence this merit did
arise ? It did arise personally from Christ himself and the dignity of his
person ; but as to the acceptation, from the Father, which the apostle re-
solves in this place in telling us; it is the grace of God, and the gift of
God, because if Christ's death had a natural power of merit without any per-
cursory agreement between the Father and the Son, it could not be said then
to be the grace of God, for God could not but in a way of justice accept it.
There is a double merit,* absolute, and ex pacto or covenanted merit, — abso-
lute when any good is done to a person, which in the very deed itself
obligeth him for whose good it is done to the benefactor which doth it, as
generation and education are the acts whereby parents merit of their children.
So that, whether children will or no, upon that very account that they are
begotten and brought up they owe everything to their parents ; so creation
being the work of God, the good of the creature, for that very cause every
creature, especially rational, is obliged to God, and God by this act doth
merit all adoration, obedience, and respect from his creature. Covenanted
merit is a work done which doth not in its own nature oblige, but by virtue
of some preceding compact and agreement between the person meriting and
that person of whom he doth merit. As when a king proposeth a reward to
those that run a race, let men run never so well, they have no right to
demand a reward but upon such a declaration of the prince ; and supposing
that edict and declaration, he that runs hath a right to the reward promised
and appointed by the king, but no right to a reward in general. The who1.
right doth rise, not from the race simply considered, but as it respects the
declaration and order of the prince. If we speak of a covenant merit, Christ
* Chamier, torn. iii. lib. ix. cap. 19, 5-11.
VOL. III. Z
354 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
did fully merit at the hands of God eternal salvation, for he fully performed
what was agreed upon ; but if we speak of absolute merit, neither Cbrist
nor any creature could merit anything at the hands of God, or render God
obliged to tbem by a natural right, no more than any man that runs a race
can oblige a king by his swiftness. As the merit of Christ regards us, it is
absolute, for Christ by his very undertaking (supposing he had not had any
agreement with the Father) to deliver us, and appease the wrath of God
against us, he had absolutely merited of us all love and observance, yea,
though he had failed in it ; but he had not merited of God anything for us,
by any undoubted right, but as it respects that agreement between the
Father and the Son. Ps. xvi. 2, ' My goodness extends not unto thee, but
to the saints which are in the earth.' Christ did not add anything to God,
whereby he might absolutely merit of him ; but to the saints he did, whereby
they are for ever obliged to him. Christ did not merit anything for us
at the hands of God but as mediator ; and to this office he was predestinated
by God, and therefore he merited nothing but by that decree. What he did
was from the office of mediator or priest ; and because he was so, therefore
he merited. As when any officers are appointed by the king, whatsoever
they act by virtue of their office has its foundation in, and force from, the
royal authority. His faithfulness whereby he merited hath its validity from
the appointment of him in his offices by God, who, Heb. iii. 2, was ' faith-
ful to him that appointed him.' There had been no honour accruing to him,
and consequently nothing challenged by him, unless he had been called of
God : Heb. v. 4, ' No man takes this honour unto himself but he that is
called of God.' Christ himself owns the Father to be the foundation and
stability of all the salvation he wrought : Ps. lxxxix. 27, ' He shall cry unto
me, Thou art my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation ; also I will
make him my first-born, higher than the kings of the earth.' This is taken
from 2 Sam. vii. 14, and cited, Heb. i. 5, as belonging to Christ, to prove
his dignity above the angels. ' The rock of my salvation,' the strength and
foundation of the salvation I have wrought for men, or alluding to the rock
from whence the waters flowed to the Israelites in the wilderness ; either way
our Saviour owns his Father as the stability of it. This salvation, i.e. not
personal but mediatory salvation.
Thirdly, As it could not have been valid had not the Father been principal
in it, so it must needs be principally from him, because it had not been for
his honour that it should principally have come from another hand. It was
not expedient that we should be redeemed by any but God, both as to the
medium of our redemption and the grand author and contriver of it.* As
God created us for happiness, so we by our own fault revolted from him. To be
restored to that happiness from which we fell is a greater good than simply to
be created, because it is more deplorable to lie under the intolerable vengeance
of an infinite God, than to lie in the depth of nothing. Since therefore
man's happiness doth consist in a blessed immortality, how much more would
man be obliged to him who restores him to his lost happiness, than to him who
created him in a state wherein he might fall to imperfection and misery !
Being God hath given us life, if another should bring us to a better life,
without his interesting himself in it, how much more of tender melting
bowels would he discover in conferring upon us that which is more magnifi-
cent ! And we should be indebted to him for the greater, to the former for
the less. If it were so honourable a thing for his goodness to create us by
himself, it is no less honourable to interest himself in our restoration. It
had been no honour to him to have his work restored to beauty and perfec-
* Vives de vent, fidei, lib. ii. cap iv. p. 355.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.J god the author of reconciliation. 355
tion by any other skill and directions rather than his own. It is as much
for the honour of the Father to appoint a head for the restoring the
world, as he did a head for the increase of it. By that one man which he
appointed, the root of mankind, a blot came upon the world ; it were not
honourable for him to have another head stand up for reinvesting man in
a nobler happiness without his appointment.
Considering that in this work there is a discovery of the dearest love and
profoundest wisdom, therefore the Father, the princip.il person in the Deity,
must needs be the principal author and director, otherwise the principal
glory of these perfections would not belong to the principal person.
Love. If the first motion came not from him, it would represent him a
hard master, negligent of the good of his creature, without bowels, and only
won by the importunities of his Son to have pity towards us. It would re-
present him only with thunders and the Son with bowels; the greatest honour
would redound to the Son, and the Son would deserve more honour than the
Father, whereas the honour upon the account of mediation is equally due to
both : John v. 23, ' That all men should honour the Son, even as they
honour the Father.' The Father is to be honoured for the greatness of his
love, in committing his right of judging to the Son. As the Son is to be
honoured for undertaking, so the Father is to be honoured for sending him.
' He that honours not the Son, honours not the Father which hath sent him.'
The sending Christ is the ground of the honour due to the Father in tho
work of redemption. If the Father were not then the chief author, the
honour of this love of Christ would not redound to him ; it would not be
1 to the praise of the glory of his grace,' as Eph. i. 6, but to the praise of
the glory of the grace of the Son. Herein is the love of the Father, that he
was placable, desirous to be at peace, orders his Son to procure it upon such
honourable terms for himself, and secure in the issue for the creature, that
he might communicate his goodness through a mediation to the polluted and
rebellious world. The love of the Father in this dispensation is as great in
moving it, as the love of Christ was in consenting. Abraham's willingness
to sacrifice his son was a type of this. Christ's death was prefigured in
Isaac, the Father's willingness represented in Abraham.
Wisdom. As goodness was the motive of this reconciliation, so wisdom
was the director. The Father would not be principal in the greatest and
highest notes of wisdom that ever sounded in the ears of men ; the highest
act of wisdom would originally flow from the Son, not from the Father. In
this business he is known to be the only wise God, which attribute Paul
celebrates with an emphasis : 1 Tim. i. 17, ' Now unto the King eternal,
&c, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever,' after he had
spoken of salvation by Christ. No less than the wisdom of God could invent
it. A punishment was due to lapsed man, that justice might not be defrauded ;
an infinite punishment the creature could not bear ; the honour of God
could not be fully vindicated in that way. Man justly owed a satisfaction,
but could not pay it ; nor without that satisfaction could be acquitted by
ju-tice from the obligation to an eternal curse. What but infinite wisdom
could contrive a way for man's deliverance, whereby justice might have the
highest ripht, and mercy the greatest applause ; that the enmity between God
and the creature might be totally demolished, never to break out again ; the
security of the creature established never to be unravelled any more ! The
wisdom of God must then be the arbitrator in this great affair, to compose all
seeming contradictions, and appoint means fully proportioned to the ends
intended. His love would not leave the world to peribh, nor his justice
leave sin without punishment. The one did not consist with his merciful
35G charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
goodness, nor the other with the honour of his law and the immutability of
his sentence. There is a way therefore found in the treasures of his wisdom
to procure peace to the sinner with honour to himself; to reconcile the
sinner without impunity for the sin ; to satisfy both the cries of his justice
and the yearnings of his bowels : the one in the punishment of sin in a
surety, the other in pardoning sin in our persons. That God might be
appeased, and that man might have wherewith to appease him, there is given
to the human nature a new man, greater than a man, which might satisfy for
man, and have that in himself which might exceed all the debt man owed to
God.* This is such a manifold wisdom which must spring from the Father,
and to whom the honour of it is due, as being his eternal purpose which he
purposed in Jesus Christ our Lord, Eph. iii. 10, 11. This being therefore
the highest act of wisdom, must originally arise from the Father, the prin-
cipal person in the Deity, the fountain of all decrees, and therefore of those
wherein the choicest wisdom of the Deity sparkles. How could it be the
praise of the glory of his grace, Eph. i. 6, if he had not concerned himself
in the whole undertaking ? It is hereby that title of the Father of Glory
belongs to him, as he is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ as Mediator,
Eph. i. 17 ; herein shines the glory of his paternity.
2. God the Father is the principal author of this reconciliation.
(1.) The particular style God assumes in the New Testament manifests
it. A title not known in the Old Testament, often in the New, Eph. i. 3,
Eph. iii. 14, 1 Pet, i. 3. In the Old Testament he was called the God of
Israel ; and immediately before the discovery of Christ in the flesh, Zacharias
blesses him under that title : Luke i. 68, ' Blessed be the Lord God of
Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people.' And God in a solemn
manner entitles himself ' the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abra-
ham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.' This was to be his name for
ever, and his memorial to all generations, Exod. iii. 15, because he was a
God settling his covenant with them, and promising the Messiah out of their
loins ; therefore when he was to deliver the Israelites from the Egyptian
bondage according to his promise to Abraham, he entitles himself thus, that
their fathers might respect him in that promise ; and among them he was
chiefly known by this title, and that of ' their God that brought them out
of the land of Egypt,1 and sometimes ' the Lord which created heaven and
earth.' But when the mystery of redemption, hid in God from ages and
generations, was drawn out of his treasury, he appears upon the stage in
another garb, with a new title,f when the spiritual redemption, whereof all
their other deliverances were as types, was wrought. He declares himself
in a new style as ' the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,' because
the seed promised, upon which account he was called the God of Abraham,
was now come, and the covenant of redemption was fully settled with him
and in him ; and so he is called the God of Christ, Eph. i. 174 [!•] Not
in regard of the divine nature, for so Christ is God equal with the Father,
Philip, ii. 6 ; but in regard of his human nature, as he was a creature, and
subject to God as a creature. [2.] In regard of his mediatory office, in
which respect he is his Father's ambassador, sent with a commission, act-
ing according to instructions received from him. In this regard he often
owns that he acted by his Father's authority, that his Father was greater
than himself. [3.] In regard of the covenant between them : in this respect
chiefly he is said to be the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, as he is said to
* Sahund. tit. ii. 2.
t Sanderson's Serm.. part ii. p. 190; Zanch. in Eph. i. 3; Bodius in Eph. i. 3.
J Bodius in loc, p. 148, col. 1.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 357
be the G-od in a special manner to Abraham, Gen. xvii. 7, as being in cove-
nant with him. Christ was in covenant with God several ways: under the
legal covenant, having subjected himself to it, and covenanted to fulfil the
conditions of it ; in the covenant of redemption, wherein it was promised
him to have a seed, and to be the mediator and foundation of the covenant
of grace, the confirmer of it by his death, and interpreter of it, and advocate
for the fulfilling the terms of it, though he was not properly in that under
the covenant of grace himself. And as he is thus the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, he is the ' Father of mercies,' and ' God of all com-
fort to us,' 2 Cor. i. 3. And as he stands in this relation, all spiritual
blessings flow from him to us, Eph. i. 3 ; he is therefore the principal person
to be considered in the work of reconciliation, not only as the party to whom
we are reconciled, but the party by whom the whole plot and model of our
reconciliation was laid, which is effected by the Son, and applied by the Spirit.
(2.) All the spiritual blessings we have by Christ spring from the Father.
Surely, then, reconciliation and redemption, which are none of the meanest
blessings, indeed the visible foundation of all the rest, arising immediately
from election, the secret foundation, and which are indeed the end which
electing love aimed at, these are the corner stone upon which all the rest are
built. What communications could we have from a God implacable ? a God _
not reconciled ? Therefore to God the Father the apostle ascribes all : Eph.
i. 3, « Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath
blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.' If all,
then this ; none are excepted, pardon of sin, endowment with righteousness,
adoption of sons, infusions of grace, participation of the divine nature ;
whatsoever blessings deserve the title of spiritual own the Father as the first
fountain. He adds, ' in heavenly places,' as our translation, or « heavenly
things,' as others ; both amount to the same, all the blessings which respect
our heavenly state. The Father was the authoritative actor in all that Christ
did : John xiv. 10, ' The Father that dwells in me, he doth the works.' As
the power of a prince resides in the ambassador for the performance of those
actions to which he is designed. Whatsoever Christ purchased of the Father,
he purchased by the will of the Father, that he might communicate himself
to us with honour to all his glorious perfections. The Old Testament also
ascribes this to the principal person in the Deity : Hosea i. 7, 'I will save
them by the Lord their God,' or Jehovah their God ; or, as the Chaldee, ' I
will redeem them by the word of the Lord.' He is therefore frequently
called ' the God of peace,' because he is full of thoughts of peace, and is the
fountain of our peace in Christ ; as he is called the God of holiness, because
there is nothing he thinks, nothing he doth, nothing he speaks, but is holy,
and is the fountain of all holiness to his creatures. All that which we have
by Christ is said to be ' the mystery of his will, purposed in himself, accord-
ing to his good pleasure,' Eph i. 9. What was the object of this purpose ?
All those spiritual blessings the apostle had numbered up before, which he
resolved himself to complete and communicate to us by Christ. As all the
motions in the world depend upon the motion of the primum mobile, so all
our blessings upon the motion of God's love. In the communication of
those blessings the Father hath a particular hand ; it is not said only that
Christ is 'made to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,'
but made all those to us of God, 2 Cor. i. 30. And the apostle distinguish -
eth the Father from the Son by this character, ' The Father, of whom are
all things ; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom, are all things,' 1 Cor.
viii. 6. The Father is the first cause, first mover, first contriver of all
spiritual mercies for us: 'of him are all things.' Christ, the only means
358 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
appointed by the Father to work those things for us, and communicate them
to us; therefore it is said, 'by him are all things.' Therefore the whole
work of redemption is often in the Old Testament called God's salvation, and
in the New Testament called ' the will of the Father ; ' and Christ all along
owns it : ' As my Father hath commanded me, so I do.' Even those bless-
ings which follow upon the death of Christ are the issues of the grace of God ;
' the riches of his grace ' is the first cause of forgiveness, Eph. i. 7 ; the free-
ness of his grace, of our justification : Rom. iii. 24, ' Being justified freely by
his grace through the redemption that is in Christ.' Yet those are the
meritorious fruits of Christ's death, much more are the counsels, contriv-
ances, and resolves about this, the acts of his free grace.
(3.) The order and foundation of election discovers it. God chose men
in Christ, Eph. i. 4, which election is there ascribed to the Father. This
was an act of love in the Father, which in no wise falls under the merit ef
Christ. Some things Christ merited, as our reconciliation, justification, &c. ;
some things were purely the acts of God's love, without any merit of Christ,
as election, and the incarnation of Christ, Christ did not merit election, for
he was the first fruit of it ; nor God's purpose of reconciliation, nor his own
mission into the world. Election, then, being the proper act of the Father,
all those means which were ordered for the accomplishing the ends of elec-
tion are of the Father's appointment, for under election doth fall both the
manner and order of that which is to be done, therefore Christ also, who is
the only means of our redemption ; and Christ himself tells us that the love
of the Father did precede his mission, John iii, 16 ; it did therefore precede
his designation. And Peter expressly asserts it: 1 Peter i. 19, 20, 'Who
verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was made
manifest in these last times for you.' For you relates not only to the mani-
festation in the latter times, but to the foreordination of him before the
foundation of the world. Christ was first elected as head and mediator, and
as the corner-stone to bear up the whole building ; for the act of the Father's
election in Christ supposeth him first chosen to this mediatory work, and to
be the head of the elect part of the world. After this election of Christ,
others were predestinated to be conformed to this image of his : Rom. viii. 29,
' Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the
image of his Son, that he might be the first-bom among many brethren ; '
I. e. to Christ as mediator, and taking human nature ; not to Christ barely
considered as God, for, as God, Christ is nowhere said to be the first-bora
among many brethren. This conformity being specially intended in election,
Christ was in the intention of the Father the first exemplar and copy of it.
One foot of the compass of grace stood in Christ as the centre, while the
other walked about the circumference, pointing out one here and another
there, to draw a line, as it were, between every one of those points and
Christ. The Father, then, being the prime cause of the election of some
out of the mass of mankind, was the prime cause of the election of Christ to
bring them to the enjoyment of that to which they were elected. It is likely
that God, in founding an everlasting kingdom, should consult about the
members before he did about the head. Christ was registered at the top of
the book of election, and his members after him. It is called, therefore,
1 the book of the Lamb ; ' Christ was the title and chief subject-matter of
the book. He was first chosen as the well-head of grace and glory, then
others chosen on whom, from, and through him those should be conferred ;
for he hath chosen us in him, that we should be holy, therefore he chose
Christ as the spring to convey this holiness to his elect. The elect were
given by the Father to Christ as mediator. Christ therefore was set up as
2 Cor. Y. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 359
mediator by the Father's pleasure ; his office was settled by the Father be-
fore the gift was bestowed upon him.
(4.) The creation of the world, which is ascribed to the Father, was prin-
cipally intended by him for this end : ' All things were created by him and for
him,' Col. iii. 16. Christ was the means wbereby God created all things, and
the end for which they were created, that he might be head of the elect kingdom
which God intended to establish by him, and discover the perfections of God
in an illustrious manner, and therefore God willed Christ then as the head
of all his works. It was from eternity decreed by God to create a world,
to communicate himself to his creature, and to have a number of elect to
praise him ; therefore he resolved to create man, and endue him with such
faculties, yet mutable.* He knew that everything would work if it were created
in this or that state and condition. He knew the devil would be envious of
man's happiness ; he knew what temptation would assault man, and the full
strength of that temptation, to what degree it would arise, and that man
would sink under his temptation, apostatize from him, engulf himself and
the whole human race in misery, and give him thereby an occasion to lay
open his wisdom, goodness, mercy, and justice ; for God sees all things dis-
tinctly in their true causes, and therefore cannot but know the event of them.
Upon this foreknowledge God appointed a remedy for man, wherein to mani-
fest his perfections in a transcendent manner. And indeed God willed the
creation, and upon that the permission of sin, that he might take occasion
from thence to communicate himself to man in the most excellent manner ;
for he that works wisely doth not only work from foreknowledge, but from a
previous intention ; as when God would make Joseph a prince in Egypt, and
use to that end the envy and ill-will of his brothers, it is not to be thought
that God only, after the foresight of their sin, did will to make Joseph a
prince, but, on the contrary, he would advance Joseph to a prince-like state ;
and therefore did permit his brothers' sin, to use their evil to a good end.
We find all the providences of God concurring since the foundation of the
world, to the bringing forth Christ the head of it ; therefore, the first will
of God in the creation was the advancement of his Son, and founding an
everlasting kingdom under him, because in all wise disposals of things, even
by men, the execution of things answers the intention, and those things which
are last in execution are first in intention. And the Scripture cloth clearly
evidence this, for it speaks of ' a promise of eternal life given to those that
believe before the world began,' Titus LI. He doth not say the decree, but
the promise. This promise was then made by the Father to Christ, for the
constituting this mediatory kingdom ; he is therefore, by this promise, settled
by the Father as head of the creation, and the author of reconciliation;
for it is made to him as the head of the believing world, and as the feoffee in
that for them, for it concerns eternal life. Tn ?«, saith he, i. e. to those that
believe ; and this promise was nothing else but that word which is now mani-
fested through preaching, ver. 3. The whole gospel is built upon this pro-
mise, and is nothing else but the manifestation and result of that negotiation
between them before the beginning of the world. The gospel is nothing else
but this piece of gold beaten into leaf. We cannot rightly understand the
gospel till we understand this transaction, because the gospel is nothing else
but the explication of this first promise of God to Christ. Now these great
acts of election and creation being the acts principally of the Father, and done
for the glory of Christ, and the completing under him an eternal kingdom,
it will follow, that the Father was also principal in all the designs of Christ,
* Amyraut. de la proedestin., chap. vi. p. 62, &c. ; Suarez in 3 part ; Aquin., Disp. v.
5, 2, p. 139, 140.
360 chaenock's works. [2 Cor, V. 18, 19.
and in what lie did. All things are for the elect, the elect for Christ, Christ
for God. The glory of God stands at the top, as the chief end of all : 1 Cor.
iii. 22, 23, 'All are yours, you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. They
were all created for Christ as the immediate end, for God as the ultimate end,
and therefore now ruled and governed by Christ ; and at last the kingdom
shall be delivered up to the Father, that God may be all in all, 1 Cor. xv. 24.
(5.) All the thoughts of God in all ages of the world were about this con-
cern. Christ owns this in his acknowledgment to God ; Ps. xl. 5, ' Many,
0 Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy
thoughts to us-ward ; they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee : if I
would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.'
Some observe that this psalm hath wholly a respect to Christ, by reason of
the different placing the words of the title ; the name of David in the Hebrew
being put before the word psalm, "W3TD 1M7, and rather to be rendered, « To
the chief musician, concerning David, a psalm,' i. e. the antitype of David,
Christ being called David, Hos. iii. 5, Jer. xxx. 9. He that speaks of the
innumerable thoughts or consultations of God about this, is the same person
that speaks, ver. 6-8 ; which words are applied to Christ, Heb. x. 5-7, and
those verses seem to tell us what those counsels of God which appear so
admirable were, viz. about redemption by Christ. To this result did they
all come, that ' Sacrifice thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou prepared
me.' The infinite numberless thoughts of God centre in this one thing, of
making Christ the foundation of the reconciliation intended, and exalting him
thereupon. All the thoughts of God discovered to us in the Scripture refer
to this ; the spirit of prophecy seems to be given chiefly for the publication
of this. This God spake by the mouth of all his holy prophets ever since the
world began, concerning the sufferings of Christ : Acts iii. 18, ' Those things
which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ
should suffer, he hath fulfilled.' Concerning also his exaltation, and the complet-
ing of his kingdom, it was spoken ' by the mouth of all the holy prophets since
the world began,' ver. 21. This thing run so in the mind of God, that he would
have all the mouths of all his prophets filled with it ; and when prophecy
began first to breathe in the world, it was to declare this grace of God. Not
a signal prophecy revealed since the foundation of the world, but there was
something of Christ in it. ' The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,'
Rev. xix. 10. The prophetic Spirit which was from the beginning of the
world, was a witness of Christ, what God bad appointed him to do ; not one
prophet is excepted, Luke i. 70, Acts x. 43. And therefore the Spirit is
sometimes more large in those stories or passages which were types or de-
clarations of Christ, than in other things ; as in Abel's death by Cain,
when nothing is spoken of the death of the other children of Adam. How
lively and largely is the story of Joseph, a type of Christ in his sufferings
and advancement, represented ; David's flights, and his ascent to the crown ;
Solomon's temple, the particular description and punctual delineation of the
Jewish ceremonies, all relating to this ; the story of Jonah upon record,
when many other prophecies were lost, chiefly as a type of his death in the
belly of the whale, and of his resurrection in being cast out upon dry land,
after three days' lying in the pit. The law and the prophets appear two
distinct things at the first sight, as Moses and Elias at Christ's transfigura-
tion appeared distinct from Christ, Mat. xvii. 3, 8 ; but when the cloud was
removed, none but Christ was seen. So law and prophets centre in him,
and his reconciling expiatory death ; they, as it were, disappear, and Christ
appears to be the full sum and scope of them, when we lay our eyes nearer
to the divine mystery. His whole undertaking was enclosed in the types,
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 361
and represented by the prophets. God hath discovered that all his counsels
and thoughts from the beginning of the world were about this, and whenever
he sent any prophetic message, it was a witness of Christ, or had some rela-
tion to him. This may give us an item how we should read the prophets
with an eye to Christ, that our thoughts in reading may agree with God's
thoughts in declaring. So that I think, from these put together, it appears
that the Father is the principal author of our redemption ; that the oi'iginal
of God's favour to lapsed men must spring from his own natural grace and
goodness ; that the death of Christ did not first dispose God to have mercy
on us. The Father's love preceded the gift, and therefore preceded his
resolution concerning the gift. The Scripture makes Christ's death every-
where the effect of God's love ; what is the effect is not the moving cause ;
his first workings of mercy to us were not raised up by the death of the
Redeemer.
III. Third thing. Wherein the agency of the Father in this affair doth
appear. ' God was in Christ reconciling the world.'
1. As choosing and appointing Christ. In which respect he is called,
Isa. xlii. 1, 'the Elect of God,' the servant whom he hath chosen, Isa.
xliii. 10, said to be appointed by him, Heb. iii. 2. He was foreordained in
the decree, designed in the promise, prefigured in the types, predicted by
the prophets. Our Redeemer came forth of the womb of a decree from
eternity, before he came out of the womb of the virgin in time ; he was hid
in the will of God before he was made manifest in the flesh of a Redeemer ;
he was a lamb slain in decree before he was slain upon the cross ; he was
possessed by God in the beginning, or the beginning of his way, Prov. viii.
22, 23, 31, the head of his works, and set up from everlasting to have his
delights among the sons of men. The Father's appointment of Christ is not
to be understood of an appointment to his Sonship, for so he was from eter-
nity begotten ; but to his mediatorship. As he was from eternity the Son of
God by generation, so he was from eternity the Mediator between God and
man by constitution. The one is natural, the other arbitrary. As he was
the Son, he was only God ; as Mediator, God and man. His being a Son is
in order of nature before his being a Mediator ; his being a Son is from
God's nature, his being a Mediator is from God's will. Believers are said
to be begotten sons according to his will, but Christ is a begotten Son
according to his nature, and Mediator according to his will. Christ is a
name of charge and office, not of nature. He had been a Son had he never
been a Mediator, or stepped in for the rescue of the world. All therefore
that Christ did is comprehended in one word, doing the will of God : Heb.
x. 7, ' I come to do thy will, 0 God.' There was an antecedent act of will
in God before there was a subsequent act of will in Christ in order of nature.
It is called therefore the wisdom of God in regard of contrivance, Eph.
iii. 10 ; his purpose in regard of the immutability and peremptoriness of his
will, Eph. i. 9 ; the pleasure of the Lord, Isa, liii. 10, in regard of the
delight he took both in the contrivance and resolution, both in the act of his
head and heart.
(1.) He was appointed by the Father to this end, viz. of redemption. God
set him up as a screen between the injured Deity and the offending creature.
It is the scope of the author of the epistle to the Hebrews to manifest that
Christ was designed to be an high priest, te offer sacrifice for men. He was
designed to be a sacrifice, because all other were insufficient, Ps. xl. 6, 7
and he submits to be a sacrifice, for to that purpose he had a body to do th
will of God in. This was God's aim in his first choice ; he was to be th
foundation of the covenant for his people, to bring the prisoners from prison,
862 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
and those that sit in darkness out of the prison-house, Isa. xlii. 1, 6, 7 ; he
intended him as a propitiation for sin : Rom. iii. 25, * Whom God hath set
forth to be a propitiation,' rrgo'skro, purposed (the same word is translated,
Eph. i. 9, purposed), ver. 25, 26 ; 'to declare, I say, his righteousness at
this time, that he may be just, and the justifier of them that believe in
Jesus.' 'I7mgt7jpwv, alluding to the propitiatory under the law, a type of
Christ. He purposed him in his eternal decree to this end, he shadowed him in
the mercy-seat under the law, and afterwards exposed him to public view, to
declare his righteousness in the remission of sin. And because it seems in-
credible, which a wounded conscience especially will hardly believe, the
apostle repeats it again. One would think that justice should lay aside its
demands against the sinner rather than feed on so rich a sacrifice. But
God did, notwithstanding his near relation to him, single him out in his
eternal council from angels and men, intended him in the 'iXaarr^otov, and all
the types of the law, and brought him upon the stage in time to declare his
justice to be as ready to be appeased and save upon that account, as before
it was to damn. He is therefore called the Lamb of God, John i. 29 (in
allusion to the lambs separated for the daily sacrifice), to be offered up to
God for the taking away the sins of the world. It was with respect to the
will of God in this first appointment that he delivered up himself, Gal. i. 4.
He ' gave himself for our sins according to the will of God,' whereby is meant
the Father in the Deity. In the very ordaining him, the Father respected
our glory : 1 Cor. ii. 7, ' Hidden wisdom which was ordained for our glory.'
This hidden wisdom is Christ crucified, as appears in the next verse. Christ
as reconciling by his suffering is the wisdom of God, hidden with him, not
known to the world for many ages. Had God had a mind to remain an
enemy, he had dealt with mankind after that covenant of works which they
had transgressed, and never had deputed a mediator to stand between him-
self and them, to administer things according to the tenor of another covenant.
It was highly represented, Exod. xxiv. 8, when Moses sprinkled the blood of
the sacrifice upon the people, calling it the blood of the covenant. At the end
of this action Moses and Aaron, with his sons and the seventy elders, saw the
God of Israel in a human shape : ver. 10, • There was under his feet as it
were a paved work of sapphire, and as it were the body of heaven in its
clearness.' The sapphire, some tell us, was an emblem of the kingly and
priestly office. Such a representation thare was when he appeared as a man
to Ezekiel, chap. i. 26. Immediately after this typical representation of him
in the sprinkling the blood of the covenant, he appeared to them in a human
form, as the great intended antitype of that type they had been immediately
before celebrating. As the Spirit is appointed to a peculiar office to sanctify,
and therefore is called a ' Spirit of holiness,' and the end of his mission is
to sanctify, Rom. i. 4, so the appointment of Christ was to an office of high
priest and reconciler, and therefore whatsoever he did and suffered belonged
to that office by peculiar designation. He was appointed to be a ' witness to
the people, Isa. lv. 4, 5, a witness of the transcendent love of God, to bring
men to God, that the nations which knew him not might run unto him.
(2.) God appointed him to every office in order to this redemption, to
every degree and circumstance : as a priest, to appease his wrath ; a prophet,
to declare his mercy ; a king, to bring men to the terms of reconciliation.
He was appointed a priest for ever, that wre might draw nigh to God, Heb.
vii. 17, 19 ; God designed him as a prophet, from whom we might receive
his lively oracles, Acts vii. 37, 38 ; God set him up as a king, that those
might be blessed that put their trust in him, Ps. ii. 6, 12. The very cir-
cumstances were appointed by God : that he should be born of a virgin ; the
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 363
place where, Bethlehem ; of the Jewish race ; of the rojal line of David,
and that when it was decayed and sunk to poverty and misery, ' a rod out
of the stem of Jesse,' Isa. xi. 1, a 'root out of a dry ground,' Isa. liii. 2 ;
and the Jews never questioned the royalty of Christ's extraction. The time
of his coming was fixed in Jacob's prophecy about the time of the fall of the
Jewish government, Gen. xlix. 10, before the ruin of the second temple,
Mai. iii. 1, after seventy weeks of years from the time of Daniel's pro-
phecy. What was figured in God's opening Adam's side to form a spouse ;
in the death of righteous Abel by the hands of his brother Cain ; in Isaac,
under the edge of the knife upon mount Moriah, and raised to be a blessing
to the world ; in Joseph in the pit and prison, and afterwards on the throne,
to deliver the church from famine ; in the paschal lamb, killed to save the
sprinkled houses with its blood from the destroying angel, were really ful-
filled in him ; all the circumstances were appointed with a particular designa-
tion of the end of them. The manner of his death was foretold by David :
Ps. xxii. 16, ' They have pierced my hands and my feet.' The manner of
his crucifixion, his burial, resurrection, and prosperity afterwards, the blessing
of men by him , justification by the knowledge of him, were deciphered by Isaiah ,
chap, liii., above seven hundred years before his coming, so exactly, as if
that prophecy had rather been a Gospel writ after his death, since the events
answered so punctually to each prediction. He was promised as a ' Prince
of peace,' Isa. ix. 6, one that should make no noise, appear with no pomp
and grandeur, Zech. ix. 10, send forth the prisoners out of the pit, ver. 11 ;
be ' the peace' himself, Micah. v. 5 ; as a king destroy the empire of the devil,
pour the waters of grace upon the world, Ezek. xxxvi., take away iniquity,
make reconciliation for sin, bring in everlasting righteousness, Dan. ix. 24.
(3.) It was a settled, firm, and irreversible constitution. It was not only
a counsel, wherein wisdom pitched upon it as absolutely the best means for
the creation's standing ; but determinate, wherein it was unalterable : Acts
ii. 23, ' Delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.'
Counsel and foreknowledge are joined, to shew that there was the highest
reason and most resolute will ; not a casual thing or contingency, but an
immutable decree for his reconciling death, fixed after the wisest counsel.
And therefore, in this appointment to this office, God took an oath, and
thereby constituted Christ an irrevocable priest, ' after the order of Melchi-
sedec,' Heb. vii. 21, to bless his people with peace, which oath must refer
to the first appointment of Christ to this office, in order to the making him
a surety of a better testament, ver. 22 ; better, for the preservation of the
honour of God and happiness of man. It was such a constitution that
admitted not of the least alteration or repentance in God ;* an oath which
was not taken for the creation of the world, or the settling of the Aaronical
priesthood. By this oath he declares this constitution to be irreversible. In
this regard he is said to be sealed by God, to shew the perpetuity of this
constitution, as the seal to the book, Kev. v. 1, shews the irreversible cer-
tainty of God's decrees. And therefore his appearance before his incarna-
tion in his glory, as well as after his ascension, was with a rainbow encircling
him, Ezek. i. 28, Rev. iv. 3 ; a sign of an everlasting covenant that God
would no more bring a destroying deluge upon the world, Gen. ix. 16. The
apostle seems to intimate as though this decree and constitution was the
standard of all God's other actions ; the point in which they should all
centre, or the rule which they should be squared by ; for as all our sins met
* HoFea vi. 3, ' His going forth is prepared as the morning ' J1D3, firm, stable, un-
alterable as the covenant of the day, like the sun rising at such a point notwithstand-
ing all the darkness.
364 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
on Christ, Isa. liii. 6, so all God's counsels met in him, Eph. i. 9. The rule
must be perpetual, since all God's works were to be regulated by this counsel.
Speaking of this mystery of his will, which he had purposed in himself, to
gather in one all tbings in Christ, he repeats again, ver. 11, this purpose of
him ' who works all things according to the counsel of his own will.' All
things took birth from this counsel, and were for the perfecting this will.
(4.) God chose him to this work with an high delight, as one fully fit for
the work, in whom he could confide. He ' put no trust in his saints,' Job
xv. 15, for they were in their own nature defectible. Where a man cannot
trust his concerns, he can have no pleasure. The Son of God's undertak-
ing to be the head of the elect, and satisfy for them, was that the Father could
only place his confidence in. This was that which could only be acceptable
to him. He calls him his elect: Isa. xlii. 1, 'HTQ, 'Behold my servant
whom I uphold, my Elect in whom my soul delights.' My tried elect ; the
word signifies, one chosen after serious consideration and trial. God found
none so fit among all the legions of angels, none that could so completely
answer his design for reconciliation ; but upon a full examination of the
whole affair he found him exactly fit for it, and therefore brings him in with
a Be/told, a note of admiration, as one he could rest in ; for so the word
~priN signifies, as well as to uphold. Upon this trial, and upon this con-
fidence, his soul, as it follows, delighted in him. He knew he would be
faithful, and able to perfect it ; some therefore refer Heb. i. 9, ' Thou hast
loved righteousness, &c, therefore God hath anointed thee,' &c, to the first
constitution of Christ. God rested upon the holiness of his nature ; and
that Isa. xlix. 1, ' From the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of
my name,' expresseth (in the judgment of some) the great joy of God in
this mediator. He had my name, as I was constituted mediator, continually in
his mouth. It was his pleasure to be always thinking and speaking of it ;
or it may note the familiar converse between the Father and the Son, con-
cerning this work of redemption. We speak and think much of that wherein
we have the greatest pleasure ; and those words, Pro v. viii. 30, 31, ' I was
daily his delight, rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth,' intimate that
the Son was the daily delight of the Father, as he had placed his mediatory
delights among the sons of men ; as the Father saw all things exactly settled
and governed by the Son, according to his mind and counsel. And there-
fore, when this suretyship of Christ is mentioned, God is pleased to express
himself with a pleasing admiration : Jer. xxx. 21, ' Their governor shall pro-
ceed out of the midst of them, and I will cause him to draw near, and he
shall approach unto me : for who is this that engageth his heart to approach
unto me ? saith the Loi-d ;' shewing the delight of his soul in his own choice,
and his Son's acceptance, in the greatness of his person, and the heartiness
of his undertaking. The word 3"iy signifies to pawn, or be a surety. We
many times express our joy in a mode of admiration ; so is God pleased to
descend to our capacities in expressing his. What is the ground of it ? Ver. 22,
the everlastingness of the covenant : ' And you shall be my people, and I will
be your God.' How may we approach to God with the pleas of Christ in
our mouths, since the Father had so mighty a delight in him ?
(5.) The Father had a particular love to Christ in this appointment, and
highly loved him for his acceptance of it. If he loved his Son's consent to
it, he loved his own proposal of it : John xvii. 24, ' Thou hast loved me
before the foundation of the world ;' which, according to the best interpreters,
respects Christ's person as mediator, rather than his naked deity. The
Father loved Christ as mediator in the first designment, that in him he might
love his elect. Our Saviour prays as mediator ; the love therefore which he
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 365
useth as an argument, was the love of the Father to him as mediator. The
Father's love to him as the second person in the Trinity, had not been
an argument congruous for that petition of his people's seeing his glory ; for
the love of the Father to him in that regard, did not necessarily infer a love
to any creature ; but his love to him as mediator and head doth infer his
love to all his members, and was a suitable argument wherewith to press
him for a glorifying his whole body. Certainly if God loved Christ because
he did ' lay down his life for his sheep,' John x. 17, there must be an high
degree of love to him, because he answered the Father's appointment of him
from eternity, by a voluntary consent. As the act of suffering, so the first
undertaking, draws out the Father's love. The Father loved him before as his
natural Son, he now loves him as the universal head. The Father's loving
him for complying with this appointment, manifests the height of his love to
all his members, for whose sake, next to his own glory, he constituted him
in his mediatory office. Some think that the well-pleasedness of the Father
with Christ for this work was one part of the glory of Christ ; no dcubt it was,
after his performance of it, and is his glory now in heaven. If so, I would thus
understand John xvii. 5, ' Glorify me with thy own self, with that glory which
I had with thee before the world was ;' i. e. testify thyself well-pleased
with my mediation, which was the glory I had with thee as mediator before
the world was. The glory of his deity was not impaired ; that was not there-
fore the glory he prays for. It is a glorifying him with his own self. What
is it, then, but the high affection the Father bore to him ; for what glory can
we conceive to come from the Father to the Son, as mediator, before the
world was, but this ? The argument he uses evidenceth it. Ver. 6, ' I have
manifested thy name,' i. e., I have actually done that, in the undertaking
whereof, 0 Father, thou wert so highly pleased. And ver. 4, 'I have glori-
fied thee on the earth, and finished the work thou gavest me to do.' I have
glorified thee by witnessing that thou art a God placable, full of love, recon-
ciling the world, therefore glorify me. As the glory Christ brought to God
relates to the business of redemption, so the glory he requests of God, which
he had before, more likely relates, not to the glory of his deity, but his glory
as mediator, which is God's mighty pleasure with it, acceptation of his will-
ingness to perform it, and great affection he bore to him thereupon. The
glory of his deity was not a subject to be prayed for ; the glory which he
was by covenant to have after his death and resurrection in his human nature,
was a glory in decree, and by compact, but not actually possessed before his
ascension. But the acceptation of him, and high pleasure in him, as under-
taking to be our surety, was a glory he really had with the Father before the
world was. Nor doth this sense weaken the proof from hence of the deity
of Christ ; for if he were in being before the world was, he was no creature.
How comfortably may we take up the same argument in our mouths as
Christ did here, since the love he bore to Christ, as mediator, before the
world was, did redound to every member of his sons which was to be in
time !
(G.) God doth glory in this contrivance and appointment. With what
daring expressions to all creatures doth God challenge the honour of found-
ing this covenant of love and peace wholly to himself! No creature did so
much as put in his opinion in this counsel, or contribute anything to it, but
he would go away with the whole glory himself: Isa. xlv. 21, ' Tell ye, and
bring them near ; yea, let them take counsel together : who hath declared
this from ancient time ? who hath told it from that time ? have net
I the Lord ? and there is no God besides me; a just God, and a Saviour.'
There is no contriver, no declarer of this but mvself. It is not meant of the
366 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
deliverance from Babylon, as some interpret it, which is evinced by the fol-
lowing verses, to the end of the chapter ; as also verse 17, where it is called
an • everlasting salvation,' which shall admit of no shame and confusion,
world without end ; a salvation that shall last as long as eternity endures.
Well might all the attributes of God glory. How surprising is his love, that
the Holy of holies should so love sinners, the sovereign Monarch justly
jealous of his glory, furious rebels, and unprofitable slaves, as to appoint his
Son for the reconciler and saviour. What motives could there be but misery
to draw out the bowels of his love ! What attractives in ungrateful creatures
lying in their blood ! What arguments could be in our thoughts to plead
with God for so admirable a design ! Justice and mercy are comprehended
as the great things he glories in ; 'just God, and a Saviour.' Wisdom might
glory in the contrivance, and goodness in the appointment of one so strong
to be a sacrifice for propitiation ; to be himself a just Judge, and yet a tender
Saviour (for tbe Father is called Saviour as well as the Son, Titus iii. 4 ;
' the kindness of God our Saviour,' distinguished from Christ our Saviour,
ver. 6). He finds a way to have a valuable satisfaction of his justice, wherein
should be bound up an eternal security to the sinner : a great priest for our
guilt, and a beautiful pattern for our imitation ; justice should triumph in
the punishment, mercy in the redemption, the creature in the fruits redound-
ing from both. How much was his sovereignty glorified in it, which he
seems also to aim at : ' I am a God, and there is none besides me.' His
sovereignty was manifest over all the creation, men and angels were his ab-
solute vassals, there was nothing wanting to declare the highest pitch of it,
when his own Son became a servant ; the Lord of all things became lower
than angels, and as low as the meanest man. Who shall stand out against
his pleasure, since the Son, equal with him, stood not out against his
Father's will ? God doth this of himself, of his own grace ; by himself, his
own wisdom ; for himself, his own glory,
2. God the Father solemnly called him : John x. 36, ' Say you of him
whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest ;
because I said, I am the Son of God ?' Our Saviour mentions a double
act of the Father towards him, separation and mission, a dedication of
Christ to his mediatorship, and then his actual mission. This call is ex-
pressed, Isa. xlix. 1, ' The Lord hath called me from the womb,' which doth
not imply, saith Calvin, that he was but then called, when he came out of
the womb of the virgin, or that the prophet doth define the beginning of
time ; but it is as much as if he had said, Before I came out of the womb,
God called me, and separated me to this office. As Paul speaks of his
separation from the womb, Gal. i. 5, yet he was chosen before the founda-
tion of the world ; and Jeremiah was known before he was formed in the
belly, and sanctified and ordained a prophet before he came out of the
womb, Jer. i. 5 ; so that in this place the prophet introduceth Christ,
speaking of his call to this office after it was formed in the eternal counsel of
God. In regard of this call by God, and his acceptance of it, he is the same
yesterday that he was to-day, and will be for ever. His call to the mediator-
ship was of a higher date than the types of the law, for before Abraham was,
he was, in the call to and actual exercise of his mediatory function ; it was
an argument to prove his former assertion, that Abraham saw his day, and
rejoiced in the sight of it, which would be of no strength if he were not then
known as mediator, by whom God was to be reconciled to man. It is I am,
to shew the constant relation he had to this office : « Before Abraham was, I
am,' mediator, affirming himself here to be the Messiah, according to the
Jews' usual speech, that the law and the Messiah were before the creation
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 367
of the world. The words used to express the call of Christ are of a greater
signification than the word used for the call of Aaron, Heb. v. 4, xaXov/iaog,
as if you should in an ordinary way call a man to you, or call him by his
name ; but ver. 10, speaking of the call of Christ, it is a word of more
weighty signification, ngoeayogtvfclc., solemnly called and pronounced a high
priest.
(1.) God called him to it as an honour: Heb. v. 4, 'No man taketh
this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron. So
also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest ; but he that said
unto him, Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten thee.' Christ glorified
not himself to be made a high priest, but he, i.e. the Father, glorified him,
and bestowed an honour upon him when he called him. The Father thought
it an honour at the time of the call, not that there could be any addition of
honour to the person of Christ as G-od, or as though he had been defective in
honour in being the Son of God and not the mediator, but as the mediatory or
priestly office is an excellent office and honourable employment. Supposing
the incarnation of Christ designed, the mediatory office was the highest
honour could be conferred upon him. What greater glory can there be than
to be placed in such a sphere, wherein he may honour the Creator more
than all besides ! Can there be a greater honour, next to being the Son of
God, than to compensate the injuries God had suffered, and repair the ruins
under which the creature had fallen ; to restore God's honour to him with-
out blemish, yea, with a greater brightness ; like a bloody sun in the even-
ing, rising fairer and fresher the next day ; and happiness to man without a
flaw ; to give God ground to look upon his works with pleasure, and man a
foundation to look upon God with delight ? The honour appears to consist
in being the ' author of eternal salvation,' as it follows, ver. 9. Though this
honour was to cost him dear, yet he was recompensed in the ends of it, the
high satisfaction of God and reparation of the creatures. In which sense
' his reward ' is said to be • with him,' as well as 'his work before him,'
Isa. xl. 10, 11. How is his work his reward ? ' He shall feed his flock
like a shepherd, and gather the lambs with his arm ;' he shall restore God's
chosen ones into his fold. What greater glory than to be a reconciling
mediator, through whose hands all the communications between God and man
were to pass ! Nay, the very calling him to death, and proposing it to him
for such high ends, seems to be a greater honour than his innocence barely
considered, or his exaltation afterwards : * Heb. ii. 9, ' But we see Jesus, who
was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned
with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God might taste death for
every man.'f It would be worth consideration whether this glory and
honour be not meant of the honour of his office, as his being lower than the
angels is meant of his state of humiliation in the world ; and understanding
it so, the words lie very fair before us. If it were understood of his glory
after his sufferings, why should it be added immediately after, ' that he should
taste death for every man ' ? That was not the end of his exaltation after his
death, but his exaltation was the reward of that. But the sense runs cleverly
thus : But we see Jesus, who in his state in the world was lower than the
angels, yet in regard of his office and design had a crown of honour and
glory above them all, in that by the grace of God he was set apart to taste
death for every man ; and by the pursuit of the apostle's discourse, speak-
ing of his perfection by suffering for the destruction of the devil, who had
* Octino, part v., pred. 13, p. 09.
t In the 8th Psalm, whence this is cited, the psalmist considers man in the honour
of his creation, and the apostle applies it to Christ in the honour of his constitution.
368 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
brought death upon mankind, and the making reconciliation for the sins of
the people, the office itself in which he was placed for those great ends may
be well said to be a crown of honour and glory. It was an honourable office
in a state of humiliation, as David's line was an honourable line in a state
of poverty. It was in his death he discovered his virtues, victories, and
triumph. In his death he blazoned out all the perfections of his Father ; he
illustrated his mercy, and shewed how dear the souls of men were to him.
He displayed his holiness, and manifested how odious the sins of men were to
him. What would Christ have been (supposing the union of the second person
to the humanity) if he had not died ? He had not been made perfect, as the
apostle intimates (ver. 10, ' to make the Captain of their salvation perfect
through suffering ') without suffering. He was called by God to suffering,
that he might be perfect as mediator, that the justice of God might as it
were quench its thirst in his blood, and the mercy of God rise out of that
sea of blood, like a rich morning sun ; and perfect also as a pattern, for in
that his humility, charity, patience appeared in the highest manner to the
sons of men for their imitation. God called him to it as an honour, and
placed the very honour of it in the very suffering that death, as well as in
acting afterwards upon that foundation as high priest for reconciling man.
It is inconsistent with the immense goodness of God, to bind his creature
to anything but what is highly conducing to the honour and happiness of
his creature. Much less doth it consist with the goodness of God, and that
infinite affection he bore to his Son, to call him to that which was not an
honour in itself. But this honour of high priest God calls him to, is an
honour next to that of his sonship, which those words intimate, Heb. v. 5,
but ' thou hast said to him, Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten thee,'
as if it were a new begetting him. If it be then an honour in the account
of God for Christ to die for such worthy ends, it is not less an honour to
him to exercise that office, which is so honourable in itself, which is an high
ground of faith and confidence in him, in all our approaches to him, wherein
we do engage him in glorious acts and worthy of him.
2. God counselled him upon this call to undertake it with large proffers :
Ps. xvi. 7, ' I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel.' It was the
same person that blesseth God for this counsel, who saith, ver. 8, that he
had ' set the Lord always before him ;' which words are expressly said by
Peter to be spoken by David concerning him, i.e. Christ : Acts ii. 25, ' I
foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand ;' and so
cites it to the end of the psalm. Christ doth bless God for this counsel, and
set this counsel of God always before him, which I have spoken of in refer-
ence to Christ blessing God for it, before upon another occasion. I now cite
it to evidence that there was a counsel of God to Christ about this affair.
What was that he was counselled unto ? To his sufferings, which are inti-
mated in the following verse ; upon the assurance]that his flesh should rest in
hope, and that his soul should not be left in hell, or the grave, the state of
the dead, and the assurance of the fulness of joy and pleasure which he should
have upon the account of this mediation for evermore. If the Father were
the first mover, that motion was not without an advice to Christ to concern
himself as mediator, and declaring how agreeable it would be to him ; upon
which account, what Christ did and suffered was not only out of a bare
obedience, but an affectionate obedience : ' John xiv. 31, ' That the world
may know that I love the Father.' Therefore, Ps. xl. 8, it is said, ' God's
law *was within his heart,' or within his bowels. It proceeded out of a tender-
ness of affection to satisfy his Father, who was desirous of reconciling man
to him. For in Christ's undertaking, it could not be love to the Father,
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.1 god the author of reconciliation. 869
unless the effect of it, which was reconciliation of man, had been declared by
his Father to be a thing highly pleasing to him, which declaration was as a
counselling Christ to this work. The Father counsels the creation of man :
Gen. i. 20, ' Let us make man ;' no less was the counsel about redemption
the Father's counsel, Let us so make man. The Father counselled him to be
the head and knot of the whole creation, whereby he might rest in it with a
full complacency ; the Son clasped about the Father with love and joy ; the
Father enfolds Christ in the glorious bosom of his counsel ; the Son embraceth
the Father with the arms of an affectionate compliance : a mighty harmony !
The one in proposing, the other in complying, that the glory of God, and the
felicity of the creature, might be completed in an eternal marriage. The
truth is, the manner of the eternal decrees and counsels of God, are to us
finite creatures incomprehensible ; but the Scripture lowers itself in expres-
sions suitable to our conceptions. As God is, in his word, represented to
us with eyes and ears and human members, in a way of condescension to our
capacities, upon the same account are the transactions of God, by such ways
of expression, brought down to our apprehensions. Add to this, Zech. vi.
12, 13, ' The counsel of peace shall be between them both.' Some make
this counsel of peace to be between the two offices, the royal and priestly,
both in conjunction and not interfering one with another, as sometimes they
did in the Jewish state. Others, between the two persons, the Lord, and the
man that is called the Branch. The will of the Father and the Son, as
they are one essence, is one ; as they are two persons, there is the counsel of
both. Counsels seem to belong rather to persons than offices.
3. God gives Christ a particular command concerning our reconciliation
and redemption. God purposing the redemption of man, the uniting his
elect under one head, designing the person, proposing to him the affair, to
be managed in a body ; our mediator, accepting of this constitution, receives
a command to die : John x. 18, ' This commandment have I received of my
Father,' i.e. to lay down his life. Sometimes it is called the will of his
Father. The will of God is called a law, Ps. xl., and the sufferings of Christ
are called obedience : Philip, ii. 8, ' He became obedient unto the death of the
cross.' He was obedient in all things, things antecedent to the cross, and to
the last point. It could not be obedience to the law as a creature, because
he never transgressed it ; and being innocent, and under the covenant of
works, he had not disobeyed, if he had not suffered, because, according to
that covenant of works, he was not bound to suffer ; for being without sin
he might have pleaded his right ; besides, God would never command any
thing against his own covenant.* It must, therefore, be obedience to some
other precept, concerning his mediatory sufferings. And Rom. v. 19, ' As
by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of
one shall many be made righteous.' The obedience of Christ is opposed to
the disobedience of Adam ; therefore, as the disobedience of Adam was
a proper disobedience, opposite to a plain precept, so the obedience of
Christ was a proper obedience, conformable to some precept. A congruous
reason may be rendered for this command, because, as men were destroyed
by disobedience, so they should be repaired by obedience ; and because a
work done in obedience is more perfect in itself and acceptable to God, for
his authority and sovereignty, the righteousness, holiness, and equity of his
iaw is solemnly owned thereby. Some question whether the command laid
upon Christ, as mediator, was a particular precept, or only a revealing of
his incarnation and death as a necessary means for the redemption of man,
* Suarez, vol. lo in 6 Tart; Airuiii. Dispat. A'6, hoc. 3.
VOL. III. , a a
370 ohaenock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
because he had decreed" to accept no other satisfaction. Some think this
latter, and that, upon"God'6 revealing his mind, there presently did arise in
Christ an obligation to undertake this. It is more likely that this affair is
expressed to us under the notion of a call, counsel, command, to shew the
ardency of the Father's affection for man's recovery, in an honourable way,
to himself ; because the Scripture placeth redemption in the Father's love
and grace, as the fountain, and in Christ's love to his Father as well as to
us, as hath been before noted. There was the declaration of the will of the
Father, which was the rule of Christ's acting, as the will of God is the rule
of the Spirit's intercession in us : Eom. viii. 27, ' According to God ;' or as
our translators have it, • according to the will of God.' A rule seems to be
set for the Spirit's acting when he was sent, and a rule set for Christ's acting
when he was called. The Spirit had a rule set, for he was to glorify Christ,
John xvi. 14, and act upon that foundation. This doth not weaken the
voluntariness of Christ in his undertaking, who was ready to comply with the
call, ' and made himself of no reputation, when he became obedient to the
death of the cross.' When this command was given, is not so clear ; but as
the promise was made before the world began, Titus i. 2, so might the pre-
cept be given, before the world began, to Christ, considered as mediator ;
for precepts many times accompany promises, The divine nature, which
undertook the mediatory office, was not in itself capable of a command or a
promise.
Use of these two heads.
1. First, How adorable then is the depth of God's wisdom, and the vehe-
mency of his kindness, to have a remedy ready to apply for the cure of fallen
nature ! God had a salve lying by him for the sore, and provided himself
with a remedy for defeating the designs of Satan. When he came to make
a process against Adam for his disobedience, and pronounce that death which
he had merited, he like a merciful Father declared this appointment of one
that should suffer indignities from Satan, and delivered man from the death
he had deserved.* When he came to expel Adam out of his forfeited paradise,
he assures him of one that should open the gates of the heavenly paradise to
him. He appoints his recovery, as well as charges him with his crime ; and
though he barred the garden against him by a flaming sword, he promises
to readmit him by the 'seed of the woman,' Gen. iii. 15, in whose blood
that sword should lose both its edge and flame, its cutting and scorching
quality. Oh the miracles of divine love ! The law saw us guilty, insolently
taking up arms against him, plunging ourselves into those crimes he had
prohibited, loathing those virtues he had commanded, guilty of millions of
sins, meriting millions of deaths, and the wrath of God, the quintessence of
hell.f Yet how did his bowels work within him, and never ceased till he had
found a way infinitely satisfactory to himself, and infallibly safe for his
creature, whereby his injured attributes are righted, and our offending souls
rendered capable of the happiness they had made themselves unworthy of !
He did this, and did it himself, by a decree incapable of any alteration,
standing like a firm pillar to support man's happiness ; the everlasting foun-
tain of his love and joy were opened at the very thoughts of this admirable
design. He clasped about the mediator with the dearest affections never to
be withdrawn, counselled, commanded, would not grow cool, and faint in the
concern. He drew out of the depths of his infinite wisdom such a model
which makes angels gaze, and believing sinners fall down to the dust in an
humble admiration. He hath appointed the heir of all things to be a "servant
* Pont. Medit. part 2. Medit. 5, p. 207.
t Daille, Serm. sur Jean iii. 16, ser. 8, p. 337, somewhat changed.
2 Cob. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 371
for rebels, the Lord of glory to be a man of sorrows, to pay bis life, more
worth than the lives of all the angels, as a ransom for us ; appointed him to
shed his blood, to preserve ours, and singled him out to feel the sword of his
wrath in his own heart, that we might feel the effusions of his healing balm
in ours. Oh wonderful goodness, to appoint and call out purity to suffer
for impurity, and the innocent for the criminal !
2. Raise pleas in prayer from these considerations. You address your-
selves to the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ ; represent to him his eternal
design, the mark of his love, the centre of his delight. Desire of him that
Jesus, with all his glories, with all his graces. Argue with him, whether be
hath not as much joy to see the fruits of his Son's death, to confer them
upon his lost and sensible creatures, as to call him out for so great a pur-
pose. Spread before him his eternal counsels, open the book of his resolves
about Christ, read every syllable before him ; let your soaring admirations,
and your ardent petitions, keep pace together. How infinitely will the
Father be pleased with such arguments, drawn from his own eternal thoughts
of redemption. If he appointed a mediator for you when you were rebellious, he
will not deny that mediator to you, when you are earnest and bumble suppliants.
His delight will be as much to bestow him upon them that seek him, as it was
to consecrate him for men, when he knew they would spurn against him. He
hath the same thoughts of reconciling mercy, and nothing that he hath done in
order to this doth he yet repent of; he hath sworn when he called his Son, and
will not repent : ' Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.'
Make use therefore of him* as supports of faith, and arguments in prayer.
3. The Father enters into terms of agreement with the Son about the
work and methods of redemption, which is expressed by divines by the term
of a covenant.
A covenant is an agreement of two or more persons, in some common end
pleasing to them both, upon certain articles and conditions voluntarily con-
sented to by both, and to be performed by each party with solemn obliga-
tions. So that in it there are two persons, mutual proposals and conditions,
mutual consent, terminating in one and the same end. Now this covenant
between the Father and the Son was a transaction between them concerning
man's recovery, consisting of articles to be performed by both parties ; some-
thing to be performed by Christ to the Father, something to be performed
by the Father to Christ ; something the Father required of him, something
the Father promised to him. Somef make this covenant to be rather God's
purpose and decree concerning Christ's incarnation and passion, and success
of his suffering, and the issue thereupon, and therefore improperly called
a covenant. I do not stand upon the term, though it seems to be best
represented to our conceptions under the notion of a covenant, and the Scrip-
ture delivers it to us under the form of a treaty and debate, Isa. xlix.
Though the Father, Son, and Spirit have but one will essentially, yet in this
affair they are distinctly considered as two persons, treating and agreeing in
one point upon certain conditions ; or, as+ there was a new habitude of will
in the Father and the Son towards each other, that is not in them essentially,
and it is called new, as being in God freely, not naturally. Such a covenant
is acknowledged by most. Arminius confesseth it to be pretty clear from
Isa. liii. 10, ' When thou sbalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see
his seed, he shall prolong his days,' in his oration tie sacerdotio Christ i.
And some of the greatest Jesuits, as Suarez, Tirinus on Isa. liii. 10, which
is much. For, asserting this covenant, the doctrines of election, efficacious
grace, and perseverance of that seed, are established.
* Qu. ' them '?— Ed. f Baxter, Aphor. Thes. 2. J Dr Owen against Biddlc, cap. 27.
372 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
That there is such a covenant, I shall offer some considerations.
1. As there was a covenant made with the first Adam for himself and
his posterity, so it is very likely there was a covenant made with the second
Adam, for himself and those which were chosen in him. Though this cove-
nant of redemption he not the same with the covenant of grace, yet some-
thing in this covenant of redemption did concern the seed of Christ. Upon
the account of this covenant, God is the God of Christ, Ps. lxxxix. 26, xl. 8,
and Rev. iii. 12 ; you have Christ calling God his God, no less than four
times in that verse. He is a surety of the covenant of grace ; there was then
some other previous treaty whereby Christ entered into terms of suretyship.
2. Christ is said to be faithful, Heb. iii. 2. As obedience implies a pre-
cept, so faithfulness implies a trust, and a promise whereby a man hath
obliged himself to perform that trust, according to the direction given him ;
and Christ is said to trust God, Heb. ii. 13. As a precept is a formal
object of obedience, so a promise is a formal object of trust ; as he had a
command, so he had a promise, both which imply a covenant.
3. Christ's prayer doth in various parts manifest this ; he doth not only
entreat and petition, but he challengeth something as due to him, upon the
account of what he had done ; in John xvii., he seems to run altogether upon
a covenant strain, which must suppose some agreement and promise on the
Father's part. God had not else been obliged to accept what he had done,
nor could our Saviour have challenged it at the hands of God. A claim
implies a promise preceding, annexed to a condition to be done by the party
to whom the promise is made, which being performed, gives a right to
demand the reward. And hence, perhaps, it is that he calls God ' righteous
Father,' appealing therein to the faithfulness of God in this business. And,
indeed, the mediatory covenant seems to me, by that John xvii., to be the
ground upon which Christ builds his whole intercession ; that being a tran-
script of it, and the pleas there being drawn by a strong compact.
4. This treaty is distinctly evidenced, Isa. xlix. 3-6, from which chapter
to the end of that prophecy, there seems to be a continued discourse concern-
ing Christ. 'Christ directs his discourse to the Gentiles, acquainting them
with themanner of this treaty : ver. 1, ' Listen, 0 isles, unto me ; and hearken,
ye people, from far.'
(1.) God calls out Christ by the name of Israel: ver. 3, ' and said unto
me,' i.e. the Lord, ' Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glori-
fied ;' the name of the body being given to the head, as the name of the
head is given to the body. The church in union with Christ the head is
called Christ, 1 Cor. xii. 12, which some think also to be the meaning of
Gal. iii. 16. The promises were made to Abraham and his seed ; ' not to
seeds, as of many, but as of one, and thy seed which is Christ,' Christ mysti-
cal. I will be glorified in thee, as the head of the Jews, to prepare them a
spiritual people for me.
(2.) Christ thinks this too low: ver. 4, 'Then I said,' i.e. he whose
mouth God had made a sharp sword, ' I have laboured in vain, I have spent
my strength for nought ; yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my
work is with my God.' A small income for so great pains an 1 cost. "What,
shall I glorify thee only in Israel ? It is but a little glory thou wilt geu
from so small a handful that will believe in me among them ; however, I
refer myself to thee, 0 Father, and will stand to thy judgment. It is a glori-
ous thing to be the Redeemer of Israel, yet it seems to be too narrow a field
for me to run my race in. Judge of the greatness of my pains ; and though
I shall be in thy eye, though Israel be not gathered, yet consider whether so
great an undertaking will not require a greater reward than a few Israelites.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 373
Thou shalt, 0 Father, be glorified in me, but I foresee that few of the Jews
will embrace my doctrine ; I shall spend my strength, prayers, and blood for
nought, inn 'pun the word used to express the chaos before it was formed
into a world. It will be as a thing without form, a very little part of a new
creation. Christ was at first God's angel to Israel, and before his coming
in the flesh had no other nations, but as some sprinklings of them were
proselyted to the Jews ; and therefore the Gentiles are said, Isa. lv. 5, to be
a people that he knew not, i. e. that he did not actually possess as his pecu-
liar, in that manner as he ruled in Israel, though the providential government
of all nations was committed to him. But after his exaltation in his human
nature, he had the possession of them. Therefore
(3.) Christ then declares God's enlarging his terms : ver. 5, ' My God
shall be my strength ;' which words some take by themselves, as the begin-
nings of God's further grant. My God was my strength ; he added courage
to me by enlarging his gift, which is expressed, ver. 6, ' And he said, It is a
light thing that thou shouldest be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and to restore the preserved of Israel ; I will also give thee for a light to the
Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.' The
word also represents as it were a former sticking in the Jews. It is too low a
thing to take flesh, sweat, labour, and die for one nation ; thou shalt spread
thy tents to the end of the earth, and have the Gentiles for thy possession.
When God saw me ready for so high a work, he did in his treaty extend the
bounds of my power and advantage further. He said the limit3 of Israel
were too narrow, the gain of Israel too light a recompence for so great a
labour. God is brought in here proposing ; Christ grieving at the narrow-
ness of it, yet complying with it. God making a second proposal, wherein
Christ doth acquiesce ; and no further debate is mentioned, after the Gentiles
were cast into his lap. Whereupon some make a double decree, or at least
two parts of the decree of salvation : 1, for the conversion of the Jews ;
2, a decree for the conversion of the Gentiles.
5. The notion of a treaty and covenant is suitable to our conceptions, and
gives us a distinct account of the methods of redemption ; and also of the
ground of the salvation of the fathers, who died before the coming of the
Redeemer in the flesh. In order of conception, the first resolution was this,
that man should be redeemed ; the seeond, by what ways and means this
redemption should be wrought ; and how to make it sure, that there may be
no revolt again. The second person is pitched upon for this undertaking.
We must then conceive his voluntary consent to this, and also some terms
upon which he undertakes it, which is necessary to every action according
to the rules of wisdom. Had not this way of redemption been settled and
stated, the fathers before and under the law could not have been saved; for
they were saved by faith. Faith could not be without a promise ; a promise
could not be without a previous ascertaining the method of redemption. Had
Christ only consented to it at the time of his coming into the world, there
had been no ground of any promise before, because the consent of the Re-
deemer had till that time been uncertain ; but the promise supposeth his
consent positively given, before the promise was made. Again, the cove-
nant of grace is as ancient as the first promise of the seed of the woman.
And since the grace the patriarchs had was communicated by virtue of a
covenant of grace, it implies that there was an agreement between the Father
and the Son ; for it is by this agreement the covenant of grace is established.
Faith in a mediator, the condition of that covenant, supposeth the settlement
of the mediator. We cannot suppose how anything could be bestowed upon
men by virtue of a covenant of grace, before the Redeemer had actually
874 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
merited, without this agreement ; for whatsoever was bestowed, was given
upon the account of that merit to be wrought in time, therefore at least a
promise of so meriting must precede ; as articles of agreement are made
among men, before the sealing of writings and payment of the money, by
virtue of which articles there is some kind of right conveyed. Upon the
account of this agreement, the Spirit was given to some particular men, but
to very few, and in a less measure; for it was not congruous that there should
be as great an effusion of the Spirit before the actual payment required for it,
as after. How this could be without a designation of the person of Christ
to this work of redemption, and a voluntary undertaking on his part, and
how there could be tbis designing and appointing him to it, and his accept-
ing of it, without some terms in the nature of a covenant between the Father
and the Son, cannot so distinctly and easily be conceived by us. But such
a notion as this makes the whole work more obvious to our weak under-
standings.
For a close of this part, I shall direct you to Ps. lxxxix. throughout, where
this covenant is very plainly mentioned ; and the whole contexture of the
psalm discovers the design of it to be, to set forth some higher person than
David ; and seems to be too magnificent and lofty for an eartbly prince. As
ver 2, ' Mercy shall be built up for ever ; thy faithfulness shalt thou establish
in the very heavens.' But how was it established in the heavens ? Ver. 3,
in making a covenant with his chosen, and swearing to David his servant :
' Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all genera-
tions.' Here indeed was faithfulness established in heaven. This will be
more remarkable if the notion of a learned man * of our own be true, that
this psalm was penned in the time of the Israelites' bondage in Egypt, by
Ethan, the son of Zerah, and grandchild of Judah, the son of Jacob, who is
mentioned 1 Chron. ii. 6 ; therefore called Ethan the Ezraite, or of Zerah,
who was the son of Judah. Though there is mention made of Ethan in the
time of David, 1 Chron. xv. 17, 19, and though David be often mentioned in
the psalm, yet, saith he, that was done prophetically. Howsoever it is, the
psalm is understood of Christ by most of our interpreters. And Christ is
several times called David in the prophets, who lived after the time of David.
Why might not David be prophetically mentioned many years before his
birth, as well as Cyrus was by the prophet Isaiah, some years before his ?
Some make this covenant of redemption the same with the covenant of grace.
But they seem to be two distinct covenants.
1. The parties are distinct. In the one, the Father and the Son are the
parties covenanting. In the covenant of grace, God and man. In the me-
diatory covenant, there were two persons equal. In the covenant of grace
there is a superior, God ; and an inferior, man.
2. The conditions are different. Death, and satisfaction for sin thereby,
was the condition of the covenant of redemption. Faith is the condition in
the covenant of grace ; death required on Christ's part, faith required on
man's part. The giving Christ a seed, and eternal life to that seed, is the
condition on God's part to Christ ; the giving eternal life only to the party
believing, is the condition on God's part in the other. So that the reward
in that covenant is larger than the reward promised to us in the covenant of
grace. In the covenant of grace, the condition runs thus, ' Believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.' In the covenant of redemption
the condition runs thus, ' Make thy soul an offering for sin, and thou shalt
see a seed.' The promises of God to Christ, or rather God absolutely con-
sidered in that covenant, was the object of Christ's faith ; God in Christ is
* Dr Lightfoot'ti gleanings on Exod. ix. 2.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. ' 375
the object of our faith in the covenant of grace. Believing in Christ could be
no condition in the covenant of redemption, as it is in the covenant of grace.
Christ must be then the object of his own faith, not his Father's.
3. The time of making these covenants is different. The covenant of grace
was made in time, after man had broke the covenant of works ; the covenant
of redemption was made from eternity. ' I was set up from everlasting, from
the beginning, or ever the earth was ; when there were no depths, I was brought
forth, while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest
part of the dust of the world ; (set up as mediator) rejoicing in the habitable
parts of the earth,' Prov. viii. 24, 25, 31. He rejoiced in angels, the chief
parts of his creation, as God; in the habitable parts of the earth, as mediator.
The revelation of the covenant of redemption was in time, but the stipulation
was from eternity ; the Father and Son being actually in being, and so stipu-
lators. The decree of making a covenant of grace was from eternity, but not
the actual covenant, because there was no soul to covenant with ; as the de-
cree of creating the world was in time, but the actual creation at the begin-
ning of time. The covenant of redemption is expressed, Isa. liii., whence
we can no more conclude, that it was but then made, than we may say, that
Christ suffered then, because his sufferings are spoken of there as already
undergone. It was made when some were given to Christ, and therefore
must be as ancient as election, which was before the foundation of the world.
4. Christ is the mediator of the covenant of grace, Heb. xii. 24, but not
the mediator of the covenant of redemption, but a party. He was the surety
of the covenant of grace, Heb. vii. 22. The covenant of redemption had no
surety ; the Father and the Son trusted one another upon the agreement.
The covenant of grace is confirmed by the blood of Christ ; but we cannot
say that the covenant of redemption was confirmed properly by that blood,
any more than as the shedding of his blood was a necessary article in that
covenant.
5. Christ performed his part in the covenant of redemption ; and by virtue
of this mediatory covenant, performed the covenant of works ; but he did
confirm, not perform, the covenant of grace.
6. By the covenant of redemption, Christ could challenge his reward upon
his own account ; but by the covenant of grace, believers have a right to
the reward only upon the account of Christ. There is an intrinsic worth in
the obedience of Christ whereby he merited, for there was a proportion be-
tween it, in regard of the dignity of his person and the infiniteness of God ;
but there is no intrinsic worth in that grace which is the condition of the
covenant of grace, to merit anything. There was a condition of a valuable
consideration required of Christ, but the condition required of us hath no
valuable proportion to the greatness of the reward. The reward was of debt
to him, because what he performed was by his own strength ; of grace to us,
because what we perform is by the strength of another. And though the
exaltation of Christ is called a free gift, ' He hath given him a name above
every name,' tyapaa.ro, Philip, ii. 9, that is in respect of the whole economy
of the mission of Christ, and the manifestation of him, which is an act of
God's free grace to us. And in his exaltation he is considered as appearing
for us, and receiving from the Father all for our good ; and because it was
an act of free grace to us, to unite the second person in the Trinity to our
flesh.
7. The mediatory covenant respects others in Christ, as well as Christ
himself, viz. his seed, and the giving them a glory. In the covenant of
grace, the promise respects only the particular person that believes ; it re-
gards none else but the particular person answering the terms of that cove-
376 chaenock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
riant. No person can challenge any right upon another's believing, but must
believe himself, if he will be within the compass of the covenant. But
Christ, upon the performance of the condition of the mediatory covenant,
could challenge not only for himself, but for others, and all that were to be his
seed, and were to believe on him to the end of the world, John xvii. 20, 24,
because that covenant respected not only himself, but others, upon those con-
ditions he was to perform; for the redemption, justification, and happiness of
believers are promised to Christ upon the condition of dying, Isa. liii. 11. All
the seed of Christ are in the covenant of redemption before they are regene-
rate, but not actually in the covenant of grace, and under the influence of
the special benefits of it, till they are regenerate ; as all mankind were in the
loins of Adam, but not guilty of his pollution till their natural generation.
8. If the covenant of grace and that of redemption were the same, then
Christ should be both the testator and a party. Christ is the testator of the
covenant of grace, Heb. ix. 16, 17. A testator makes not a will to bequeath
legacies to himself.*
So that these two covenants are distinct ; they agree in the common nature
of a covenant, that there are conditions to be performed, and privileges there-
upon to be enjoyed. But the conditions and privileges are distinct. They
agree in this, that the salvation of the seed is promised in both covenants :
it is promised to the believer upon his faith ; it is promised to Christ in
behalf of the seed upon his s iffering ; and, further, the covenant of redemp-
tion is the foundation of the covenant of grace. In the covenant of grace,
Christ, or God in Christ, is the object of faith. Christ had not been the
object of faith, had not such an agreement between the Father and the Son
preceded. How is Christ the object of faith, but as dying ? What force had
his death had, without some compact between the Father as the principal
party wronged, and the Redeemer as the person satisfying ? The everlast-
ingness of the covenant of grace depends upon the perpetuity of the covenant
of redemption : Ps. lxxxix. 28, 29, ' My covenant shall stand fast with him ;
his seed will I make to endure for ever.' This covenant between the Father
and the Son must be broken, before the covenant of God can fail to a be-
liever. Upon this account Christ is said to be ' given for a covenant to the
people,' Isa. xlii. 6 ; a covenant to the people, i. e. to bring the people into
covenant with me ; as being the foundation of the covenant of grace, upon
which account he is called the peace, Eph. ii. 17 ; as being the foundation
and cause of peace between God and man. And all the promises as esta-
blished by his death are yea and amen in him : they receive their validity
from his death, and his death receives its validity from the covenant of re-
demption. He thereby performing what was required on his part, settled
the covenant of grace between God and us for ever unrepealable, and it had
not its full settlement but in the establishment of this. Upon the account
of this covenant, the right of Christ as a testator bequeathing the inheritance
is grounded, for he could not as a testator bequeath what he had no right
unto. His testament was made by him, not as God, but as mediator by
means of his death, Heb. ix. 15, 16. Therefore, as mediator, he had a right,
which cannot well be supposed without some precedent agreement between
the Father and the Son, because the right originally resided in the Father.
And this covenant of redemption is the ground of our hope and faith : Titus
i. 2, • In hope of eternal life, which was promised before the world began.'
The hope believers have of eternal life springs up originally from that pro-
mise made by the Father to the Son before the foundation of the world ; for
the promises of the covenant of grace were included in this covenant of
* Bulkly of the Covenant, p. 35.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 377
redemption ; and to be made good when Christ made the conditions on his
part in that covenant good. In this agreement, then, God was in Christ
reconciling the world.
(1.) The Father covenants with Christ, that he should undertake for man as
a common head ; to free men from that dreadful condition, wherein God fore-
saw from eternity they would fall upon their creation. Hence he is called
the second Adam, as being a public person ; and as Adam had fallen off
from righteousness to the love of iniquity, and violated the law of God, so
the second Adam, as a head of many fellows, was to ' love righteousness,
and hate iniquity,' Heb. i. 9 ; i. e. vindicate the honour of God, laid pros-
trate by sin, and restore the righteousness of the law. This being rendered
there the ground of his advancement by God as his God, a God in covenant
with him, implies that it was the main article insisted on, and a condition
in the covenant which Christ was to perform. Man was a criminal debtor, the
debt must be paid ; Christ by agreement puts himself in the sinner's stead,
to pay this debt, submit to the revenging arm of justice, and thereby release
the prisoner : Gal. iv. 4, 5, ' He was made under the law, to redeem them
that were under the law ;' as we were under the law, so was Christ to bear
the curse of the law for us, that whatsoever power the law had over us in
regard of its precepts, Christ was to obey ; in regard of its curses he was to
undergo ; and thus undertaking for us, he was to endure the shock of his
Father's wrath, which we sinners are liable to : and, therefore, he is brought
in, offering himself as a surety in our stead : Ps. xl. 7, ' Lo, I come to do
thy will, 0 my God ;' thy covenant- will, as thou art my God ; which will
was our sanctification by the ' offering of his body,' Heb. x. 10. Referring to
ver. 7, and as being instead of us the principal debtors, he calls our sins his
own (ver. 13, ' mine iniquities have taken hold of me') ; as he was our surety,
the debt which a surety engageth to pay being legally his own debt, though
he did not personally incur it by any crime of his own, or receipt of that for
which he stands indebted.
(2.) In order to this, another condition necessarily consequent upon the
other was, that he was to take a body. This debt could not be paid, nor
the articles of the covenant be performed, but in the human nature, the divine
being impassible. He was therefore to have a passible nature, a nature
capable of, and prepared for suffering, Heb. x. 5 ; a body to suffer that which
was represented by these legal sacrifices wherein God took no pleasure, ver. 6.
He was to have a body of flesh, surrounded with the infirmities of our fallen
nature, sin only excepted ; whereupon Christ doth freely comply, ' I come
to do thy will, 0 my God ;' I am come to take such a body, which by thy
will is allotted to me.
(3.) In this body he was to pay a service and obedience to his Father.
After this agreement, whatsoever Christ did in the body falls under the term
of obedience to the mediatory law prescribed him. Hence he is called God's
servant, Isa. xlii. 1, and ' took upon him the form of a servant,' Philip, ii. 7 ;
not as servants were formerly bought with a price, and passed wholly into
the right and dominion of another, but a servant who, by covenant and
agreement, undertakes an employment by the order of another ; for he was
such a servant, that he was also Lord, Heb. iii. 6, Heb. i. 2. This is ex-
pressed, Isa. 1. 5, ' The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebel-
lious.' God constituted him his servant by the opening his ear, according
to the Jewish custom of boring the ear, and he was not in any thing rebel-
lious ; he was to do whatsoever was commanded him to do ; and, therefore,
all the time of his life before his death, he acted an obedience to his Father,
and did nothing but by his Father's command and order: John xiv. 31, ' As
378 charlock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19;
the Father hath given me commandment, so I do.' He stipulated to take
upon him the ' form of a servant,' Philip, ii. 6, 7, which seems to refer to
this agreement ; and, after that, ' was made in the likeness of men,' refer-
ring to his incarnation ; as a man is said to take upon him such a task, when
he hath covenanted to do it.
(4.) In this body he was to die at last ; and, therefore, his dying is said
to be obedience : Philip, ii. 8, ' He became obedient to death, even the death
of the cross ;' his dying, and dying so ignominiously upon the cross, was
obedience ; which implies a command and order to die, and to die such a
death, otherwise it had not been obedience, though it might be termed affec-
tion. This was the chief article of the covenant : Isa. liii. 10, ' When thon
shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed.' D^n is then
the third person, and being feminine, agrees well with &?E3, a feminine noun.
Other translations read it, If he shall make his soul an offering for sin ; or,
rather, according to others, and according to grammar, If his soul shall make
an offering for sin. In this death he was to respect the satisfaction of God's
justice ; for it was not a bare offering, but an offering for sin. God, in im-
posing this article, respected this chiefly, as this was the main end of sending
him to be an 'i\a<s/j,6g : 1 John iv. 10, ' God hath sent his Son to be the
propitiation for our sins.' So it was the main end of this article of dying,
which Christ was to respect in his dying ; for the regarding the end of any
service or command is a principal ingredient in obedience ; by virtue of
which covenant and command thereupon, there was an ought upon Christ :
Luke xxiv. 26, ' Ought not Christ to have suffered those things ?' And a
command, John x. 18, ' I have power to lay down my life ; I have,' e^ovaiav,
1 authority, for I have received a command from my Father.' Hence his
death is said to be determined : Luke xxii. 22, ' The Son of man goes as it
was determined.' In the first giving himself to God, he gave himself as a
ransom, to be testified and brought forth upon the stage in time, wherein his
mediatory office chiefly consisted, 1 Tim. ii. 5, 6. And methinks Christ
doth intimate this laying down his life for his sheep to be the effect of this
mutual agreement between the Father and himself: John x. 15, ' As the
Father knows me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for
the sheep.' It was the effect of their knowledge of one another, not a bare
knowledge, for that might have been without Christ's dying ; but an inti-
mate conjunction of mind, an approbation on both parts. This mind, to
take upon him the form of a servant, was in Christ, Philip, ii. 5, and there-
fore this mind was in his Father, for their minds could not be different ;
there was a mutual knowledge and agreement in the whole affair, and from
this knowledge one of another, did arise the laying down of his life. God
required this sacrifice of Christ, exclusively of all others, in the first treaty,
as to any satisfaction : Heb. x. 5-7, ' Sacrifice and burnt-offering thou
wouldst not ; in them thou hadst no pleasure ; then said I, Lo, I come.' He
pronounced them utterly useless for the satisfaction of justice, though fit to
prefigure the grand sacrifice he intended. And that voice of Christ upon
the cross, ' It is finished,' John xix. 30, seems to refer to this agreement. I
am come to a period on my part, the article on my part is completed, there
remain no more deaths for me to suffer. This seems to be a necessary
article, very congruous to the wisdom of God, as he is creator, governor, and
the end of all things : Heb. ii. 10, • It became him for whom are all things,
and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the
captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.' It became him as a
wise Creator, as a wise Governor, as he is the end of all things, to insist
upon the sufferings of Christ as the fittest means for the attaining, the end he
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 879
aimed at ; for hereby his justice and mercy are glorified. In the perform-
ance, Christ was very exact in every punctilio : ' As they were shewed by the
mouths of the prophets, he so fulfilled them,' Acts iii. 18; and God shewed
them by the mouth of the prophets as they were determined and agreed upon.
The ancient Jews had some prospect of this covenant. One of their writers*
saith, God treated with the Messiah : Righteous Messiah, those who are hid
with thee, are such whose sins in time shall bring thee into grief; thy ears
shall hear reproaches, thy tongue cleave to the roof of thy mouth, thou shalt
be wearied with sorrow. The Messiah answered, Lord of the world, I joy-
fully take them upon me, and charge myself with their torments, but upon
this condition, that thou shalt quicken the dead in their days. God, saith
the rabbi, granted him this, and from that time the Messiah charged himself
with all kind of torments ; as it is written, Isa. liii., 'He was afflicted. 'f
So that the death of Christ was not by a fortuitous rencounter of things, nor
merely by the violence of the Jewish rage, nor from any inability in his
Father or himself to hinder so strange an event, but it was the issue of a
previous agreement, flowing from infinite love, managed by incomparable
wisdom, disposing things to so great an end.
(5.) In regard of what Christ was to do and suffer, the Father makes
excellent promises to him.
[1.] Promises of assistance. [2.] Of a seed. [3.] Of glory.
[1.] Promises of assistance.
First, Promises of a fitness for it. He had the promise of the Spirit to
this purpose : Isa. xi. 1-3, • The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the
Spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and of the fear
of the Lord ; ' to distribute all his gifts to him, in a fulness of measure, in a
fulness of duration. All the gifts of the Spirit should reside in him, as in a
proper habitation, perpetually; as the Deity dwelt in the humanity, and was
never to forsake it. The human nature being a creature, could not beautify
and enrich itself with needful gifts ; this promise of the Spirit was therefore
necessary, his humanity could not else have performed the work it was
designed for. So that the habitual holiness residing in the humanity of
Christ, was a fruit of this eternal covenant. Though the divine nature of
Christ by virtue of its union, might sanctify the human nature, yet the Spirit
is promised him, because it is the proper office of the Holy Ghost to confer
those gifts which are necessary for any undertaking in the world ; and the
personal operations of the Trinity do not interfere. It also might be, because
every person in the Trinity might evidently have a distinct hand in our
redemption.
Secondly, Promises of protection in it. Upon this one stone there were to
be seven eyes, Zech. iii. 10. Seven eyes upon one stone, a special care of him,
and counsel about him. Seven notes multitude ; eyes note intention. Pro-
vidence is signified by eyes in Scripture ; a special providence shall be exer-
cised towards Christ in the whole management of his office, and defence of
his kingdom ; hence, he doth acknowledge that he was under the choice care
of God : Luke ii. 49, 'Wist you not that lam about my Father's business?' I*
roTg tov itar^, among those things my Father takes care of; ' why sought
you me ?' Do you not know that I am the choicest jewel of my Father, and
that he hath his eye upon me ; as one of the cabinet rarities of my Father ?
God promised to hide him in the shadow of his hand, preserve him as a shaft
in his quiver, in the midst of the rage and fury of his enemies. He doth
solemnly promise his omnipotency, all his creating and governing power, to
* R Hadars : Chan, in Gen. i. 1, cited by Mornai, contra Jevfs, chap. vi. p. 163, &c.
Helvic. contra Judoz. Elench. i. in Thes. 43. t Daille.
880 charkock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
hold his haDd in his being for a covenant of the people, and a light of the
Gentiles, till he had brought ' the prisoners from the prison, and them that
sit in darkness out of the prison-house,' Isa. xlii. 5-7. He promises here,
in the loftiest expressions, to strengthen him so, that he should not be dis-
couraged, but see the blessed effects of his undertaking. He would uphold
him tenderly, as a father doth his son in his arms, that no hurt may happen
to him, and that because he had called him in righteousness ; or, as some,
our righteousness, to settle an evangelical righteousness in the earth. He is
said, therefore, to be made strong by God for himself: Ps. lxxx. 16, ' The
Son of man, whom thou hast made strong for thyself;' the King, Messiah,
whom thou hast strengthened for thyself; so the Targum. The title of Son
of man was by way of eminency given to the Messiah in Daniel, and the title
he commonly gave himself in the New Testament. This assistance of Christ
was represented by the ark, which had three coverings, together with tbe
table of shew-bread representing the Church, Num. iv. 8, as a type of a
special protection to both, whereas other consecrated things had but two
coverings.
Thirdly, This assistance was to run through the whole course of his media-
tion. He was to be assisted in his conflict, and in his success, while his soul was
travailing, and while it was triumphing. He should not be discouraged, till
he had « set judgment in the earth,' Isa. xlii. 4. It is a meiosis ; he shall be
mightily encouraged, till he have wrought a perfect deliverance for his people ;
and there shall be a supporting hand under him till he hath completed the
work of redemption. He should stand, and be established, and ' feed in
the strength of the Lord,' Mic. v. 4, • in the majesty of the name of the Lord
his God.' He should gather, rule, and save his sheep in the choicest of God's
strength, as he was his God, i. e. a God in covenant with him, and had
appointed him to be ' the Judge of Israel,' ver. 1, and this, till he should be
1 the peace,' ver. 5, not only laying the corner-stone by his death, but the
top-stone by his exaltation.
Fourthly, Christ was to plead these promises, and encourage himself in them.
He was to plead them : Ps. lxxxix. 26, ' He shall cry unto me, Thou art my
Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.' After the repetition of the
promises of strength and assistance, ver. 19-21, &c, he was enjoined to
put those covenant promises in suit, and then he should be made the first-
born, higher than the kings of the earth, and his covenant should stand fast
with him ; as though God promised him the Gentiles for his possession, yet
he was to ask it, Ps. ii. 8. In this covenant there was an injunction upon
Christ to intercede and plead for himself, and for his people ; so that the
intercession Christ doth manage in heaven for the completing of those pro-
mises, which were formerly in that covenant, or depended upon it (as all the
promises in the covenant of grace do), is an article in that covenant, and
therefore will be kept up till all enemies are made his footstool, and death,
which is the last, swallowed up in victory. Christ encouraged himself in
those promises ; by these God made him hope when he was ' upon his
mother's breasts,' Ps. xxii. 9, and he prophetically pleads them, ver. 10, 11,
' I was cast upon thee from the womb : be not far from me, for trouble is
near.' It was an high satisfaction to him, that he should not be moved,
therefore he set God always before him, Acts ii. 25. In regard of confidence,
and supply of strength, his eye was not upon him in one strait or two, but
in the whole affair, Ps. xvi. 8, 9 ; he had a confidence that God would be at
his right hand, which signifies to be an helper and fellow- champion in fight
for the weakening of his enemies :* it being a metaphor taken from conflicts,
* Rivet in Ps. xvi. 8.
2 CoR. V. 18, 19.] GOD THE AUTHOR OF RECONCILIATION. 381
where he that is at the right hand of his companion doth first expose him-
self to danger, and receiving the enemies' force defends his associate from the
blows. The same expression is used of standing by Christ : Ps. ex. 5, * The
Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings.' How loftily doth he
express his confidence in it : Isa. 1. 8-10, ' The Lord God will help me ;
therefore have I set my face as a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.
The Lord God will help me ; who is he that shall condemn me ? ' and chal-
lenged all the power of earth and hell to contend with him, since he had the
promise of God to justify him. ' My God shall be my strength,' Isa. xlix. 5,
my God in covenant with me. And the apostle brings him in declaring his
trust in God : Heb. ii. 13, and ' I will put my trust in him.' And he
acknowledges that the preservation of his disciples, and consequently all his
people enjoy by him, is through the ' name of his Father,' John xvii. 12.
He acknowledges his powerful assistance in every particle of his work. ' I
have kept them in thy name.'
[2.] Promises of a seed, as the success of his undertaking. He was first in
order to die, and then to see his seed : Isa. liii. 10, 11 , ' When his soul shall
make an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall see the travail of his
soul ; ' his grief and pain shall not be fruitless. He was to have a flock to
guide as a shepherd, members to animate as an head, a spouse to cherish as
a husband, children to breed up as a father, subjects to reign over as a king.
There was a designation of some to him for those relations at this first agree-
ment, which he doth acknowledge as a donative from his Father : John vi. 6,
' Thine they were, and thou gavest them me.' Thine by election and creation,
mine by donation and merit ; they belonged to Christ as God before, though
originally to the Father as the fountain of the Deity ; but now to Christ by
another tie, as mediator, as jewels to be made up by him ; upon the account
of which gift by compact, he calls them his sheep before their actual enfolding,
John x. 15, 16. The promise made to Abraham of the blessing of the nations
iu his seed is said to be made to Christ, Gal. hi. 19 ; ' till the seed should
come, to whom the promise was made, which seed is Christ,' ver. 16. And
some interpret ver. 17, ' the covenant that was confirmed before of God in
Christ,' tig Xgterbv for to Christ, as Eph. i. 5, tig durov for savru, and Col.
i. 20, reconcile all things tig avrbv, to himself; but howsoever, the promise
to Abraham is certainly grounded upon a promise to Christ, that in him who
was Abraham's seed all nations should be blessed; whether that Hos.
xiv. 5, 6, be a promise to Christ, who is called Israel, or rather a promise or
prophecy concerning the church, of the beauty of Christ's seed as a lily, the
firmness as a cedar, and the fruitfulness as an olive.
God promised, 1. A numerous seed. 2. A succession of seed. 3. A
duration of seed.
God promised him a numerous seed, like the dew that falls at the dawn
of the morning in abundance upon the flowers and plants of the earth, Ps.
ex. 3 : ' The dew of thy youth, from the womb of the morning.' Micah v. 7,
As the dew upon the grass. As the poets call the dew the tears of the morn-
ing, so was this the fruit of Christ's tears and blood ; they were upon his
ascension to flock to him from all quarters of the world. He promised to
' bring his seed from the east, and gather them from the west ; he would say
to the north, Give up ; and to the south, Keep not back ; bring my sons from
far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth,' Isa. xliii. 5, 6. And
Isa. liv. 1, ' More shall be the children of the desolate than the children of
the married wife, saith the Lord.' The Rachel of our mystical Jacob, that
had remained so long barren, should be suddenly mother of a numerous train.
Then was our Saviour Israel indeed, one that prevailed with God (as the
382 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
word signifies) to enlarge the lines of his inheritance to the Gentiles. He
was to ' speak peace to the heathens,' Zech. ix. 10. And, according to this
article, God enlarged the tents of the church, so* that twenty-three years
after the publication of the gospel, not only Syria and Arabia, and the bor-
dering provinces on Judea, were full of Christians, but Asia, Italy, Spain,
and the chiefest of the western part. And Tacitus saith, that in tbe eleventh
Year of Nero, which was thirty-one years after Christ's ascension, Rome, the
capital city of the world, swarmed with men professing the name of Christ.
The death of Christ was to be more fruitful than his life, and being lifted up
upon the cross, he was to draw all men after him, and gather a plentiful
harvest of all kindreds, tongues, and nations ; a mighty generation to be new-
born to serve him. He was to be cast into the ground, that seed should
spring up from him, John xii. 24. He was to be dead in reality, as Isaac in
figure, that he might be the everlasting father of many nations. Thus, when
he was on his part to be laid low as a root in the earth, by making his soul
an offering for sin, God, the husbandman of this vine, promiseth to bring
forth a new set, an abundance of branches sprouting up from him. They
should come ' from afar off and build in the temple of the Lord,' Zech. vi. 15.
Gentiles as well as Jews should be knit together as lively stones to rise up
for a temple to the Lord.
God promiseth a succession of seed. ' His name shall be continued
as long as the sun,' Ps. lxxii. 17, P3* filiabitur, his name shall be childed in
him, as the name of a man is continued successively in his posterity. It is
not only one morning that the rich and plentiful dew shall fall from heaven
npon the hearts of men, but successively to the end of the world, as long as
this Sun of righteousness shall rise in any horizon, and the day dawn before
him. Grace shall be dropped upon the hearts of men for a succession of
seed, till in the last generation a period be put to the world. Seed shall be
springing up till the last fire seize upon the world, at which time there shall
be some catched up into the air to meet him, and a generation among the
nations shall be successively blessed in him.
A perpetual seed is promised him. God's covenant shall stand fast
with him, and the issue of that is, that his seed will God make to endure
for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven, Ps. lxxxix. 28, 29. His seed
and throne are coupled together, as if his throne could not stand if his seed
did fail. If his subjects should perish, what would he be king of? If his
members should consume, what would he be head of? The promise of a
perpetual kingdom secures the duration of his seed. This was so consider-
able an article, that in his plea he insists on it more resolutely, and chal-
lenged it with a more vigorous earnestness : John xvii. 24, ' Father, I will
that they also whom thou hast given me be with me,' &c, as he had at the
first treatv insisted upon the enlarging his inheritance among the Gentiles.
He had hitherto been praying only for his own glory, and their preservation
and sanctification in the world. He now brings in an also ; there was an
article for the glory of his seed, as well as for the glory of his person, and
the word also signifies that he would be as earnest for them, and insist as
much upon the performance of this article which concerned them, as upon
that which concerned himself. And the reason rendered signifies thus, ' For
thou lovedst me from the foundation of the world.' Thou didst manifest
thy love to me as mediator before the foundation of the world, in this pro-
mise of a seed, and that they should be perpetually with me to behold my
glory; this was the main article which encouraged Christ to this work, where-
in the Father manifested his love to him as mediator ■ before the world, and
* Daille, Serm. sur Ps. ex. 2, 3, p. 605.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 383
therefore in that rich promise wherein God engageth the majesty of his name
for the strengthening of him, the perpetuity of his seed is ensured : Micah
v. 4, ' He shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of
the name of the Lord his God ; and they shall abide.' Who ? Ver. 3, the
remnant of his brethren that shall return to the children of Israel, the breth-
ren of that ruler in Israel whose goings forth have been from everlasting,
they shall abide. And some thus interpret Isa. liii. 10, ' He shall see his
seed, he shall prolong his days,' i. e. the days of his seed. They shall be per-
petually with him. For it was the pleasure of the Lord in this compact to
give them a kingdom (as Christ tells his disciples) ; and this pleasure of the
Lord should prosper in the hands of the mediator. That which God in his
wisdom aimed at in his Son's sufferings, he aimed at certainly in the calling
him and engaging him by covenant to suffer, and that was the bringing many
sons to glory : Heb. ii. 10, ' It became him, in bringing many sons to glory,
to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.' The end
and the means were becoming propositions for the wisdom of God to make,
and as becoming for the wisdom of God to perform. Since the means have
been fully wrought, the end will be perfectly attained. Christ had those pro-
mises of eternal life made to him as a common head, and a feoffee in trust for
them : Titus i. 2, ' Eternal life was promised before the world began.' Not
for himself, who was the eternal Son of God. Could the promise of eternal
life to his humanity make him take flesh barely for that ? It was promised
to him for his seed, for whose redemption he was to lay down his life as a
ransom. As God made a covenant with Adam, not as an individual person,
but as a nature, he being the representative of mankind, so that if he had
stood, his posterity had stood and enjoyed life; so he made a covenant with
Christ to give eternal life to those that should believe in him, who are as
really in him by regeneration as men are in Adam by natural descent.
To which may be added,
God promised his grace to draw men to him. That this seed should
be sure to him, God promises to prepare men for him : to remove the stony
heart, mollify their hearts, give them hearts of flesh, conquer their carnal
principles and resolutions, and put his Spirit into them, that they might be
a fit progeny for Christ. Christ intimates this in that speech ' None can
come unto me except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him,' John vi. 44.
As the Father's sending him was the issue of a compact between them, so
the drawing any is a fruit of that compact; for Christ removes this from him-
self, as an article to be performed on his part, as that which lay solely upon
his Father's hands, as belonging to him as much as his own mission, and the
particular circumstances of it. And this promise he had, Ps. ex. 2, ' That the
people should be willing in the day of his power.' God ordered him indeed
to call the nations : Isa. lv. 5, 'Thou shalt call a nation which thou knowest
not ; and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee, because of the
Lord thy God ; for he hath glorified thee.' But the vigour which should
spirit them to so quick a race to Christ he reserves to himself; they shall
run because of the Lord thy God ; by his power, as he was the Lord ; by his
faithfulness, as he was his God in covenant ; and the reason rendered is the
glorifying him ; which is both an engagement to Christ to call those his
Father would have him call, and an engagement on the Father to bring the
nations to him. The coming in of nations would redound to his honour ;
and it is likely this is part of the glory Christ prays for, John xvii. 5. He
doth not particularise what that glory was, but some guess may be made by
his falling off from that petition to the praying for his people. The preserva-
tion of them and keeping those that had been given to him (which includes
384 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
the bringing them all in) is part of the glory which was promised to him.
And this glorifying of him in his people he begs for at his Father's hand, as
being by this covenant to be his act. The coming in of nations to him wag
a great part of the glory of Christ promised him in this covenant. The con-
version of every man by the efficacy of grace, is the fruit of the covenant be-
tween the Father and the Son, as God is the Lord God of Christ. And
therefore the calling of us by God is said to be according to his own purpose,
and that grace, which was given us in Christ before the world was, 2 Tim.
i. 9, a promise of grace for us, and of our calling in time, made then. For
what is here called the purpose of God is, Titus i. 2, called the promise of
God, and intimated as a promise in those words, ' given us in Jesus Christ,'
by an agreement with him as our head, as the promise of life upon the cove-
nant of works was given us in Adam as our common head. And so the pro-
mise of taking away the heart of stone, and giving an heart of flesh, may be
said to be promises made to Christ on the behalf of his seed, not of his per-
son ; because, without this taking away the heart of stone, and giving an
heart of flesh, it was impossible the nations, or any man, could be blessed in
him. Notwithstanding that this efficacious grace is from the Father, and by
his Spirit, by the covenant, yet all thus regenerated may well be called the
seed of Christ, because the end of the sufferings of Christ was to merit a
spirit of grace for those that were given to him ; and the Spirit doth nothing
in forming a seed, but what rises up from the merit of Christ's sufferings.
It is the travail of his soul, though the formation of the Spirit. Christ en-
dured the pangs upon the cross for every new creature, though the Spirit
brings it forth into the world. So that they are his seed, as springing up
from the merit of his death, and being animated by the power of his life ;
they are Christ's seed by right of purchase, the Spirit's seed in regard of
operation ; yet as they are the Spirit's seed, they may be called Christ's seed,
because the coming of the Spirit in its plentiful effusion for such an end was
a fruit of his death and his ascension, John xvi. 7. He was sent by him as
the greatest gift of his royalty.
There was something concerned Christ to do in this article of a seed ;
he was to take a special care of them. There was not only a may, but a
must bring : John x. 16, ' Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them
also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice.' He was to call them, and
the Father would draw them, and he was to bring them into one fold with
the Israelites ; and this doth arise from this compact, or the mutual know-
ledge the Father and he had of one another ; the mutual agreement, which
was the cause of laying down his life, ver. 15. Knowing, in God, some-
times signifies election, 2 Tim. ii. 19. God had chosen Christ to this end,
and Christ had accepted of it to this end. These he was to teach, Isa. viii.
16. Those which he calls children, which the Lord had given, are, ver. 18,
called his disciples, among whom he was to seal the law ; whom he was to
instruct in that knowledge of God which was eternal life, and manifest his
name to them, John xvii. 2, 3, 6. And particularly, he was to instruct
them in this great doctrine we are now treating of : ver. 7, ' Now they have
known, that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee' ; which
was indeed the manifestation of the name of his Father, which he had
spoken of, ver. 5, that all things which I do are by thy appointment, order,
and assistance. I have ascribed nothing to myself, but magnified thy love,
as the sole fountain of all that I have done ; which was necessary, for I
doubt many men think the Father to be cruel, and full of hatred to his
creatures, and that he was over-persuaded to redemption by the importunities
of his Son, as a severe prince might be mollified by the supplications of
2 Cor. V. 18, 19. J god the author of reconciliation. 385
his heir. It was not so ; and Christ was to acquaint men with the true
notion of God, and what his thoughts and affections were concerning them,
and to shew him to be a proper object of faith in this business. He was to
use a great tenderness towards them ; he was not only to gather the lambs
with his arm and power, but to carry them in his bosom ; not only to lead
them, but gently to lead them; to have a special care of them, Isa. xl. 11.
When they were given to him, they were given with some rules and orders
how he should manage them, and he was to have his eye not only upon the
flock in general, but upon every one in particular, that as any of them were
weak, he should use them with more gentleness ; take such an one in his
bosom ; he should have seven eyes upon the weakest, as his Father had
upon him the corner-stone. He is therefore said to know his sheep, John x.
14 (every one in particular, as he knows the stars by name) ; otherwise the
foundation of the Lord, this covenant of redemption, which is the founda-
tion of all his proceedings, could not stand sure. The Father knew them
in particular when he gave them to Christ, and Christ knew them in parti-
cular when he received them from him. It seems also that by this covenant
he was to bring every conquering soul to a triumph, and he had power given
him to this purpose, John xvii. 2. In the perfection he promises to them
that overcome, he seems to refer it all to the covenant with the Father: Rev.
iii. 12, he would make them pillars in the temple of his God, write upon
them the name of his God, and the name of the city of his God, which is
new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from his God ; where he
mentions God as his God in every reward he promises the victorious souls
in the church of Philadelphia, four times in that verse, as I have observed
before.
[8.] Promises of a glory upon his suffering. As he was to endure the cross,
so he was also to enjoy a crown. The enduring the cross was an article on
his part, the bestowing a crown was an article on God's part. It was tes-
tified before by the prophets that sufferings should precede, the glory follow,
1 Pet. i. 11. The solemn inauguration into all his offices was after his
making reconciliation ; making an end of sin, bringing in everlasting right-
eousness, and thereby shutting up all prophecy and vision, because all the
prophecies tended to him, and were accomplished in him ; and then as mani-
festing himself the most holy, he was to be anointed, i.e. fully invested
in all the offices of king, priest, and prophet, Dan. ix. 24. The compact
runs thus, Do this, suffer death for the vindication of the honour of my law,
and thou shalt be a priest and king for ever. He could not, therefore, be
solemnly installed till he had performed the condition on his part (for the
promise was made to him considered as mediator, or God-man) ; then it was
that he was advanced, for the ground of his exaltation is pitched wTholly
upon his sufferings : Philip, ii. 9, 'Wherefore God hath highly exalted him,'
i.e. because he became obedient to the death of the cross. God hath given
him a name which is above every name ; and because he loved righteous-
ness, therefore God, as his God covenanting with him, hath anointed him
with the oil of gladness above his fellows, Heb. i. 9, therefore he hath given
him a glory, as a just debt due to the price paid, the sufferings undergone,
and the obedience yielded to the mediatory law. Therefore the glory Christ
prayed for, which he had before the world was, John xvii. 5, may be under-
stood of that glory which he had in promise to be given to him upon the
completing the work he then engaged for. For this covenant was not about
giving him his essential kingdom, for that belonged to him by nature, as he
was God equal with the Father. But the mediatory kingdom belonged to
his office by a particular grant. There were two works of Christ, works of
VOL. III. b b
886 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
humiliation, which were suffering and dying; which were voluntary, not
natural works ; no natural tie upon him as the Son of God to undergo them,
but a moral tie, after agreement and promise. There are regal works which
were conferred on him by his Father, that he should be honoured and adored
in the world as mediator, Heb. i. 6, worshipped by all the angels of God,
when the glory of his deity should be manifested in the humanity, which had
been so long veiled, and had but now and then beamed out ; and this full
shine of the Deity through the humanity was a new mode of glory acquired
by the right of his death.
First, He had a promise of resurrection. As he had a power or authority
by command to lay down his life, so he had a power and authority by pro- .
mise to take it again, John x. 18. His heart was glad, his glory rejoiced,
his flesh had hope in his sufferings ; the ground of which hope was the
assurance from his Father that his soul should not be left in hell, nor his
Holy One (one so holy in the undertaking, and so holy in the execution)
see corruption, but should be reduced again to the path of life more glorious,
and attended with a fulness of joy, Ps. xvi. 10, 11. It is contained in the
promise of seeing his seed ; for if he were to remain dead, how should he
see his seed ?
Secondly, A promise of a royal inheritance. The appointing him in the
human nature heir of all things (Heb. i. 2, ' Whom he hath appointed heir of
all things, by whom also he made the worlds'), which is distinguished from that
power he had over all things by right of the creation of them, as the person
by whom God made the worlds. That power was natural, this by appoint-
ment. The inheritance that belonged to Adam, as the head of the lower
creation, being forfeited by him, was restored to the human nature of
Christ ; which Christ was so pleased with in the first grant, that he esteems
it a goodly heritage, Ps. xvi. 6, which appointing him head and heir of all
things was for the behoof of the church, his spiritual seed : Eph. i. 22,
' The head over all things to the church.'
Thirdly, An extensive power. In heaven as well as earth, Mat. xxviii. 18,
not only to judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations, Micah
iv. 3, but to be the head of principalities and powers. That every knee in
.heaven, and under the earth, as well as in the earth, should bow down to
him, and every tongue should confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God
the Father, who appointed him, Philip, ii. 10, 11. A power over all flesh was
granted to him, and claimed by him, as a glory given him by promise upon
his glorifying of his Father : John xvii. 2, ' Glorify thy Son, as thou hast
given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as
thou hast given him.' A power over the seed of the serpent, the whole flesh
as it stood in opposition to spirit and the interest of the redeemed ones ;
for it was granted to him as a feoffee in trust for the use and behoof of his
seed, and to be exercised by him in subserviency to the eternal happiness of
his people, the great design and fruit of reconciliation. He had power before
his suffering ; for as God saved men upon the promise of his suffering, so
upon the same promise he committed all power of judgment to him ; but
the solemn investiture and publication of it was at his resurrection and as-
cension: Acts ii. 36, ' God hath made that same Jesus whom you have cru-
cified both Lord and Christ.' For the setting him at his right hand in the
human nature was a full declaration and confirmation of the right of that
power which he had acquired by his death; therefore he prays for his glory,
and pleads a deed of gift for it, which was by this agreement, and therefore
desires a full investiture of it, as it had been agreed on first to be asked by
him, and then given by God : Ps. ii. 8, « Ask of me.'
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 387
Fourthly, A perpetual and royal priesthood, Ps. ex. 4. And indeed all the
rights of the first-born, which were the right of government, and the right of
priesthood ; by virtue of which he was to perpetuate the virtue of his ex-
piation, and also purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver,
that they might offer to the Lord an offering in righteousnes, Malachi ii. 2.
Fifthly, An universal victory; the propagation of his kingdom in all parts
of the world. Isa. xlii. 4, 'The isles shall wait for his law;' the conquest of
many hearts by his Spirit, the willingness of people in the day of his power,
the subduing some rebellions by the sword of his mouth, others by the
sword of his arm, when the Lord at his right hand should strike through
kings in the day of his wrath, Ps. ex. 5, 6. At last a conquest of all his
enemies, the devil and death, 1 Cor. xv. 26, which was for the benefit of
his people. He had conquered the devil and death in his person, he was
to have a complete victory over both in his members ; so that we see the en-
couraging promise made him by his Father was the purchase of a seed, and
the glory God promised him was in relation to, and for the advantage of,
that seed, that the reconciliation to be purchased for them might be com-
pletely enjoyed by them. Judge then whether the Father was not signally,
in this agreement in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.
We have handled this covenant, let us see what confirmation there was of
it. On God's part we find an oath. God swears that Christ should be a
priest, Ps. ex. 4 ; he is therefore called the man of God's right hand in the
prayer of the church : Ps. lxxx. 17, ' Let thy hand be upon the man of thy
right hand,' * whether for the hastening the suffering of Christ, or for his
assistance, is uncertain ; the man to whom thou hast sworn with thy right
hand, so the Targum ; the manner of taking oaths being to lift up the
right hand : so Ps. lxxxix. 3, ' I have sworn to David my servant,' when he
made a covenant with him ; though this was spoken to David in the type,
1 Sam. vii., yet, ver. 14, ' I will be his Father, and he shall be my Son,' is
applied to Christ, Heb. i. 5. And he swears by his holiness : Ps. lxxxix.
36, ' Once have I sworn by my holiness, that I will not lie unto David.
His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me.' By
David I understand Christ; once, i.e. once for all, irrevocably, unchange-
ably ; and that by his holiness, by all that will fit him for a governor and
judge of the world., by that holiness which he chiefly aimed to advance by
this undertaking of his Son. As I am an holy God, and desire my holiness
may be trusted by this undertaking, I will stand to my word, by that holiness
which is the beauty of every attribute, without which, neither power, mercy,
justice, nor wisdom could be perfections worthy of a God, as they could not
be if holiness could not be ascribed to every one of them, holy power, holy
mercy, holy justice, and holy wisdom. By his holiness, which comprehends
all his attributes, which would fail, should he violate his oath ; whereby it
appears that thi3 of settling the seed of Christ, was the main article which
God intended, which his heart was set upon, since he assures it by tho
strongest bond of an oath, and an oath by that attribute which was so
necessary to the being of the Deity, without which we can have no concep-
tion of a God. We may conceive God punishing all men by justice, or
pardoning all men by mercy ; but we cannot conceive a God without holi-
ness, for then we conceive a God without the highest perfection belonging
to the Deity, an ungodded God. Now by this seed is not meant Christ the
seed of David, because that David whom he had found as his servant,
ver. 20, must be meant of Christ, by the greatness of the expression which
fullows after, and it is the seed of this David he will make to endure for
* Vid. Muis in he.
388 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
ever, ver. 29 ; ' his seed,' his seed who was the first born. And though the
word of the oath is said to be since the law, Heb. vii. 28, that must be in
regard of the manifestation of it, or rather in order of nature. For in this
covenant God excluded all other sacrifices as insufficient ; the order in the
decree runs thus : first, the creation of man, covenant of works, &c. The
foresight of the violation of that covenant, the insufficiency of other sacri-
fices for expiation, then the settling this grand sacrifice and high priest by
an oath ; for the first call of Christ was upon the inability of other sacrifices
to afford God any pleasure, Heb. x. 5-7 ; i. e. the foresight of their in-
ability. It was confirmed also to Abraham by an oath, that the nations
should be blessed in his seed : Heb. vi. 17, sfjuoirevasv he mediated by
an oath, the tenor whereof was, that as Abraham was willing to offer
his son in a bloody sacrifice to him, so he would offer up his only Son
for Abraham, and all such as should follow his example of faith and
obedience.*
Use of this.
1. We see the main cause of unbelief and despair. It is the ignorance of
the Father's interest in redemption ; the ignorance of the transaction between
the Father and the Son is the cause of this, John xv. 21, ' because they know
not him that sent me.' They consider not that this was the Father's con-
trivance, that I am sent forth by him, and ordered by him to do what I
do. If we had a clear vision of the gospel, and remembered God as intent
upon a way of redemption, we should not nourish that which disparageth
the whole plot. Such souls look upon him as a God of wrath rather than a
God of peace, whose hand is more filled with thunders than his heart with
love ; they regard him as one of a narrow and contracted goodness ; that
God minded nothing after man's sin but preparing his bow and sharpening
his arrows. Hence they have frightful thoughts of God, slavish fears, fretful
jealousies, that he will never accomplish their desires though they seek him
never so fervently.
2. See the blackness of unbelief. It is as much as lies in a man to make
void the end of God, frustrate the covenant of redemption, deprive God of
all the glory he was to get by the articles of it, and Christ of the honour of
his undertaking, and make the whole covenant insignificant, rejecting the
eternal counsel of wisdom, as well as the rejecting John's baptism, Luke
vii. 30, was so interpreted. Whosoever doth not believe upon the declara-
tion of the gospel doth endeavour to deprive Christ of a seed as far as he
can. And those that endeavour to keep off others from Christ, endeavour, as
far as their power extends, to make God violate his oath. This contrivance
of God is the greatest masterpiece of wisdom and love ; it was the most
becoming thing God ever set about, most agreeable to his mercy and jus-
tice. Unbelief doth what it can to demolish this fabric of God's erecting,
as though the contrivance of his wisdom were a piece of folly, and the beat-
ing of his heart only worthy of the spurns of our feet.
3. Salvation is upon the most certain terms to every believer.
(1.) In regard that every believer is the seed of Christ. God hath given
such to Christ with an absolute will that they should not perish. Christ by
covenant was to take care of them ; God by covenant was engaged that Christ
should see his seed. He confirmed it by oath, that his seed should endure
for ever. Shall God be defeated of his will and the design of his everlasting
covenant ? He committed by covenant the souls of his people to Christ as
his charge, John vi. 37-39. Would God put a charge he values into the
hands of impotence or unskilfulness. Will Christ be guilty of disaffection to
* Jackson.vol. ii. fcl. book x. cap. hi. p. 302.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 389
his Father ? Can he break the trust reposed in him ? Will the Father be
guilty of unfaithfulness to Christ ? Can there be a violation of articles so
solemnly made between them? This seed was to be perfect, Christ was
to see the travail of his soul, which will be when he hath given Christ a
full possession of that trust he acquired for him upon the cross ; but they
must wait, for it is with his people as with himself. He obtained a right
upon the cross for himself and them, but neither he nor they are yet in a
full possession of the right he then purchased.
(2.) In regard of the firmness of the covenant between them. The cove-
nant the Father hath made with Christ is an obligation wherein he stands
bound to Christ, and consequently to every parcel of his seed. Free grace
to us made him a promiser to Christ, and his promise made him a debtor
to him. Therefore if it be possible that the infinitely true God could be
false to a temporary promise, how could he be false to his Son, the Son of
his dearest love, the Son that he appointed, called out, and put upon this
undertaking ! How can he be false to his own counsel, and to a solemn
everlasting covenant 1 His truth is a powerful engagement for performance,
especially added to that love which first moved him to make this covenant.
The covenant indeed was firm between God and Adam, had Adam stood ;
but there was not altogether so strong an obligation on God, he never
confirmed it by an oath ; he never was so much pleased with that, as
with this. The greater pleasure any man hath in the promise he
makes, and the stronger resolution to perform it, the stronger assevera-
tions he backs it with. To what purpose doth Christ give us a draught
and epitome of this eternal transaction as the ground of his pleas in
heaven, but that the joy of believers may be full, that they might have his
joy fulfilled in themselves ? John xvii. 13, ' These things I speak in the
world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves ; ' that they might
have a joy in the consideration of it, as he had in the making this covenant,
and performing his part in it. ' These things I speak in the world.' I
give them this history of our agreement, this copy of the articles between
thee and me, that they may read thy eternal counsel concerning their good,
and have a strong consolation, and run to this public record in all cases,
spread it before, yea, and plead it with thee. And by virtue of this cove-
nant, though a believer fall into sin (for it is not possible he can run on
in a course of sin), God will reduce him. The afflicting them to that end
is a condition ensured in this covenant, Ps. lxxxix. 28-32, God will visit
them with rods, but not lash them with scorpions ; he will afflict them,
but not destroy them ; whip them, but not damn them ; because he will
not take away his loving-kindness from his Son, or suffer his faithfulness
to fail.
(3.) In regard that Christ has suffered and performed all on his part.
Christ hath performed his part by making his soul an offering for sin ; he
must therefore see his seed, and that to satisfaction, Isa. liii. 11, otherwise
there would be a breach of covenant and promise on the Father's part. God
was to please Christ, as Christ had pleased him ; and the pleasure is not
mutual unless both be pleased alike. The wafting therefore of every
believer through this vale of misery is a debt God owes to Christ, and a
satisfaction necessary to make his happiness as mediator complete, and
which our Saviour may challenge as a due debt by virtue of compact. Will
God ever go back from his word, tear the articles on his part in pieces, and
bo let the strength and blood of Christ be spent for nought ?
(4.) In this covenant God hath linked his own glory and the salvation of
believers together. For in this covenant, wherein God was to be glorified,
390 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
Christ was to be his salvation to the ends of the earth, Isa. xlix. 3, 6. As
he covenanted with Christ for a glory from him, so by covenant he gave up
the Gentiles to him ; and thus having settled them together upon one corner
stone, the happiness of a believer is as firmly upon that basis established as
the honour of God. And therefore what the prophet calls the glory of God,
Isa. xl. 5, ' All flesh shall see the glory of God,' Luke expresseth by salva-
tion, Luke iii. 6, ' All flesh shall see the salvation of God ; ' and when God
hath declared his will for the sending Christ for the redeeming of the
prisoners from captivity, Isa. xlii. 5, 6, ver. 8 he saith, ' My glory will I
not give unto another.' I will entrust no other with redeeming work, which
is my glory, but this servant of mine ; so that the peace is as firm as God's
honour, and can then only cease when God shall cease to love himself, his
Son, and his own glory. What greater ground of faith can there be than
this, since God's love cannot reach a strain higher than to venture his own
glory in the same bottom with a believer's happiness ?
4. Fly to this covenant of redemption, as well as to the covenant of grace,
since that is the foundation of this. All other considerations of Christ's
death, merit, and everything stored up in Christ, can give us little hope,
unless we consider this covenant, which supports all the other stones of the
building. Fly to it when your souls are in heaviness. Though there may
be sometimes clouds upon the face of God, yet consider those compassions
in his heart, when he struck this covenant with Christ. He covenanted to
bruise his own Son by his wrath, while he promised to support him by his
strength, and the sounding of his bowels always kept pace with the blows of
his hand. The consideration of this will encourage our faintness, silence
our fears, nonplus our scruples, and settle a staggering faith. Is a believer
in a storm ? Here is an anchor to hold him. Is he sinking ? Here is a bough
to catch at. Is he pursued by spiritual enemies ? Here is a refuge to fly to.
Sin cannot so much oblige God's justice to punish, as his oath to Christ
obligeth him to save a repenting and believing sinner. These two covenants,
that of redemption, and the other of grace, are as a Hur and Aaron to hold
up the hands of a feeble faith. His love cannot die, as long as his faithful-
ness remains, nor his peace with the soul perish as long as the covenant with
his Son endures. This covenant of redemption is to be pleaded by us, as
well as the merit of Christ's death, because the merit of his death is founded
upon this compact.
IV. The Father did fit Christ for this great undertaking to make recon-
ciliation. Christ was the vine, John xv. 1, 'lam the vine, and my Father
the husbandman ;' a vine of the Father's planting, a vine of the Father's
dressing. And God planted him a noble vine, in order to the beating
branches. He made him a vine fit to cherish those he should insert in
him. He is therefore said to be sanctified by the Father when he is sent
into the world : John x. 36, ' Say you of him whom the Father hath sanc-
tified and sent into the world ;' sanctified in order to his mission, or sanc-
tified at his mission, that the glory of God's reconciling love might be manifest
by him ; sanctified to do the works of his Father, for which end he was sent
into the world, as ver. 37 intimates, ' If I do not the works of my Father,
believe me not.' Much of God's secret counsel was spent about him, whence
he is called ' a polished shaft in his quiver,' Isa. xlix. 2, ' in the quiver of
his secret counsel wherein he was hid.' This promise he had in that agree-
ment between them, that ' the Spirit of the Lord should be put upon him,'
Isa. xlii. 1 ; and for this great end of redemption, as you may read in the
following verses in that chapter. And since the end of his undertaking was
to glorify God in the work of redemption, the wisest counsels would be
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 391
employed to furnish Christ for bringing about the highest glory to God and
happiness to man.
1. A fitness for so great a task was absolutely necessary. In regard of
his office : * As he was settled in an office by the Father, so the graces and
gifts of the Spirit were necessary to fit the human nature for those great
works of the Father which were to be performed in it. The human nature
had been unprofitable without an office, and an office had been unsuccessful
without graces and gifts for the execution of it. An office of mediator, with-
out capacity, fulness, charity, and goodness, had been useless, and to no
purpose. In regard of the greatness of the work he was to do : Sin had
blemished the world, turned all creatures from their true end by man's revolt
from the service of God, whereby those creatures which were made to serve
a loyal subject were forced to serve a rebel. The world then was to be
restored, the ruins by sin repaired, the sin removed, and the sinner redeemed.
As this required infinite skill for the contrivance, so it required infinite fit-
ness for the execution. The glory of God's design required it, which was to
make his attributes most illustrious, and display them more magnificently in
the work of redemption than in that of creation ; and this being to be done
in the human nature (whose fall had necessitated a reparation or destruction)
because by that God was dishonoured, in that therefore the glory of his
attributes was to be manifested, it required a mighty fitness for the mani-
festation of an infinite glory.
2. Christ in regard of his divine nature was infinitely fit, and in regard
of the union of that to the human suitably fit. For in regard of his infinite
knowledge, he knew the rights of God in the infinite extent of his glory, and
what was fit for the reparation of those rights which had been violated ; he
knew the infinite holiness of his Father, he knew the utmost malice of the
inward bowels of sin, which he was to expiate ; for he knew all things ; for
1 the Father loves the Son, and shews him all things that himself doth,'
John v. 21. As God, he knew what wrong God had sustained in point of
honour, and in point of service ; and what was necessary to restore the
honour to God, and reduce the creature to the service of the Creator. In
regard of his infinite holiness therefore, God, who is holy, could be sanctified
in his righteousness, Isa. v. 16. In regard of his power, as he was the fittest
medium by whom God created the world, Heb. i. 2, so he was the fittest
medium by whom God might repair the world, and give a new consistency to it :
Col. i. 16, ' He was before all things, and by him all things consist.' He was
' the mighty God, the everlasting Father,' or the Father of the age to come,
and therefore ' the prince of peace,' Isa. ix. 6. It was necessary he should be
God, as it was necessary he should be man, to make the compensation suitable,
because the human nature had committed the trespass ; so it was necessary he
should be God, to make the compensation sufficient, because God had received
the wrong. Two things were requisite : suffering, therefore he must be man ;
satisfaction by that suffering, therefore he must be God. Two things in
justice to be considered : the equity of justice, therefore the nature offend-
ing must suffer ; the infiniteness of justice, therefore an infinite person must
suffer. He therefore being thus infinite, could answer the infiniteness of God's
honour in the reparation, and the infiniteness of our debts in the expiation.
For as he had a human nature, wherein to merit, so he had a divine nature
whereby to make that merit sufficient. No other nature could be fit ; the
angelical nature was not infinite, and therefore could not pay an infinite
price ; the human nature was neither infinite nor innocent, and therefore
could not satisfy for infinite guilt. He was to stand under the sin of the
* Moulin, Decad. iv., Serm. i., p. 13, somewhat changed.
892 charnock's works. ("2 Cor.- V. 18, 19.
world, and what creature could ever be fit to bear so vast a burden ! As
none but an infinite goodness could exercise so great a patience towards the
sins of men, so none but an infinite goodness could pay a satisfaction for them.
Now, though Christ, as he was the Son of man, ' gave his life a ransom for
many,' Mat. xx. 28, yet the value of the redeeming price arose from it, as
'the blood of God,' Acts xx. 28. He gave his life as man, but the pur-
chase was made by him as God. It could not have been for our glory, or
purchased a glory for us, unless he who was the Lord of glory had been
crucified, 1 Cor. ii. 6, 8 ; for ' being the express image of God, and uphold-
ing all things by the word of his power, he did by himself purge our sins,'
Heb. i. 3. So that his shoulders were able to bear the weightiest burden,
his strength able to endure the sharpest curses, and his soul able to drink
down the bitterest potions. Christ therefore being God, and united to the
human nature, was every way fit, as being God and man in one person, that
what the human nature could not do by reason of its imbecility as a
creature, the divine might ; and what the divine nature could not do by
reason of its perfection, the human nature might perform : that God's
honour might be repaired by an infinite satisfaction, and man reduced to
service by the highest motive, viz. the incarnation of his Son, than which
God could not afford a greater.
3. The fitness, whether of his divine nature or his human, did originally
arise from the Father. The Father, as the fountain of the Deity, did confer
on him his natural fitness, by communicating to him the divine nature from
eternity by natural generation. He had a natural fitness as the Son of
God, and a gracious fitness as the Son of man. The natural fitness was
from the Father, for ' as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given
to the Son to have life in himself,' John v. 26. To have life in himself is
the property of God, who is therefore called the living God, and this is given
by the Father.
(1.) All the fulness whereby he is fit to reconcile, and accomplish his
mediatory work, he is enriched with from the Father: Col. i. 19, ' It pleased
the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.' It is true, the word
Father is not in the Greek text, but is to be supplied from the discourse of
the apostle before, verse 12, where he begins a thanksgiving to the Father.
He did not only ordain him to be head of the church, but he fitted him
with whatsoever was necessary to constitute him in that office, and enable
him for the exercise of it. By this fulness is meant both a fulness of the
divinity, as he is the image of God, and a fulness of habitual grace, as he is
the first-born of every creature, having the rights of the first-born given to
him, as he is the head of the body the church, and the first-born from the
dead. God would have this great mediator filled with all the perfection of
the Deity, and all the excellency of grace in his humanity, that he might be
in this office of mediation every way acceptable to God, and successful for
man ; that no fault might be found in him, either by God or man, to stave
off the acceptance of the one or the reliance of the other, that so the recon-
ciliation might be in all parts and degrees complete.
(2.) The Father stored up this fulness in Christ with a mighty pleasure.
He did not only order the communication of this fulness to him, and the
perpetual residence of it in him for his appointed ends, but he did it with a
transcendent pleasure, an svBoyJa, such a pleasure as he had in his person,
as that which answered all his ends, both for his own glory and his creatures'
recovery. As he was the treasury of grace for us, so he was the object of
God's delight.
(3.) This fulness was lodged in Christ, for the making peace with his
2 Cob. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 393
Father, and accomplishing all the ends of it. As he assembled all light
together and fixed it in the sun, as a natural type of Christ, to convey light
and heat thereby to all sublunary bodies, as also to the stars in the firma-
ment, whence both might derive that excellency they have, and so agree in
one point and principle, so he hath espoused together the divine and human
perfections in one person, that thereby he might reconcile all things to him-
self; by him I say, 'whether they be things in earth or things in heaven,'
that both the restoration of the broken peace with men, and the confirma-
tion of the standing peace with angels, might meet in him, and be derived
from him as one centre of both. For as it pleased the Father, that in him
should all fulness dwell, so it was a pleasure to him that it should per-
petually reside in him to this end, that peace might be made, and all the
intendments and consequence of it be promoted to a perfect issue ; that he
having an alliam e to God by his divinity, and an alliance to man by his
humanity, might stand as a perfect mediator between God and his creature,
to make peace and preserve it. For hereby he understood the rights of
God to secure them, and the indigencies of man to relieve him. He had his
humanity fitted to be a sufferer, and his divinity fitted to be a repairer; the
one made him passible, the other able, and the holiness of his person made
him acceptable. His being in the form of a servant made him obnoxious
to suffering, and his being in the form of God made that suffering meri-
torious of our peace, that in all respects he might become a prince of peace
both in heaven and earth.
4. We may note also the constancy of it ; it dwells in him. This was
the pleasure of the Father, that it should not only be communicated to him
to lodge, but dwell in him ; not as a private person, but an universal prin-
ciple ; as head of the body, as well as a reconciler, that he might be able to
do the works of God, and fill the emptiness of man. God promised to
engrave the engravings of this stone, which is ushered in with a repetition
of a behold : Zech. hi. 5, ' Behold the stone that I have laid : behold, I will
engrave the engravings thereof, saith the Lord,' that men might observe it,
and the end of it. He would work all habitual grace in him with an inde-
lible character ; as the engravings of a stone cannot be razed out without
defacing and dissolving some part of the stone at least, sometimes not with-
out breaking the whole. The end of this engraving is expressed in the fol-
lowing words : ' And I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.'
Some understand it also of his death ; and I think it may be understood
of both his fitness for suffering, and his actual suffering. The end of this
sculpture was for the taking away sin, and making reconciliation with God
by the expiation of it. So that the graces of the Spirit are not only poured
upon his head, as that which may be dried up again, but engraven on him,
as noting fixedness and duration. Fulness acquaints us with the abundance
of this grace, and dwelling signifies the perpetual residence of it, engraving
the deep rootedness, and all for this end of redemption.
This fitness of his human nature was the work of the Father, not imme-
diately, but by his Spirit.
1. He is fitted with a body.
(1.) This was necessary. Man, as constituted of soul and body, had vio-
lated the articles of the first covenant; therefore man, as constituted of soul
and body, must answer the violations of it. He was therefore to have a body
of the same kind with that man that had broken the covenant, whose pun-
ishment he was to remove ; therefore he was not to be new made from the
earth as Adam was, but to descend from him ; otherwise he had not been
of the same kind, and so could not satisfy for that kind whereof he was not
394 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
a part.* As the obligation descended upon all men from the first man, so it
was fit that one descended from him should satisfy that obligation.
(2.) It was also necessary that he should have a mortal body, that he
might be nearly related to us in all things (sin excepted), and redeem us by
his passion. Blood was to be shed, death was to be endured (for we owed
to God our life and blood), the righteousness of God was to be declared,
Rom. iii. 25, which could not be but in the offending nature. His life he
must lose, thereby to lay a strong foundation for the removing of sin, with
a rich manifestation of God's righteousness. Now, to make a body mortal,
which was not in itself sinful, was a work only to be wrought by the wisdom
of God, whereby to make a salvo for his righteousness, always manifested
to his rational creatures. That soul that sins, it shall die. Had not Adam
sinned, he had not died. Our Saviour died who never sinned ; he was there-
fore to have such a body whereby our sins might be imputed to him, yet
not inherent in him. He was then to have a human nature to suffer our
punishment, as well as a divine nature to surmount it. A flesh was neces-
sary to be a sacrifice for sin, as well as the Deity to be a priest. What
could he have offered for us, had he not had flesh and blood ? Without a
body he had been a priest without a sacrifice, without an holy flesh he had
been a priest with a sinful sacrifice. He was to have a body to ' bear our
sins on a tree,' 1 Peter ii. 24 ; yet an holy body, that by the offering of
that body ' once for all, we might be sanctified,' Heb. x. 10. As God only
could, so he did provide him such a body. This he ascribes to God: Heb.
x. 5, ' A body hast thou prepared me.' A mortal body, fit to be a sacrifice;
a body prepared, after the rejection of all other sacrifices, wherein God could
find no pleasure ; a body also prepared to be a reconciling sacrifice, such a
body wherein he might do the will of God, i.e. the whole will of God, which
was to take away sin. It was a body so fitted as to be obedient to the soul,
to have no rebellious power in it against reason and command, but to be fully
and readily obedient in all its motions to God ; not barely a body, but a body
so tempered as to do the service required of it. It was not indeed fit that
the body wherein the Deity was to tabernacle, John i. 14, hx-K^vuasv, should
be framed by a less wisdom, and slighter order, than the Mosaical tabernacle,
which was a shadow of it, which was done by exact order, and by the inspira-
tions of the Spirit, filling the workmen with skill, Exod. xxxi. 2, 3.
(3.) Yet he was to have a holy body, free from any taint of moral imper-
fection, fit for the service he was devoted to, for which the least speck upon
his humanity had rendered him unfit. This could not have been, bad he
descended from Adam by way of ordinary and natural generation. He had
then been a debtor himself, a lamb with blemish, and so wanted a sacrifice
for himself. His sacrifice would have been defective, and have needed some
other sacrifice to fill up the gaps of it. It was necessary he should descend
from Adam in a way of birth, but not in a way of seminal traduction, that
he might have the nature of Adam without the spot. Such a knot could not
be untied without infinite skill, nor .such a way of production be wrought
without the infinite power of God.
Therefore,
(1.) The Holy Ghost frames the body of Christ of this seed of the woman,
that it might be mortal, and have his heel bruised by the devil, Gen. iii. 15 ;
not of the seed of the man in an ordinary way of generation, that it might
be without any taint of sin, sanctifying therefore the seed of the woman in a
peculiar manner. Wherefore in relation to his humanity, conception, and
birth, he is ' the holy thing,' Luke i. 35 ; as his body is called the Holy
* Sabund. Theolog. Tit. 253.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 395
One in the grave : Ps. xvi. 10, ' Thou wilt not suffer thy Holy One to see
corruption.' His soul was not in the grave, being separated from the body
upon the recommendation of it upon the cross into his Father's hand. And
as it was an holy body, so it was a mortal body, called therefore a ' body of
flesh,' Col. i. 22. This God had appointed and predicted as an extra-
ordinary thing : Jer. xxxi. 22, ' The Lord hath created a new thing in the
earth, a woman shall compass a man ;' 13 J, a mighty man. By calling it
a new thing, he points to a miraculous birth of the Messiah, and the word
creating signifies something out of a natural course, next to a mere creation,
and God's work as much as creation. A new thing as not being from the
old stock ; for though his nature was the same with Adam's, yet he had no
taint of original sin ;* because he was not morally in the loins of Adam
before his fall (the promise of his incarnation of the seed of the woman
being given after the fall), whereby the sin of Adam could not be imputed
to him. It was therefore a new thing, and an holy thing according to that
new promise after the fall. Though the Spirit was the immediate agent in
fitting this body, yet it was by the appointment and power of the Father :
Luke i. 35, ' The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the
Highest shall overshadow thee ;' where by the Highest is understood the
Father, the mystery of the Trinity being manifested in the incarnation of
the Son of God.
(2.) The Holy Ghost makes the union between the divine and human
nature. The overshadowing by the power of the Highest unites the two
natures, whereby that 'holy thing' in the virgin's womb should be 'called
the Son of God,' Luke i. 35, which could not be without a union of the
divine nature to the substance made of the seed of the woman, by this
overshadowing ; which also is the act of the Father by the Spirit, as being
in the ' power of the Highest.' And this is that which is called the gratia
unionis, grace of union, which Christ had from God, whereby the Godhead
dwelt bodily in him, or personally, Col. ii. 9 ; the two natures — the divine,
signified by the Godhead, the human, by that wherein it dwelt — making up
one person ; 2w,cta among the Greeks signifying not a bare body, but & person,
as it doth also in common speech among us.
The union of the two natures by a particular conjunction, whereby the
divine nature dwelt substantially in the human, and was acted by it in all
undertakings, was the work of God by his Spirit. This union of both
natures was for the making peace : Col. i. 21, 22, ' And you that were
sometimes alienated, yet now he hath reconciled, in the body of his flesh
through death.' Who ? Ver. 15 : He who was ' the image of the invisible
God.' The image of the invisible Deity rendered himself visible in the
humanity, to reconcile us to his Father, so that by this union we who are
afar off from the Deity are brought near in his humanity ; and the gulf of
original sin, which consisted in enmity to God, and which hindered the pas-
sage of God to man, or man to God, is filled up, taken away, and the work
done in and by him. As he was God, he knew the terrors of hell, because
he knew all things ; but, as God, he could not have experience of them : he
was to have a body of flesh to bear them, as well as he was the image of the
invisible God to support that body under them. As man, he was fit to
endure his wrath ; and as God, fit to appease it. As man, he was fit to
undergo the sharpness of the curse; and as God, able to remove it. As man,
he was capable to obey both the moral and mediatory law ; and as God, to
transmit the fruit of that obedience to us, which is intimated in these words,
• Yet now hath he' (who was the image of the invisible God) ' reconciled, &c.
* Owen of the Spirit, p. 136.
396 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
to present you holy, and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight.' Pre-
senting us, as he is the image of God in our nature, free from sin by the washing
of his blood, after he had reconciled us through the body of his flesh ; the
meriting of reconciliation was wrought in his flesh, but arose from his deity.
Thus Christ had a body every way fitted with a holy soul, with a glorious
indweller, that he might be every way fit for making peace : a body in all
things like ours, but without impurity, that he might be our kinsman, and be-
. come a Goel, a redeemer by right of propinquity ; that he might be the suffer-
ing head of the human nature, which he could not be without our nature. Had
he taken the angelical nature, which was more excellent in itself, and suf-
fered in that, his sufferings would have been esteemed the sufferings of that
whole nature, but not of the human nature, because not partaking of it, and
so he could not have suffered for it unless he had suffered in it : for since
he was to make reconciliation for the sins of the people, « he took upon him
not the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham, because
it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merci-
ful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make this recon-
ciliation,' Heb. ii. 16, 17, We may note, besides the holiness of his body,
it was so framed by the appointment of the Father, and the operation of the
Holy Ghost, and tempered with such affections, as to do this work with the
greatest compassion to the fallen nature of man ; that whereas he had a
holiness to make him faithful to God, so he had a tenderness in his nature
to make him merciful to us for the carrying on this reconciliation and the
ends of it to the highest perfection ; so that those two natures, thus united
by God, made him every way capable and fit to be a reconciler, knowing the
justice of God's claim, that he might give to God what he knew to be his
due, and feeling the infirmities of our nature, that he might purchase that
remedy he knew we wanted. Herein we see the incomparable wisdom and
love of the Father, in fitting Christ, so that he might be in him reconciling
the world to himself.
(3.) He is filled with his Spirit by the Father, i. e. with all the gifts and
graces of the Spirit necessary to this work. That precious ointment, com-
posed of so many sweet and excellent ingredients, wherewith the Levitical
high priest was anointed, Exodus xxx., was a type of those excellent graces
of the great high priest, whereby he was qualified for the exercise of his
offices. As the Spirit espoused the human nature to the divine, so he
espoused all his gifts and graces to the human. As the body was conceived
by the power of the Holy Ghost, so his soul was beautified and adorned by
the graces of the Holy Ghost, whereby he became ' fairer than the children
of men, and grace was poured into his lips,' Ps. xlv. 2 : ' His going forth is
prepared as the morning,' Hos. vi. 3, furnished with all things necessary to
work out redemption, and free the world from the wrath of God, as the sun
is with light to deliver the world from the darkness of the night.
[l.J The subject of these gifts was the rational soul of Christ. The
human nature was only anointed with the Spirit ; the divine nature being in-
finite, could receive no increase of gifts, it having a fulness of perfection by
eternal generation. Yet though the divine nature stood in no need of those
gifts, it did capacitate the humanity of Christ for greater receipts, by reason
of its union with it, than any other mere creature was capable of. We must
not think, as some may conceive, that the divine nature was instead of a
soul to the body of Christ. He had a real rational soul ; for since the whole
nature of man was corrupted, both soul and body, the whole nature of man
was to be repaired. How could he have suffered in a body, without a soul,
the wrath due to our souls as well as bodies ? Had he only had a body, he
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 397
had not taken the human natnre ; only the meanest and worst part of man,
not that which constitutes the man. Unless he had been God and man in
one person, his blood could not have been called 'the blood of God ;' and un-
less he had a soul and body, an entire nature, his blood could not have been
the blood of man. As he was to have a body prepared, so he was to have a
soul proportionably furnished.
[2. J He was abundantly filled with them ; he had ' the Spirit not by
measure,' John iii. 34 ; not as light in a room, but as light in the sun ; not
as water in a vessel where the bounds are visible, but like water in the ocean,
where the depths and limits are unknown. In him there was nothing but
Spirit and fulness, without limits for quantity, without imperfections for
quality ; all the treasures, the fountain, not the rivers. There are varieties
of gifts, as there are of stars, and the qualities of them, in heaven ; and of
flowers, and the beauties of them upon earth : what were various in others
were entire in him. Others have parcels of those gifts and graces, like
Abraham's children by Keturah ; but Christ had them entire. As Isaac had
an inheritance as the heir of promise, so Christ, as the heir of all things,
had the possession of the choicest gifts in the treasuries of his Father. As
God had communicated an infinite being to him by eternal generation, so it
was convenient to communicate a fulness of graces and gifts to the humanity,
as far as it was capable to receive and contain it, because it was joined to so
excellent a nature as the divine ; for though he was made flesh, yet he had
' the glory as of the only begotten Son of God.' It was fit therefore he
should be ' full of grace and truth' in that flesh, John i. 14. It was not
congruous that the Spirit of God should come into the soul of Christ with
half his attendants, but with the greatest majesty, with his whole train of
excellencies. Not that the perfections poured ;out upon his soul by the
Spirit of grace and glory were infinite, because those graces were created
qualities, and infiniteness can never be ascribed to a creature ; and his soul
was the subject of them, and that being a creature, was not capable of re-
ceiving into it subjectively that which is infinite ; but he had them without
measure, as to the kinds of gifts ; in the mass, not in parcels.* As to the
degrees of them, others have them in a lower degree, as light'in a candle ;
Christ in the highest degree, as fight in the heavens : so that whatsoever per-
tains to the nature of grace was conferred on Christ, as whatsoever belongs
to the nature of light and heat is stored up in the sun. ' All his gar-
ments did smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia,' Ps. xlv. 8. As God hath made
the sea a treasure of waters, emptied into it from all the rivers of the world,
so he hath made Christ a mighty ocean of all perfections, in a vaster quan-
tity and richer qualities than any other creature is capable to receive, as
the sea is more capacious to receive the perpetual floods than the greatest
river in the world. If the whole creation should be reaped, and gleaned, and
stored up in one person, it would be but as the drops of a bucket to the ful-
ness of Christ, which the Father hath laid up in him.
(4.) These graces were infused into him at once. As the new creature hath
all its parts framed at once, so the head of all the new creatures was prin-
cipled at once with them, though in regard of the various exercises of them,
they grew up in him by degrees : Luke ii. 40, ' The child grew, and waxed
strong in spirit, filled with wisdom,' ver. 52, and shone forth as he increased
in age, by new excitations of them by the Spirit of God. Grace came into
the soul of Christ, as his soul into his body, or as light into the sun at the
creation, not by pieces ; but as the soul did not exercise its functions, so his
graces did not exert their strength, but by degrees, according to the capacity
* Davenant, in Col. i. 19.
898 chabnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
of his age and occasional occurrences. The anointing of this Spirit was
conferred upon him at his incarnation ; when he was made flesh, he was full
of grace and truth, John i. 14. Also visibly at his baptism, which was his
entrance into the exercise of bis office, as a visible token of his Father's ac-
ceptation of him, now at bis inauguration, Mat. iii. 16, 17 ; as David, the
type, was anointed at Bethlehem, the place of his habitation, by Samuel, and
afterwards at Hebron, when he was actually installed king by the tribe of
Judah. The first anointing at his incarnation was his furniture for his office,
that at his baptism his investiture in his office.
(5.) These gifts and graces of the Spirit were necessary for the human
nature. It was necessary that the soul of Christ should exert supernatural
acts. There was a necessity of love to God, to spirit him in his mighty diffi-
culties ; of faith in God, to suck refreshment from the promises made to him
as mediator, when he should arrive at any conflict : these were supernatural
acts in themselves, and so were above the bare natural strength of the soul
of Christ, and the powers of it.* As the soul of Christ did need a natural
concourse to natural actions, as other souls do, and needed the gift of miracles
for the working of miracles, so he needed a supernatural grace to exert super-
natural acts. It is essential to the nature of a creature to depend upon God
for all communications. To act independently, and without the influence of
another, is a property of God, not to be derived to any creature. The humanity
of Christ then being a creature, could not act of itself without the influence
of a superior being ; the humanity then did not endow itself; grace is not
minted by any creature. It did no more inspire itself with grace than it did
inspire itself with life. As God was the Father of Christ, so he was the Father
of grace to him ; the divine nature of Christ gave a personal dignity by
union, but conferred not of itself a beauty upon it. Had the divine nature,
by virtue of its union, elevated the faculties of Christ's soul, he needed not
have grown in wisdom and knowledge ; the divine nature, though united to
the humanity, did not communicate to it all that it was capable of receiving.
This communication was the proper work of the Spirit, according to the order
in the operations of the Trinity : hence his human soul knew not the time
of the day of judgment, though as God he did. If his divine nature had
advanced his rational faculties, it had also stocked him with full comforts,
without the mission of an angel to refresh him in the garden, Luke xxii. 43,
and why did it not also advance the vegetative power to rear up his body to
a full stature ?
This elevation was the work of the Spirit. It was necessary he should be
thus furnished.
[1.] In regard of the greatness of his task. Gifts are imparted to men
suitable to the places wherein they stand for action, and according to the
largeness of the vessel. Christ's place was higher, his work harder than any
creature's, therefore required a greater measure of gifts than all creatures in
heaven and earth put together. Though he was mighty in his person, and
fit to have help laid upon him for us, yet he was to be anointed with the holy
oil, Ps. Ixxxix. 19, 20. Without this fulness of grace the human nature could
never have arrived to the perfection of the great undertaking, but would have
sunk in the midst of the work.
[2. J In regard he was to be a pattern, as well as the prince of believers.
A pattern ought to be the perfectest in the kind. Christ was to be set up as
a pattern for believers, both of the Spirit's operation in him, and of their
imitation of him. Those who draw pictures look upon the original, that they
* Suarez in part 3 ; Aquin. torn. Disp. i. 18, sect. 4, p. 3C8, 3G9.
2 COE. V. 18, 19.] GOD THE AUTHOE OF EECONCILIATION. 399
may work tbem into a likeness to it. The Spirit of God in the fashioning
souls, is to conform them to the image of Christ, Eom. viii. 29. It was fit
that the pattern of all the heirs of heaven should be fully exact to the plea-
sure of God. It being God's end to bestow more upon the creature in this
redemption than he did upon it by creation, and that in a more suitable man-
ner, there was as much need of an infinite fitness in the person that was to
prepare the way for those communications in an honourable manner to God,
and everlastingly comfortable to the creature.
(6.) The Father was the principal cause of this furniture. It was God that
' anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost,' Acts x. 38, and ' God
gives the Spirit not by measure to him,' John iii. 34. It is rendered as a
reason why ' he that God hath sent' (which is a peculiar and ancient title of
Christ) ' speaks the words of God.' This the Father did out of the infinite
affection he bore his Son for this work of mediation ; ver. 35, ' The Father
loves the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.' The power he had
conferred upon him, giving all things into his hand, did require a fulness of
the Spirit to manage that power also, that he might be a person fit to be
believed on, and confided in, ver. 36. All this was that he might do the
Father's will, speak his words, perform his command of love in the repair of
his creature. The Lord anointed him, Isa. lxi. 1, and as a God in covenant
with him. God, Heb. i. 9, ' Even thy God,' according to the promise made
to him, and with an oil of gladness, a joyful oil, as that which is a pleasure
to the Father, makes the countenance of Christ cheerful, as the psalmist
speaks of oil in another case, and joyful to the church ; because upon this
fitness depends its happiness and salvation, its reconciliation, and all the
fruits of it. And if Bid rourou, therefore, notes to us the final cause or end
of this anointing, viz., that he might love righteousness, and hate iniquity ;
it acquaints us that the end of this unction was to fit him for this work of
redemption with a perfect holiness, without which he could not have restored
God's honour, nor appeased his wrath, nor consequently reduced the crea-
ture to terms of amity with God. This putting his Spirit upon him was a
fruit of that delight God had in him as his servant : Isa. xlii. 1, ' My servant
in whom my soul delights, I have put my Spirit upon him.' Which delight
is also testified, when the Spirit did visibly descend upon him, that he was
'his beloved Son in whom he was well pleased,' Mat. iii. 16, 17.
The gifts and graces he was endowed with by this Spirit the Father had
given him, were
[1.] Habitual holiness. He was infinitely holy in regard of his deity ;
holy by the hypostatical union in his humanity, holy by the residence of the
Spirit ; a greater holiness than man in innocency or angels in heaven have.
The giving the Spirit not by measure to him implies a greater holiness, as
well as other abilities in the human nature, than all the angels in heaven
ever had, who have the Spirit by measure. The holiness, therefore, of
Christ's person incomparably exceeds all the holiness of the angelical nature,
which hath a limited communication of the Spirit. As the apostle argues
for his deity, Heb. i. 5, ' Unto which of the angels said he at any time,
Thou art my Son ?' so to which of the angels did he at any time give the
Spirit not by measure ? Though he took upon him the form of a servant,
yet he was a righteous servant. There was no original sin in his concep-
tion, nor actual sin in his conversation ; he was separate from sinners in the
manner of his birth and in the actions of his life ; he had a purity of
nature and a purity of life commensurate to the law, that he might be our
paschal lamb without blemish ; he was holy iu the account of angels, Luke
i. 35 ; holy in the account of devils, Mark i. 24, ' the Holy One of God ;'
400 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
holy in the account of his Father: John viii. 29, 'He always did those
things which pleased him.'
This was necessary for his office. It became him and us, as our high
priest, to be undefiled, Heb. vii. 26. As it was necessary he should suffer
for the satisfaction of God's justice, so it was necessary he should by a purity
be fit for so great a task. As reasonable creatures we owe a perfect obedience,
as rebellious creatures an eternal punishment ; there must, therefore, be an
holiness commensurate to the precepts of the law, as well as a passion com-
mensurate to the curses of the law. Upon this holiness of his is our recon-
ciliation grounded : 2 Cor. v. 21, ' For he hath made him to be sin for us
who knew no sin, that we might be made tbe righteousness of God in him.'
Had he known experimentally the least spot, he could not by his sacrifice
have been made the righteousness of God to us ; for not only as his servant,
but as his ' righteous servant,' he was to 'justify many,' Isa. liii. 11. Hereby
he was able to ' appear to take away our sins,' and did do it, because ' in
him there was no sin,' 1 John iii. 5, the apostle rendering the latter as the
reason of the former. Had he had the least speck, he could not have been
a mediator, because he had then been a party in being a sinner ; his office
could not have been performed, which was to make up the breach, not to
make a new one ; he had rather polluted than purged us, and fastened our
sins rather than took them away. What could he have offered if he had
not had flesh and blood ? How could he have offered acceptably if there
had been any spot upon him in his appearance before the holy justice of his
Father ? Heb. ix. 14. He had then been a rebel, a prisoner, and had for-
feited all that might have been a ransom for us. How could he have made
peace with God for us, when by reason of a blemish he could not make
peace in his own conscience ? An inevitable destruction had been brought
upon mankind, which could not have been repaired. His intercession kept
up the world from sinking when Adam fell ; but whose mediation should
have preserved the world had this mediator failed, since God had no other
son to employ in so great an affair ?
It was necessary in regard of his dignity. The Deity, because of in-
finite holiness, could not have dwelt in a tainted humanity. Though this
habitual grace be given by God, yet it is a connatural property of Christ,
God-man, because by the dignity of his person it was due to him.* It
had been a prodigious and preternatural thing to unite the human nature
without the ornaments of grace to the divine, as it had been if the body
of Christ had not by reason of the hypostatical union been made immortal
and glorious, though those properties of the body do not flow from the
union by any physical resultance ; for to the humanity by this union there
is only communicated esse personale, not essentiale divince natural, the per-
sonal, not the essential being of the divine nature ; and therefore divine
operations of grace do not physically follow this union, but as they are
due to that nature so united. Had they followed physically this union,
the body of Christ could not have been weary, hungry, and subject to the
infirmities of our flesh. In regard of the dignity of his person, this holi-
ness was due to him ; without it, it had been the greatest disparagement
to God to send him, and the greatest prejudice to us ; for had there been
any spot, the person of Christ had been said to sin, as well as the per-
son of Christ is said to suffer. Since the Father had placed his delight
in him, and had promised to uphold him, it could not be that that should
enter upon him, which was so contrary to the perpetual delight God had
promised to fix in him.
* Suarez in part iii. Aquin., torn. i. disp. xviii sec iii. p. 367.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 401
This was the act of the Father, and ascribed to him : John x. 36, ' Say
ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world.'
Some understand it of the sanctification of Christ by eternal generation,
receiving, by that, holiness per essentiam, by essence ; others by sanctifica-
tion understand only a separation of him to his office. But it rather seems
to be meant of the preparations for the exercise of his office, sanctifica-
tion and mission being joined together ; the Father separated him and
anointed him with the Spirit, who, as the Spirit of the fear of the Lord
resting upon him, Isa. xi. 2, was the immediate inspirer of him with this
internal holiness.
[2.] With wisdom and knowledge. As God, he had an uncreated know-
ledge, but this could not be communicated to his humanity, because a crea-
ture is not capable of anything infinite ; and though he was filled with all
gifts from his conception, bi:oararr/.Qg, personally, yet it doth not follow
from thence that the soul of Christ should know everything, because this did
not belong to the property of that nature. And though he was the head of
angels, it will not follow that he should know, as man, what the angels knew ;
for then he had not stood in need of an angel to strengthen him. And if
he were made lower than the angels, it was no disparagement to him, as
being in the form of a servant, to be ignorant in some things which the
angels knew, which he implies he was in that speech concerning his igno-
rance of the day of judgment : Mat. xxiv. 36, ' Of that day and hour knows
no man, no, not the angels of heaven.' But there was no privative ignorance
in Christ, but a negative, which is not sinful; and this kind of ignorance was
no more disparagement to Christ than it was, that his soul, which was the
soul of God, as well as his blood the blood of God, should be sad to death.
But the wisdom he was filled with was the wisdom pertaining to his office of
mediator ; as he was to reprove, and convince, and smite the earth with the
rod of his mouth : Isa. xi. 2-4, 'The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the
Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.' He had wisdom, i. e. a right
judgment of things pertaining to his office, judging of things according to
the divine will, counsel and prudence in the direction of his actions, know-
ledge of all accidents and circumstances which might occur to hinder him
from the accomplishment of his work, and might to effect all ; which gifts
were bestowed upon him by the Spirit. All which gifts did end in this of
the fear of the Lord, a reverence and observance of his Father as superior to
him in this work of mediation. And therefore it is repeated again, ver. 3,
' Shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord; ' an observ-
ance of the will of God in that work committed to him. All the gifts he had
were to run into this ocean of faithfulness to God. The fear of the Lord in
Christ was a reverence of the divine majesty and the divine command ; not
a fear of separation from the Father by any sin, or a fear of punishment by
him for any sin, because he could not sin. Without a reverence of God, he
had not been faithful; without wisdom and knowledge, he had not been able.
Ignorance could never have managed his work, unfaithfulness could never
have accomplished it ; the one had made him incapable to attempt it, the
other to perfect it ; the one had stripped him of all capacity for it, the other
of all successfulness in it. The knowledge of the will of God was that whereby
he was ' mighty to help,' Ps. lxxxix. 19.* He had counsel to direct as well
as power to effect ; he had the gift of wisdom to manage his power to the
defeating of his enemies. This was necessary ; the human nature had been
* Targum, ' one mighty in the law.'
vol. in. c C
402 chaenock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
defective in that which it was designed for, unless it had understood what
was fit to be done in order to it. It had not consisted with the wisdom of
God to send one about so great a work who did not understand the nature
of it, who was not fully instructed how to manage it. This was necessary
as well as holiness ; without knowledge he could not have been- a reasonable
and voluntary sacrifice, all voluntary acts being to be founded in reason ;
and without holiness concurring with it, he could not have been an acceptable
sacrifice. This wisdom did fit him to sprinkle many nations: Isa. lii. 13, 15,
' My servant shall deal prudently, he shall be extolled, and be very high; so
shall he sprinkle many nations.' ^DK", some translate prosper, it signifies
both ; when anyone prospers, it is commonly ascribed to his own prudence and
wise management of things. He shall understand what is due to God for
the reparation of his honour, what is necessary for men for the relieving
their necessities, and so purge many by the blood of his sacrifice. Now this
wisdom, and the increase of it, was from the strength of the Spirit in him,
and the grace of God upon him, Luke ii. 40. There were constant revela-
tions to him of what was fit to be done by him in the exercise of his office,
according as the Father pleased by his Spirit to communicate himself to his
humanity.
[3.] The Spirit was given him to fit him with a tenderness to man, and
to lead him out to those exercises whereby he might be sensible of the indi-
gences of man. He had not only the law of redeeming love in his head,
whereby he had a knowledge of his office, but in his bowels, whereby he
was fitted for a tender execution of that office : Ps. xl. 8, ' Thy law is within
my heart,' ty®, bowels. The Spirit therefore descended upon him in the
likeness of a dove, an emblem of meekness and tenderness. And the apostle
Peter, Acts x. 3, intimates that the intendment of this unction of him was to
fit him for a compassionate converse with man : ' God anointed Jesus with
the Holy Ghost, who went about doing good, and healing all that were
oppressed of the devil.' He had a tenderness as God, and his humanity is
fitted with a tenderness to keep pace with that of the Deity as much as was
possible, that the tenderness of both natures might be joined together in one
person. And when this Spirit visibly settled on him after his baptism, he
led him presently to an exercise whereby he might feel the miseries of man,
and from an experience of them, be affected with more tenderness towards
him: Mat. iv. 1, ' Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit in the wilderness, to
be tempted of the devil.' Then ; when ? As soon as ever he had the
Spirit as a dove lighting upon him, and had heard those encouraging words,
Mat. hi. 16, 17, ' This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' He
was led by this Spirit to be tempted by the evil one, that he might in his
humanity be acquainted with the craft and subtilty of that adversary which
had overturned the world, brought all the dishonour upon his Father, and
sunk mankind into their present misery ; that he might know the enemy
which was threatened in the promise of his incarnation, and experience the
subtilties of that serpent which had wrought all those mischiefs he came to
redress; and so, as he was to be • acquainted with grief,' Isa. liii. 3, he might
understand the first author of that which occasioned this grief to him. It
was by this grace of meekness and humility he was specially fitted to be a
second Adam to redeem us, because pride was the sin of the first Adam to
destroy us, who, because he would become as high as God who created him,
the Redeemer would become lower than man that was created by him ; yea,
' a worm and no man,' Ps. xxii. 6 ; so excellently did the Spirit fit him with
a humility proportionable to his undertaking.
[4.] The Spirit was given to him by his Father, to enable him with a
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 403
mighty power to go through this undertaking. He had a ' Spirit of might,'
executive of his wisdom and counsel, Isa. xi. 2, a courage to attempt the
most daring difficulties, and en dure the fiercest calamities : a power to
suffer for the satisfaction of justice, a power to relieve the pressures of our
wants, a power to conquer his and our enemies. When he was anointed by God.
with the Holy Ghost, he was anointed ' with power,' Acts x. 38, bovd;nj.,.not
s^ovgia, for the exercise of his office and the doing good. The design of putting
the Spirit upon him, was that he might bring forth judgment to the Gentiles,
for that immediately follows the promise of the Spirit to him,' Isa^xlii. 1.
This was his encouragement actually to engage in the exercise of every part
of his office: Isa. lx. 1, 'The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he
hath anointed me to preach glad tidings to the meek,' &c. The Spirit was
upon him in all the acts of his mediation, the Spirit therefore did continually
assist him in every exercise ; he was not left alone, but ' he that sent him
was with him,' John viii. 29. The Father was with him by his Spirit :. the
Father had promised his assistance. Now, assisting grace is the work of
the Holy Ghost. His grace was fed and actuated by the Spirit, and brought
forth into exercise. The Spirit led him into temptation ; what ? only to.
lead him to the conflict and desert him in it ? No,, saxely ^ but to. actuate
those graces wherewith he had filled him against the tempter ; ' God was
with him,' Actsx. 38, assisting, exciting, actuating him. And the Spirit did
assist him, and excite the graces in him to the very last gasp,, for ' through
the Spirit he offered up himself,' Heb. ix. 14,. through the virtue of this
Spirit sanctifying his human nature, gifting him with strength and wisdom,
exciting those eminent graces upon the cross, therewith he had filled him
at his conception, and supporting him with his. power while the Father was
bruising him. As he lived in this holiness of Spirit,, so. he died and offered
up himself through the strength of it, without spot to God.. Through the
Spirit, signifies the strength and power of the Spirit, as when we are said ' to
mortify the deeds of the body through the Spirit,' Rom., viii, 13, *.e, through
the powerful operation of the Spirit. For as the highest graces of Christ,
faith, love, and obedience, were to be exercised upon the cross, so the
assistance of the Spirit was necessary to the exciting and actuating those
graces ; for acts of grace being supernatural, a suitable concourse is neces-
sary for the exerting those acts, and this concourse is truly the exciting and
assisting grace of the Spirit. The natural powers of the humanity cannot
otherwise be helped by the word, but as the Xo^oj or word doth flow in
upon it to actuate those powers of the soul. But this influx and motion is
common to the Trinity, and therefore it is not from the divine nature, as
hypostatieally united, but from God as the first cause, and from the Spirit as
the person whose office it is to excite grace, and assist it in the exercise.
Not that the Spirit did so possess Christ, as that he did not exercise his own
faculties in his whole office ; but as the Spirit is said to pray in us, Rom. viii. 26,
and we said to pray in him, Jude 20. The Spirit quickens our faculties,
and by his inspiration excites and assists the act. The Spirit did all along
enable Christ with a mighty power ; it did first unite his soul to his body,
his divine nature to the human, strengthened him in his temptation, stood
by him in his passion, and at last united his body to his soul at his resur-
rection : 1 Pet. iii. 18, ' Quickened by the Spirit' ; Rom. i. 14, 'Declared
to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by his
resurrection from the dead ;' shewing himself here in the whole administra-
tion a Spirit of holiness, in his conception, conversation, oblation, justifica-
tion, and resurrection. Upon which account he is said to be 'justified in
the Spirit,' in the administration and ordering of the church. For it was
404 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
' through the Holy Ghost he gave commandments to the apostles whom he
had chosen,' Acts. i. 2, not leaving his human nature till it was made im-
mortal and glorious in heaven, that thereby the redemption and reconciliation
might be every way complete. It was to those ends and purposes God gave
the Spirit not by measure to him.
[5.] The Spirit was given to him by his Father, not only to fit him for
his mediatory undertaking, but thereby to accomplish all the fruits of recon-
ciliation in his seed. As God prepared him a body to lay down as a ransom
for us, Mat. xx. 28, so he gave him the Spirit to bestow as a largess on us.
He was given to him to be derived from him, as from the fountain, to all
believers, whence they are said to be his fellows, Heb. i. 9. As he made
himself their fellow, by descending to the fellowship of their nature, so they
were to be his fellows by the communications of his Spirit. All men are his
fellows in regard of his partaking of human nature, but believers only are
his fellows in regard of conformity to the image of God. There is a fulness
of merit in him resident in heaven, as a sweet smelling savour before God,
and a fulness of grace to distil upon his seed to make them acceptable to
God : merit to keep up the amity on his Father's part, and grace to keep
up the amity on the believer's part. The graces of the Spirit were given to
him, not only as mediator, without which the human nature had not been
capable for the work, but as a head, which redound from him upon his
members, Col. ii. 19, and convey nourishment to every part. As God
assembled light in the sun to fit it for a full fountain of light, to transmit
from heaven to the creatures on earth motion, warmth, and influences,
whereby the qualities in all bodies are preserved and excited, so hath God
given the Spirit to Christ, the Sun of righteousness, and stored him with
grace and holiness, as a common fountain of gardens, a public head, for the
quickening, beautifying, and enriching believers. Without this fulness of
light, the sun could not be beneficial to the world, nor answer the end of its
creation ; so without this fulness of Spirit in Christ, he could not accom-
plish the fruits and ends of the reconciliation he hath made. And there-
fore, though the Spirit sanctified Adam in innocence, as the third person in
the Trinity, and so he breathed an holiness upon Christ, yet he sanctifies
believers now in a new habitude, not only as the third person in the Trinity,
but as the Spirit of Christ, the mediator, sent in his name by the Father, John
xiv. 26, as purchased by Christ, upon which account he is called the Spirit
of Christ, and Christ is said to send him, John xvi. 7. Because, as mediator,
he acquired a right by the merit of his sufferings to dispense this fulness of
the Spirit, who now acts as a fruit of Christ's intercession upon believers :
John xiv. 16, ' I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another
comforter.'
Use of this part.
1. How gross a sin is unbelief, which practically denies the ability of
that Saviour, which the Father so richly fitted by his Spirit to the work of
reconciliation ! It is a charge and imputation upon God, as though he did
not furnish him with sufficient abilities. It is a denying his divinity or
humanity, or both. It is all the heresies that ever were started against
the person of the Son of God in the mass ; they are all practically bundled
up in this one single sin. God's anger will most flame when that which
cost him the greatest treasures is despised. It is the despising all that is
great in God ; his riches, his power, his honour : his riches in furnishing
him, his power in supporting him, his honour designed by him in both. It
is a more sensible contradiction to the Trinity than any sin against the light
of nature, because there is a more evident discovery of the Trinity iu his
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 405
mediation ; the Father appointing, calling, counselling, ordering ; the Spirit
furnishing, fitting, exciting, supporting ; the Son acting as the subject of
all this. It doth affront not a man, nor an angel, no, nor only the Son of
God himself, but the magnificence* of the Father towards him, and the pains
of the Spirit on him.
2. How should we be encouraged to faith in this able Saviour ! Since
he hath all the fitness that could delight God, and all the fulness whereby
he can pleasure man, he is every way able to satisfy God and save the be-
liever. His ability being so much and so great upon the earth, is not
diminished in heaven, no more than his compassions are abated. As he
learned a new mode of compassionating men before his departure out of the
world, so, since his ascension to heaven, he hath received a greater power
of assisting men. Before, he had the Spirit to gift himself, now he hath
the Spirit to send upon his people. He hath a fulness of grace, a fitness
of gifts, that he may be every way able to help. He had a body to bear our
sins, and a divine nature whereby to expiate them ; his merit was as infinite
as his person. He is an holy high priest, not tainted with any of those
evils which he was to expiate in others. He is not only man ; then he might
have fallen as the first Adam did, and left us in the same, or a worse con-
dition than before : he is not only God ; then he could have performed no
obedience to the law, as being not concerned in it as a subject, but as the
law-giver ; nor could he have offered any satisfaction to God, as being un-
capable of suffering in the Deity; but God and man, fit to repair the honour
of God and the fallen state of the creature. He had an enlarged under-
standing to know his work, unconceivable power to perform it, and incom-
parable goodness to be faithful in it. Such wisdom as he was furnished
with could not be ignorant of his office, nor is to this day ; such power could
not be weak, nor will ever languish; such integrity could not be false, nor
will ever deceive the comers to him.
3. Admire these infinite compassions of God. Oh marvellous grace ! that
Christ should be endued with the richest grace by his Father to relieve our
poverty, with the highest might to help our weakness, with a powerful assist-
ance to conquer our enemies, with an overflowing fulness to fill up our empti-
ness, and abundant grace poured into his lips to comfort our dejectedness.
God cannot shew greater love than to send his Son to make the peace, and
unlock his cabinet wherewith to furnish him. An old frame of thankfulness
will not fit an evangelical discovery of love. When God tells them, Isa.
xlii. 9, 10, of his ' Servant in whom his soul delights,' and upon whom he
had put his Spirit for the redemption of man, then he makes this use of
exhortation of it, ' Sing unto the Lord a new song.' New love calls for new
praise. God might have destroyed us with less cost than he hath recon-
ciled us; for our destruction there was no need of his counsel, nor of fitting
out his Son, nor opening his treasures; a word would have done it, whereas
our reconciliation stood him in much charge. It was performed at the
expense of his grace and Spirit, to furnish his eternal Son to be a sacrifice
for our atonement. An inexpressible wonder, that the Father should prepare
his Son a mortal body, that our souls might be prepared for an incorruptible
glory !
4. God commissioned Christ to this work of reconciliation. He gave
him a fulness of authority as well as a fulness of ability. He is therefore
said to be sealed, as having his commission under the great seal of heaven :
John vi. 27, Tovrov yao It nrari\o sapp'i.yKtsv, 6 Qiog. Sealing notes a special
design ment of the thing sealed to some special purpose ; so the sealing of
* Qu. ' munificence ' ? — En.
406 charnock's works. [2 Cor. Y. 18, 19.
Christ signifies his separation and authority to exercise his offices ; and in
particular, of giving meat to the world, which should endure to everlasting
life. By virtue of this commission, whatsoever Christ doth is valid, for he
doth it as God's attorney, to whom he hath transferred a power to carry on
the work of redemption ; in which respect he is called God's servant, not by
nature, but a servant by office. In this respect he is said to be anointed,
lsa. lxi. 1. Anointing was not so much the fitting a person as a declara-
tion of his fitness, and an authorising him to an exercise of his offices.
Auointing under the law signified an authority conferred upon a person for
government, priesthood, or prophecy. In that place Christ doth distinguish
his commission from his fitness, and declares himself fit, because he was
commissioned. ' The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me ;' there is his fit-
ness, ' because, \S", therefore the Lord hath anointed me.' It was not agree-
able to the divine wisdom to commission any for an office but whom he had
furnished with an ability for that office. What was he commissioned for ?
Not to thunder the law, but to declare the gospel, the gospel of peace to the
broken-hearted, to reveal the thoughts of amity which his Father had. Upon
this account Christ tells us he did not come of himself, John vii. 28, and in
regard of this commission he is called God's angel, Mai. iii. 1, ' messenger;'
the word signifies an angel, the ' apostle of our profession,' Heb. iii. 1, be-
cause, as he authorised and sent the apostles, so the Father authorised and
sent him ; < a messenger, and an interpreter,' John xxxiii. 23. Though this
commission was given him at his birth, yet God renewed the declaration of
it several times : at his baptism, Mat. iii. 17, ' This is my beloved Son, in
whom I am well pleased ; ' at his transfiguration, Mat. xvii. 5, ' This is
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear you him.' Christ pleads
this commission, as well as the covenant between them ; John xvii. 4, ' I
have finished the work thou gavest me to do,' when he calls it a work given
him to do. What work I have done was appointed me, and I have done it
by thy authority, and therefore our redemption and security in it depends
primarily upon the covenant or federal transaction between the Father and
the Son ; and next, upon the commission given to Christ, which was indeed
but the performance of the first articles on the Father's part. Christ's com-
mission was declared several ways; by the miracles he wrought by his own
hand, as well as by the apostles ; by the holiness of his life ; by the accom-
plishment of all the predictions of the prophets in his person; by his resur-
rection from the dead ; and by the conversion of the world executed in the
most astonishing and divine manner. This commission he had at once, as
well as his fitness ; but he did successively enter into the exercise of his
offices. At first he performed his prophetical, then exercised his priestly a
little before his death, at his authoritative prayer, John xvii., where he begins
his intercession, the greatest, choicest, and most durable part of his priest-
hood. His kingly he exercised more especially after his resurrection, in the
orders he settled for the church ; all power was then more manifestly declared
to be given him.
He had then in the whole, the stamp of all God's authority upon him.
(1.) His whole work was prescribed him ; which is expressed by the no-
tion of a precept as he was God's servant. The command of a superior is a
sufficient commission to a servant to do a work he is ordered to perform ;
and Christ, in regard of his mediatory office, was inferior to his Father, John
xiv. 28. In which respect the Father is said to be greater than he. The
command was his commission from God, but miracles were the manifestation
of that commission to man. This command implies not any unwillingness
in Christ to undertake and perform this work (as though God were necessi-
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 407
tated to bend his will thereunto, and to force him by virtue of his obedience
to it) ; but it is rather a law or rule of his acting voluntarily, agreed upon
between the Father and the Son, and as heartily embraced by Christ as it
was kindly enacted by God for the good of man. In regard of this particular
order, his whole mediatory management in the world is called obedience :
Philip, ii. 8, ' He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.'
Obedient to death, even to the utmost and sharpest point; which infers an
extension of the command on God's part, and obedience on Christ's part, in
all things preceding the cross, and all the circumstances of his reconciling
death, doing nothing in his whole state of humiliation but in obedience to his
Father's injunctions ; which injunctions were so particular, that there is no
material thing in the whole life and death of Christ upon record in the New
Testament, but is expressed in the mysteries of the law, or the oracles of the
prophets in the Old. He did nothing either as man or as mediator, but accord-
ing to God's order. As he was man, he was observant of the moral law. as
being that covenant of works he was to make up the breach of, which he per-
formed in the highest manner upon the cross, manifesting his love to God in
laying down his life according to his order, and love to man in giving his
life for a ransom for him ; and by an act of charity incumbent upon him by
the moral law, praying for his persecutors. As he was born under the Jew-
ish administration, he observed God's orders in that : in circumcision, as a
federal rite, which he suffered in his flesh ; and the passover, a commemora-
tion of a national deliverance, which he celebrated with his disciples ; but not
in purifications and sacrifices, which were appointed for atonement, and im-
plied sin in the offerer, which it was not congruous for him to be subject to,
by reason of the exact purity of his person. But above all, he was an exact
observer of the mediatory law, which was a law added over and above to him
in that economy, and incumbent upon none else, neither angels nor men.
In this he did nothing but by order ; he ' did nothing of himself, but what he
saw the Father do,' John v. 19, i.e. what he had directions from his Father
to perform ; for if you understand it of Christ as mediator, he did many
things which the Father did not do, but nothing but what the Father did
order him to do. And therefore whatsoever Christ did was manifested to
him by the Father : ver. 20, ' For the Father loves the Son, and shews him
all things that himself doth,' &c. ; and he had no respect to his own will,
did nothing of his own head, but observed exactly the pattern set him by the
will of his Father: ver. 30, ' I can of my own self do nothing; I seek not my
own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.' As he was sent
by his Father's order, so he was altogether guided by his Father's will,
wherewith his own will exactly concurred. Therefore those good works he
had done were shewed them from his Father, John x. 32, those y.aXa toyct,
those comely works ; all that tenderness he had shewed, either to soul or
body, were wrought by his Father's commission and his Father's power. In
this respect, as he was polished in regard of fitness, so he was a shaft in re-
gard of motion, Isa. xlix. 2, flying swiftly to the mark whereto the archer
designed him. And because he had so exactly observed his commission,
he did ' abide in his Father's love,' which he uses as an incentive to his
disciples' obedience, both from his own example and the issue of it, John
xv. 10.
(2.) God gave him instructions how to manage this work. When any wise
man intends an end, and fixes upon the best means for it, he orders every
circumstance, time, place, manner, as far as he is able. God intending the
mediation and incarnation of Christ, comprehended under that decree the
place, manner, and all the circumstances of it in every punctilio. It is so
408 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
evident that Christ had his instructions from God, that the Socinians fancy
an ascension of Christ into heaven after his birth, and before his preaching
in the world, to be instructed by God what he should preach; for Paul, say
they, ascended into heaven before he was sent to the Gentiles ; and if the
servant did, why not the master ? But this is to argue against the deity of
Christ. It is strange that the Scripture, which speaks so particularly of the
actions of Christ, of what was done before his preaching, viz. his birth and
baptism, should be silent in so remarkable an occurrence, and every evan-
gelist be forgetful of it. It is not credible, that if they had known it, they
should be silent in it. But the Scripture plainly denies this pretended ascen-
sion : Heb. ix. 12, 24, ' He entered once into the holy place.' In regard of
this instruction, God is said to call Christ to his foot, Isa. xli. 2, i.e. taught
him, as scholars used to sit at their master's feet: 'Who raised up the
righteous man from the east,' p*1V, righteousness. Some understand it of
Abraham, some of Cyrus, both which were raised from the east ; but the
following expressions are too high to suit either of them. God brought him as
the sun from the east, to shine upon a dark and blind world. His work is in this
respect said to be before him, Isa. lxii. 11, as having his instructions copied
out to him, as ambassadors receive instructions from the prince. His doc-
trine is therefore said not to be so much his as his Father's, John xvii. 16 ;
it is a transcript of his Father's mind and will : whence Ps. xl. 9, 10, ' I
have not hid thy righteousness within my heart, I have declared thy faith-
fulness and thy salvation, I have not concealed thy loving-kindness and thy
truth ; ' wherein Christ is represented speaking to his Father, and giving an
account how he had observed, his rule, and how faithful he had been in the
declarations of his will ; how emphatically is he referring all to God, thy
righteousness, thy faithfulness, thy salvation, thy loving-kindness, thy truth.
Whatsoever Christ spake, he heard from the Father ; not only as a Son by
eternal generation, but as a mediator by an authoritative instruction, he
spake to the world those things which he had heard of the Father, John
viii. 26, and every tittle of his instructions was observed, John xv. 15. He
had communicated all things which he had heard of his Father ; and whatsoever
he did communicate, was revealed to him by his Father. This declaration,
which was the chief part of his instructions, was of the name of God, which
he pleads he had declared, John xvii. 6, 26, the name of grace and love
which is expressed Exod. xxxiv., his reconciling name. The name of God
is said to be in him : Exod. xxiii. 21, ' My name,' i.e my law and doctrine,
as in some places the law of Christ is expounded, his law, Isa. xlii. 4, which
is rendered his name, Mat. xii. 21. This was promised, Deut. xviii. 18, 19,
• I will raise them a prophet, and will put my words in his mouth, and he
shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.' They were God's
words in his mouth ; God's words which he should speak in God's name.
God gave him authority to reveal his will, and commanded men to hear him
if they had any mind to eternal happiness. You have the full instructions
of the work he was to do and the words he was to speak, Isa. xlix. 8,9, after
the covenant made with him : he was to establish the tottering earth, which
was shaken and disordered by sin ; he was to be an herald, to proclaim par-
don and liberty in favour to the prisoners bound in chains of guilt. God
instructs him what he should say: ' That thou mayest say to the prisoners,
Go forth ; to them that are in darkness, Shew yourselves ;' come out of your
dungeon, you that are sold under the power of sin, shew yourselves, appear
before God as a reconciled Father ; for I am the covenant of the people, and
God's salvation to the ends of the earth.
(3.) Miracles pei-formed by him were a confirmation of the authenticness
2 Cor. V. 18, 19. J god the author of reconciliation. 409
of his commission. They were miracles of that nature that had not been
performed by any prophet before him. The opening the eyes of one that
was born blind was an act unheard of in the world, and the raising one that
had lain some days putrefying in his grave was not to be paralleled by any
of the ancient prophets. And those miracles clone by him which were of the
same kind with those done by the prophets of old, were done with more
ease, and in a way of absolute authority. These were such credentials, that
not only Nicodemus acknowledged him upon that account to be ' a teacher
sent from God,' John iii. 2, but the devils knew him to be the Messiah, the
Son of God, Luke iv. 41. The casting out devils was an unanswerable
argument of his authority, since those malicious spirits were too strong to
be subject to a created power, or obey his command without a touch ot
omnipotence to compel them to it ; these he dispossesses with authority, as
one that had power over them, whence the people began to admire the
excellency of his doctrine, because accompanied with such triumphant seals,
Mark i. 27. Without a divine commission to fortify his command, his word
had been as ridiculous to them as they were malicious against him. The
end of all those miracles wrought by him was to testify God's approbation
and mission of him. Acts ii. 22, ' Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of
God among you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did by him m
the midst of you,' d^odcdsiy/u,svov. They were demonstrations of his commis-
sion, and are called signs which God did by him, as they are called also the
works of his Father, John v. 36, which did bear witness of him that the
Father had sent him, and challenge from the Jews a belief of him, and he
intimates that their unbelief had been excusable if he had not done such
works, John x. 37. These miracles were an evident testimony that the
Father was in him, because, exceeding the sphere of natural causes, they
were products of the creative power which is ascribed in Scripture princi-
pally to the Father, and therefore more unanswerable than an audible voice
from heaven, which had been more liable to evasions and objections than
ocular demonstrations, allowed by the common sense of all spectators, and
felt by the subject who received the benefit of them. These being acts of
omnipotence, could not be affixed to a falsity. For it would follow that
either God were deceived himself, which he cannot be because of his omni-
science, or that he would deceive others, which is impossible, because of his
truth. And especially when he was solemnly desired to assist him with his
omnipotence in the raising Lazarus, to this end, that ' they might believe •
that he had sent him,' John xi. 42, which he durst never have desired, nor
would God ever have granted, had he only pretended an authority ; for then
he had settled the faith of man upon a false foundation, in overpowering
their reason by a supernatural work, to assent to those things which they
could not have been induced unto by lower arguments. These were the
seals of his patent from heaven ; whence, when John sent his disciples to
know of him whether he were the Messiah, he gives no other demonstration
than that of the supernatural works he had wrought.
(4.) The end of this commission was the reconciliation and redemption
of man.
[1.] Satisfaction for our sins : Gal. i. 4, ' Who gave himself for our sins,
that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will
of God and our Father.' It was the will of God and our Father, that he
should give himself for our sins; wherein God acted not only as a just judge,
to have the honour of his law maintained; nor only as a sovereign lord, to
reduce the creature to obedience ; but as a tender father, out of a paternal
affection to restore the creature to happiness, ' according to the will of God
410 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
and our Father.' The apostle lays therefore our atonement upon the will of
God, whereby Christ was authorised to this work, ' by which will we are
sanctified,' Heb. x. 10. By this will of God given in charge, and instruc-
tions to Christ, we are atoned and brought into a state of reconciliation,
through the offering of the body of Christ once for all. Hence i/.doxiffdai, a
making reconciliation for the sins of the people, is said to be a thing per-
taining to God, wherein Christ expressed his faithfulness to the instructions
God gave him as a high priest, Heb. ii. 7.
[2.1 Testification of the love of God. Isa. xliii. 10, 11, ' Ye are my
witnesses, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and
believe me, and understand that I am he, I, even I am the Lord, and
besides me there is no Saviour.' To witness the nature and love of God in
the salvation he hath provided, to evidence that he was the only true God,
because the only fountain of salvation to the lost world. He had therefore
an account of all from his Father upon whose hearts an impression of this
love was to be made, so that he knew them all by name, John x. 3. It
was to give us an understanding of God, both of his truth and of his love,
1 John v. 20.
[3.] Final and perfect salvation. It was the will of God not only that
he should give himself for our sins, but that he should deliver us from
this evil world, i. e. conduct us to heaven, that we might be for ever there
without spot or any stain of the evil of the world upon us, Gal. i. 4. Upon
this account he had authority, s^ousiav, to give eternal life to as many as
God had given him, and it was in his instructions not to cast off any that
came to him, John vi. 38. Whence the conversion of the Samaritan woman
is said to be the will of his Father, John iv. 34 ; and there is no work of
grace upon any soul by the merit of his passion and power of the Spirit,
but is by an order of his Father to him for it ; and therefore when God
shall call for all those that as a right are deposited in his hands, he expects
the full performance of his charge, and a resignation of them all to him
without the loss of one, John vi. 39. For his commission and instructions
extended not only to take away the enmity on God's part by the satisfaction
of his justice, but to present them unblameable and unreproveable in the
sight of God, that there might be no ground for the breaking out of this
enmity again on either side, Col. i. 20, 22. Thus was our Saviour made,
by the authority of God, a ' surety of a better testament,' Heb. vii. 22 : a
•surety on man's part, to satisfy the debts which were owing to the justice of
God, which he performed as a priest by his death ; and a surety on God's
part, to secure pardon and peace to believers, that they should be no more
under arrest for their debts, which was ensured when all authority and power
was given into his hands ; so that the commission and instructions were
every way extensive for the asserting the honour of God and ensuring the
happiness of the creature.
5. The Father actually sends him. Nothing more frequent in the
Gospels, especially of John, than Christ's affirming he was sent by the Father :
John viii. 42, ' I proceeded forth, and came from God ; neither came I of
myself, but he sent me.' As he intruded not himself, nor appointed him-
self, so he did not take his journey, and present himself to the world, till he
had his despatch from God ; as he had his divine being by communication
from the Father, so he had his temporary mission from his Father. His
generation is the proper ground of his mission. John vii. 29, ' But I know
him : for I am from him, and he hath sent me,' though his mission is not the
necessary consequent of his eternal generation ; his eternal generation did
not necessitate his temporal incarnation, no more than the eternal procession
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 411
of the Spirit from the Father and the Son can necessitate the incarnation
of the Spirit. There was in the Father a right of sending propter relationem
originis ; and because of Christ's voluntary putting himself into the relation
of a mediator. In respect of his being the second person in the Trinity, he
is said to be begotten ; as mediator and reconciler, he is said to be sent.
Generation was an eternal act, missiou a temporal ; that was natural, this
voluntary ; the decree of mission was eternal, the act of mission temporal.
His being sent doth not impair his deity ; though sent, he is Jehovah :
Zech. ii. 8, 9, ' Thus saith the Lord of hosts, After the glory he hath sent
me : and you shall know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me.' The person
that saith he is sent is Jehovah, and he is sent by Jehovah ; and the end
of his sending is there expressed, ver. 11 : for the conjunction of many
nations to the Lord, in that day of his sending and dwelling in the midst of
Zion. And when he affirms that he is sent by the Lord, — Isa. xlviii. 16,
♦And now the Lord God, and his Spirit, hath sent me,' — he affirms himself
to be ' the first and the last :;•' ver. 12, 13, ' Whose hand laid the foundation
of the earth, and his right hand spanned the heavens,' when he called unto
them to stand up together. His ancient name was sent, which some think
is the signification of the word Shiloh, Gen. xlix. 10, which they derive from
a word which signifies sending; and Moses speaks of him to God by this
title. Exod. iv. 13, ' 0 my God, send, I pray thee, by the hand thou wilt
send;' which anciently was understood of the Messiah, because the patriarchs
did in difficult things express their desire of the coming of the Messiah, who
was to restore and settle all things in a happy state. Moses knew that God
would send him to be a redeemer, and he desires God would send by him.
And it is a title appropriate to Christ by John Baptist : John Hi. 34, ' He
whom God hath sent.'
(1.) There is the highest reason to acknowledge him sent of God. That
there was such a person in the world, is acknowledged by the very enemies
to his person, and owned in human stories as well as divine writ. Since
he professed himself to be sent by God, if he were not sent by him, he had
been guilty of the greatest falsity, and greatest folly in affirming so.'* Had
he been a mere man, and come without any authority, how comes it to pass,
that after his death he prevailed against the laws of the nation, the grandeur
and valour of the world, the wisdom and eloquence of men, and against the
whole world that resisted his doctrine ; that he put to flight the powers
of hell, silenced their oracles ? How should one crucified as a malefactor
be so powerful, after his death, to make such impressions upon the minds of
men ; to change the whole scene of the world ; to assist his followers for
many years after in the working of miracles ? If God would for a time have
left such a wickedness (had it been a false assertion) unrevenged, yet would
he never have seconded it by his own power, and nonplussed men into a belief
of it ! Would he have assisted the heralds of this news even against him-
self, and his own truth and righteousness ? Had this been done by human
means, it might have been suspected ; but a divine wisdom and art appeared
in all. It was not by riches, honours, or the promises ot woridiy great-
ness, that this doctrine spread itself over the world, and found such harbour
in the minds of men ; but by promises of an invisible and future happiness,
and assurance of present misery, reproach, poverty, prisons, torments, and
death ; and by these means his followers increased to a formidable number,
against the opposition of princes and learning of the world ; and they were
more willing and fond to lay down their lives to seal the truth of the doctrine,
that Christ was sent of God, than to strike one stroke for the propagation of
* Savonarola, Trium. Cruris, lib. ii. cap. 13, p. 134.
412 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
it, though they wanted not courage for acting, as well as for suffering, had
any such commission been granted them. Now if God doth rule the world
justly and righteously, we must believe that Christ was sent by God for
those ends he declared in the time of his life, or we must deny the righteous
providence of God, and acknowledge all things to be ordered by chance, or
some worse power ; we must accuse God of the highest unrighteousness, in
bearing witness by a divine power to so great an imposture, whereby millions
of souls would be undone, had he not, according to his own declaration, been
sent by God.*
(2.) God sent him for this end of reconciliation and redemption. He
was sent as ' the messenger of the covenant,' Mai. iii. 1, to declare the peace,
as well as to be the peace, Eph. ii. 14, 17. The thing itself was so incredi-
ble, that an injured God should be desirous of reconciliation, and upon such
terms as the death of his Son, that it was as needful to be declared by God,
as contrived and acted by God. The objections that might have been made
against it had such strength, that he only who lay in the bosom of the
Father, and knew all his eternal counsels, and was the actor of it in his own
person, could reveal the thoughts, purposes, and resolves of his Father con-
cerning it from all eternity, John i. 18.
6. Uses. (1.) We see again here the sad charge against unbelief and disobedi-
ence. It is a despising the stamp of all God's authority upon Christ, and
tearing his commission ; a refusal of one particularly sent, a rejection of the
messenger of the covenant, and all the covenant treaties of love and peace.
This was the aggravation of the Jews' sin, and is likewise of all the inheriters
of that unbelief, to the end of the world ; that Christ hath an authoritative
commission from his Father, and is not received by the rebels ; that he speaks
in his Father's name, and is not believed by the offender, John v. 43. God
was in Christ reconciling the world, as a prince in an ambassador; therefore
God and his reconciling offer are despised in the refusal of his commission.
It is to God the affront is oifered, Christ being the representative of God in
the highest and most gracious charge, in the tenderest and most indulgent
offers ; any slight thoughts of his person, any contempt of his precepts, any
disregard of his promises, redounds upon the person authorising him to those
ends. He was sent to be heard and obeyed, Mat. xvii. 5, not to be slighted
and despised.
(2.) Study Christ's commission in the extent of it. Whatsoever Christ
doth, he doth it by command, and commission from his Father. This will
support faith against fears, and hope against despondencies. It will afford
us arguments in prayer, when we can open before God the commission he
gave to his Son, and back every petition with some clause in it ; when we
can go to Christ as an officer authorised and instructed, and shew him what
instructions he had : Isa. lxi. 1-3, ' To bind up the broken-hearted, proclaim
liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound ;
to give beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise
lor the spirit of heaviness, that they may be trees of righteousness.' To
bind up the broken-hearted, deliver the captives, open the prisons, change
deformity into beauty, and sorrow into joy, a spirit of heaviness into a spirit
of praise, a languishing frame into a fruitful growth ; all which parts of his
commission were owned by him, Luke iv. 18, and observed in his actings in
the world. The poor woman pleaded with him for mercy, as he was the
' Son of David,' Mat. xv. 22 ; we upon a higher title, as he is the com-
missioner of God, the apostle of our profession, the messenger of the
co\enant.
* Savonarola, Trium. Crucis, lib. ii. cap. 16, p. 173.
2 Cor. V. 18, 10.] god the author of reconciliation. 413
(3.) Act faith much upon it. There is little comfort in all that Christ did
and suffered, unless we respect him as one sent. Had he come of his own
head, we could not with any confidence plead his merit before God. He is
sent as his Father's servant, to do service for his Father and his people.
Christ must he respected, not only as dying, but as one sent by the Father
to such an end. This is the character he gives his disciples' faith in his
relation to the Father : John xvii. 8, • They have believed that thou didst
send me.' It is this commission Christ pleads in his intercession : ' Let not
them that wait upon thee, 0 Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake ;
let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, 0 God of Israel,
because for thy sake I have borne reproach,' Ps. lx. 6, 7. It is Christ's
passion prayer. The 9th, 21st, 22d verses, are applied to Christ in the New
Testament. It was by thy order, and for thy honour, I bore this reproach ;
let not, therefore, any believer be ashamed and confounded. What he de-
sired on earth, he intercedes for in heaven, and upon the same ground. He
will not therefore refuse those that come unto God by him, he hath an office
in heaven for their reception. You come to one who hath an obligation and
order from his Father to receive you, and hath too faithful a disposition, and
too compassionate a nature of his own, ever to reject you. It was from the
strict observance of his Father's orders, that he did nothing but what was
pleasing to God : John viii. 29, ' I do always those things that please him'
{upsard). 'Ageffrbv signifies, some say, an order of a court. Not a work done,
not a word spoken, but was agreeable to the tenor of his commission, to the
copy of his instructions : John xii. 49, 50, ' Whatsoever I speak therefore,
even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.' We cannot but please God,
by believing one that is so exact, by presenting to him what he is so highly
pleased with. The command given him by his Father, was the publishing
everlasting life. We should then believingly put in plea God's order. This
is a stronger ground of support than the principles of sciences, and fallibility
of sense, and the totterings of reason.
(4.) Bless God for his love, and for any work in your hearts. The author-
ising Christ is a piece of love, that could never enter into the heart of anv
man, unless God had revealed it. It is therefore called a mystery, Eph.
iii. 3. The apostle could not consider the will of God and our Father in this
work, without interrupting his discourse with a doxology : Gal. i. 4, 5, ' To
whom be glory for ever and ever, Amen.' Bless him for any gracious work
in any of your hearts. It was by the order of his Father any work was
done by him in the world. It is by the same order any work is done by him
in your souls. It is Christ's ' meat and drink to do his Father's will' in
both. Not a person that finds the qualifications of grace in his heart, but
may read his name in the commission of the Father to Christ. As the
angels rejoiced in the manifestation of the wisdom and power of God, when
the new creation was laid in the incarnation of Christ, so should we in the
mission of the Son of God. ' Glory to God, and peace on earth,' are in con-
junction in themselves, and should be in our meditations on it.
7. The Father actually bruiseth him. In this act is the corner-stone of
our reconciliation laid. He bore from his Father our punishment ; the pun-
ishment of sense in his agonies in the garden, the punishment of loss in the
eclipse upon the cross. In the one, he tasted the terrors of hell ; in the
other, he felt the oitterness of a temporary clouding of heaven. He was
• smitten of God and afflicted,' Isa. liii. 4, percussum Dei, D\~6k P130. Men
that were extremely afflicted, they regarded as smitten by the immediate
hand of God. God indeed both loved and punished him in that act, John
x. 17: he loved him as our liedeemer, and bruised him as the surety engag-
414 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
ing for our debts ; he loved him for the glory he was to gain by him, and
punished him for the sins he did legally bear upon himself ; he loved him
as his servant in whom he would be glorified by the punishment of our sins,
and the redemption of our souls. It is granted on all hands, that God was
the supreme cause and author of Christ's sufferings ; but some say,* not the
immediate executioner with his own hands. For the phrase in Scripture,
that God did these or those things, concludes not that he did them with his
immediate hand ; but that he was the decreer, disposer, and directer of them
by his just judgment in a holy manner to correct the sins of men, or by his
wisdom to make trial of his saints ; God using for the executioners men or
angels, good or bad, or other inferior creatures, as seems best to his wisdom :
Amos iii. 6, ' Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it ?'
where he doth not ascribe all evil of punishment to the immediate hand of
God, but to the sovereign judgment and power of God, appointing and order-
ing what should be done.
It is certain, that the grace of God was the cause of his tasting death,
Heb. ii. 9. But it is most likely, that the Father did immediately bruise
him.
(1.) It seems necessary that the stroke should come immediately from the
Father.
[1.] In regard of what he was to suffer. It was more than a bodily death
was due by the first sentence against Adam in case of failure on his part,
(xen. ii. 17, ' In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,' J"I1D
niOD. All kinds of death ; the curse of the law reached further than the
case of the body. If nothing more were due to the sinner but the temporal
death of the body, it were a light and tolerable punishment. An infinite
wrath surely was due both to soul and body for transgressing the precepts
of an infinite majesty. The soul being principal in sin, must be the prin-
cipal in suffering ; the soul was the agent, the body but the instrument.
The whole nature of man had sinned, and violated the articles of the covenant;
the whole nature of man must therefore answer. The soul in us then being
the proper subject of sin, the soul of Christ must be the immediate subject
of suffering, otherwise he suffered not the penalty due to sin. Not one of
those murderers, whose hands reeked with the blood of his body, could reach
his invisible soul, and stain their hands immediately with the oppression of
his spirit ; that was beyond their touch, and was obnoxious only to the
Father's stroke. No creature could drop an inward wrath upon his soul.
An infinite justice was wronged, an infinite punishment must be suffered.
Now none can execute infinite wrath, but an infinite person ; what creatures
could be sufficient to revenge an infinite offence against an infinite majesty ?
As every faculty of our souls had been depraved by sin, so must every faculty of
the soul be afflicted with sorrow. ' The whole world was guilty before God,'
Rom. iii. 19, LiroBixos rw ^ecC, under the judgment of God : ' his wrath abode
upon us, John iii. 36. We were ' by nature children of wrath,' Eph. ii. 3.
Christ must endure the wrath due to us ; it was more than a common death
that he was to taste, and did taste, Heb. ii. 9, 14, 15 — that death which
the devil had the power of, who labours not only for the death of the body,
but for that of the soul ; that death which men under a sense of
guilt feared, which was not a temporal, but an eternal one. Men feared not
a death in sin, but a death for sin ; not so much the death of the body, as
that of the soul. Such a death which men feared, Christ endured ; the
penal death of men, not the spiritual death of men ; and that in regard of
the nature of it, not of the continuance, nor the despairs and moral evils
* Bilson of Christ's Sufferings,
2 Cor. Y. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 415
which follow upon it. Such sins as the damned are guilty of, are not essen-
tial to the nature of punishment, but arise from the inherent unrighteousness
of the person ; neither is the eternal duration of the punishment essential
to its nature, but ariseth from the finite nature of the suffering creature,
which renders a commensurate satisfaction from him impossible. The in-
finite holiness of Christ's nature was a bar against the sins which are com-
mitted by others under that wrath, and the infinite grandeur and dignity of
his person was a bar against the eternal duration of that punishment. Now
such a death is immediately inflicted by the wrath of God. I cannot see
how any creature can inflict that which is infinite.
[2.] In regard of the attributes the Father intended to glorify in the death
of Christ. He acted herein as judge, for the manifestation of his vindictive
justice ; as supreme lawgiver, for the vindication of his holiness ; as a go-
vernor, for the declaration of his tenderness and kindness towards man : all
which attributes were glorified in the highest strain by his being an actor in
the death of his beloved Son.
His justice. His justice had not been so eminent, if Christ had only
suffered the death of the body, without impressions of wrath on his soul ;
nor if God had left him to the strokes of others, without striking him him-
self. This attribute had been manifested upon the highest creatures, angels
in heaven, man upon the earth, and upon the account of the latter had
reached both the irrational and inanimate creatures ; there wanted nothing
to express it to the utmost but this of bruising his Son. God designed the
utmost demonstration of this in the death of his Son, Rom. iii. 26. Christ
was ' set out as a propitiation, that God might be just ;' that God might be
just, i. e. that he might be known, and declared in the highest manner to be
a righteous God ; implying, that all other expressions of it before had been
drawn in fainter colours than what he intended here, as if he could not have
been known to have an impartial justice without such a way of discovery.
He did, therefore, all in this case which anexact justice could require ; for
to neglect what it requires, is an injury to it, as well as to do what it pro-
hibits. In the creation, he was a God of power and wisdom ; in the law, a
God of vengeance, which is mounted to the highest point in inflicting wrath
upon Christ for man's, violation of that law. In extraordinary visible judg-
ments by the hand of God, there are clearer notices of his justice than when
the hand of instruments is more sensibly felt in them. ' The heavens ' then
1 declare his righteousness,' when ' the Lord is Judge himself,' Ps. 1. 6.
Abraham's obedience was more eminent by the laying hands upon his own
son Isaac himself, according to God's order ; so was God's justice in laying
his own hand upon Christ, than if it had been committed merely to instru-
ments. Had our Saviour suffered only a bodily death, with those griefs in
his soul which are incident to men barely for the death of the body, he had
under all that load of sin which was laid upon him suffered less than many
men have done. There was something therefore of wrath dropped into his
soul, which was the act of his Father's bruising of him, for the manifestation
of his justice, and giving it an unexceptionable satisfaction.
His holiness. God was now upon the highest discovery of his holiness
and hatred of sin. Had this punishment been left only to instruments, he
had indeed declared his holiness, but in a fainter degree ; his hatred of sin
had not been so conspicuous, had he not with his own hands poured out a
wrath upon him. His end in sending his Son ' in the likeness of sinful
flesh ' being to make him a sacrifice to • condemn sin in the flesh,' Rom.
viii. 3, his shooting his wrath upon him was a more sensible, high, and
full condemnation of sin, than if all the devils in hell, and all their subjects
416 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
and votaries on earth, had been let loose to buffet him. Herein he shewed
that sin was odious and abominable to him, that it should not be spared
though it were only by imputation upon his Son ; and hereby he lays a
foundation of greater awe and reverence of his sanctity, and pure indignation
upon the hearts of men. Here was the beauty of his holiness, as well as the
exactness of his justice ; vindicating the honour of his law, displaying the
purity of his nature by sheathing his sword with indignation in the bowels of
sin, while he pierced the heart of his beloved Son. A prince punishing his
own son for some enormous crime by his own hand, would evidence a greater
abhorrency of it than if he only exposed him to the hands of executioners.
His love. If God's love appeared more in giving up Christ as a sacrifice
than if he had saved the world without the death of his Son, and without
any satisfaction, — as appears, John iii. 17, ' God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son,' &c, which was a purer strain of love than par-
doning sin without a sacrifice, — it may also follow, that since God resolved to
signalise his love to us, he would have it reach the highest note ; and it could
not be screwed up to a higher peg than the sacrificing of his Son for us with
his own hand. If there be such an emphasis of love in sending him, there
is a stronger emphasis of love in bruising him. ' God so loved the world,
that he gave his only-begotten Son ;' but God so loved the world, that he
bruised his only begotten Son, declares a richer magnificence fof love, and
raises it to a* height of glory, in shewing what he would do for miserable
creatures. He magnifies his kindness, demonstrates how much he values
and delights in his elect, and gives an undeniable proof of the treasures of
love in his heart for them. His earnestness in shooting his arrows into him-
self, rather than lose his people, and engraving upon him the marks of his
anger, is the highest point his compassion to us could amount unto, and a
step beyond the bare offer and mission of him. God would save us as a
Judge, with the evidence of his righteousness ; as a Lawgiver, in the dis-
covery of his holiness ; as a King, in the display of his sovereignty : Isa.
xxxiii. 22, ' The Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, and the Lord
is our King ; he will save us ;' and as a Father too with the clearest and
dearest affection.
(2.) God did bruise him : Isa. liii. 10, ' Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise
him ; he hath put him to grief : when thou shalt make his soul an offering
for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of
the Lord shall prosper in his hands.' This chapter is the history of the
cross, and the epitome of the gospel ; it is Christ's crucifixion in effigy be-
fore he was crucified in person. The double state of Christ, of humiliation
and exaltation, are here described. The verse is a prophecy which hath some-
thin<* minatory and something consolatory : minatory, ' It pleased the Lord
to bruise him ;' he speaks of what was future as if it were past ; consolatory,
' He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days ;' and yet, this word refers
to something antecedent in ver. 9, ' he had done no violence, neither was
any deceit in his mouth.' Though he had an unspotted holiness in his nature,
an unblameable purity in his life, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him, as he
stood in our stead, and represented our persons.
It pleased the Lord, ¥Bn. The word signifies not only a bare will, but a
will with delight. The word is used to signify God's pleasure in his church,
Isa. lxii. 4, where the word is Hephzibah, my delight is in her, the same
word, and it is used to express Christ's delight in his saints, Ps. xvi. 3, • in
whom is all my delight.' Not only his resolve, but his pleasure, his heart
was as much in it as his hands ; the word speaks more than a bare permis-
sion. He delighted not simply in the strokes he gave, but in his own
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 417
essential perfections manifested by those strokes ; he delighted not simply in the
rod, but in tbat balsam which was to drop from the end of the rod upon man-
kind; he was pleased with every wound, as it was a necessary medium to re-
demption ; the text intimates it, he was pleased to bruise him, but it was in
order to another pleasure that was to prosper in the hands of the bruised person.
To bruise him, N31, he hath put him to grief. The word signifies to pound
as in a mortar, whereby the greatness of Christ's sufferings is expressed.
God came armed with his vindictive justice, the sentence of the law in his
mouth, and the penalty of the law in his hand ; he appeared as a just gover-
nor of the world, with a readiness to exercise his authority for the vindica-
tion of his law ; he glittered in his holiness to right the wronged holiness of
his law, and in his justice to revenge the insolences committed against it.
His delight in this might very well consist with his love to his Son. As a
Father he loved him, as a judge he punished him ; as a Father he loved his
person, as a God he loved his own honour. A son enters into suretyship
with his father for an insolvent debtor ; the father loves his son as he is a
father, but demands the debt of him as he is a creditor, and hath the law
passed against him as he is a governor : he did affect him as he stood in re-
lation to himself, and punished him as he stood in relation to us ; he loved
him for his own holiness, and punished him for our sins.
Again, it is no wonder that it is expressed that the Lord was pleased or
delighted to bruise him, since the bruising Christ was a part of the accepta-
tion of the sacrifice : as fire descending from heaven to consume any sacrifice
presented to God was a sign of the acceptableness of it to God. This is sup-
posed to be the sign of the acceptation of Abel's sacrifice. Fire from heaven
consumed Abel's sacrifice, and not Cain's. Theodotian therefore renders
accepted sniK-jpiasv, and the Scripture gives us frequent examples of this way
of acceptation. So it was with Gideon's offering, Judges vi. 21 ; and so it
was with Aaron's, Lev. ix. 24, and with Elijah's, 1 Kings xviii. 38, and with
David's, 1 Chron. xxi. 26. God had never kindled the sacrifice, had he not
been pleased with it.
When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. When God was to deal
with him in a way of vindictive justice, as he was a sacrifice for us, he would
not spare him, nor abate one stroke due to him for our sins ; he would deal
with him in the same manner as he would deal with us, in whose place he
stood as a sacrifice ; he did not bruise him as he was his Son, but as he was
a sacrifice, and so would not abate anything of that weight of suffering which
was due by the law and by the demand of justice for our iniquities.
The promissory part follows. ' He shall see his seed,' thore shall be a
succession of generations for the glory of Christ, according to that Ps. lxxii.
17, ' His name shall be continued as long as the sun ;' he shall be childed,
he shall have a generation of children to keep up his name.
In the verse you see,
1. The greatness of Christ's sufferings, expressed by bruising.
2. The inflicter of them, the Lord.
8. The reason of them, as he was an offering, a sacrifice for sin.
4. The subject, the Redeemer,
5. The fruit of it, a spiritual seed, with duration.
Doct. The greatest punishment inflicted upon Christ, when he stood as a
sacrifice for sin, was not the act of men, but the act of God. There were
sufferings in the body of Christ, as buffetings, spitting, scourging, crucifying ;
in these, men were the instruments, but the determinate counsel of God pre-
ceded. But there were sufferings in his soul which was beyond the reach of
VOL. III. D d
418 charnook's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
men. God himself made the impressions on this ; the fire that as it were
scalded his spirit, that made him sweat clods of blood in a cold season, came
down from heaven, as the fire did upon the legal altar. He never expressed
so great a sorrow under all the calamities he felt in the course of his life as
in the garden ; he was sore amazed and very heavy : Mark xiv. 33, 34, ' He
began to be sore amazed,' as if he had tasted nothing but joy in the time
past of his life, and never understood the invasions of any sorrow before. He
then began to feel the first impressions of that wrath due to sin, a sudden
consternation seized upon his faculties. Both words, sx8u/j.(3zo&ai and
ddrip.oviTv, signify that his pangs were highly strained ; a mere bodily death
could not amaze him thus. He had a divine nature to support his human,
against a mere separation of his soul from his body, since the divine nature
would be separated from neither, and he knew a few days would reunite
them for ever in a glorious state. Christ did as well foreknow by the pro-
mise, the glory that was to follow upon his sufferings, as he did by the pre-
cept the passion he was to undergo. It was the wrath of God, a greater
bitterness than any other gall in the cup of death, that the human nature,
though supported by the divine, stood looking upon with apprehensions of
grief and amazement ;' he knew the greatness of the punishment due to sin,
and the greatness of the passion he was to undergo for sin. He is called
4 the Lamb of God,' a lamb of his own appointing, a lamb of his own sacri-
ficing, distinguished from the paschal lamb by the author and giver, called
the Lamb of God, whereas those were the lambs of men. In the constitu-
tion of Christ in the office of mediator, which was God's immediate act, he
acted the part of a wise governor ; in punishing sin in the person of our
surety, thereby satisfying his justice, he acts the part of a just judge. May
not the punishment of Christ be immediate by God's own hand, as well as
the constitution of Christ was immediate by his own mouth ? Isaac was to
be the sacrifice, and Abraham the sacrificer ; Isaac a child of promise, in
whom the seed should be called, ordered to fall by the hand of Abraham,
the father of many nations : Christ's suffering represented in the one, and
God's striking prefigured in the other ; God seeming to intimate, that as
Abraham was willing to offer up his son at his command with his own
hand, so be would offer up his Son as a sacrifice for him, in whom all
the nations of the earth should be blessed. It is true the devils were let
loose upon him, with all the powers of darkness, Luke xxii. 53, John xv. 13,
and upon the cross he combated with principalities and powers, because
there he spoiled them, Col. ii. 15, they bruised his heel by their instru-
ments, and his Father his soul by his wrath. The church of old expected
and desired this : Ps. Ixxx. 17, ' Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right
hand, upon the Son of man,' &c. The psalmist complains of the miserable
desolation of the church, for which there was no remedy but in Christ, the
man of God's right hand, the man of his love. By the hand being upon a
man, is meant punishing, many times in Scripture : as Ps. xxxviii. 3, ' Thy
hand came upon me,' i. e. thou didst strike me with a plague. Indeed, his
Father mixed the cup, would not suffer it to depart from him, though he
offered up supplications with strong cries ; and God, who, as a righteous
judge, will not clear the guilty, did sentence him to the drinking the dregs
of it ; and it is as righteous an act to inflict the punishment as to pronounce
the sentence. He constituted him mediator by an act of sovereign mercy,
he inflicted the punishment upon him by an act of sovereign justice; he sent
him into the world, as the Father who had the power of mission, and bruised
him upon the cross, as a judge who had the power of punishing.
1. The imputation of our iniquities to him was the act of God : Isa. liii. 6,
2 Cor. V. 13, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 419
1 The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all ;' JHQn, accurrere fecit
incursn hostili. He gathered together the debts of men, put them into one sum,
and transferred them upon Christ, as to guilt and punishment. He bound our
transgression upon the back of his only Son, as Abraham did the wood upon
the shoulders of his Isaac. Our sins were laid upon Christ, as the transgres-
sions of the people were laid upon the head of the scape-goat, Lev. xvi. 20,
21, 22, which was but a type of this imputation to Christ; for their sins
were not truly laid upon the goat, it had then been the antitype, not the type.
Sins were confessed, gathered together by confession, laid upon the beast,
which is said to bear them ; he, and all that touched him, were accounted
unclean. All our sins were laid upon the head of Christ by God. He it
was ' made him sin for us who knew no sin, that we might become the
righteousness of God in him,' 2 Cor. v. 21 ; not by inhesion, but imputa-
tion ; not only a sacrifice for sin, but sin itself. The double antithesis in
the text intimates, he was made that sin he knew not ; he knew the punish-
ment by suffering, but he knew not the guilt by commission and practice ;
he was made that sin which is opposed to righteousness, and that was sin
itself, which must be understood only as to the imputed guilt; for punish-
ment could not have been inflicted on him, unless guilt had first been
imputed to him.*- Had he not first borne our sins, he could not have been
driven into the wilderness of desertion and death. Upon this is laid the
difference of his first and second appearance : Heb. ix. 28, ' So Christ was
once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for him shall
he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.' At his first he bore
our sins, not personally inherent, but legally, after the substitution of him
in our stead, counted to him as his proper debt ; upon which account he
1 restored what he took not away.' At the second he shall ' appear without
sin.' His nature was free from sin in his first coming, but not his condition ;
he had sin as our surety, though none in his person ; it was impossible he
could be our surety without this imputation. Upon the account of this
suretyship, God reckoned him a debtor, as ' made under the law, to redeem
them that were under the law,' Gal. iv. 4. That what God in justice might
charge upon the bankrupt, he might, after this constitution of him under the
law, by the same right charge upon the surety ; for this guilt, by the Father's
act of imputation, upon his own voluntary submission to take our offending
nature, became his ; and, therefore, what penalty was by the law due from
us was to be paid by him. All punishment supposeth a guilt one way or
other ; but the Redeemer had no personal guilt, for ' he had done no violence,'
Isa. liii. 10, ' yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him, when his soul made itself
an offering for sin,' imputed to him. This imputation was God's immediate
act, and could not be the act of any other, because he was the sole creditor,
without any partner ; and therefore it is no more reflection upon God imme-
diately to punish him, than it was to transfer our sins upon him, which was
an act of God, not possible to be done by any creature. God imputed a
world of sins to him, because he undertook for that world God had created
by him ; therefore God alone inflicted upon his soul that punishment which
was principally due for our sins. Since he died for our sins, he died under
that hand which was to strike us for them ; for God made him sin for us, i. e.
he handled him as he would have done those sinners in whose stead he
suffered, had he not undertaken for them.
2. His greatest sufferings appear to be above the power of any creature to
inflict. Was it a contest with any creature that made him desirous to waive
that death, which was the main end of his coming ?
* Polhill on the Decrees, p 225.
420 charnoce's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
(1.) How was his soul begirt with, the wrath of God, before his agony in
the garden ! What an excess of sorrow do those words signify, Mat. xxvi. 37,
Mark xiv. 83, hJa^Qstada/, ub^/xcviTv, sore-amazed, sorrowful, very heavy ; an
inward quaking, an inexpressible amazement. What a deluge fell from heaven
upon our ark, of which that of Noah was a type ! How was his soul ground
to powder in his agony ! How did his soul boil under the fire of wrath, and
his blood leak through every pore of the vessel by the extremity of the flame !
Must it not be more than a finite breath that thus melted his soul in the
garden ? Must it not be a stronger than a finite stroke, that wrung out those
bitter cries ? Was there any visible person to afflict him ? Yet his agonies
there are thought to have more of hell-fire in them, than his sufferings on the
cross ; clods of blood dropped from him when there was no visible hand to
strike him. Unconceivable must be the afflictions of his soul, that could
make such dismal commotions in his body, and put the whole instrument out
of tune ; that should make a dissolution of the parts, and make his heart like
melted wax ' in the midst of his bowels,' Ps. xxii. 14. His spotless con-
science could not flash such lightnings, as to melt the sword, when nothing
touched the scabbard ; his Father was then charging him with our sins,
actuating his knowledge and sense of them ; he had all his lifetime a know-
ledge of the ingratitude and rebellion of sin ; he knew how it had offended
and injured God, how it had deformed and mined the creature ; now was
his knowledge actuated, and the charging upon him the punishment of them
made his knowledge sensible and experimental. This cup discovers more
bitter ingredients than any creature could wring out into it.
(2.) Could it be only the sense of an approaching bodily death, that could
so deeply afflict his innocent soul ? If so, he had discovered a greater weak-
ness than many of the martyrs ; nay, had been outstripped in courage by
many moral heathens. His nature sure was as strong as theirs to bear it, had
not his sufferings been attended with a more sensible sting than theirs were.
Martyrs have suffered as great outward torments with joy, laughing in the
faces of their persecutors, and . edging their fury to more sharpness. But,
alas, he suffered more deaths than one : Isa. liii. 9, ' He made his grave with
the wicked, and with the rich in his death,' VJ1D2 ; the death of the soul in
regard of the bitterness, though not in regard of duration. His Father inflicted
what was evil, and withdrew that which was good. Were not the clouds of
his Father's countenance, and a subtraction of good looks from him, a bruis-
ing him ? All the outward torments of the world could not have drawn one
doleful cry from any man under the full and sensible beams of God's favour,
much less from Christ. Could all the instruments in hell, earth, or heaven,
draw a veil between his soul and his Father's countenance ? This must only
be his Father's act, and was a signal stroke. It is clear there was a negative
act of God, denying that comfortable presence which was due to him as a
holy person by the covenant of works ; and could not be denied his humanity,
as united to the second person in the Trinity, had he not been in another
capacity upon the cross, and not only precisely as the Son of God. The
inflicting of the evil of inward punishment was sure as much the act of his
Father, as the withdrawing from him an inward good, the light of his counte-
nance. Might there not be more than a bare cloud, might there not be some
bitter frowns darted upon him, since he appeared at that time in the condi-
tion of the greatest sinner ? If the wrath and justice of his Father did not
immediately drop upon him, how could he satisfy it ; what satisfaction could
arise to it, if he were not at all touched by it? The fire upon the typical
altar cams down from heaven, and so did this wrath which consumed our
sacrifice.
2 Cob. Y. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 421
3. God had a choice delight in the bruising him. With what ardency-
doth he rouse up the sleepy sword, to sheath it in the bowels of the man
that is his fellow ! Zech. xiii. 7, ' Awake, 0 sword, against my shepherd, and
against the man that is my fellow ; strike the shepherd,' &c. The latter part
of the verse is applied to Christ, Mat. xxvi. 31. He commands it to pursue
his design with a strength like a man newly refreshed and risen from sleep, and
make the deeper gashes. Never was God so pleased in drawing his sword against
his creatures, as in drawing it against the man his fellow, against the Shep-
herd, one of Christ's titles in Scripture. It pleased the Lord to bruise him,
Isa. liii. 10. God delighted in his bruising. The word ¥21"! answers to
iudoziav in the New Testament, when he saith that he is well pleased in
Christ as his beloved Son. In the formal condition of this action, as it was
conversant about punishment, it was not delightful to God, for he doth not
punish with his heart : Lam. iii. 33, ' He doth not afflict willingly, or grieve
the children of men' ; ' He delights not in the death of a sinner,' much less
in the death of his Son, Ezek. xviii. 33. But as finally considered, it is
highly pleasant to him in regard of his glory and man's redemption. The
reason why God bruised him was not any delight simply in the death of
Christ, but because in that act he broke in pieces our sins (which were the
cause of the enmity) which were borne by Christ in his body upon the tree :
1 Peter ii. 14, ' Who his own self bore our sins in his own body upon the
tree, that we, being dead to sin, should live unto righteousness, by whose
stripes we were healed,' which is a comment on Isa. liii. 4, 5. He hath
borne our griefs, he was smitten of God, he was bruised for our iniquities,
and with his stripes we are healed. Christ appeared in that state, as bear-
ing the whole body of sin, as well as the body of flesh. The Jews aimed at
killing his body, and God aimed at killing our sin. Every stroke he fetched
was not ultimately to put his Son to death, but the enmity to death; to
destroy the dominion and power which sin by its guilt had derived from the
law ; for so being dead to sin must be understood, which is clear by observing
the like phrase, Rom. vi. 11, 14, where by being dead to sin, he means sin
not having dominion, or condemning power over him, which is evidenced by
a suitable expression of being ' dead to the law,' Rom. vii. 4, which is no
more than the law's not having dominion over us in regard of the curse, as
appears, ver. 1-3. It was sin which had made the breach, that God princi-
pally struck at in the bruising his Son. He had a pleasure to bruise him
as our surety, a trouble to bruise him as his Son. He was afflicted in his
afflictions as his Son, and would have the sun in the heavens bear witness
to it by hiding its head. But he was delighted with his sufferings as our
Redeemer, because they were for the satisfaction of his justice, the condem-
nation of sin, and the restoration of his creature. In this respect, the death
of Christ was the sweetest sacrifice that ever was offered, and consequently
the smiting of him the pleasantest work that ever God engaged in.
4. The graces of Christ were most eminent in enduring the inward impres-
sions of wrath from his Father. The odours of his graces brake out more
strongly by his Father's bruising him.
(1.) His kindness and tenderness to man. Christ was now upon the
highest manifestation of his compassions to mankind. His death was the
emphasis of his love ; his love was stronger and purer than the love of any
creature, not only in regard of the excellency of his person, but the greatness
of his sufferings. Had he endured only a death of the body, and not such
a death that could have been inflicted only by an infinite hand, his love had
lost much of its lustre. His love is principally laid upon the score of his
death : Gal. ii. 20, ' Who loved me, and gave himself for me.' If his
422 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
passion had been only in his body, without impressions from an higher hand
upon his soul, he had been in some measure paralleled in this (except in the
dignity of his person) by several, who have freely resigned their lives to the
enemies' swords, and some to unexpressible torments, for the public good of
their country, as the Roman Regulus to the Carthaginians, because his
country should not agree to disadvantageous conditions of peace. Besides,
by this inward conflict he was fitted for further tenderness, having hereby an
experience of the worst men were exposed unto by sin, that he might be
more tender of their welfare, and with more melting bowels solicit his Father
for relief; hence did arise his strongest sympathising with the condition of
men.
(2.) His obedience to his Father. It is a signal testimony given him,
that he was ' obedient even to the death of the cross,' Philip, ii. 8. The
sharper then his circumstances were upon the cross, the more illustrious his
obedience was. The lustre of obedience is seen in engaging upon command
with the most affrighting difficulties. It was a more full acknowledgment
of his Father's sovereignty, and a stronger asserting his own obedience, in
• making his soul an offering for sin,' Isa. liii. 10, than if he had only made
his body so by a temporal death (though I confess by soul, many times in
Scripture, is only meant life), and also to have his eye fixed upon the
mediatory law, and his own duty arising from thence. When his Father
seems to have forgotten all the promises he had bound himself in, and shot
frowns into his heart, and denied him both the light of sun and stars,
comfort both from heaven and earth, he adds yet holy inflammations to
obedience, which under those circumstances was most ravishing to the
Father, and most meritorious for us. It was then an offering and ' a sacri-
fice of a sweetsmelling savour unto God,' Eph. v. 2.
(3.) His fiduciary trust in God, and the promises made to him, was more
signal and noble. To trust a God smiling, when he doth cast about us
nothing but cords of love, is not a case of difficulty ; every man hath a strong
impulse to this, when God drops sweetness into him. But then is faith at
the highest elevation, when a man can trust God though he kills him, and
wait upon him when he hides his face and drops hell from his hand. Thus
was our Saviour's faith put to the trial by this proceeding ; yet he went
forth conquering and to conquer, and would not let go his hold. Though his
Father's beams were withdrawn, and his bowels seem contracted, the heaven
overcast with darkness, and all the curses of the law let fly at him, he would
still depend upon God for his help in his greatest passion : Isa. 1. 7, 9,
' The Lord God will help me ;' ver. 10, ' Who is among you that fears the
Lord, that obeys the voice of his servant, that walks in darkness and sees no
light ? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay himself upon his God.'
He would not let the storm blow these concerns of the world out of his
hands, which then were managed by him ; which trust of his, in this dismal
time, he seems to set as a pattern for our imitation, in the words immediately
following, intimating we should have his faith under those dreadful circum-
stances always in our eyes to encourage ours.
These graces of Christ, tenderness, obedience, and trust, had not been
set forth in such orient colours to us, had not his soul drunk a cup of
wrath of his Father's tempering, as well as his body felt the strokes of human
fury.
5. I must add a caution or two for the better understanding this, and
preventing any mistake.
(1.) Though Christ suffered from his Father an infinite wrath due to us,
yet it was not necessary it should be eternally endured by him, because
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.1 god the author of reconciliation. 423
eternal wrath is due to us ; for the eternity of punishment ariseth from the
condition of the subject suffering, not from the nature of the punishment
itself. A creature being a limited nature, cannot give an infinite satisfaction
commensurate to an infinite justice, without suffering eternally. Therefore
though infinite punishment be due, yet eternal punishment is not in itself
due, but falls in for want of the creature's ability to satisfy the demands of
legal justice ; since it cannot satisfy the law by one or many acts of suffer-
ing, it is always suffering, but never fully satisfieth. But the infinite dignity
of the person of Christ transcending all creatures, made the satisfaction he
offered valuable without an eternal duration of those torments, which the in-
sufficiency of the creature could never have made by suffering to eternity.
He satisfies the debt, that pays at once the millions he owes ; but he can
never satisfy, but must remain in bondage, that pays a farthing in a year when
his debts amounts to millions, besides his running farther into debt while he
is paying. The eternity of punishment proceeds not only from old debts,
but new ones contracted by blasphemies and hatred of (rod ; for though
some say that in termina the damned do not sin, I cannot think but loving
and glorifying God is the essential duty of a creature ; and while he is a
creature, let him be in what state he will, he is under the obligation of it.
It is impossible a creature can by any conditions be freed from the obliga-
tions of loving and adoring his Creator. Christ might suffer .the pains of
hell, but not with all the accidental circumstances, nor in the place of hell ;
time and place are but accidental things, and not of the essence of punish-
ment. It is not the place of hell makes hell, but the wrath of God, in what
place soever it is poured out A surety goes not to prison if he pays the
debt ; the prison is not a place of payment, but a place to enforce the pay-
ment where there is unwillingness to pay.
(2.) This act of his Father in bruising him by his wrath was no approba-
tion of the guilt of the instruments in the death of his body. The sufferings
in his soul in the garden were before the Jews had laid hands on him to
apprehend him. God dropped wrath upon his soul, yet had no hand in the
crime of the Jews, in the covetousness of Judas, envy of the pharisees,
cowardice of Pilate, and the fury of the people : these did spring from their
natural corruption ; they had one end, God another ; they aimed at the satis-
faction of those lusts, God aimed to content his justice, declare his wisdom,
manifest his mercy, clear his holiness, remove the enmity, and relieve our
souls. Though God approved of the death of Christ, and ' delivered him
up,' Acts ii. 23, yet he did not approve of those ends which managed them
in that action. It was the highest guilt that ever was manifest upon the
stage of the world in them, as it was the highest love that ever God shewed
in the ordering things to the redemption of man. God determined redemp-
tion by the death of his Son, but did not positively determine the evil of the
instruments. God laid no inward restraints upon them, left them to act as
voluntary agents ; he knew what their fury would do, and resolved to govern
it for his own glory and the good of the world. God had given them a free
power to act otherwise ; he did not necessitate them to this rage ; their own
corruptions met together to commit this horrid crime. They were not
impelled by a command, threatening, or promise ; his law was a rock
against it ; the destruction of their city and the dissolution of their state were
assured them by our Saviour if they went on in that way ; they had no
motives from God, but from their own lusts, which were not of God's infu-
sion, but engendered by themselves and inflamed by the devil. God only as
a wise governor used them, and ordered them to his own glorious ends, as a
man uses the ravenous disposition of his hound to catch the hare, which the
424 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
hound would of itself do, and governs it to his own ends, different from that
of the animal. In short, they acted utterly against the law in shedding in-
nocent blood ; God acted according to the mediatory law, in bruising him
who had voluntarily substituted himself in our room ; they aimed not at any
one end which God aimed at in it ; their intentions were wholly different.
Though God approved of the death of Christ precisely considered, because he
delivered him up, yet his death as managed by them was the greatest
wickedness that ever the sun saw, so that the Father's bruising Christ doth
not in the least excuse the Jews, nor had they been excusable had their
intentions concurred fully with God's in the act, unless they had received a
command from him to crucify him, as Abraham had for the offering his son.
The Father then hath been in Christ reconciling the world unto himself :
in bruising him by his wrath, glorifying his attributes in that act, which were
necessary to be manifested in our redemption, laying all our sins upon him,
delighting in it as it was for his glory and our happiness, thereby winding up
the graces of Christ, necessary for the exercise of his office and our redemption
and imitation, to the greatest height, and thereby relieving us from that curse
of the law which we must always have borne and could never have satisfied.
So deep a hand had the Father in this work of redemption ! The Trinity
were signal in it : the Father bruising, Christ receiving the stroke, and the
Spirit supporting him under it.
Use 1. How may our meditations swim in this unlimited ocean of love !
Oh the depth of the riches of grace, that we should have the cursed pleasure
of sinning, and Christ the bitterness of suffering ; that the punishment due
to us should be charged upon the Son of God by the Father ! Must the
Father bruise the Son for us, who had deserved as well as devils to be kept
bound in chains of darkness to the judgment of the great day ? Might he
not more easily have condemned us, than condemned his beloved Son for us
to a bitter death ? But here he would have infinite love and infinite justice
kiss each other. What could we do to deserve it ? If we could merit any
good, could we merit so great a gift as this ? If we could have deserved
that he should open his arm to embrace us, could we merit that he should
wound his Son's heart to redeem us ? If we could deserve to be filled with
his grace, could all the world deserve that his Son should be emptied of his
glory ? Could they deserve that God should be wounded by God for their
transgressions ? God gave Christ to die for us while we were yet sinners,
Rom. v. 8, when we wanted motives of love as well as merits of grace, and
had no incentive of his grace, unless the want of grace could pass for one.
Were God as man, his thunder had crushed the world ; the disciples, the
best of men upon earth at that time, would have been prodigal of God's
thunderbolts, if they had had them in possession, when they desired fire
from heaven upon the poor Samaritans. And had man a storehouse of
punishment, he would empty it upon persons that notoriously wrong him ; but
God poured out those vials upon his own Son, which of right belonged to us.
Consider, it was his Son whom he bruised, not a servant, not an unspotted
angel ; his only begotten Son, the brightness of his glory, the express image
of his person, not an adopted Son, having only a dark representation of the
divine nature ; a begotten Son of his nature, not begotten of his will ; a
beloved Son, not a disaffected Son ; an only Son, not one picked out of many
children. God had no more in all the world, and yet he bruised him ; he
bruised him not only by a temporal death of the body, but by a weight of
wrath on his soul, not to purchase some small favour, but an everlasting
inheritance. How great is this love, that valued our salvation above the life
of an only Son, and shed a blood more valuable than the whole creation to
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 425
preserve ours, which could not be equivalent to the price of it, and put him
into the posture of an enemy to his Son, to make us his friends ! If the
thunders of the law had been shot upon us, what strength had we to bear
them ? What merit to remove them ? How great is the love of the
Redeemer, to be willing not to be spared for a time, rather than millions of
men and women should fail of being spared for ever ! It was ' for our
transgressions he was wounded, for our iniquities he was bruised, and the
chastisement of our peace was upon him,' Isa. liii. 5. In every wound God
gave him, he minded the full punishment of our sin, in the person of our
Saviour, that those whom he represented might go free. He spared him
not, abated not a mite of what justice might demand, that so his people
might have a fall redemption : Rom. viii. 32, ' He spared not his own Son,
but delivered him up for us all.' He did not spare him in regard of the
strength of justice, wherewith he punished him. What could more enhance
the love of God than the terrors inflicted on Christ ! And what could more
enhance the love of Christ, than that he endured not only a bodily death,
but a wrathful death in his soul for us !
2. Let then this love engage every man to come to God through Christ.
How should it ravish us into an humble compliance with him, and subjec-
tion to him ! If he hath bruised him for us, he will not bruise us if we
come to him. The blood shed by the order of God, is able to expiate a
world of sins. God hath spent his wrath upon him, and hath none for those
that accept of him. God hath discovered a propensity to be reconciled,
though we lie open to the stroke of his justice, and have no strength to with-
stand him ; a higher evidence he cannot give.
3. Spare nothing for God. He spared not the best thing he had in pos-
session, and shall we spare our lust from being mortified by him ? The sin
of man grieved him more than the death of his Son ; shall we preserve that
which grieves him, and slight that which was his greatest pleasure ? How
comes it to pass we are so indulgent to our lusts, and murmur to be parted
from that which is the grief of God and the ruin of our souls ? Are those
destroyers of our souls so extremely dear to us, that we are loath to bring
them out of our bosoms, and deliver them to a crucifixion ; no, not in love
to that God who melted that Son in the fire of his wrath out of love to us,
whom he had cherished by the warmth of his bosom from eternity ? Sure
if our souls were all flint, being smitten by such a love, they should yield
some fire to consume our corruptions. How hateful should sin be to us,
since it is evidenced to be so hateful to God, as that he would not spare his
only begotten Son, when he lay under the imputation of our iniquities, and
caused the curses of the law to meet on him with all their stings, upon whom
our sins had met in all their guilt ! Why should we spare that, for which
God did not spare his Son who never offended him, but highly pleased him,
and in this very act, too, of bowing down under his strokes by reason of our
transgressions ? Why should we indulge that in our hearts, which God hath
discovered by this act to be so abominable and odious to him, and so deserv-
ing an object of his just indignation ? Let not that find rest in our bosoms,
under which, while our Saviour was in the form of a servant, he found no
rest from the curses of the law and the wrath of his Father, till it had bruised
him, and offered him up as a sacrifice of atonement for it.
6. The Father was in Christ reconciling the world, in accepting him, and
his expiatory reconciling sacrifice. The steam of his precious blood went
directly up to heaven, as the smoke of the sacrifices ascended right up to
heaven (ae they say), not blown aside by any wind.* This gave God a rest,
* Lightfoot, Temple, chap. 34, p. Ifll.
426 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
of which sin after the creation had endeavoured to despoil him ; for if God
had a complacency in the work of creation, — which is signified by the word
refreshed, Exod. xxxi. 17, PBJ\ < In six days the Lord made heaven and
earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed ;' — much more
must God be refreshed by the work of redemption by Christ, it being a
restoring God's rest to him by a new creation, and a greater glory to God
than the work of creation was, or, simply considered, could be. God did
perform what was incumbent on his part, according to the covenant of
redemption, in regard of acceptation, after Christ had trod the wine-press
alone ; and his grace was of the same tenor in the entertainment of Christ
after his work, as it was in the first designation and call of him to it, the
foundation and the topstone being all the fruit of a condescending grace.
The grace of God accepted it, and justice could plead nothing against it ;
grace and justice took him by each arm and led him to the throne of glory.
It was God that justified him, Isa. 1. 8. His entrance into heaven, with the
same clothes of flesh he wore upon the earth, only changed in the fashion
suitable to that glorious country to which he was returning, was an evidence
of his full acceptance.
(1.) It is evident that the Father did accept him.
[l.J The types and representations of this reconciling sacrifice were
grateful to God upon this account. That first sacrifice after the deluge was
a sweet savour, or a savour of rest : Gen. viii. 21, ' And the Lord smelt a
sweet savour'; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not any more curse the
ground for man's sake,' nmn. He smelt in that sacrifice a savour of that
wherein he should have a rest, and which should fully quiet his mind; and
such a rest, that he said in his heart, or swore, Isa. liv. 9. The oath there
mentioned can refer to no other place but this. For the sake of the antitype,
which was respected in that offering, God swore that he would not any more
curse the ground for man's sake. What influence could the steam of the
blood of a beast, and the stench of the burning fat, have upon a spiritual
substance, an angel, much less upon God? Could the blood and burnt
carcases of a few silly animals appease God, so much as to engage him to
make so magnificent a promise, not to curse the ground any more for man's
sake, when the doleful cries, and vehement supplications of multitudes of
dying men in the deluge, could not persuade him to stop his hand, and shut
up the flood-gates of heaven ? Could this make him order the constant
course of nature, and succession of times, when in the very moment he pro-
mised it he considered the perpetual fountain of evil in the heart of man,
that ' the imagination of his heart was evil from his youth ?' No ; but God
was pleased with a resemblance of Christ, presented to him in the faith of
the offerer ; as a man is with the picture of his friend whom he dearly
esteems, and loves the person that presents such a medal to him, because of
the estimation he hath of his friend. If the picture be so acceptable, because
of the relation it hath to a delightful object, how much more dear is the
object itself! In the day of the general expiation of the Jews, the sins of
the people were atoned by the sacrifice of the beast, and sprinkling of the
blood ; what force had the blood of a brute to wash off the sins of a rational
creature, and those of a nation ? But this typified the mighty acceptable-
ness of the blood of Christ, satisfactory to justice, and pleasing to 'the mercy
of God, whence all sacrifices received what efficacy they had. God's being
pleased with this sacrifice of Noah, and others of his own appointing, was
but to testify how highly pleasing the death of his Son would be to him, as
it was an atoning sacrifice, and sweeter than the iniquities of men were
loathsome, both being under his consideration at one and the same time.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 427
[2.] The time of Christ's coming, and being in the world, is called by way
of eminency an acceptable time, much more was his suffering so, which was
the complement of his humiliation work. It was an acceptable time, because
it was a day of salvation for man : Isa. xlix. 8, ' In an acceptable time have
I heard thee, and in the day of salvation have I helped thee.' They are the
words of the Father to Christ, wherein he assures him of the acceptance of
his sacrifice extensively for the Gentiles : ' I will give thee for a covenant
to the people ; ' which place the apostle uses as an argument to press the
Corinthians to the sincere embracing of the gospel, 2 Cor. vi. 2, because it
was an acceptable time, a time wherein Christ was accepted, and all believers
accepted upon his account ; a time acceptable to God in the prophet ; a
time which therefore ought to be acceptable to man, as the apostle infers.
It is therefore called the acceptable year of the Lord : Isa. lxi. 2, ■ To pro-
claim the acceptable year of the Lord.' The clearest, and serenest time
that ever God saw since the creation of the world. Why was it so accept-
able? Because it was the day of vengeance of our God, a day of vengeance
upon sin, a day of the taking away and removal of that which had caused
all the enmity. Upon the knowledge of God's approbation of it, Christ prays
for his assistance in the time of his suffering, Ps. lxix. 13. A psalm of
Christ, as appears, ver. 9, 21, applied to him in the Gospel, ' As for me, my
prayer is unto thee in an acceptable time: 0 God, in the multitude of thy
mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation,' when the whole world was set
against him, and he was made the song of the drunkards ; the time wherein
he put it up, and the circumstances he was in, were pleasing to God, as being
for his greatest service and glory. Let the mercy which engaged me first in
this attempt, and the promise thou hast made me of the salvation of man,
move thee to hear me now, and to manifest the truth of thy salvation which
thou hast committed to me, and I am now upon the effecting of. When
was this acceptable time ? this |l¥l W ? When he was in the mire and
deep waters, ver. 14; when he was reproached, and full of heaviness, ver. 20;
when they gave him gall for his meat, and in his thirst vinegar to drink ;
then was the time of this highest acceptation with God for the redemption
of man.
[3.] All the fruits of his death manifest God's high acceptation of it.
First, The mission of the Spirit. The great end why the Spirit was sent,
was to manifest this acceptance ; to evidence to the world that Christ was
no impostor, because he was gone to the Father, John xvi. 7-10, and had a
welcome in heaven. The coming of the Spirit, and the working miracles in
the name of Christ, kept up the credit of his mission and authority from the
Father in the world. He was sent by the Father, in the name of Christ :
John xiv. 26, * The Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name,'
l. e. upon the account of his mediation, as a fruit of it. His name would
have been of no authority for so great a gift, had not his death been of a
grateful efficacy. And by the virtue of his intercession, — John xiv. 16, ' I
will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter,' — God unlocks
to him all his treasures, as a testimony of the pleasure he took in his death,
and the completeness of it to appease his anger, and satisfy the most exten-
sive demands of his justice. So high a favour could not be dispensed, if
justice had not first been fully contented. This Spirit was also to abide for
ever with his people : John xvi. 16, ' That he may abide with you for ever;'
which shews the everlasting acceptance of this sacrifice by God ; for since
the first coming of the Spirit was upon the first acceptance of his offering,
the abiding of the Spirit evidenceth the perpetual prevalency of it with God ;
for he could not abide any longer than the ground of his mission did endure,
428 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
for they must both run parallel. Now, had he not gone away, the Com-
forter would not have come, John xvi. 7, which refers not only "to his ascen-
sion, but to his passion. And had he gone, and his death been unapproved
by God, the Spirit had stayed in heaven. His work also testifies this
approbation. He was to ' bring things to remembrance, whatsoever Christ
had said to them,' John xiv. 26, which would never have been, had not
Christ in every tittle been faithful to his Father's instructions. He was not
to speak of himself, John xvi. 13 ; he was not to be the author of a new
doctrine in the church, but to impress upon men what Christ had taught,
and what he had wrought by his passion ; he is therefore called the Spirit
of truth, teaching and clearing up to the minds of men that truth which
Christ had taught, and confirmed by his blood. There was no error or mis-
take in any part of the management of this work on Christ's part ; for the
Spirit is not sent to rectify anything, but to raise the superstructure upon
that foundation Christ had already laid. He was to declare only what he
heard, John xvi. 13, 14 ; to act the part of a minister to Christ, as Christ
had acted the part of a minister to his Father; to glorify Christ, to manifest
the fulness of his merit, and the benefits of his purchase ; for he was to
receive of Christ, i. e. the things of Christ, his truth and his grace, and
manifest it to then- souls, and imprint upon them the comfort of both. There
had been no foundation to glorify Christ, had not Christ in this work been
glorious in the eyes of God, and been acknowledged by the Father to have
glorified him to the utmost. Now since all this is come to pass, according as
Christ did predict it, it is an undeniable evidence that the Father hath fully
approved of Christ's faithfulness in his office, and rests highly contented by
his death.
Secondly, The answer of prayers in his name. As his acceptance by the
Father was the ground of all the miracles which were wrought in the name of
the Son after his ascension, so it is the ground of all the answers of prayer
that any believer receives from God, for our Saviour joins them both toge-
ther : John xiv. 12, 13, ' He that believes in me shall do greater works than
these, because I go to the Father; and whatsoever you shall ask in my name,
that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.' ' Whatsoever
you ask in my name,' i. e. saith Cajetan, for my glory, not only in the inten-
tion of the petitioner, but the direct tendency of the thing petitioned for, I
will do. His power to do it, is an argument of the strength of his oblation,
and validity of the price. ' That the Father may be glorified in the Son,'
which is the end for which our prayers are answered, and is the event of
those mercies we receive as answers from the hands of Christ. The Father
is glorified in the success of Christ's mediation, and the ' finishing the work
he gave him to do,' John xvii. Every return of prayer, upon the account of
the merit of Christ, is a testimony of this success ; and glory redounds by
it to the wisdom of the Father, for contriving ; to the kindness of the Father,
for appointing so able a Saviour, who could fully satisfy all the concerns of
God, and provide for the necessities of the creature, and lay a foundation
for the full communication of all mercies needful for him. His receiving
from his Father the keys of all his stores, to dispense to believers, manifests
how welcome he was to the Father upon his return, after his conflict in the
world, and how successful he was in his execution of his office, and how
fully he contented the justice of his Father, which could not by any right
keep those stores from him after his meritorious passion ; so that in every
answer of prayer, the wisdom, love, righteousness of the Father are glorified,
in the obedience, merit, and purchase of his Son ; the love of the Father is
manifested in sending so sufficient a mediator ; and the justice and grace of
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 429
the Father is glorified in accepting him, and performing the conditions requi-
site on his part by the covenant of redemption. There is a most intimate
conjunction of the glory of the Father and the glory of the Son in this me-
diation of Christ, which is the foundation of the acceptation of him, and his
acceptation upon the same foundation will be perpetual ; because, as what-
soever he did here was for the glory of his Father, whatsoever he doth
above also, in distributing his gifts, communicating his grace, is for the same
end, and therefore can never be unacceptable ; for, by this acceptation of
him, the Father hath a current and standing revenue of glory established •
his exchequer is daily filled with it, by virtue of this approbation. This ac-
ceptance is writ upon every return of our supplications, put up in his name,
and tending to his glory ; the wonderful effects whereof have been known in
all ages, and in the private experience of every sincere Christian. Would God
ever listen to those pleas in his name, were he not well pleased with the
sacrifice of his person ? Would God ever expend his gifts to man, to keep
up the credit of a person he had disowned ? This is the ground of that
near communion believers have with God, nearer than Adam was admitted
to in paradise, wherein God condescends to the familiar expressions of his
grace, and converses with men in and through a mediator, who before were
alienated from him, and made the marks of his wrath. The ' golden altar
with incense,' Rev. viii. 3, is the pleasant perfume of his merits.
[4. J The content God hath in men's believing on Christ manifests it.
God hath made faith, the acceptance of him by men, the only condition of
enjoying the fruits of his purchase ; and it is not all the amiable virtues in
the world, nor the riches of the whole creation, can procure us any right or
title to him without it. So much doth the Father stand upon the honour
of his Son, that he will not grant an eternal happiness to any but those that
join with him in a sincere and hearty acceptation and approbation of him,
his meritorious death, and the righteousness evidenced thereby. Without this,
no beams of glory can sparkle upon us, but an eternal wrath will swallow us
up. As the Father hath approved him, so as to give all power into his
hands, so he wills us to approve him, so as to bring all our own righteous-
ness to the footstool of Christ, and embrace him only by a naked faith, that
nothing of the glory of his work and merit may be clouded by any thing of our
own. A true, willing, cordial, lively acceptance is required, a resting on him
for salvation, as God rests on him upon his satisfaction. An estimation
of him approaching as near as a creature can to that of God's ; the know-
ledge and embracing of him is the best savour to God, next to that of his
own oblation ; and man only in a believing embracing, stands in his true
posture of acceptation with God.
[5.] The naked declarations of Christ to the world are acceptable to God.
The very discourses, and the discoursers of it, are a sweet savour to God :
2 Cor. ii. 15, < We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are
saved, and in them that perish.' Yea, though men cast away the thoughts
of him, and perish in their unbelief ; yet the proposal of it to them for their
acceptance is very sweet to the thoughts of God. As he will express how high
his acceptation of them was, in the gifts of eternal happiness to them that en-
tertain him, so the rejecters shall learn the same in the severity of the punish-
ment inflicted on them. But whatever men do, the sound of it in the world
is a sweet savour to him ; and all men shall be at last convinced, that his
righteousness was acceptable to God, because he is gone to the Father.
(2.) God accepted him with a mighty pleasure. As soon as he was made
perfect by his sufferings, he was saluted an high priest, • called an high
priest,' Heb. v. 10, U^jffayoPiudiig, saluted; ngooayogsvsi, a<r<Td£zrai (Hesych.).
430 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
When, by the accomplishment of his passion, he became the author of eter-
nal salvation, God congratulates him for his attainment of a new honour by
his consecration, as men congratulate one another upon new acquisitions.
It was a ' sweetsmelling savour to God,' Eph. v. 2; there was hdoxia in his
mission, and svwhia in his passion. God smelled a greater fragrancy in his
death than stench from our sins ; the sweetness of the one did drown the
noisomeness of the other : his death was more satisfying to God than our
sins were displeasing. As he was a vine, he sent forth a delicious fruit of
his blood to cheer both the heart of God and man ; of God, by the fragrancy
of his satisfaction ; of man, by the fulness of his merit. God's /soul de-
lighted in him, Isa. xlii. 1. He had an overflowing joy. All the attributes
of God, which are the soul and perfections of the Deity, had an undisturbed
acquiescence in him. There was an unblemished exactness in his work,
because there was a fulness of delight in his Father. The delight he took in his
designation was rather heightened than diminished by his faithfulness in the
execution. He was, after his death, brought near before God : Dan. vii. 13,
' One like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the
ancient of days, and they brought him near before him,' two words to express
the height of pleasure, near and before him. As if God would express his
pleasure in the strait and intimate embraces of his Son, after his great en-
gagement and return from the battle ; and so welcome he was, that God
presented him with the dominion of the whole world. For the order of the
vision expresseth first his incarnation, and then his exaltation ; so that
this being ' brought near before the ancient of days,' must be upon his ascen-
sion just after his death, and before his full investiture in the dominion of
the world.
[1.1 He pleased him more than all the sacrifices under the Jewish
economy ; far more than all the devoted creatures, than oxen and bullocks
which have horns and hoofs ; it is the expression concerning Christ, Ps.
lxix. 31. A mark of eminency, a how much more is put upon this offering,
above the virtue of the blood of bulls and goats, Heb. ix. 13, 14. Though
they were instituted by God, yet they were not acceptable to God for the
removal of sin, ' neither could make the offerer perfect before him,' Heb.
x. 1. Nor could the heaps of sacrificed animals, the streams of brutish
blood, persuade him to the justification of any one offerer : ' In burnt offer-
ings or sacrifices he had no pleasure,' or rest, Heb. x. 6. He had a pleasure
in them, not as they were the sacrifices of beasts, but representations of his
Son's passion, and appointed as remembrances before him, of what was to
be suffered by the true object of his rest in time. Christ is the person, and
his death the sacrifice, wherein God only can find a rest : Isa. lxvi. 1, 2,
' Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my foot-
stool : where is the house that you build unto me ? and where is the place
of my rest ? For all those things hath my hand made, and all these things
have been, saith the Lord : but to this will I look, to the poor and a con-
trite spirit, and that trembles at my word.' The temple and temple- worship
was not the place of his rest; God speaks with contempt of them, and seems
to cast in the whole created compages of heaven and earth, as no firm object
of his pleasure. But to this will I look, i. e. this poor and contrite spirit, H3J,
stricken ; of the same root as mo, smitten of God and afflicted : Isa. liii. 4,
' That trembled at my word ; ' he speaks as of one that trembled under the
curses of the law, and felt the weight and bitterness of them ; to him will I
look, or intently or fixedly look, as the word signifies. The word tremble,
"13n, signifies to be careful or solicitous, as, \L Kings iv. 13, it is so translated,
' Thou hast been careful for us with all this care,' though it signifies also to
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 431
tremble. Who was more stricken than Christ ? Who more careful of the
honour of God's law than Christ ? Or who tasted more of the gall of the
curse than Christ ? Who can that signal mark this point to, but Christ ?
Who can be set in the balance with the whole frame of the creation, angels
and men, but Christ ? ' All those things hath my hand made,' which seems
to refer not only to the temple, but to the heavens, his throne, and the earth,
his footstool ; all those have been, and yet no rest found in them. Now
after the coming and striking of this person, upon whom the eye of God is
intent, an end is put to all the ceremonial sacrifices : ver. 3, ' He that kills
an ox, is as if he slew a man ; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a
dog's neck,' &c. It was a disgrace to him for men to think he could be
pleased with such sacrifices, when he had appointed and accepted another ;
if they then kept them up, they should be an abomination to him, as the
blood of swine, and yet they kept them up after this poor stricken spirit,
after the offering of his Son : he calls them ' their own ways, their abomina-
tions in which he delighted not.' And ver. 4, he would ' bring their fears
upon them ;' perhaps it may be meant of their fear of the Romans, which you
know tbey pretended, for the putting Christ to death, thereby to prevent
any occasion of an invasion ; and ver. 6, he prophesies of their destruction.
But before this destruction she should be ' delivered of a man child,' ver. 7.
You know how he armed the Romans against them, discharged his wrath
upon them, gave up the city and temple, which they (and even their
enemies) studied to preserve, for the death of his Son, as a prey to the fury
and avarice of the enemies. I have been the longer upon it, to shew there
is some ground to understand this place principally of Christ, though not to
exclude the common interpretation ; perhaps we might have had more
ground for the understanding it so from Stephen's discourse, Acts vii.,
where he ends his citations with this place of Scripture, ver. 48, 49, and
descending to the application of what he had before cited, and charging upon
them the blood of Christ, was interrupted by the fury of the Jews from any
further light which his discourse might have given us. To consider it
again, God demands where the place of his rest was ? They might answer,
the heavens. No ; all these hath mine hand made, yet no rest in them ;
but to this I will look ; this is my rest, as the antithesis carries it ; this
stricken in spirit, as if he had pointed to Christ on the cross and in the
garden, trembling under a sense of wrath. An intent look is a look of ex-
pectation, or a look of pleasure.
[2.] He shews his mighty pleasure in the acceptance of him by a public
proclamation as it were : Heb. i. 6, ' Again, when he brings his first begot-
ten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him.' Or
as some read it, ' And when he brings his first begotten into the world
again,' understanding it of his resurrection, he then proclaims him to the
angels as an object of worship. He is the heir appointed, as well as the
heir eternally begotten, proclaimed to the angels as their head, and the root
of their standing. He was ' seen of angels,' manifested to them in such a
manner as their head, after he was justified by the Spirit, 1 Tim. iii. 16.
Methinks being ' seen of angels' should signify something more than the simple
vision. He was 'justified by the Spirit,' when he was quickened and raised
by the Spirit, 1 Peter iii. 18. His being ' preached among the Gentiles, be-
lieved on in the world, and received up into glory,' were evidences of this
acceptance of him by the Father. He brings him after his resurrection, as
he did Adam after his creation, into the possession of the world, and gave
him dominion over the creatures. He brings in his Son, and gives him an
empire over the angels as he was mediator, which he had before as he was
432 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
God blessed for ever ; and the angels praise him, and acknowledge him
' worthy,' as the lamb slain, ' to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and
strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing,' Rev. v. 11, 12.
[3.] He declares the pleasure he had in his acceptation of him, by fixing
his love for ever upon him. He was settled in his Father's love, because
he had performed the mediatory command : John xv. 10, ' If you keep my
commandments, you shall abide in my love ; even as I have kept my
Father's commandments, and abide in his love.' A commandment was
given him, and a commandment was kept by him, which obedience hath
been hitherto the foundation of his Father's love to him as mediator ; and,
when he had fully finished it, would make a fixation of his Father's love.
If he had not performed the mediatory command, he had had no interest in
his Father's affections ; as poor creatures, if they observe the commands of
Christ, shall for ever be rooted in his love, never to be cast out. So is
Christ, upon the observation of the command his Father gave, for ever settled
in his affection and acceptation, whereby he hath given us assurance, that
he was in Christ reconciling the world.
(3.) As the Father accepted Christ, and accepted him with a mighty plea-
sure, so this acceptation of him and his death redounds to every believer.
Grace and glory depend upon this ; take away God's approbation, and the
whole chain of privileges, linked together by it, falls in pieces.
[1.] It is the stability of the covenant. His approach to God as a surety,
having engaged his heart for us, is that which God speaks of with a pleasing
astonishment, and is so, transcendently taken with it, that he settles the
covenant of being their God, and making them his people upon it ; that is
the issue, Jer. xxx. 21, 22. And the everlastingness of the covenant is
founded in his being a witness to the people : Isa. lv. 3, 4, ' I will make an
everlasting covenant with you ; behold, I have given him for a witness to the
people.' All the promises of God are yea and amen, in him the faithful and
true witness, E-ev. iii. 14.
[2.] Justification is founded upon this acceptance. God was in Christ
reconciling the world, i. e. not imputing their trespasses to them, but dis-
charging them. For the pleasure he took in Christ's sufferings upon mount
Calvary, he graciously forgets our sins, and of rebels entitles us heirs. There
is a fundamental justification of future believers in the discharge of Christ,
though not formal and actual till they believe. As there was a fundamental
condemnation of all in the loins of Adam upon his fall, not actual till they
were in being, and did actually partake of his nature ; so Christ having his
discharge as a common person, all those whose sins he bore have a funda-
mental discharge in that of his person from any more suffering. As he bore
the sins of many as a common person in the offering of himself, and satisfied
for their guilt, so he hath an absolution as the head from all that guilt he
bore ; no more to lie under the burden of our sins, or endure any penalties
of the law for them : Heb. ix. 27, ' As it is appointed unto men once to die,
and after that the judgment, so Christ was once offered for the sins of many ;
and unto them that look for him shall he appear without sin unto salvation.'
As judgment is appointed for all men, as well as death, and they receive their
judgment after death, so Christ after his death was judged by God, and
judged perfect, fully answering the will and ends of God, and shall not ap-
pear any more as a sacrifice, but as a perfect Saviour. He is no more to
appear in a corruptible body prepared to bear sin by imputation, but in a
glorious body, as a manifestation of his justification, fitted for the comfort of
those that look for him. Unto them doth this judgment extend ; for upon the
score of this judgment passed by God in his behalf, he is to appear at length
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 433
to them for salvation. For if Christ satisfied for believers, he is accepted
by God on their behalf; therefore his sufferings are imputed to them ; for it
would be strange that Christ should endure a punishment for them, be ap-
proved of God as standing in their stead, and his acceptance not be counted
■to them. If there be an approbation of his sufferings for us, there is an
imputation of his sufferings to us, or else no satisfaction is made to justice
upon our account. As he suffered, so he was acquitted as our surety and
representative.
[3.] The acceptation of our persons and services redounds to us from the
Father's acceptance of Christ. His love to Christ as mediator, is the ground
of our acceptation : Eph. i. 6, ' To the praise of the glory of his grace,
wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.' He chose him first as
the head, and his members in him ; he accepts him as the first beloved, and
believers in him. Had not Christ been accepted first, none could have pre-
tended an holiness worthy of the notice of God. The grace of God is the
cause, his love to Christ the ground, acceptation of us in him the effect of
both. In ourselves, we are the objects of his anger ; in Christ, the marks of
his choice affection. It is the pleasure God took in the obedience of his Son,
which makes believers as his members, and their services, though weak imi-
tations of him, delightful to God.
[4.] The constant wooings of men by God flow from hence. He entreats
and beseecheth men to embrace him, to be reconciled to him, because he hath
been thus reconciling the world in Christ : 2 Cor. v. 20, ' As though God did
beseech you by us, be ye reconciled to God.' The entreaty and arguments
used to persuade men to the acceptance of it, could have no validity without
this foundation, that a reconciliation is wrought, and the expiatory sufferings
of Christ accepted by God. So much is God in love with Christ's perform-
ance, that he condescends to the lowest step, to beseech and solicit the crea-
tures' affections for him, and presseth them with that sweet importunity, as
loath to take any denial at their hands.
Use 1. See the unexpressible value of Christ's mediation with God. God
h ,th given the highest evidence of the grandeur of it, of Christ's faithfulness
in the discharge of the trust committed to him, glorifying the Father in all
that he undertook and taught. It is from his being a ' righteous branch,'
that he is become the Lord our righteousness, Jer. xxiii. 5, 6. He was by his
voluntary submission, and his Father's designation, made sin for us, which
performance is so grateful, that all that believe in him are made not bare
righteousness, but ' the righteousness of God in him.' He seems to become sin
itself, wholly guilt, and believers thereby righteousness itself in the presence
of God. His death is so valuable as to procure the casting our sins into the
depths of the sea, and the advancing our persons to the heights of glory, to
stand before God in his kingdom. Our persons, odious in Adam, are made
beautiful in Christ ; and our duties, that smell rank by nature, smell sweet by
his merits, Rev. v. 8. The odours of his merits are so strong as to overcome
the stench of our nature. There is no need of any masses, human satisfac-
tions, and additions of any merits of our own.
2. Comfort to believers. Since this acceptance, how doth justice itself
smile ! The rod of God's fury falls out of his hand upon the sweetness of
his Son's offering, and gives way to a sceptre of grace ; nothing was omitted
which was necessary for the pleasure of God's piercing eye. This may well
calm the fears in our hearts, because it smooths the frowns in God's face.
If no charge can be brought against Christ since the acknowledgment of thf
sufficiency of his offering, no charge can be brought against believers. Fo
vol. in. E e
434 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
whom was it performed, but for them ? For whom was it accepted, but for
them ? The acceptation must be for the same ends for which his sufferings
were endured ; shall not then the influence of it upon them answer the in-
tention of it for them ? If it should not, the first acceptation would be in
vain ; Christ must then return to offer another sacrifice, which shall Dever
be. Tn the acceptation of Christ for you, he hath accepted you in him. He
stood in no need of it, but in relation to you; he was the eternal Son of God,
acceptable to the Father, but by this he is established an eternal Saviour.
An obedient faith on our part will entitle us to salvation on his part : Heb.
v. 9, ' And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation
unto all them that obey him.' Since God hath accepted him for you, God
will appear full of omniscience to understand your wants, full of compassion
to pity you, full of power to relieve you, full of wisdom to guide you, full of
grace to pardon you, full of glory to bless you for ever. Every believer will
be accepted by God, because by his faith he owns that which gives God a
rest ; and as the grace of God assists him, so he contributes to God's con-
tentment. Oh, then, remember your offences against God, to be humbled ;
and God's acceptation of the blessed offering, to be comforted. The odour of
this sacrifice was so agreeable to God, that, not content to discharge us from
the condemnation we had merited, he would also that we should partake of
the life, and enjoy the kingdom of his Son, judging it not equity to make any
separation between the head and the members, the redeemer and the re-
deemed, and a disparagement to the greatness of the offer, and offering, to
shut heaven against them. Hereby is not only condemnation removed, but
eternal glory assured. It is not only a not perishing, but an eternal life upon
faith, John hi. 16.
3. This is the main foundation of faith. How unvaluable had all Christ's
sufferings been, and how vain our faith, had God disapproved him ; justice
had been armed against us if a blemish had been in the oblation. Faith
first reads Christ's commission, then casts its eye upon the streams of blood
flowing from his heart, listens to his doleful cries, considers them for itself,
but ultimately rests itself in God's acknowledgment of the full discharge of
the debt, and his cancelling the obligation wherein Christ was bound. After
this, none have any excuse for unbelief, unless they will accuse God of weak-
ness, or falsity, and imposture in bearing witness to the faithfulness of one
who had not discharged his office.
4. Glorify God. It is the use Christ in the prophetic psalm makes of it:
Ps. xxii. 23, 24, ' Praise ye the Lord, all ye the seed of Jacob; glorify him,
all ye the seed of Israel: for he hath not despised nor abhorred the afflic-
tion of the afflicted ; neither hath he hid his face from him : ' a meiosis. His
face indeed was hid for a time, but to return with fresher and brighter beams ;
find the warmth at the return made a recompence for the clouds upon the
cross. How should our hearts swell with praise, as heaven did with joy,
and the thankful gladness of our hearts keep time with the joyful acceptance
of his Father !
5. Accept Christ. What is worthy of God's acceptation cannot be un-
worthy of ours. If this be agreeable to the fountain of goodness, why
should it not be grateful to the derived streams ? That which gratifies an
infinite ocean of purity would surely gratify us, were we not abominable sinks
of corruption. It is the highest contrariety to God not to seek and acknow-
ledge rest in that wherein God finds a full content. If the pure eye of God
behold not the least spot to disturb, but a commensurate goodness to settle
his rest, what can we see in Christ which should make us nauseate him ?
Christ is the object of God's rest, and well may be of ours. As God rested
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 435
not in anything after the degeneracy of the world bnt in Christ, so neither
should we rest in anything since the degeneracy of our hearts but in the
same object. G-od will love us highly for our acceptance of him. God is
highly pleased with his creatures' converse with him in and by a mediator :
Deut. xviii. 16, 17, ' They have well spoken that which they have spoken,'
when they desired that God would not speak to them but by Moses, a type
of the Mediator. God never gave them so great a commendation as in this
case, nor ever approved so highly of any action or words that came from the
body of this people. God dwells above in the clouds, we cannot come to him
but by Christ. He is a God of vengeance, and we the merit ors of it ; we
cannot be screened from his wrath but by Christ ; accept him, and God will
accept us in him ; refuse him, and all the other righteousness in the world
cannot secure us. Let God's approbation be the director of ours. Accept-
ance of Christ is a noble imitation of God.
7. God raised him. There- was a necessity of his resurrection in regard
of the predictions; for since the Messiah was to die, and not see corruption, —
Ps. xvi. 10, ' Thou wilt not suffer thy holy One to see corruption,' — -it is clear
he was to rise again, else his body in a natural course would have seen cor-
ruption. This resurrection is a clear evidence of his acceptation ; himself
uses this as an argument both of the authority of his commission and fidelity
in execution : John ii. 18, 19, 21, ' Destroy this temple, and in three days
I will raise it up,' speaking of the temple of his body. Bfev. i. 5, he is the
' faithful witness,' manifested to be so by being the ' first begotten from the
dead.' Without his resurrection, his acceptation had not been manifest ;
neither could he have appeared in the quality of a Redeemer and High
Priest, had he, like one of us, lain rotting in his grave ; he had not, without
it, been powerfully declared to be the true Son of God, nor consequently
evidenced to be our Eedeemer, nor been in a capacity, according to the
decree, to reign to the ends of the earth.. All men would have concluded
him an impostor, but by rising up from the power of an ignominious death,
he was manifested to angels and men to be not only God's beloved Son, but
his obedient servant, faithful in all his will, the exact revealer of his counsels,
and grateful to him in his sufferings, whereby not only the valuableness and
sufficiency of his passion for a foundation of everlasting reconcilement, but
the actual acceptance of it, was evidenced. It was a testimony to Christ of
his faithfulness, a testimony to us of the approbation of his sacrifice for those
purposes for which it was offered- As his resurrection by the Father was,
as it were, a new generation of him as the Son of God, — Rom. i. 4, 'Declared
to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead,' — so it
was as a new constitution of him as the mediator of men. Himself calls his
resurrection a regeneration, Mat. xix. 28, and he is therefore called not the
first risen, but the first-born from the dead : Col. i. 18, ' Who is the begin-
ning, the first-born from the dead,' this being a new birth of him from the
womb of the earth. It is a rule in the language of the Scripture, aliquid
factum, dicitur, cum factum esse demonstratur. Hereby his person was owned
to be the Son of God, and his works and suffering, as our Redeemer, were
declared highly pleasing ; the suit was depending till his resurrection, but
then the controversy between God and sinners upon the account of the law-
was at an end, and the bond was cancelled in token of full satisfaction. The
public decree of God determined it; the decree is extant, Ps. ii. 7; the inter-
pretation of it, Acts xiii. 33, • God hath fulfilled the same unto us, in that
he hath raised up Jesus again ; as it is also written in the second psalm,
Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.' Thus was he justified
and declared righteous, and his obedience, which run through all his acts,
436 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
exceeding acceptable. He was indeed approved of God by miracles, wbich
God did by him in the time of his life, Acts ii. 22 ; and by such miracles
that could not fall under any jealousy, but by those he was testified to be a
prophet, a man approved of God, a teacher come from God, as Nicodemus
argues, John iii. 2. But by his resurrection he was testified to be more
than a man, the Son of God in his majesty. Notwithstanding the miracles
of his life, he appeared in the form of a servant, and scarce assumed any
other title than that of the Son of man ; but after he had by his conquest
made death his captive, he illustriously appears to be the Son of God, the
glory of which is increased by his ascension, exaltation, and the plentiful
effusion of the Spirit : by all which his righteousness and obedience was de-
clared to be pure without any mixture, perfect without any defect, clear gold
without any dross, and a full payment of the utmost farthing to divine justice
for believing sinners.
(1.) It was the act of the Father. The body of Christ was raised, and
resurrection is not the work of either soul or body, but of God only. God
raised him from the dead in such a manner as to declare him to be his Son.
It being the declaration of the Father, his resurrection was the act of the
Father : ' God raised him from the dead,' Acts xiii. 30, 33. Upon which
account God is set forth in this raising Christ as the object of faith : Rom.
iv. 24, ' If you believe on him, who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.'
This being, as it were, a new begetting him, was the act of the Father, whose
Son he was by eternal generation. It is particularly ascribed to the Father :
Rom. vi. 4, ' As Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the
Father ;' by the glorious power of the Father, which was made illustrious in
it. Some take glory of the Father for the formal cause, as though the mean-
ing were, Christ in his resurrection was adorned with the glory of the Father ;
others for the final cause, he rose to the glory of the Father ; but to take it
for the efficient cause is more natural ; as the love of the Father was most
magnificent in giving him to die, so the power of the Father is most glorious
in unloosing the bands of .death, and delivering him from the grave with
triumph ; because the reuniting the soul to the body, and restoring it to all
the functions of life, is an act of creative power. And this resurrection was
more glorious than a single creation, in regard of the mighty load of guilt
Christ lay by imputation under when upon the cross. It is true this resur-
rection was the work of the Trinity, it was the work of the Spirit; he is
•therefore said to be •', quickened by the Spirit,' 1 Pet. iii. 18, and 'justified
in the .-Spirit,' 1 Tim. iii. 16. His resurrection was the justification of his
person in all that he performed for the satisfaction of God. Christ also is
said to raise himself: John ii. 19, ' I will raise it up,' and had an authority
to ' take «p his life again,' John x. 18. As he is said to conquer his ene-
mies, 1 Cor., xv. 25, ' he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his
feet;' yet the Father is said to do it, Ps. ex. 1 ; for acts of power are more
peculiarly ascribed to the Father, and resurrection is an act of omnipotence,
as wisdom is ascribed to the Son, and love to the Holy Ghost. The conquest
of his enemies is the act of his Father, and therefore the beginning of his
triumph, and the overpowering the great enemy death. And as he waits at
God's right hand till his enemies be subdued, so he waited in the grave till
his discharge was ordered by the Father.
(2.) It was most congruous and regular for the Father to be principal in
the raising Christ. The Father had the power of mission, and therefore of
acceptation ; and therefore the act whereby it was declared did principally
pertain to the Father, as it was a full manifestation of the faithfulness of
Christ in his office. As he received his commission from his Father, so it
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 437
was most regular he should receive his discharge from the same hand,
because he had been faithful to him that appointed him. The Father was
the creditor, he had covenanted with his Father to suffer and give him satis-
faction ; the Father then was the most proper judge whether the articles
were performed or no, whether the satisfaction was valid and the debt paid.
As the Father was the lawgiver and judge, the delivering Christ to death
belonged to him ; upon the same account the delivering him from prison
and judgment belonged to the Father. None have power to remit or dis-
charge after the sentence but the supreme authority. So that the raising
Christ belonged as properly by right to the Father as the power of deliver-
ing him to death. When the account was made up in heaven, and not a
farthing of what was due was found wanting, but the demands of justice
fully balanced by the satisfaction of Christ, ' he was taken from prison and
judgment,' Isa. liii. 8, and God sends an angel to roll away the stone, Mat.
xxviii. 2 ; not indeed to make way for the resurrection of Christ, as though
there was a necessity of rolling away the stone to give his body passage out
of the grave, but to evidence to the women that intended to come into the
sepulchre that his discharge came frnm heaven, and that they might see the
grave empty of his body. As he that is in prison for debt ought not to go
out without the judge's authority, so Christ was held in the fetters of death
till his Father's absolution, and then was delivered from the grave as a
debtor from prison. ' God loosed the chains of death,' Acts ii. 24, 'it being
not possible that he should be held ' in those chains, for it was not equitable
that fafter he had satisfied he should be held longer in his fetters. The
judge only can free from prison ; and when the law, where any is impri-
soned, is satisfied, he is in justice bound to order the discharge, and pro-
nounce in open court the acquittal of the prisoner.
(3.) This act of the Father in raising him was with respect to this work
of reconciliation, and the accomplishment of all the fruits of it.
[1.] For the justification of every believer. As the same authority which
had delivered him to death raised him from the grave, so in pursuance of
the same ends for which he was delivered, he was ' delivered for our
offences, and was raised again for our justification,' Eom. iv. 24, 25. It is
declared as an encouragement to believe on him that raised up Jesus our
Lord from the dead ; which argument would have no validity in it to incite
the soul to faith in God, if those ends there spoken of were not actually
aimed at in those acts of his. The Father, who was the author of both,
had the same ends in both those acts ; they were the acts of the Father,
and therefore the ends of the Father. Though his death was the foundation
of his merit, yet his resurrection is the foundation of the application of that
merit to all his seed. At this door comes in our justification. As God, in
delivering him up to undergo the curse of the law, delivered us in him, and
looked upon believers as suffering in him the punishment due to sin, so in
raising him he virtually raised them in him, and fundamentally compre-
hended them in that discharge. His resurrection was not meritorious of
our justification, that was the fruit of his death ; he paid by his death what
was due for our sins, and began to receive at his resurrection what was due
for his sufferings ; by compact he suffered for us, and by compact he was
raised for us. As the expiation of our offences depended upon the death of
our surety, so the justification of our persons depended upon the discharge
of our surety ; and to that end he was raised up by God to be a standing
foundation of and encouragement to our faith, to believe the promises of
God, and grow up into hope of the enjoyment of them : 1 Peter i. 21, ' God
raised him up from the dead, that your faith and hope might be in God.'
438 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
[2.] For the regeneration of the seed promised him. This depends upon
his resurrection, and was the aim of God in it : 1 Pet. i. 3, ' Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, according to his abundant
mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead.' As the resurrection of Christ was as the
Father's new begetting of him to be the Son of God, so in regard that he
rose as a common person, his resurrection was a new begetting all his elect
to be the sons of God. Herein was the foundation of their regeneration,
as well as of their justification, settled. He was ' taken from prison and from
judgment,' and then it follows, 'who shall declare his generation ?' Isa.
liii. 8. For by the resurrection of Christ, God having declared himself
pacified, hath opened all the treasures of his grace to Christ for the framing
a new generation in the world to serve him ; without which merit of the
suffering, and discharge thereupon, there could mot have been a mite of
grace given out of God's treasury for the renewal of the image of God in
any one person. The spiritual resurrection of any one soul is as much the
effect of this resurrection of Christ, as the resurrection of bodies shall be at
the last day. That power which doth raise any soul from a death in sin,
would never have wrought in any heart without this antecedent to it, it
would have wanted the foundation of satisfaction, for God only sanctifies as
a God of peace. And therefore the power which was everted for the raising
of Christ from the grave was put forth as a power to work in the hearts of
all his seed. As the subject of this resurrection was not a private person, but
a public representative, as God acted in it in a public manner as the governor
and creditor, so the power whereby he raised him was, as I may call it, a
public power, a pattern of what was to be spiritually wrought in the hearts of
all those whose debts he paid, and for whom the payment was accepted by
God. His working in all believers is but ' according to the working of that
mighty power which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the
dead,' Eph. i. 20. It was also a pattern of that power which should be
employed for doing all works necessary in the hearts of those that believe.
It is the fountain from whence all spiritual life streams down to us ; by this
God put into him the spring of the Spirit of life to flow out upon all his seed.
[3.] For to give us the highest security for all new covenant mercies.
This security was intended by God in the very act of raising him. ' For as
concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to
corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David,'
Acts xiii. 34. This was in the thoughts of God when he put forth his hand
to the raising of him. There can be no greater security than the fulfilling
of the promises made, which the apostle there placeth in the resurrection of
Christ, ' For,' saith he, ' we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the
promises made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their
children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again,' Acts xiii. 32, 33. What
promise was that which was thus fulfilled ? It was the promise of ' an ever-
lasting covenant,' Isa. lv. 3. Whence this is cited, that grand promise that
God made to Adam, and in him to all his posterity, was fulfilled in this act
of raising Christ ; it being a declaration of the bruising the serpent's head,
the author of all the enmity between God and man, by the seed of the
woman. The promises also of blessing all nations in the seed of Abraham,
and the bringing in an everlasting righteousness, were fulfilled. These were
but initially performed by the sending Christ and bruising him. But the
wisdom of God, the righteousness of God, and the truth of God, did all thine
forth in their fullest beams, in the raising him from the dead, which was the
top-stone of our reconciliation, as his death had been the corner-stone and
2 Cor. V. 18, 19. J god the author of reconciliation. 439
foundation. The certain enjoyment of all the blessings of the new covenant
is insured to us by this act of God, and so intended by him in the act itself;
this giving and dispensing of the sure mercies of David, i. e. the making all
the mercies which this our David had purchased by his sacrifice, and had
been promised to him in the first agreement, sure and settled for ever.
Use. How strong a ground is here for our faith and comfort ! When our
Saviour was upon the cross, there was a black cloud of wrath between God
and him, the heavens were dusky, the face of God veiled ; but in his resur-
rection the heaven looked clear, the wrath of God was pacified. It left its
sting in our Saviour's side. Christ therefore after his resurrection salutes his
apostles with peace : John xx. 21, ' And Jesus said to them again, Peace be
unto you ; as my Father hath sent me, so send I you ; ' which seems to be
more than an ordinary salutation, since it is attended with a special com-
mission, the fruit of his reconciling death. Peace dawned at his birth, but
was not in its meridian till his resurrection. Thereby he was cleared to all
the world, and eased of the burden of men's sins, which bowed down his
head upon the cross. Had not God been a God of peace, i. e. fully recon-
ciled by his death, he had not brought him again from the dead, but suffered
him to have lain there : Heb. xiii. 20, ' Now the God of peace, that brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ.' Would we be perfect in even-
good work? Would we do the will of God ? Would we have everything well-
pleasing in his sight wrought in us ? Then we should go to him as a God of
peace, as a God lifting up Christ from the grave, that he might with honour
to all his attributes work such excellent things in the hearts of all that believe
in him, and act faith upon this act of God's power, righteousness, and truth,
in the raising the great Shepherd of our souls. He delights now to be called
the God of peace, and by this act hath laid aside what was terrible to us in
the consideration of a judge for the breach of his law. Why may we not
hope to attain whatsoever is needful at his hands, since he hath clothed himself
with a new title ? And it is to be observed that the apostle saith, God
' brought him again from the dead, through the blood of the everlasting
covenant.' He entered into prison as our surety, and paying the price, was
delivered by that payment ; and freeing himself by that payment from any
more satisfaction, he frees all those that are his members ; so that the blood
of Christ will have the same virtue for those that it hath for himself. God
manifested it to be the blood of the everlasting covenant, a blood sufficient
to establish the everlasting covenant upon, by this deliverance of him. God
hath no more to lay to his charge, all bonds are cancelled, all actions against
him fully answered ; he rose not only by his own power and right, but
by his Father's warrant, whereby God owned himself his Father, and in him
our Father, upon which account he tells Mary, John xx. 17, ' I ascend to
my Father and your Father, my God and your God.' This resurrection is
the testimony, God is become your Father as well as mine, the enmity is
abolished, you stand in a relation to God, and I ascend to him as your
Father as well as mine, to take possession from his hands of the inheritance
I have purchased for you.
8. God glorified Christ, and so was in Christ reconciling the world unto
himself, fully establishing this reconciliation wrought by him. All power
was promised to him : Ps. ii. 8, « I will give thee the heathen for thine
inheritance.' It was performed : Mat. xxviii. 18, ' All power is given me.'
His resurrection had not attained its full end and perfection, had he not
been exalted to a glorious government ; it was for this end, dia rouro, that
he died, that ' he rose again and revived, that he might be Lord both of
dead and living.' He died to purchase it, he rose to possess it, and lives
440 chaenock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
for ever to manage it. He was exalted for the honour of God and the happi-
ness of believers, as Joseph the type was advanced to manage things for the
interest of the crown and the good of the people.
First, We must premise these two things : there is a double glory and
dominion of Christ.
(1.) Essential, as God, which was communicated to him in the communi-
cation of his essence ; for being God from eternity, he had all the preroga-
tives of God.
(2.) Mediatory, which was by an agreement between tbem to be bestowed
upon him upon the accomplishment of his work in the world. He had a
right to this by the donation of his Father at his conception, for he was
made Lord when he was made Christ : Acts ii. 36, ' Know assuredly, that
God hath made that same Jesus whom you have crucified, both Lord and
Christ.'* But he had not his actual investiture and full settlement in it till
after his resurrection, because his reconciling death was to precede his en-
trance into glory, where he was to reside for the management of this power.
In this respect he is called the heir of all things : Heb. i. 2, • Whom he
hath appointed heir of all things ; ' which inheritance is not meant of his
• ssential dominion, for so he is not appointed but begotten heir. He might
then be said to be constituted God as well as heir, which would be an im-
proper speech, like the Socinian's Dens /actus. What is natural, cannot be
said to be by constitution ; the one is voluntary, the other necessary. He
is appointed heir, as he was appointed mediator, Heb. iii. 2. He was
mediator by a voluntary designation, he was heir by a voluntary donation,
and all judgment was committed to him by a voluntary deputation, but he
was a Son by a natural generation. Again, an heir succeeds in the place of
another ; so Christ as mediator succeeds in the place of his Father, in regard
of government, as his delegate and deputy ; but what the Son hath from the
Father as God, he hath not as his deputy, but by an essential, natural, and
eternal communication. So that these two differ.
(1.) The one belongs to his essence as God, the other to his office as
mediator.
(2.) The essential is by nature, the mediatory is conferred as a reward of
his humiliation and expiation of sin : Philip, ii. 8, 9, ' Wherefore God hath
highly exalted him,' viz. because of his obedience to death. The one be-
longed to him without suffering, but his suffering death for us was the moral
cause of his exaltation. Since the heavenly sanctuary was shut against us,
the expiation of our crimes must precede his entrance into it, and posses-
sion of it.
(3.) The essential is an absolute sovereignty, the mediatory is delegated.
For it is a judgment committed to him by the Father, John v. 22. In the
first he is one with the Father, in the other he is the Father's substitut
and deputy ; his Father's lord-lieutenant in the world according to a derived
authority.
(4.) The essential is wholly free, it hath no obligation upon it; the
mediatory hath a charge annexed to it. It is a dominion with rules, and
given him as a means to bring believers to salvation, which is part of the
work belonging to the charge of mediator, John xvii. 42. He hath this
power given him by the Father, ' that he should give eternal life to all that
God hath given him.'
(5.) The essential is necessary: he cannot possibly be God without an in-
finite glory and dominion. The other, though due by the covenant, yet is a free
gift : Philip, ii. 9, ' God hath given him a name which is above every name,'
* Camero, p. 371, Mestrezat sur Heb. i. 2.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19. J god the author of reconciliation. 441
iyjtalearo. Not that God, who is infinite goodness and holiness, would ever
lei such an exquisite holiness and affection to his glory, which Christ dis-
covered in the whole course of his obedience, pass without a rewarding and
crowning it with the greatest glory in his treasury (it being an obedience
superior to that of all the angels, it required a recompence superior to all
their glory), yet that high exaltation is a free gift.*
[l.J In regard that the whole economy, the mission of Christ and his in-
carnation, is a free gift of God to us ; and in his exaltation he is considered
as appearing for us, and receiving from the Father those treasures which
were to be dispensed to us, and that power and dominion which was to be
employed for us.
[2.] Because as it was the free gift of God to unite our flesh to the deity
of the second person, it was also an act of free grace to continue the mani-
festation of the glory of the divinity in the same flesh.
[3.] Because the death he suffered, and the conquest he gained thereby,
being by the powerful assistance of the Father, according to those promises
of assistance made to him, his glory may be well said to be a free gift from
the Father.
[4.] Because given without constraint, with a free pleasure, though upon
a valuable consideration.
(6.) The essential is eternal, without beginning and end ; the mediatory hath
a beginning after his death and resurrection, and shall have an end. When
all the seed are brought in and perfected, all enemies subdued and conquered,
Christ shall resign his commission and his people, for whose sake he was
commissioned and deputed to this government, unto his Father, 1 Cor. xv.
24, when he shall still reign with his Father in the glory of the Deity. The
Father lays aside his immediate government, that Christ may be all in all ;
at last Christ shall resign the government to the Father, that God may be
all in all, and delight immediately in his people, when they shall be fully
perfected, and free from sin. The power, in regard of the particular ends
for which it was conferred on Christ, ceaseth when those ends cease ; but
what belongs of right to him as God, or what was given him by covenant as
a reward for his obedience, will endure as long as the humanity remains
united to the divinity.
Secondly, This is to be considered, that it was the person of Christ which
was exalted by the Father. The subject of this power is the person of Christ,
and the execution of this power is by the person of Christ.
1. His divine nature was exalted and glorified in regard of its manifesta-
tion. The Father would manifest that the Redeemer of the world was God
blessed for ever, above angels or men. His deity in the time of his humi-
liation was incapable of any change, and therefore neither did nor could
receive any detriment in its nature and essential perfections. It could not
be subject to infirmities, or fall under the strokes of death ; yet the Son of
God emptied himself in taking upon him the form of a servant, and veiled
that deity which dwelt bodily in him by the flesh he took, and suffered re-
proaches and indignities from men, and masked the glory of it by human
infirmities ; but in his resurrection and ascension, the deity did gloriously
spring out of that obscurity, and brake out from under the cloud of his
humanity in a glorious lustre, which before had discovered itself in some few
sparklings; he was now 'clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and his name
is called the Word of God,' Rev. xix. 13; i.e. he was manifested to be the
Word of God after and upon the account of his death.
2. His human nature was exalted and glorified by a new acquisition and
* Cocceius de Fsedere, sect. cvi.
442 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
addition of perfections of glory, which had been never conferred upon any
man or angel. That was really delivered from all that suffering and debase-
ment it had been subject to before in the days of his flesh, and was drawn
up into a great and glorious condition, and endowed with gifts above all
creatures in heaven and earth, and received a new royalty and power of
ruling ; and as the Mediator had performed a new work in dying, so he re-
ceived a new glory in his exaltation. Thus the person of Christ, and each
nature, may be said to be glorified in a distinct sense : the divine, in the
manifestation of it, from that obscurity wherein it had been disguised; the
human, in the reception of that which it had not before possessed. This was
fully conferred on him at his ascension, and sitting down at the right hand
of God; whereas before the name of a servant was written upon him, the
fashion of his vesture being changed, there was a new name writ upon him,
King of kings, and Lord of lords, Rev. xix. 16.
These things premised.
1. The exaltation and power of Christ is everywhere ascribed to the Father.
It was his promise : Ps. lxxxix. 27, ' I will make him higher than the kings
of the earth.' Several monarchies overtopped the Jewish kingdoms through-
out the whole duration of that state. He bruised him as he was the rector
and judge of the world, to whom belonged the right of punishment ; he
advanced him as the supreme governor and fountain of all honour ; and thus
he was in Christ ordering the application, and insuring reconciliation to us
upon the conditions in his word.
(1.) In regard of donation. It is a gift from the Ancient of days, Dan.
vii. 14. God anointed him to this office as well as to the rest. He sets
him in the highest place next to himself, at his right hand : — Ps. ex. 1, ' The
Lord said unto my Lord ;' — gives him all the ensigns of authority, a crown
in the day of his espousals, an everlasting throne, a sceptre of righteousness :
Heb. i. 8, ' But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, 0 God, is for ever and
ever ;' a sword in his mouth, the keys of life and death, all royal preroga-
tives ; subjects all the angels to him, to receive commissions from him, and
be at his service ; they are now the eyes and horns of the Lamb, ministers
and instruments of his jurisdiction.* He ' committed all judgment to his
Son,' John v. 22 ; not only a power of judging or sentencing, but a power
of governing and conducting all things. In regard of the power he received,
he is said to sit down, Luke xxii. 69, ' at the right hand of the power of God.'
In regard of the authority invested in him, he is said to sit down at ' the
right hand of the throne of God ;' in regard of the glory conferred upon him,
he is said to sit down ' at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the
heavens,' Heb. viii. 1. His royal power to manage it, and the glory attend-
ing it, being all the gifts of God to him, and that not in a way of common
providence, whereby other kings reign, but by a peculiar deputation and
special decree, in a mighty affection, whereby he doth as it were take him
by the hand and set him upon his throne, — Ps. ex. 1, ' Sit thou at my right
hand,' — and peculiarly calls him his King, Ps. ii. 6 ; makes him higher
than the heavens, gives him by inheritance a more excellent name than all
the angels ; all which are peculiarly the acts of God towards him, Heb. i.
8, 13, the special orders of God concerning him.
(2.) In regard of fitness for this government. « The Spirit of counsel and
might' did rest upon him for the exercise of this government, as well as for
his other transactions in the world ; that he might ' reprove with equity,'
' smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips
slay the wicked,' Isa. xi. 4 ; righteousness was to be the ' girdle of his loins,'
* Mr Jos. Mede.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 443
and ' faithfulness the girdle of his reins.' This was his excellency, conferred
upon him as King of the church ; he had seven horns, a full power, and
seven eyes, a perfect wisdom, for the management of the government, Rev.
v. 6. He had need of the highest fitness, because this government upon his
shoulders was a charge incumbent upon him above what all the angels in
heaven were entrusted with. He hath a spirit of wisdom to guide the church,
a spirit of power to defend it, a spirit of faithfulness to take care of it, a spirit
of compassion to pity it, and inexhaustible fulness to impart unto his people
in all their necessities, able to fill the cistern, the church, and every private
bucket. He was not without power to rescue those out of the hands of the
devil by conquest, whom he had redeemed from the wrath of God by his death.
He had full power given him to force the jailor, after he had contented the
creditor ; God fitted him with wisdom against the wiles of Satan, and might
against this power.
(3.) In regard of defence and protection in it. He hath the whole power
of the Godhead to defend him in it, he sits at his right hand. The right
hand is a place of honour, and the right hand of a great king is a place of
security. Though Christ hath a power to subdue his enemies, jet the Father
is said to make his enemies his footstool. Putting forth his power, to shew
in the punishment of his enemies the high acceptance of his person and
passion, that he will with his own hands bring down all that concur not with
him in giving honour to his Son. The power which is essential to the
Deity, is promised to be employed for the subduing his enemies under his
sceptre and under his feet : Ps. ex. 1, ' Till I make thy enemies thy foot-
stool.' As he did bring him to his throne in spite of all opposition, so be
will establish it against the storms and powers of hell. He set him upon
the throne with a mighty zeal for his honour, and indignation against his
opposers : ' Then shall he speak to them in his wrath, yet have I set my
king upon my holy hill of Sion,' Ps. ii. 5, 6, notwithstanding all their
counsels against him and resolutions to cast his cords from them. So the
increase of his government and peace, the ordering of it, the stability of it
with judgment and justice, and the perpetuity of it, are settled, protected,
and assured by the same zeal that placed him in it : Isa. ix. 7, ' The zeal of
the Lord of hosts shall perform this,' i. e. that vehement love which he hath
both to the honour of Christ and the eternal peace and security of his seed.
The power of God first lifted him to his throne, and the same omnipotency
will keep it from being shaken by the powers of darkness. And the
Redeemer was still to exercise faith in God as his Father, as his God, the
rock of his salvation, even when he had ' set his hand in the sea, and his
right hand in the rivers, Ps. lxxxix. 25, 26. Then God doth promise to
' beat down his foes before his face, and plague them that hate bim,' and
1 his seed ' he would make to.' endure for ever, and his throne as the days
of heaven,' vers. 23, 29.
2. The Father did this upon the account of his death, and to shew his
high valuation of it, and that reconciliation he wrought by it.
(1.) This exaltation and dominion was upon the account of bis reconciling
death. His sufferings were the way to his crown ; he first surrendered
himself as our surety to the justice of God, before God surrendered his
power to the management of Christ for the good of man : • He died and rose
again and revived, that he might be Lord of the living and the dead,' Rom.
xiv. 9 ; he obtained a new state of life, not to die again, as Lazarus ; and
he was not raised barely to a life, but to a royal and princely life, to have
an extensive dominion over all, the foundation whereof was laid in his
death. God ' lifted up his head,' because he did ' drink of the brook in the
444 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
■way,' Ps. ex. 7, and it was as he was a lamb that had been slain as a sacrifice,
that he had both his power and his wisdom, Rev. v. 6.
[l.J The exercise of his dominion before his incarnation, did in order of
nature presuppose his death. Though he exercised a power in the world
before his incarnation, yet it was exercised by him as a constituted mediator;
and his assumption of a mortal body, and offering it up to death, was the
condition required at the first constitution of him as mediator, as a repara-
tion of the honour of God, which had been violated in the disorder of his
first form of government by the entrance of sin. As soon as ever man fell,
the government of the world devolved into the hands of Christ by virtue of
the covenant between the Father and himself. When sin had undermined
the pillars of the world, they would have fallen had he not given a new con-
sistency to them, Col. i. 17, and ' upheld all things by the word of his
power,' Heb. i. 3, and ' established the earth,' Isa. xlix. 8, which else would
have been overthrown by justice as well as the angels. Had not the govern-
ment of the world been put into the hands of Christ, and a covenant of
grace been erected, the world had been destroyed ; the holiness of God
could not have endured the sinfulness of it, and the justice of God could not
have endured the standing of it according to the covenant of works. And
this government was not put into the hands of the mediator, but upon a
supposition of his death. What reason have we to think God should con-
stitute a new mode of government without a reparation of his honour in the
first ? ' The government was upon his shoulders ' when he was first given
to us as a Son, Isa. ix. 6. He was given to us in promise before he was given
to us in the flesh ; and in that first promise, wherein his power is ensured to
him for us, viz. the bruising the serpent's head, his death is supposed by
the serpent's bruising his heel, Gen. hi. 15. He was a Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world, and it was upon this presupposed oblation that
the world had its standing, that any had grace bestowed upon them, and
found acceptance with God. If the great end of the government he is since
his death invested with, was performed by him before his incarnation, viz.
the salvation of souls, yet with respect to his future death, then the govern-
ment also, which was but a means in order to this, was conditionally con-
ferred upon him. As believers were saved before his coming, so the world
was governed by him, because he was to die. Hence he was the angel of
the Lord in delivering his church ; the captain of the Lord's hosts in fight-
ing their battles, Joshua v. 14 ; the guardian of the church, and an advocate
for them in their distresses, Zech. i. 8, 12 ; and attended upon his throne
with all the angels as messengers to perform his will, Isa. vi. 1, 2,
which, in the evangelist's interpretation, was the Lord Jesus, whose glory
Isaiah saw, John xii. 41, when the seraphims celebrated his glory in the
earth : it was he, the foundation of whose glory was laid in the earth, in the
redemption of the sons of men. They are silent of that glory God hath in
the vast heavens, and speak only of his glory in the small point of earth,
which relates to that of his mediation, wherein the establishing the earth
and reducing it to a due order was the main concern.
[2. J He was absolutely confirmed in it upon his death. There was a
confirmation of it in the first instant of his conception, for he was made Lord
when he was made Christ ; at his birth he was proclaimed by the angels a Lord
as well as a Saviour, Luke ii. 11, but his full investiture was after his death,
upon his ascension, when seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
David had an authority conferred upon him at his anointing, but was not
fully inaugurated till his coronation at Hebron. So after the Redeemer had
finished his ministerial work, God did fix him in his royal dignity to exercise
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 445
his power, not only in the divine nature, as he had done before, but also in
his human nature assumed by it. There was an ' anointing ' of him after
his ' bringing in everlasting righteousness ' by his death, and ' making recon-
ciliation for iniquity, making an end of sin, and sealing up the vision and
prophecy' which centred in him ; then was the most holy to be anointed
and have his solemn investiture, Dan. ix. 24. Because of that illustrious
holiness he had manifested in the whole course of his humiliation, and that
signal obedience upon the cross, he then was settled an high priest for ever,
which he exerciseth by himself ; a prophet of his church, which he exer-
ciseth by his Spirit ; an everlasting king, which he manages partly by his
Spirit, partly by himself. Thus our Noah was brought out of the ark after
the suffering, the terror of a deluge, to be the father of a second world ; and
as Isaac was raised up, after he had appeared as a victim under his father's
sword, to be the father of many nations, he was to be Shi/oh, a peace-
maker, before the gathering of the nations under his sceptre, Gen. xlix. 10;
and the Son of man, before he was to have a ' dominion that should not pass
away,' Dan. vii. 13, 14. As God brought him again from the dead, 'through
the blood of the everlasting covenant,' he raised him because his blood was
a covenant blood, Heb. xiii. 20, so by his own blood he entered once into the
holy place, Heb. ix. 12. But it was not only after his death, but because
it was a death for man voluntarily submitted unto. ■ The conquests made by
him in the world, his having a ' portion divided with the great, and the spoil
with the strong,' was • because he poured out his soul to death, made inter-
cession for the transgressors, and bare the sins of many, Isa. liii. 12. It
was upon this score of purging and expiating our sins by himself that he
• sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high,' Heb. i. 3. He expiated
sin by the oblation of himself, not as other high priests, by the blood of
animals.* If any creature had been offered by him, though held in the
highest rank in the creation, the priest had been infinite, but the sacrifice)
had been finite. But it was himself which he offered, a finite, human nature,
in conjunction with an infinite person, and that for the atonement of our
iniquity ; for which infinite obedience, and infinite charity, God rewarded
him with an infinite exaltation. It was his own blood which procured his
admission into the holy place, and he was crowned because he had combated
with the curses of the law and enemies of our peace, and conquered them
for us.
There are two things requisite to the exercise of this power and dominion :
the knowledge of God's decrees, and authority over the chief ministers in the
execution of them ; both which Christ hath upon the account of his redeeming
death.
First, The knowledge of God's decrees. God gave to him the knowledge
of his decrees concerning his people, Rev. i. 1. No man on the earth or
angel in heaven was found worthy to open the book, i.e. to be acquainted
with the contents thereof, nor to unloose the seals, to dive into the depth
and mysteries of his counsels and providence, but only the lion of the tribe
of Judah. But it was by virtue of his death (as he was the lamb slain, the
antitype of the legal lambs sacrificed) that he took the book and opened it,
Rev. v. 6, 7. The prevalency of his death with his Father was the cause of
the knowledge of all the secrets of his will. As he was the lion of the tribe
of Judah, and the root of David, as he had taken human nature according to
the will of his Father, and suffered in it, he prevailed to open the book and
unloose the seals thereof, Rev. v. 5, that they should not be concealed from
him who was the head of the reconciled world. When the justice of God
* Mestrezat in locum.
446 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
was appeased by the prevailing death of Christ, he gives forth willingly what-
soever mav conduce to the salvation of his people ; and in order to this, there
was a necessity Christ should understand his secrets. How else could he be
an executor of all the counsels of God ? This revelation is to him as medi-
ator in his human nature, as appointed king by God, which is distinct from
that knowledge he had as God, as his mediatory kingdom was distinct from
that essential kingdom he had as God. As that was a delegated power, so
this is a revealed knowledge ; and both one and the other he had, as he was
the Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world.
Secondly, Authority over the chief ministers employed in the execution of
his will. ' Things in heaven ' must bow down to him, Philip ii. 10 ; ' all
power in heaven, as well as earth, was given him,' Mat. xxviii. 18, and no-
thing was exempt from his jurisdiction but only the Father, who did put all
things under him, 1 Cor. xv. 27. The innumerable company of angels,
which are citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem and mount Zion, the seat, of
his royaltv, Heb. xii. 22, are under his sceptre. His sitting on the right
hand of God (as was said) was because he purged our sins by himself, and
whatsoever did accrue to him by virtue of this session was upon the same
foundation with the session itself. Part of that dominion accruing to him,
as sitting at the right hand of God, was the power over angels (1 Peter
iii. 22, ' Who is on the right hand of God, angels, and authorities, and
powers being made subject to him'), who had authority and power from God
in the administration of his providence either among other angels or among
men; they were subjected to him, i.e. by his Father. He was passive in it,
and had it conferred upon him as part of his mediatory glory. As God, he
did himself subject the angels to him. Thus, as an honour for the oblation
of himself, were they all marshalled under the power of Christ by the Father,
who had power to dispose of his creatures under the reins of what govern-
ment he pleased. And the most excellent orders of them were not exempt
from this subjection, but every person to whom God had granted a princi-
pality, power, might, and dominion, either in this world or that which is to
come, was brought under his sceptre, to be serviceable to him in the execu-
tion of those designs he had for the church, which he had reconciled to God by
his blood : Eph. i. 21, ' Far above all principality and power;' not only am,
but b<rsod.va, exceedingly above in excellency of dignity and largeness of autho-
ritv ; whence they are called his angels, Rev. i. 1, and fellow-servants of
' those that have the testimony of Jesus,' Rev. xix. 20, and therefore ser-
vants to Christ as mediator. And as a testimony of this subjection of them,
God sent all his angels to wait upon him at his triumphant reception, as his
chariots to convey the human nature of Christ to heaven, and to welcome
him after his victory, Ps. lxviii. 17. He was ' among them as in Sinai,'
when he came down to give the law ; he was commander of them, and gave
them directions in that affair. This is spoken with respect to his ascension,
as it follows, ver. 18, ' Thou hast ascended on high ;' they attended him to
his throne and waited upon him, to be employed in the execution of his
royal edicts. Now, this adoration which the angels are commanded to render
him was because he had expiated sin, Heb. i. 3, 6. Their waiting round
about his throne to attend his pleasure, and the joyful acclamations they
shout forth in his praise, is because he was the lamb slain, the reconciling
sacrifice, whereby God and man were brought together, Rev. v. 11, 12.
[3.] It was very fit and congruous that he should have this glory. This
was the agreement between the Father and the Son before he set foot out of
heaven. He had glorified God, had given him a foundation by his submis-
sion to the sharpness of his mediatory work, to display his wisdom in the
2 Cor. Y. 18, 19. J god the author of reconciliation. 447
highest glory, his justice in the deepest severity, his mercy with the clearest
lustre, his veracity in the firmest stability. Without his undertaking this,
none of those attributes could have appeared in such glory upon any other
foundation; they could never have been thus manifested by any creature, or
the undertaking of the whole creation. As he therefore glorified the Father
more than all creatures could glorify bim, so it was fit he should have a
glory transcendently above them. As he had improved his talents above
them, so he should be possessed with a rule above them. Without this
power he could not have conducted those whom he had purchased to a
blessed eternity. It was very reasonable, that as the Father had by him
done the hardest work, viz., the expiating sin, he should also by him work
the full accomplishment of it. It was congruous that things should be given
into the hands of the Redeemer to manage, who had purchased them all by a
price so valuable as that of his death. If he died to purchase them, it was
fit he should have authority to perfect them. He, being a divine sacrifice,
was of infinite price ; and as his sufferings surpassed the punishments of all
creatures, so the value of his sacrifice exceeded the riches of the whole crea-
tion, both of heaven and earth, angels or men. He had not had a reward
commensurate to the value of his death, had not a dominion been added to
him as mediator, beside that of his deity, which was his by nature, and
could not fall within the compass of a purchase, since he never was nor
could be dispossessed of it. It was but reason the angels should be sub-
jected to him, who had been preserved and confirmed by bim ; for God bad
in him 'gathered together things in heaven as. well as things in earth, Eph.
i. 10, which collection would have signified little, unless by it they had been
wrapt up into a permanent state, and a full assurance from any danger of apos-
tasy from God and a fall into misery, as some of their fellows had done. It
was very convenient that they who had received so great a benefit by him
should be subject to him, that they who had been gathered under his wing
should be as well under his sceptre. Besides, as he had discovered himself
faithful to death against some reluctancy of human nature, he should have
an opportunity to discover himself faithful in the other parts which concerned
the honour of God ; he that was faithful to him under the curse of the law-
would not be unfaithful to him under the blessing of deliverance. And very
fit at last that he that was the innocent sufferer should be the judge of his
guilty enemies, and condemn the great head of that enmity which was the
occasion of his conflict with his Father's wrath, to remove it out of the way.
As he, being rich in the deity and in the form of God, became poor in his
humanity and in the form of a servant, eclipsing thereby the glory of his
Godhead, it was fit he should reassume his former state as the heir of all
things, and exercise that power in his humanity which he had a right unto
in his deity.
[4.] This power was conferred upon him for the application and perfec-
tion of the fruits of reconciliation. This power and dominion is given to
him for the advantage and full growth of his seed. When his people shall
be perfected and his enemies subdued, the government devolves wholly to
his Father, there being no longer any occasion for the exercise of his media-
tory dominion. If it were conferred upon him only for himself, the power
would not cease as long as his person endures ; but the cessation of it upon
the accomplishment of such effects evidenceth that those effects were the
end for which it was first conferred. It is upon this score the Scripture
placeth the extent of his dominion, Eph. i. 22. He, i.e. the Father, hath
put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to
the church, for the church's welfare, for the good of the subjects as well as
448 ciiarnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
the glory of his empire. He is the King of saints, to rule them by his grace ;
and the King of nations, to rule them by his providence. He is set to reign
in Zion, the hill of holiness, Ps. ii. 6, as the centre of all the power and
wisdom of his government, as the chief city of a prince partakes most of the
fruits of his valour in conquering, and his wisdom in ruling. As his pro-
phetical office is not to cease till instruction be swallowed up in vision, nor
his priestly till his intercession be succeeded by immediate communion, so
neither his kingly till there be a total cessation from all danger, and not an
enemy left to disturb their peace.
First, For the bestowing gifts on men for the publishing this reconcilia-
tion. He received gifts at his triumph, that he might, as a royal steward of
his Father, distribute them for the good of those that had been rebels to
the government of God, to fit them for the great fruit of this peace, viz., a
communion between God and them, ' that the Lord God might dwell among
them,' Ps. lxviii. 18 ; Eph. iv. 8, 11-13. These gifts come from God as a
God of salvation, as the doxology infers, Ps. lxviii. 19, ' Blessed be the 'Lord,
who daily loads us with his benefits, even the God of our salvation.' The
intent whereof was to wound the head of the enemy Satan, who had been
the first makebait : Ps. lxviii. 21, ' God shall wound the head of his enemy.'
The Spirit was not therefore given in that emineney and fulness of gifts and
graces till the glorification of Christ, wherein he absolutely received the keys
of all the treasures of his Father, as well as the keys of hell and death :
John vii. 39, ' The Spirit was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet
glorified.' The giving the Spirit depended on the glorification of him as
Jesus, a Saviour. God would receive those gifts for the triumphal corona-
tion of his Son as an evidence of the peace which was made by him, by the
effusion of the richest treasures of God. The Spirit was in the world be-
foi*e, as light was upon the face of the creation the three first days, but not
so glorious, sparkling, and darting out full beams till the fourth day, the
day of the creation of the sun, and fixing it in the heavens ; so was the rich
beaming forth of light, when after four thousand years, the fourth divine day,
the Sun of righteousness was seated in the heavens to disperse his beams.
The first edict he gave out after the receipt of his power, was the commis-
sion for preaching the gospel : Matt, xxviii. 18, 19, • All power is given unto
me in heaven and in earth ; Go therefore and teach all nations.' It was the
intention of his Father that he should dispose of his power for this end ; for
he who did all things according to his Father's will would not use his power
in the least, but for those ends for which it was conferred upon him.
Secondly, For the inviting of men to an acceptance of him. As the most
beneficial commands that ever he gave, so the most condescending affections
he ever discovered, the most gracious invitations that ever he made, were at
those times where he had a sense of this power in a more peculiar manner,
to shew the proper intendment of it, and to what ends he was to manage it.
The grant of this power is the foundation of that invitation he makes to
weary souls, Mat. xi. 27, ' All things are delivered to me of my Father ;'
the inference is, ' Come unto me, all ye that labour ;' and his governing them
as a leader and commander to the people is the encouragement God uses to
men to accept of that rich and liberal invitation of coming to the waters and
buying wine and milk without money and without price, Isa. Iv. 1, 4. God
exalted him to all his power, to enable him to make the most gracious offers
to men, and encourage their acceptance of him, as himself intimates in that
fore-mentioned Mat. xi. 27, that the delivery of all his treasures to him
was to make a revelation of his Father to the sons of men.
Thirdly, For the preserving the reconciliation for ever firm. As there ia
2 Cor. Y. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 449
an increase of his government, so there is an increase of his psace : Isa.
ix. 7, ' Of the increase of his government and peace there is no end.' His
government, and the peace he purchased, go hand in hand ; as his glory riseth
to the meridian, so doth the reconciliation. He therefore went to heaven to
purify the heavenly things themselves with his sacrifice, Heb. ix. 23, i. e.
(say some) heaven itself, which in some sense was polluted by the stench of
our sins coming up into the presence of God, into which Christ as the high
priest entered with his blood, to settle the sweet savour of that before God,
instead of the loathsome savour of our sins which had offended his majesty.
But howsoever, this exaltation was that he might ' appear in the presence of
God for us,' Heb. ix. 24, and preserve by his intercession what he had
wrought by his passion. He hath therefore his head encircled with a rain-
bow, Rev. x. 1, to evidence the perfection of the peace he had made, and
the establishment of the security in heaven, against the opening any more
the flood-gates of wrath for an overflowing deluge.
Fourthly, For the subduing his and our enemies. He is to continue in
the exercise of this power, ' till all the enemies be put under his feet,' 1 Cor.
xv. 25. All the enemies, all the enemies to him as God, all the enemies to
him as mediator, all the enemies to the great design of his mediation, all the
enemies to him in that state and condition wherein he sits at the right hand
of God, which is as mediator, and therefore whatsoever is contrary to his
mediation and the intendment of it, all those enemies to his members which
would hinder then* arrival at happiness, and their blessed conjunction with
their head, are to be destroyed. And those are,
First, Sin, which hath ' reigned unto death,' Rom. v. 21.
Secondly, Satan, who as a prince hath reigned in the world, and kept up
sin in its vigour, John xii. 31.
Thirdly, Death, the last enemy, which hath ' reigned from Adam to Moses,'
Rom. v. 14, and will reign to the end of the world, 1 Cor. xv. 26. What-
soever sets itself in contrariety to the happiness of believers, is an enemy to
the design of Christ, and is to be put under his feet, as one end of the
authority granted to him. All the powers of hell must be crushed, all the
fortifications of the devil must be demolished, and himself despoiled of his
arms. This was necessary, that his kingdom should extend over the devils,
to repress them, if it did extend over his subjects to secure them ; these
could not be advanced by his mercy, if the others did not sink under his power.
Fifthly, For the perfect salvation of his seed. His exaltation was for the
perfection and perpetuity of salvation; the apostle's inference else would have
no validity : Rom. viii. 34, ■ It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen
again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession
for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ?' But the apostle
6ets forth the eternal knot between him and believers, upon his session at
the right hand of God, with a rather. God ' exalted him to he a prince and
a Saviour,' Acts v. 31. A princely Saviour, to bestow the royal gifts of
repentance and forgiveness of sins. As he appointed Christ to give it, so ho
hath appointed men to attain it by him, and from him, 1 Thes. v. 9. As he
merited salvation by his death, he might perfect it by his life, Rom. v. 10.
That as his death was by the ordination of God to purchase a seed, so his
exaltation was, by the like designation, for a full sanctification of this seed,
that he might at last behold them in their perfect glory ; and therefore what
he thought his proper work, upon a sense of it in his soul, when he con-
sidered his divine original, and his approaching glory, when yet it was not
absolutely conferred upon him, John xiii. 3, 4, he will think his work
VOL. III. f f
450 charnock's works. [2 Cor. Y. 18, 19.
when he is in full possession of it, viz., the full sanctification of his people,
the washing their souls, which was symbolically signified by the washing
their feet. What seems to be the end of that present sense, will much more
be the end and issue of his enjoyment. As he was humbled to save them,
so he was exalted to perfect them ; and since he was made sin for us in his
death, he is in his advancement made wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption, a full treasury to supply all our necessities, that as he was
the author, so he might be the finisher of our faith. If God delivered to
him the full contents of his will because he was a lamb slain, it must be in
order to carry on that work for which he was slain, to perfect an eternal
amity between God and them, that there might be an eternal rejoicing in one
another. The mediator being to reign till the whole church be brought to
heaven, the intendment therefore of his heavenly royalty is the perfection of
them in a heavenly glory ; that as in his humiliation he was the way of our
access, as by his spirit he was the discoverer of the truth, so by his life he
might be the perfecter of our happiness : John xiv. 6, ' I am the way, the
truth, and the life.' As he glorified his Father on the earth by a full satis-
faction of his justice, so his Father glorified him in heaven, to make a full
application of his merits, John xvii. 1, 2.
[5.] By this the Father testifies the highest acceptance of his person, and
the sufficiency of his death. John iii. 35, ' The Father loves the Son, and
hath given all things into his hands.' His coronation testifies the accepta-
tion of his person, and it being after his death, testifies the acceptation of
his passion ; as Pharaoh's elevating Joseph from a prison, to the highest
dignity in Egypt, next to that of the sovereign, was a testimony of that king's
high admiration of Joseph's wisdom.
This acceptance is testified by two things : the manner of his reception
and settlement ; the nature of his power.
First, The manner of his reception and settlement. It was with an infi-
nitely pleased countenance, and all the marks of joy in the soul of God,
which rejoiced him more than the crown of pure gold set upon his head, or
the length of days for ever and ever granted to him. The psalmist placeth
all the joy of Christ upon his ascension in this : Ps. xxi. 3-6. ' Thou hast
made him exceeding glad with thy countenance,' imnn nnD'C'2, thou hast
made him glad with joy. One frown in the face of God would have damped
all the joy of Christ. The psalm was anciently understood of the ascension
and glory of Christ, and Ainsworth makes a pretty observation of the word
rejoice, n»B», by transposition to be IWD, Messiah. If there be joy in
heaven at the return of sinners, how great was the joy of God at the return
of the Saviour of them, after the performing unto God so eminent a service !
How heartily did the Father take him in his arms ! How straitly did he
embrace him ! How magnificently did he fix him in a throne of immortality
and advocacy! And when he did thus constitute him his king upon his
holy hill, he established his throne and perpetuity of his kingdom by an
oath : Ps. lxxxix. 35, 36, ' Once have I sworn by my holiness, that I will
not lie unto David : his seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun
before me.' What men are mightily pleased with, they confirm under the
highest obligations. As when the daughter of Herodias pleased Herod, he
confirms by an oath the grant he had made of whatsoever she should ask
him, Mark vi. 22, 23. And the solemnity at Christ's entrance into heaven,
and sitting upon his throne, lasted ten days before the sending of the Spirit
as the first fruits of his purchase.
Seco)idhj, The nature of that glory and power invested in him. It is not
in the orbs of the planets, or the starry heaven, where Christ hath taken up
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 4ol
his residence, but he is mounted above all the visible heavens: Eph. iv. 10,
' Far above all heavens ; ' wngdarct, not <zr», exceedingly above the heavens,
into the holy of holies, the habitation of the glorious majesty of God ; a
place of purity for a pure Redeemer, a place of glory for a glorious Mediator.
And he is seated in his humanity in the highest place of heaven, next the
Father, at the right hand of the Majesty on high, yea, ' in the midst of the
throne,' Rev. vii. 17, an honour never allowed to the highest angels, Heb.
i. 13, which stand before the throne of God, but sit not in the throne with
him. The obedience of angels never did, never could, eqnal the obedience
of the Son of God. His empire is of the same extent with his Father's ;
so highly did his Father value his expiatory offering, that he would not
exempt an angel in heaven, nor a devil in hell, nor any creature upon earth
from a subjection to him, but poured the whole rule and government into
his hands, ordered the same worship to be performed to the Son as to him-
self, John v. 23, and that in heaven, Heb. i. 6, Rev. v. 13. And for
duration, it is for ever and ever ; he is to reign as Mediator till all the ends
of it be accomplished, and afterwards for ever with the Father in the glory
of the Deity, Heb. i. 3.* He is to reign as Mediator in the place of the
Father, till the church be perfected, by reducing all enemies to an entire
subjection, and then to res'gn his power to his Father. As the son of a king,
sent to reduce rebellious countries to obedience, hath a royal commission
from his father to act as king, an authority to pardon or punish, till his
conquest be finished ; so when Christ shall have gained the full victory, he
shall cease his mediation, and God shall reign immediately over all, and Christ
shall reign with him, not as Mediator, but as God. ■ God shall be all in all,'
1 Cor. xv. 28, which is opposed to Christ's interposition or intercession as
mediator; there will be no need of God's communicating himself by a mediator,
but he will immediately shine forth upon them, when the fruits of sin, and
sin itself, is abolished in them. But for the Father to resign things to the
management of his Son, as the Son had given himself up to the justice of
the Father, in a sort to eclipse his own glory for so long a time, as the Son
had eclipsed his Deity in his humiliation, and as it were lay by the imme-
diate exercise of his authority of judging and governing which originally per-
tains to him, and veil it, to let the beams of it shoot into the world only
through this medium, is such a mark of his acceptation, that higher cannot
be given. It cannot be conceived how the Father should, do more than
this, for a testimony of his pleasure in him and his sacrifice. It is impos-
sible the Father should dethrone himself, and therefore anything higher
than what he hath done cannot be imagined. For though the authority still
resides in the Father, and is extant in every act of Christ's government, yet
he acts not immediately, receives no addresses immediately to himself,
1 ut all in and by his glorified Son. Had he had the least displeasure with
him, or found the least blemish in him, he had not lodged the exercise of his
power in him.
Use of this head.
First, This exaltation of Christ by the Father is a mighty encouragement
to faith in Christ.
1. Hereby we have assurance, that all that Christ spake and did was
agreeable to the will of the Father. This exaltation of Christ will not suffer
us to think that anything was left undone by him which he ought to have done.
Otherwise the exact justice of God would never have consented to have put the
government of all things into his hand ; an exact obedi<nce was to precede
before a glory was to be conferred. Since therefore this glory is conferred,
* Me.-trczat.
452 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
it is evident his obedience was unblemished. All the world, and the con-
cerns of it, would never have been laid upon his shoulders, had the piercing
eye of the Father discerned any fault in it. The infinite wisdom of God
would never have entrusted him with so great an affair, if he had not been
faithful in the management of what had been before committed to him ;
because, if he had been unfaithful in one, there was no ground to think he
would be faithful in the others. But it is a strong argument that he will
be exact in the glorious part of his charge, since he hath been exact in the
ignominious part of his work. It is upon the account of his being a faithful
witness, that he is the ' Prince of the kings of the earth,' Rev. i. 5. It is
this argument the Spirit useth to convince the world of righteousness, i. e.
the righteousness of his person, the righteousness of his mediation, that
there is a full expiation of sin, because he is entertained and received by
the Father, John xvi. 10.
2. Hereby we have assurances that it is the intent of the Father, that
all things should be managed by Christ for the good of those that believe
in him. Since he hath delivered the book to Christ, containing the secrets
of his will, because he was a lamb slain, it is evident that it is the pleasure
of the Father, that his government shall be for those ends for which he was
slain, and that the book contains the will of God pursuant to the ends of
that death. Had that book contained anything contrary to those ends, and
to the interest of his people, the Father would not have delivered it into his
hands. The end of his exaltation can never cross the end of his passion ;
nor could the unchangeable love of the Father give him rules for his acting
in his government, opposite to those he had designed his humiliation for.
Since therefore he was in Christ upon the cross, reconciling the world to
himself, he is in Christ upon his throne, pursuing the ends of that recon-
ciliation, and bringing the fruits of it to a glorious maturity by the glorifica-
tion of the reconciler. How soon were the tears of John dried up, when he
looked upon 'Christ opening the book of God's decrees, and found by the
praises of the elders that the world was committed to him, to order all things
for the good of the church, Rev. v. 4, 5. What encouragement would they
else have had to have fallen down, singing the praises of him, and acknow-
ledging him as their Lord and King, and to present to him their golden vials
full of odours, which are the prayers of the saints ? The first homage he
receives, after his opening the book, and that as a pleasant odour, is the
prayers of believers : ver. 8, 'And when he had taken the book, the four
beasts and twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one
of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of the
saints ;' which doth evidence their good to be the intendment of the Father
in delivering it to him, and that the rules in it were to that purpose, and his
own resolution to observe the rules of it.
3. It is to be considered who this person is that is thus exalted, in order
to the encouragement of faith. It is the same person, in whose humiliation
the Father was reconciling us ; our kinsman, by the assumption of our
nature, but more by the relation of our faith to him into whose hand this
power is put. He is made the steward to dispense his Father's gifts, who
knew our indigences and wants of them, and whose tenderness cannot be ques-
tioned, since he hath had an experience of our infirmities. He that shed
his blood to save us, will not spare his power to relieve us. As he had not
•lied but to reconcile us, so he would not have been exalted as a reconciler,
but to perfect it by bringing us to the Father : by the one he made way for
our access, and by the other for our perfect conjunction. His being quickened
by the Spirit, and the glory following thereupon, as well as his being put to
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 453
death in the flesh, was to ' bring us to God,' 1 Peter iii. 18. He had a
tenderness as he is the Son of God, partaking of the same nature with
his Father ; he bath a tenderness as our mediator, and clothed with our flesh ;
he hath also an engagement of faithfulness, since all the treasures of heaven
sire put into his hands, to be expended for those ends for which he died.
He is not only adminstrator of his Father's goods, but guardian of the souls
committed to him by his Father, and faithful he is in both.
How may we then cast our souls into this bottom, since the directions he
receives from the Father are agreeable to all the former economy ? Since,
as a lamb slain, he is God's steward to distribute ; since both his heart, and
the heart of his Father, are so full of love, one in the execution, the other in
the acceptation, nothing can be cross to the interest of those for whom the
one died and the other accepted it. No higher ground can there be of faith,
than the love the Father hath shewn to our Redeemer for his reconciling
passion, by his glorious exaltation. He loved him in the laying down his
life, and he loved him in the taking of it again, John x. 17. Get your
thoughts then up into heaven. Behold the Father taking him up in his
arms, congratulating his victory, adorning his triumph, conferring upon him,
and perpetuating a government. See if in all this you can find a frown on
God's face, any doubt in his heart of the validity of his sacrifice ; see if any
letters, but those of grace, be written about his throne. And if God hath
no doubt of it, who is more concerned in his glory, than you in your salva-
tion, why should any jealousies remain in any heart that accepts him, dis-
cards all affection to sin, and endeavours to imitate him in an holy obedience
to God ? ' Be followers therefore of God as dear children,' since he hath so
magnificently entertained his Son, upon the account of what he did, for all
that will believe in him ; and wait upon God till he shall send his Son in
all his royal attire, to bring you to the full enjoyment of all the fruits of this
reconciliation, so strongly wrought, and so heartily accepted ; and till that
be accomplished, let hope every day pierce through the veil, and enter into
that which is within it, more inward, Heb. vi. 19, j/'s to stturtgov rou
xaraTSTa.gij.aTOi, inning our souls by faith and hope every day in the veil.
This faith is a firm anchor, to hold the soul safe in storms, and the Father's
admission of Christ into heaven is the rock on which it should fasten.
The second use is of comfort.
1. Sin is fully expiated, since it is upon the account of the expiation of
it that he is thus dignified. The purging of our sins by himself hath met
not only with a bare acceptation, but an high valuation, with the Father.
Since he hath thus crowned and enthroned him, what assurance have we of
the full atonement by the blood of his cross ! How can we doubt the full
satisfaction, delight, and content of the Father with him, and with us upon
the condition of faith, since it was for the purging, not his own, but our sins,
that he did ' sit down,' as of right, ' on the right hand of the throne of the
majesty on high ' ? Heb. i. 3. The gratifications the Father made to our
Redeemer, manifest the satisfaction of his justice, since not only God's kind-
ness, but his justice, which is a part of his majesty, was employed in the wel-
come reception of him. Had that frowned, there had been no throne for him
to sit on ; and if it ever frown upon him, his throne will shake under him.
But it never shall, for it is a ' throne for ever and ever,' and that because
' his sceptre is a sceptre of righteousness,' Heb. i. 8. A majesty still
offended would never have admitted him to this honour. Is there any
room for sorrow and dejection, for jealousies of the sufficiency of the ransom,
after so illustrious a discharge from the Father ?
2. Accusations shall be answered. We have great enemies ; the devils
451 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
that tempt us, our corruptions that haunt us, and both to accuse us. To
whom must they accuse us ? To that majesty, at whose right hand Christ
hath his residence. Whence must the vengeance they call for issue, but
from that majesty upon whose throne Christ sits as a lamb slain, who sits
ready to answer the accusations, and stop the revenge? He tore Satan's
charge upon the cross, will he let it be pieced together in his triumph ?
As he bowed down his head upon the cross to expiate our sins, so his
head is lifted up on the throne to obviate any charge they can bring
against us. Satan knows it is fruitless for him to bring his indictment
there, where Christ perpetually appears, and is never out of the way. The
perpetuity of our justification results from this sitting of Christ at tin-
right hand of God ; for he sits there, not as an useless spectator, but an
industrious and powerful intercessor, to keep up a perpetual amity, and pre-
vent sin from making any new breach: 1 John ii. 1, sin we must not, but
* if any man sin' (not a course of sin, but fall by some temptation), 'we have
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.' He sits as an
advocate, as a reconciler, and a propitiation for sin, spreading before his
Father the odours of his merits and righteousness, to answer the charge and
indictments of sin. ' He appears in the presence of God for us,' Heb. ix. 24,
before the face of his glory in the highest heavens. It was through the blood
of the covenant he arose, it was through and with the blood of the covenant
be entered into the holy place, to carry the merit of his death as a standing
monument into heaven. God, by his advancement, would have the sight of
it always in his eye, and the savour of it in his nostrils; that as the world,
after the savour of Noah's sacrifice, should no more sink under the deluge ;
so the believers in Christ should no more groan under the curse of the law,
though they may, in this world, smart under the corrections of a Father.
It is a mighty comfort in the midst of all infirmities (where there is the
answer of a good conscience towards God), that Christ is gone to heaven, and
is on the right hand of God, to save those that are baptized into his death,
and that have the ' stipulation, Wegwrrj/jba, of a good conscience towards God,'
which is the apostle's reasoning, 1 Peter iii. 21, 22.
3. Wants shall be relieved. It is that human nature wherein the expiation
was made on earth, which is crowned with glory in heaven by the Father; that
human nature, with all the compassions inherent in it, with the same affec-
tions wherewith he endured the cross and despised the shame, with the same
earnestness to relieve them as he had to deliver them, with the same
desire to drink of the fruit of the vine with them in the kingdom as he had
to eat the passover with them upon the earth, to supply their wants as he
had redeemed their persons. If the free gift of all things be argued from
the Father's delivery of the Son to death, Rom. viii. 32, the full distribution
of all things may be expected from the Father's setting him upon his throne,
and giving him the keys of death and hell to stop their inroads upon a
believer, and the command of his treasures to dispense at his pleasure ;
what can be denied to the merit of his death, since as our surety he is
established in an eternal throne ? Since he was admitted as a ' forerunner
for us,' Heb. vi. 20, ngobictiog, what can there be necessary for us, in our
journey till we overtake him, that we may not expect at his and the Father's
hands ? All our needs will be supplied, since there are riches in glory in
Jesus Christ, Philip, iv. 19.
4. Spiritual enemies shall be conquered. All enemies are to be made his
footstool, Ps. ex. 1. Satan, who was wounded by him upon the cross, shall
not rise, since he is upon his throne. He that could not overpower him
while he was covered with the infirmities of our flesh, cannot master him,
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 455
since all power is delivered to him in heaven and earth, and the keys of hell
put into his hands. He bruised him while he was known only to be the seed
of the woman, and bruised him for us ; and shall he be able to repair his
broken strength, since his conqueror is now declared to be the Son of God
with power ? Our inward enemies shall, fall under the same might. It was
the purpose of the Father to ' conform his elect to the glorious image of his
Son,' Rom. viii. 29. What hath Christ this power in his hands for, but to
destroy the power of that in the heart, the guilt whereof he expiated by his
blood ? That as he appeased the anger of God, and vindicated the honour
of his law by removing the guilt, so he may fully content the holiness of God
by cleansing out the filth. As he had a body prepared him to effect the one,
so he hath a power given him to perfect the other ; that as there is no guilt
to provoke his justice, there may be no dirt to offend his holiness ; that,
as the Father hath been reconciled by the death of Christ, he may delight
himself in the soul by the operation of the power of Christ. This will be
accomplished. The first fruit of his exaltation was the mission of the Spirit,
whose proper title is a Spirit of holiness, in regard of his operation, as well
as his nature ; and whose proper work is, to quicken the soul to a newness
of life, and mortify by grace the enemies of our nature. The apostle assures
the believing Thessalonians of it, from this argument, of his being a God of
peace : 1 Thes. v. 23, ' The very God of peace sanctify you wholly,' avrbg
o Qiog. That God of peace : ver. 24, ' Faithful is he that calls you, who also
will do it.' It is not only a petition, but an assurance ; as appears by ver.
24, that it will be done by him as the author of reconciliation ; and com-
pletely done, oXorO^Tg, wholly perfect, universally for the subject, in under-
standing, will, affections, body, ' in spirit, and soul, and body.' The enmity
else would not be taken away ; as the enmity is removed from God in the
satisfaction of his justice, by the blood of his Son ; so the enmity shall be
removed from a believer, in the renovation of his image by the grace of his
Spirit, that there may be at last no disgusts on either side ; for ' he is faithful
who hath called you.' He is not a God of peace for a day or an hour ; it is
not an imperfect reconciliation he designed ; it is a faithfulness to himself, to
his own resolves, to his own honour, to his Son's blood, to the call of his
people. And this is a good argument to plead in our prayers for sanctifica-
tion, since God hath manifested himself to be a God of peace in the raising
Christ, accepting him, exalting him.; all which were evidences of a perfect
reconciliation, that he would perfect in you every good work, Heb. xiii. 20, 21.
Use 3. As the Father's exaltation of Christ is comfortable to the believer,
so it is as terrible to the unbeliever and unregenerate. He that advanced
him to the throne, and conferred upon him a power of asking the heathen for
his inheritance, confers also upon him a power of destroying his enemies :
Ps. ii. 8, 9, ' Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inherit-
ance,' &c. ' and thou shalt break them with a rod of iron.' The breaking
refers to ask of me ; and as thou shalt have blessings for believers, so thou
shalt have wrath and judgment for unbelievers. Unbelievers that break his
bands, and cast his cords far from them, are so far from having the benefit of
Christ's intercessions for mercy in his glorified state, that they have a dreadful
interest in his pleas for wrath. He hath a power of dashing them like a
potter's vessel conferred upon him. He that gives Christ the whole world
upon asking, will not contradict him in his severest acts against his unbe-
lieving enemies. For that love to him that advanced him, as a lamb slain,
will spirit his wrath with a greater fury against the undervaluers of his death
and sufferings. Will the Father, who upon his death thought him worthy
to devolve the government of the world upon him, and to act all by the hand
456 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
of his Son, take it well that he is not imitated by his creature ? Is it not a
reflection upon the Father, as if he had acted a weak part, had set too high
a value upon the death of his Son, that his eyes were too dim to pierce into
the nature of it ? Will God, who is pleased with him, bear with such real
blasphemies against him ? for so all unbelieving rejection of Christ is. Shall
his obedience be so pleasant to God, and be unrevenged, if it be unpleasant
to us? Shall God subject the whole host of angels to him, and let worms
despise him without severe punishment ? If there be not an holy estimation
of Christ, obedience to his will and laws, it will not consist with the Father's
exaltation of him to suffer the affront, or let his authority be an idle name,
an authority without hands, an empty title. No ; as he hath a sceptre of
righteousness, so he hath an iron rod to bruise his enemies. What a folly
is it to despise that Kedeemer, wilfully to violate his laws, who hath all power
given him in heaven and earth, and the power of judging committed to him
by the Father ! This is to dare the curses of the law, break open the store-
house of his wrath, and be bent upon hell with violence.
Use 4. Let us accept Christ then, as our Reconciler and our King. God
is not contented only with the establishment of him in this honour, but he
loves to hear the world ring with acknowledgments of it ; he will have every
tongue to confess to the glory of God the Father, that Jesus is the Lord :
Philip, ii. 11, ' That every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.' For the glory of God, who conducted him
through this great undertaking, accepted him for it, and dignified him for
bringing in an everlasting righteousness. The way to glorify God the Father,
is to acknowledge the dignity of Christ, and to accept him for those ends for
which the Father hath exalted him. All things are for the glory of God, but
this more signally ; hereby he hath discovered the wonders of his wisdom,
justice, power, and love, before men and angels ; and he that owns Christ as
a glorified Mediator, owns God in the glory of all those perfections ; without
this acceptation of him, we cannot answer the end for which God hath exalted
him ; ' he hath given him a name above every name,' that we might confess
and acknowledge him as he hath declared him, and pay him a service by our
faith. If we do not render him a voluntary homage now, we shall be forced
to render him an homage hereafter in a deplorable state. Heartily to accept
him for our Lord, is to perform a duty in fellowship with the angels which
encompass his throne. Faith is a choice of Christ for head and governor; it
is therefore expressed, Hos. i. 11, ' They shall appoint themselves one head,'
i.e. the Messiah, they shall believe in him. Christ is an head of God's
appointing, and of believers' approving. God sets him as an head authori-
tative, and we should embrace him voluntarie and obedientialiter, freely and
obediently. As the magistrate chooseth a public officer, and the people con-
sent to him; the magistrate gives him the authority, and the people encourage
him in the exercise. God ' set his Son upon the holy hill of Sion,' Ps. ii. 6,
and we are commanded to kiss him, which is a token of acknowledgment,
consent, and subjection. As he sits at the right band of God, he ought to
sit in the centre of our hearts. Since he is possessed of the highest place,
and doth not disdain the lowest, it is unworthy to keep him from it. Serve
him as a Lord. As he hath made himself a sacrifice for us, and rose again
and revived, Rom. xiv. 9, i. e. acquired a new state of life, we should serve
him as a living Lord, in obedience to the pleasure and authority of God the
Father, who hath been in him reconciling the world, and for his work hath
advanced him to the dominion over all creatures. As God exalted him out
of a sense of what he had done for the appeasing his wrath, and the salvation
of man, so should we exalt him in our hearts, out of a sense of what he hath
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 457
done for our souls : ' He that honours not the Son, honours not the Father
who hath sent him,' John v. 22, 23, and who hath glorified him. For he
contradicts the ends for which God hath given all judgment to the Son.
Use. 5. Glorify God in Christ, glorify Christ. ' God is gone up with a shout :'
Ps. xlvii. 5, ' God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trum-
pet ; sing praises to God, sing praises ; sing praises to our king, sing praises ;'
alluding to the joy in the fetching up the ark, 1 Chron. xiii. 8. There were shouts
of angels at his entrance into heaven : ' God reigns over the heathen, God
sits upon the throne of his holiness ;' a throne which his holy and righteous
obedience purchased, or the holiness of God is now gloriously apparent, fully
vindicated. Glorify the Father for it, the Father and the Lamb are joined
together in their praises : Rev. v. 13, ' Blessing, honour, glory, and power
be unto him that sits upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.'
As the Father hath enlarged his hand to Christ, as our reconciler, we should
enlarge our hearts in thankfulness to him. God was not satisfied with giving
a" little mite to Christ, a small reward ; all the treasures of heaven must be
open for him. "Why should wTe put off God with a little praise?
General use of the doctrine.
1. Information.
(1.) This declares the excellency of the Christian religion above any other
that ever was in the world. All the philosophy and learning in the world can
never acquaint us with these mysteries. In the gospel we see the face of
God unveiled, whereas with natural light we can but feel or grope after him,
Acts xvii. 27. He is not far from us by the light of nature, but in a cloud,
not barefaced ; but the light of the glory of God shines forth in the face of
Christ. How doth this way of the gospel shame all other religions, all other
notices of God ! It resolves the question, which nonplusses the natural
learning of the world, and gives light to the impossibilities of reason. No
other knowledge presents us with a reconciled God, and a reconciling Jesus ;
this only salves the honour of God, repairs the ruins of nature, ensures the
happiness of the creature, and discovers an eternal inheritance upon a firm
foundation ; this varnisheth all God's attributes, calms the conscience, cures
natural jealousies of God, and restores the creature to answer the end of his
creation ; this declares things worthy of God, honourable to him as well as
beneficial to the world ; it shews him in the heights of his wisdom, and the
depths of his holiness, the length of his love, and the breadth of his justice.
[1.] It declares the glory of God. We know something of God bv natural
reason, but the full story of his glorious perfections is not printed in the book
of the creation, as in that of redemption. Hence, when he speaks of his
redeeming design, he often adds, 'that I may be glorified,' Isa. xlix. 3, lx. 21,
as though he had no glory lying in the womb of creation, but all was to
spring out from that of redemption. The creation of the world was but a
preparation to this ; the creation was too dim a glass to shew the image of
God's glory. He seems to intimate, Isa. xlii. 5, 6, that his creating the
heavens and stretching them out, the spreading forth the earth, and that
which comes out of it, and giving breath to people upon it, was as a stage
on which he would call Christ to act the highest part, as a covenant for the
people. He laid the foundation of the old world, to build those new things
upon. The glory of the creation was too low for a great God to rest in.
Upon sin the creation was laid waste, and the glory of God had sunk with
the ruins of it, had not this succeeded. This restored to him the glory of
his creation, with interest and increase. His stretching out the heaven and
spreading the earth had glorified his power ; the damning man upon his fall
had honoured his justice ; where then should the standing angels have had
138 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
prospect of his tenderest love, immense wisdom, and severest justice? He
had never been known in his full beauty by any creature, had not the plat-
form of this counsel been laid and executed ; whence he calls his calling
Christ in righteousness, to open the eyes of the blind, and committing the
work of reconciliation to him, his glory, that he would not give to another,
t. e. entrust in any other hands than in the hands of his Son, Isa. xlii. 6-8,
peculiarly his glory, which he doth not ascribe to himself so eminently in
stretching out the heavens. His attributes were glorified, some in one act,
some in another ; here they kiss each other with mutual congratulations ;
mercy rejoices that justice is satisfied, justice rejoices that mercy is mani-
fested, wisdom and holiness join the hands of mercy and justice together.
In other things they are scattered in various subjects, here they are banded
in one knot, and shine forth with united beams. In which respect Christ
may be said to be ' the brightness of his glory and the express image of his
person,' as we'll as in that of his deity, Heb. i. 3, yjxPuxrriP, wherein we may
see the perfections of God engraven as visibly as a stamp upon the seal, his
wisdom, mercy, justice, holiness, and truth. ' The light of the glory of God '
breaks forth ' in the face of Jesus Christ,' 2 Cor. iv. 6. In the actions and
sufferings of Christ, God exhibits himself in the glory of his nature, and gives
a fuller view of himself, who was but imperfectly known before. Here the
world may see him in the beauty of his holiness, the condescending sweet-
ness of his nature, the severity of his justice, the inexhaustibleness of his
bounty, and brightness of his wisdom ; thus he shews himself at once clearly
legible in all his perfections. What religion in the world gives us such an
account of God ? What discovery did so fully evidence him in his robes of
royalty at once ? Never was the earth seen so full of the glory of God, as
in the mediation of Christ ; then was there glory to God in the highest
ascents, a glory reaching as high as the highest heavens, when there was
peace on earth, Luke ii. 14.
First, It manifests his wisdom, which shoots forth with clearer beams in
his Son than in the creation. In which regard Christ is called ' the wisdom
of God,' i. e. the highest discovery of his wisdom. There is a counsel, as well
as will, in the more minute passages of his providence ; but there is a more
glorious workmanship of wisdom in the work of reconciliation, a manifold
wisdom in laying the reconciliation frame with advantage to the glory of his
name, and the welfare of the creature, which could not be conceived by
angels or men before they saw it unfolded, for it was hid in God from the
beginning of the world, and was not then made known to the angels, Eph.
iii. 9, 10. What is the frame of heaven and earth to this ? Just as his power
and wisdom is in the making a clod of earth, to that which appears in the
fabric of a man. In the creation it is like a sunbeam through the cranny of
a wall, this like the sun facing us in its full glory ; he is the only wise God,
as he is our Saviour, Jude 25. And the apostle fixeth the best note to it,
when he calls it ' all wisdom and. prudence,' wherein God abounded too :
Eph. i. 8, ' Wherein he hath abounded towards us in all wisdom and pru-
dence.' All wisdom in contriving and determining the way, prudence in
ordering and disposing the means consonant thereunto, wisdom in drawing
the platform, and prudence in digging through all impediments, and making
even the seeming obstacles serve as steps to the execution. How great was
that wisdom that restored us by that Xoyog, that Word, whereby he had created
us, and appointed his Son, who had an holiness exactly to obey him, and a
power to bear the weight of whatsoever was necessary, to make up the breach !
And this mystery he kept secret in his own breast from the beginning of the
world, revealed to none distinctly, but by the gospel, after the incarnation of
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 459
Christ, that it might evidently appear to be the work only of his wisdom,
and therefore called 'hidden wisdom,' 1 Cor. ii. 7; whence the apostle,
speaking of this as a mystery kept secret, breaks out into the praise of God
for it, as 'the only wise God,' Rom. xvi. 25-27. What religion in the world
declares the security of God's rights with man's happiness ? What doctrine
beside this answers all contradictions, and discovers justice possessing all its
rights, and mercy fully answered in all its desires ?
Secondly, His power. As the Father was in Christ reconciling the world,
Christ was the power of God, as well as the wisdom of God : 1 Cor. i. 24,
' Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.' The power of God in
breaking the heart of the enmity by the death of the cross, and overthrowing
all the designs of the evil spirit. The power of God is manifest in sustain-
ing all things after the foundation of the world tottered, more than if he had
destroyed this world and made a new one. That man hath a mighty power
over his own passions, that when he is extremely injured without giving the
least occasion, yea, and against multiplied benefits, should study ways of re-
conciliation with that persoD, though he knew he should receive new slights
from him upon the offers of such kindness ; a mightier power would be mani-
fest over himself, if he should part with his dearest friend, or a beloved son,
to expose him to contempt and ignominy, for renewing the amity between
him and his ungrateful adversary : such a man would have a mighty power
and royalty. Rex est qui sibi imperat. Other things shew the power of God
over the creatures, this is as it were power over himself. If the pardon of
one sin, or the sins of a nation, argue the greatness of God's power, — Num.
xiv. 17, the power of God is pleaded by Moses as an argument to pardon the
provoking Israelites, ' Let the power of my Lord be great,' — much more doth
the reconciling a world. Here is a power over his own wrath, deeply pro-
voked by his offending creatures ; a power over his own affections and love
to his Son ; a power over himself after such vast provocations, and a fore-
sight of more, enhanced by ingratitude and slights of his creatures, and
studying ways of reconcilement, while the offender was exercising fresher
hostilities against God. It is an unconceivable power, and greater than that
which is visible in the creation, and will be acknowledged so by those that
understand the evil of sin, and the immense provocations offered to the justice
of God. What religion in the world gives us any notice of so vast a power
in God, as the gospel doth in this case ?
Thirdly, The wonders of his goodness. How is the gospel an edition of
God's heart, as it wrought from eternity ! An unfolding, and opening of
his bowels which lay secretly yearning ! This ' brings life and immortality
to light,' 2 Tim. i. 10, which lay locked up in the cabinet of God's purpose,
till they were unlocked and brought down to men in the gospel. In this we
may see the scheme and model of his thoughts, the method of his counsels,
the treaties about man's recovery, all the motions of his goodness, in its
descent to earth and ascent to heaven, carrying at last the creature with it,
to the wearing an eternal crown upon its head. How did he prepare all
things for man's recovery, before man's fall, which was foreseen by him, and
decreed to be permitted, providing a medicine before the disease, and a
solder before the crack ; casting about to reduce rebels to amity, before
they had a being wherewith to rebel ! Where is that religion, besides, that
presents us with such draughts of divine love, that declares its secret resolves
and transactions, that tells us of such an immense flood of bounty flowing
down upon mankind ! The heathens regarded God as severe, though they saw
testimonies of his patience, they saw not those springs of kindness bubbling up
in Lib own breast ; they imagined them squeezed out by their sacrifices and
4G0 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
solicitations, and purchased by their services. Here is the goodness and
tender compassions of God making the first motion, laying on one colour
after another, till it was brought to perfection. The gospel shews us God
contriving redemption by his own wisdom, drawing it with his own hand,
working it by his own power.
All this shews the excellency and amiableness of his nature. Honourable
to God, a pattern of goodness to men, the highest incentive to a worship,
adoration, and service to him, to all those duties which are most fit for a
creature toward God, admiration of him, self-humiliation, dependence, in-
genuous obedience : such discoveries of God leave men without excuse in all
their contradictions to him. He is not represented in the gospel with his
standard up, his weapons sharpened, his bow bent, and his arrows prepared,
unless against inveterate and wilful unbelievers ; but the gospel draws him
to our view sheathing his sword, placing his arrows in bis quiver, not in
his bow, with his arms open, his countenance smiling ; means sufficient to
make us sink down in self-abomination, and rise up in the choicest affections
to God. No religion represents God so admirably, so amiably to man, so
worthy of himself, and with greater motives to those duties which become a
creature ; and therefore this hath an excellency above all other religions in
the world.
[2.] It hath an excellency above, all other religions, in shewing the true
way of attaining peace with God, and thereupon peace in ourselves. ' God
was in Christ reconciling the world to himself ;' not in any other methods,
not in purifications and washings superstitiously practised by the heathens ;
not in sacrifices of beasts, though commanded to the Jews ; but only as
types of the great sacrifice God intended. All other ways of appeasing God
are fond and foolish, cannot find a foundation in common and ordinary
reason ; they disparage God rather than honour him, in such mean and sordid
thoughts of him, as though an infinite justice could be bribed by the blood
of a beast. All other religions widen the breach, but do not in the least
close it. But here we see a God of peace, and a prince of peace embracing
each other, and ' the voice of the turtle is heard' in the world. The gospel
is the dove bringing an olive-branch of peace, put into its mouth by God. It
brings us news of the allay of his wrath, which was due to our sins, and that
his sword is blunted by himself in the bowels of his Son, that it might not
be sheathed in ours. It shews us a shelter for storms, a light in God's
countenance even in the shadow of darkness. Here God draws near to man,
that man may have access to him. He makes his Son like to man, that
man might be rendered capable of approaching to God. • Two natures are
joined in one person, that there may be an amiable conjunction of two different
parties ; he exposeth his beloved Son to the strokes of his justice for a time,
that he might reassume his life with honour for ever. It is a way that
reason cannot disapprove of, since nothing could conduce more to the honour
of God, and nothing more establish the peace of the creature. Other reli-
gions have framed mediators of their own, deified men, whereby they might
have access to God. God in the gospel presents us with a mediator of his
own choosing, of his own fitting, of his own ordering ; one that he will not
refuse, whose intercessions he is pleased with ; that he might keep off the
darts of divine justice from us, that we might ' draw near through the veil
of his flesh,' Heb. x. 20, that we may look upon God in Christ, without
being dazzled by his glory, or scorched by his wrath. Now may devouring
fire and combustible stubble meet together ; fire without scorching, stubble
without consuming. Here misery may approach to glory, because glory
condescends to misery. Hereby guilt is removed, which makes us uncapable
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 4G1
of access to God; and wrath is removed, which hinders our actual access.
Here may all that will believe in God through Christ and conform to his
laws, walk in the midst of the furnace of God's justice without having an
hair of their heads touched, without feeling the smart of that which will be
quick in consuming unregenerate men. Since nothing else discovers any
peace with God, no doctrine else can make any peace in the conscience. It
is the old way gives rest to the soul, Jer. vi. 16, the way as old as the first
promise of a reconciler. All other ways, if rightly considered, rather promote
than allay suspicions of God. Conscience hath no ground to make any
comfortable reflection, without some plain declaration of God's reconcilable-
ness and reconciliation. Conscience can shew us our guilt, but nothing in
the world evidenceth the way of our peace but the gospel ; no other re-
ligion discovers God in treaty about reconciliation.
Herein the Christian religion transcends all others ; it glorifies God, and
dignifies the creature. Salvation is bestowed upon fallen man, but the
honour of all redounds to God, ' that no flesh may glory in his presence.'
Here is an admirable temperament of justice and mercy, in the reconcilia-
tion of God and the creature : Hosea ii. 19, ' I will betroth thee unto me in
righteousness and judgment, in kindness and mercy.' Judgment in the satisfac-
tion by the surety, an efflux of mercy in requiring no portion at our hands.
(2.) Second information. If God be the author of reconciliation and re-
demption, then the knowledge of this, the declaration of the gospel, is an
inestimable blessing to a nation. What better news can God send to men ?
The very declaration of it is a lifting a nation up to heaven : Mat. xi. 23,
'And thou, Capernaum, that art exalted to heaven.' The Bibles in our
hands are unexpressible blessings, since God hath made a large comment
upon that first promise which he gave to Adam ; God hath declared to the
world in full, what he gave Adam as it were in a scrip of paper ; he hath
unfolded in his word the mystery, brought it to perfection, and proclaimed
it openly, and given us a glass wherein we may see his glory. The discovery
of Christ in the flesh was a greater glory belonging to the second temple
than what was in the first, notwithstanding all its ornaments and riches.*
The people wept when they saw the beauty of the second temple inferior to
that of the first ; and indeed there was wanting in it the propitiatory, the
holy fire, Urim and Thummim, the spirit of prophecy, and the ark of
the testimony ; yet, Haggai ii. 9, God tells them, < the glory of the latter
house should be greater than that of the former,' though it wanted all those
things. The matter of it was not so precious, the condition of the inhabi-
tants was more grievous. The temple was often pillaged, by Antiochus,
Pompey, Crassus. There must be some other gift proportionable to the
majesty of that God who had promised, as the words following declare, ' I
will give peace.' Not a temporal peace, for they never had such cruel wars
as after the building of that temple ; but a spiritual peace, a peace between
God and man, between God's justice and our sins, by the means of the
Messiah. He would not adorn the temple with riches ; he could if he would,
for the gold was his and the silver his, ver. 8. But the declarations of peace
which should be wrought in that city, and published in that temple, was the
glory of the place. What though a nation should be hrought to poverty and
disgrace, have the waves of all kinds of afflictions go over their heads, while
God keeps up the declarations of a spiritual peace, while he proclaims still
the reconciliation he is the author of ! That nation is still glorious, though
externally miserable. God never employed his thoughts so much about the
riches and honour of a nation, the gold and ornaments of the temple, as
* Mornai contrc les Juifs, ch. iv. p. 110, 111.
462 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
about the reconciliation of man. While God declares that to a people which
is the subject of his thoughts, the delight of his heart, the glory of a nation
is preserved ; but when once he shuts his mouth, and will speak no more,
when his voice shall not be heard in our streets, when he shall shake off the
dust of his feet against us, then we may write Ichabod upon ourselves, the
' glory is departed,' though wealth and outward glory should stay behind.
The proclaiming the everlasting gospel is the fall of Babylon. When the
angel comes forth with the everlasting gospel, Eev. xiv. 6, he is presently
followed by another that brings the tidings of Babylon's fall : ver. 8, ' Baby-
lon is fallen, is fallen.' The removing the everlasting gospel is the rising of
Babylon, and makes way for an army of judgments. Desolation follows upon
a nation when God's ' soul departs from them,' Jer. vi. 8, and his soul de-
parts from them when he breaks off any further treaties with men upon the
articles of peace in the gospel. The gospel is nothing else but a proclama-
tion of the articles of peace. His thoughts of peace were the cause of his
sending Christ, the accomplishment of the reconciliation is the ground of
proclaiming it. He sent Christ to effect it, and his Spirit in the gospel to
ratify it. It is called by the title of ' the word of reconciliation,' 1 Cor. v. 19,
as though nothing else was intended in it, but to make God and man at
peace together actually. It is a declaration of his ardent desire to return
into amity with us, that he is satisfied by the death of his Son, and can ad-
mit us, without any contradiction to his justice, and with a stronger security
than at the first creation. What a mercy is it that God should make known
his gospel to us, and not to all in the world ! If he did not intend to be
reconciled to some in a nation, he would never transmit it from one nation to
another. He hath made known his Godhead and power to all, Kom. i. 20,
but not his placability and mercy to all. Men may know by natural light
that God is merciful, and yet not know that he hath erected a propitiation
for the world in Christ, and without this distinct knowledge no man can be
saved under the New Testament ; and by all the knowledge of God's mercy
in the world, they were never able to arrive to this without a special revela-
tion, no more than by the knowledge of the nature of a candle they can
arrive to the knowledge of the nature of the sun in the heavens. Is not this
a glory, a happiness ? What praise doth God deserve from us for it !
(3.) Third information. This doctrine acquaints us with the whole con-
cern of faith. It shews,
[1.] What a strong foundation of faith we have. God chose him, called
him, counselled him : he is wise, and would not choose a feeble and uncer-
tain reconciler, unable to manage the business committed to him ; he is im-
mutable, and in regard of the holiness of his nature, will not and cannot
recede from his own choice and approbation ; he hath done all that he can
possibly to shew himself placable and pacified. Christ hath done all which
concerned him, to the high satisfaction and content of God. All the business
lies on our side, whether we will join issue with God in it ; whether our
hearts shall endeavour to run parallel with the counsel of God in it ; whe-
ther his approbation shall be the joyful measure of ours. What high ground
have we to own and accept this pacification ; or what pretence can we have
to refuse it ? If we do not refuse it, God cannot. His act hath been already
passed ; for Christ is a reconciler of his election. It is his glory and our
security, that he is a God that changeth not : Mai. iii. 6, ' For I am the
Lord, I change not, therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed.' Which
seems to me to be spoken in relation to the messenger of the covenant, ver. 1,
and not to the words immediately foregoing, ver. 5. As if God should say,
I will punish, for I am unchangeable in my justice; which would infer rather
2 Cor. Y. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 4G3
their destruction than their preservation : but I have decreed the sending
the messenger of the covenant, and I am unchangeable in this purpose, and
in the accomplishing all the fruits of his coming, therefore you sons of Jacob
are not consumed. The assurance is stronger, since the decree hath been
manifested, and the satisfaction accepted by the injured Father. God hath
provided such a satisfaction to himself, in the death of his Son, as is answer-
able to the greatness of the creature's guilt, a remedy for the creature's fears.
The God who was offended is pacified ; the law which cursed the sinner is
satisfied ; the honour of God, which stood in the way of happiness, is re-
paired. He sent him when we did not desire him, he sent him when we did
not expect him ; when there was scarce any faith in the promise of the
Messiah left in all the land of Judea, and sent him not to procure a tem-
poral good, but the favour of God, which is the womb of inconceivable hap-
piness ; and was so far from dealing with us as enemies when we were in his
hands, that he did the utmost he could to lay a foundation of amity, and put
the management of it into the hands of the person dearest to him, whom he
could only trust.
Had God spared any cost to reconcile us, our doubts might be excusable ;
but since he hath discovered a combination of gracious acts about Christ,
that his thoughts only run upon this, and had no other intention but the
glory of his name in the happiness of the offending creature ; there is no
room for distrust if we embrace his conditions. The very end of raising him
and giving him glory, and therefore of all the actions preceding, was ' that
your faith and hope might be in God,' 1 Pet. i. 21, that you might believe
him to be a God reconciled, and thereupon hope for all blessings from him
which he hath promised. As crucified, Christ is the object of faith ; as
exalted, he is the ground of faith. This sufficiency of Christ as a ground of
faith, God hath witnessed in the highest manner possible : 1 John v. 7,
• There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the
Holy Ghost; and those three are one,' i. e. that give an heavenly and divine
authority to this truth. The word heaven is not to be taken for the place,
or local heaven, for many there bear witness to it, innumerable companies
of angels, and martyrs, and glorified spirits ; but we must understand it of
an extraordinary testimony. (As Job xx. 27, when it is said, ' The heaven
shall reveal his iniquity,' i. e. God, by an extraordinary judgment, shall mani-
fest to man, that he was a wicked creature.) * And these three are one,' not
only in their essence, but in their testimony, which gives a greater strength
to this witness ; as the testimony of a man is stronger, when it is in con-
junction with the testimony of others, who are worthy to be credited ; and
this record is, that faith hath a strong foundation, and will have a blessed
success ; it was the whole purpose of the blessed Trinity to join together in
this extraordinary witness in all their acts, that Christ is a full ground of
faith in God ; so that now a faithful person may highly plead this, Lord, I
present thee with a mediator of thy own choice. Thou didst choose him for
me, before I did choose him for myself ; thou didst counsel him to under-
take this office, before thou didst command me to accept him ; thou didst
call him to be a reconciler, before thou didst call me to be reconciled ; thou
didst bruise him for me; this is thy only act, and this I plead, and upon
this foundation will I rest the weight of my soul. It is a ground for a brave
plea ; for God would not busy himself about any thing that should have no
effect. God would not deceive his people, and feed them with vain hopes
in a business of so great a concern ; he will not go back from his own ap-
pointment, he cannot go back from his own word, his own deed, his own
counsel, which he is pleased with, especially since it was not by permission,
4G4 ciiarnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
as Adam's sin was, but by his grace, which makes, in the apostle's judg-
ment, the efficacy of Christ's death stronger for reconciliation, than Adam's
offence was for the breach of amity : Bom. v. 15, ' If through the offence of
one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which
is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many,' i. e. acting all along
in it and with it in a way of grace from the first original of his gift, and
therefore it abounds, i. e. is more efficacious to the salvation of men, than
Adam's was to their condemnation.
[2.] It shews us the nature and necessity of faith. God hath appointed
Christ a mediator between himself and man. God hath testified himself
reconciled in this mediator, all his acts about him signify those things.
Faith on our parts is nothing else but an act of our souls, answering to those
acts on the part of God. As God chose him, commissioned him, accepted
him, glorified him, so faith is a full approbation of all the acts of God in
this concern. A choice of Christ, an acceptance and glorifying him, putting
our concerns into his hands, receiving him as our mediator and king, up-
holding him, as far as creature-ability reaches, in his office ; resting in him,
in his precepts by obedience, in his promises by dependence ; and by such
terms faith is set out in Scripture. As God looks to him as his rest, Isa.
lxvi. 2, so we are to look to him and be saved, Isa. xlv. 22. As God looks
unto him with all the affections of a God, we should look unto him with all
the affections of a creature. A mediator must be accepted by both parties
that are at variance, and they must stand to what that mediator doth. As
when two princes are at difference, and a third interposes to make an agree-
ment between them, they must both consent to accept of that prince for
mediator, and both put their concerns into his hand ; he can be no mediator
for him that doth not accept of him in that relation. God hath appointed
this mediator, and settled him in this office, because God and man did not
stand upon equal terms, God being the sovereign and only offended, man
being the offending criminal. God hath declared himself fully contented,
and hath complied with all the conditions of the first agreement ; it only
rests now that man will accept of him for those purposes for which God did
constitute him, and comply with those conditions which God hath settled.
This is necessary ; God saves no man against his will, and he that doth not
join issue with God in consenting to this, declares he hath no purpose to be
saved by him.
There must be some mediator to make God and man meet in agreement,
to answer all the ends of God, and restore the fallen creature ; God hath
appointed no other than his Son ; if men could find out any other and pro-
pose him, God is not bound to accept of him. But what mediator can man
appoint to treat with God ? Without consent to this person, man is utterly
undone, for all the wit of men and angels cannot find out a person fit for so
great a business. If it were possible, it is an increase of the crime, and a
high presumption for a criminal to stand upon terms, and refuse the person
the prince chooses to mediate for him, when there can be no exceptions
against him ; which shews the necessity of faith in Christ, in whom God
hath been reconciling the world, and only in him, and the duty of the
creature to acquiesce in God's contrivance and constitution. God hath
taken a full measure of Christ and all his sufferings, and found him com-
plete, therefore our faith should be complete in him. As God hath singled
him out from angels and men to be an expiatory sacrifice and a great king,
so faith suits itself to this act of God in singling Christ out from all other
competitors to be a reconciler and Lord, and the righteousness of God from
all other righteousness. This faith must not be a naked assent, as God's
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 465
act about Christ was not a naked assent, but a full, hearty consent ; a joy
in him, an acceptation of him with all his affections. So must ours be.
[3.] It shews us the true object of faith. Not God in the simplicity of
his own being, not Christ alone in his incarnation and death, but ' God in
Christ.' As God was in Christ reconciling the world, so God in Christ is
the object of faith. God is the ultimate object of faith, Christ the immediate
object : John xii. 44, ' He that believes on me, believes not on me, but on
him that sent me ;' not on me ultimately, his faith is directed to God ; as
he that believes an ambassador doth not only give credit to him, but to the
prince that sent him. And to God, not as creator, but as the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ ; to God as ordering, to Christ as acting ; to God as
commissioning, to Christ as commissioned : John xiv. 1, ' You believe in
God, believe also in me ;' in God as the author of all good, in me as the
mediator and purchaser of all grace ; in God as the first author, in Christ
as the faithful executor. God is the sun, Christ is the beam ; our eye as-
cends to the sun by the beam, but terminates not in the beam, but in the
sun. Faith ascends ultimately to God, as being the head of Christ, 1 Cor.
xi. 3, and the salutation is first, ' Peace from God the Father,' 1 Cor. i. 3,
the fountain and spring of all that Christ did. In Christ, we see the smiles
of God; in Christ, we hear the joyful sound of his bowels; in Christ, we feel
the beatings of his heart. The Father is the reconciled, the Son the recon-
ciler, faith is therefore called faith towards God, Heb. vi. 1, and we are said
to ' believe in God through Christ,' 1 Peter i. 21, and 'through his name,'
Acts x. 43. God is the primary and principal object, Christ the immediate ;
both must be taken in. He that believes not in the Son, believes not in the
Father ; he that believes not in the Son as reconciler, believes not in the
Father as reconciled. He that believes not in the satisfaction and mediation
of Christ, believes not in the Father satisfied ; for ' he that honours not the
Son, honours not the Father which hath sent him, John v. 23, for they are
one in the work of redemption, and in all the grace which flows down to us,
as well as in nature. As Christ is the Son, equal with the Father, we be-
lieve in him as God ; as he is mediator, we believe in him as God's servant,
furnished by him with authority and ability. He is the proper object of
faith, as being one with the Father. If he were not God, he could not be the
object of trust : Jer. xvii. 5, 7, ' Cursed is the man that trusts in man;
blessed is the man that trusts in the Lord.' And a blessedness is pronounced
to those that trust in the king God hath set upon Sion, Ps. ii. 12, and in
the chief corner-stone he hath laid in Sion, 1 Peter ii. 6. He is the medium
of our faith, as he is God's servant. We believe in God as the author, we be-
lieve in Christ as the means. Faith fastens upon Christ as a gift, upon
God as the donor. It receives Christ as God's token and gift of transcen-
dent kindness, and from ravishment with this gift, the soul ascends to con-
fidence in the giver. It reads God's heart in Christ, sees the glory of God
in the face of Christ, and mounts up to clasp about one who hath declared
himself in amity. We eye Christ as the expiation, God as the judge ; we
see Christ upon the cross and in heaven. But we consider by whose
authority he is there, for what ends he is there ; and both the authority and
the ends lead us naturally to God, to place our confidence in him as the
rector, the accepter, and in Christ as mediator. For faith is a grace that
comforts the soul ; joy and peace comes in by believing, John xv. 13.
What joy can there be in Christ's actions and passion, unless we regard God
the Father as concerned in them ? God is a God of all comfort, as being
a God of all peace. All Christ's sufferings signify nothing but as they refer
vol. in. o g
4GG charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
to God, and have his approbation and concurrence ; so our faith is not
right, and signifies nothing, which doth not make the whole honour redound
to God.
[4.] It shews the acceptableness of faith to God, and the high pleasure he
takes in it. Faith is an approbation of God's actions herein, and of the
whole scheme ; it is a sealing the counterpart, as God's act was a sealing the
original deed ; it is a testimony to the glory of all those attributes he
honoured in the mediation of Christ : as Abraham by his faith ' gave glory
to God,' Eom. iv. 20. Faith doth actively glorify God, and passively too,
for -every one that trusts in Christ is 'to the praise of the glory of his grace,'
Eph. i. 12. To his truth and to his power, which were concerned, one in
the intention of making good his promise, the other in his ability to perform
it ; so in believing in God as reconciled through Christ, and that he hath
taken off the curses of the law, and will bestow an everlasting righteousness,
and relying upon him in a way of obedience, as Abraham did in that case,
we acknowledge God's veracity, wisdom, holiness, justice, love ; and we ac-
knowledge Christ's love, tenderness, and sufficiency. It is an applauding
the wisdom of God in his choice. Certainly, that God gives us so many
exhortations to be followers of him, to be like him, is delighted to see men
have the same sentiments with himself, to be like him in their judgments of
things in regard of knowledge, and like him in the practice of things in
regard of holiness ; he delights to see that his Son's blood was not shed in
vain ; to perceive himself and his Son glorified by men in laying down their
weapons. Every act of faith is a new glory to God ; it is ' to the praise of
the glory of his grace.' God justifies us by this way of reconciliation, and
our acceptance of it justifies God from all charge and imputations from the
creature, as the approving of John's baptism, Luke vii. 29, was a justifica-
tion of God. Next to the joy God hath in Christ, he hath a joy in the
beginnings of faith : there is ' joy in the presence of the angels,' Luke xv. 10.
Christ hath a joy in the faith and obedience of his people, John xv. 11 ; and
when their faith is perfect, they shall at last be ' presented before the pre-
sence of his glory with exceeding joy :' Jude 24, ' The presence of his
glory ;' God will appear more glorious when he comes to see all the pur-
chased and redeemed ones of Christ, that have approved of his gracious and
wise contrivance, and given him the honour of his attributes by a believing
obedience to his will. « With exceeding joy ;' since the subject of this joy
is not determined in the text, it may be understood of the joy of God, of the
mediator, of the saints. ' Presented' ; God shall receive the presents sv ayak-
Xidtfsi, with an exulting joy.
(4.) Fourth information. We see here the strength and sufficiency of
Christ for all the concerns of his mediation. God would not have called
him out for this work, had he not been able to accomplish it ; he would
never have laid the government of things, in order to a restoration, upon un-
able shoulders. God would no more have chosen him, or been pleased with
any proposition of it, than he was pleased with sacrifice and burnt offerings.
God would not fail of his end ; his end was reconciliation ; Christ therefore
was able to pacify the sharpest wrath. It was not agreeable to God's
wisdom to choose an unable or unskilful agent. God was certain of the
event ; he would never have exposed the human nature, united to the second
person, to a task wherein it should have utterly sunk under the justice of
God. God had more love to his creature, than to venture the eternal con-
cerns of those he was resolved to save, in a weak bottom, that could not have
resisted the sturdiest rocks and most blustering storms. God foresaw the
vast number of those sins (though numberless to man) that stood in need of
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 467
pardon, when he singled out Christ to this charge. It was for ' many
offences ' he intended the merit of Christ, Rom. v. 16, even for as many
offences as those for whom he died would he guilty of, and he would not
lay them upon the shoulders of one who was not able to bear them. He
was every way able, in regard he had the same nature and glory with the
Father; he was every way fit, in the affinity he had with both parties,
whereby he could reach out his hand to both : the hand of* his deity to the
Father, that of his humanity to man. As God, he could satisfy for all man-
kind; as man, he could suffer. Had he not been every way fit and able, the
Majesty of heaven, who was desirous of reconciliation, would not have pitched
upon him. No creature could satisfy by suffering, because no creature had
an infinite dignity in his person to render temporary sufferings- of infinite
value ; nor could any creature present a service as valuable as. the offence
was provoking. No man can be- profitable to God, Job xxii. 2. Good
services among men take not off the sentence of the law in a court of
judicature, without a pardoning act of the supreme power. Where was there
any creature who had strength enough to bear our sins, and dignity enough
to satisfy for them ? Our offences were too great a load for a creature's
strength, or a creature's suffering, or expiation. Here was the humanity in
conjunction with the divinity, to be the sacrifice ; and the divinity in con-
junction with the humanity, to be the altar for the sanctification of it. The
whole method of God's proceedings assures us of the sufficiency of Christ
for the work of mediation ; had he not been fit,. God would never have laid all
his honour at stake in the choice of him to it. And the sequel shews that
God is fully satisfied with it, since,, on the consideration of it, justice forgets
the injuries done to the Deity, and treats believers as heirs of heaven in-
stead of rebels.
(5.) Fifth information. It gives an assurance of all spiritual and eternal
blessings, since God was in Christ reconciling the world, and was the
author of all the methods of it, and the accepter of the performance.
Christ must cease to be a reconciler,, before Gol can cease to be reconciled.
God was in Christ from eternity in the resolve of it ; he hath been in Christ
in time in the acting of it ; he will be in Christ for rendering the fruits of
it fully ripe. Christ is the knot and band of the reconciliation, and is gone
to heaven in our nature to secure it. God is in Christ approving it, the
second person is in the humanity ensuring it ; his conducting Christ through
the world in human infirmities to eternal glory, is an assurance that he will
dignify all those that by faith lay hold on him, and lay down their weapons
against him. If he be in Christ reconciling the world, he is in Christ wrap-
ping up all other blessings for us : since it is an everlasting gospel, the womb
of it is full of everlasting blessings.
[1.] God's end is not yet perfected. God hath not attained his full end ;
reconciliation was but in order to further blessings. There may be a re-
conciliation wrought between parties, whereby a party is freed from punish-
ment, without being partaker of a special amity. God did send Christ to
mike peace, not simply to be at peace with his creature, but to second it
with other mercies which the enmity before was a bar unto. It is a recon-
ciliation that teems with many more unexpressible blessings. The riches of
his grace, and the glory of his grace, would not be fully displayed by a single
peace. The mystery which he proposed in himself, was, that he might
gather together all in one, even in Christ, to the full possession of the pur-
chased inheritance, ' to the praise of his glory,' Eph. i. 10, 14 ; his glory
would not attain its full praise without further blessings at the heels of this.
He will rejoice in believers for ever. How can he rejoice in them if they
468 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18 19.
never come to rejoice in themselves ; if there he always a defect and in-
digency in them ? The remnants of enmity will drop off, the appearances of
anger in his face as a Father will one day for ever vanish, and every frown
be smoothed. God is perfectly reconciled, but believers are not yet fully fit
for all the fruits of it ; but since he hath been in Christ laying the founda-
tion in grace, he will be in him rearing the superstructure to glory. God
would be at peace with us, that he might bestow the highest kindness upon
us. Justice stood in the way, and God would have his justice satisfied, that
mercy might flow down without any obstacle. Since, therefore, he hath
been in Christ contenting his justice, he will be in Christ fully pleasing his
mercy. As infinite justice was not contented without the death of Christ,
so mercy will not be contented without an efflux of benefits upon the
believer. We should not understand God fully appeased, if things stood
always at one stay.
[2.] The glory of God is concerned in it. If he be the author of it, he
will no less be the guardian of it; the same motives of honour and love
which excited him to contrive it, and brought it to this issue, will have the
same influence on him to ripen all the fruits of it. As he hath the title of
' the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,' in regard of the whole interest he hath
in this affair of redemption, so the apostle gives him another title in rela-
tion to the same work : Eph. i. 17, ' The God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of glory.' He is the Father of glory, as he is the fountain of all
the glory which accrues from this work ; as well as he is the Father of glory
subjectively, in the glory of the divine essence infinitely glorious ; and ob-
jectively, as all glory is due to him from his creatures. He is the Father of
glory, as all the actions of Christ did centre in the honour of the Father ;
or the Father of glory, as being the author of all those gracious and glorious
communications designed to be bestowed by him, as the God of our Lord
Jesus Christ, upon his creatures. It is by him, as the Father of glory in
Jesus Christ, that a ' spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of
Christ ' is given, a full and complete knowledge of him, and the riches of
the glory of his inheritance in the saints. If God designs to shew himself
a Father of glory, as the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, and if he shews
himself a Father of glory in increasing the knowledge of Christ by a spirit
of wisdom in the hearts of his people, and acquainting them with the riches
intended for them, the crown of his glory would be dim if there were only a
knowledge of it, and no possession at last, and full enjoyment of all that
which Christ hath purchased. How little glory would God get by acquaint-
ing them with it, if the knowledge of it should not at last mount up into
fruition !
[3.] All that remains to be done in this kind is more feasible, and hat
less obstacles than what already hath been done. The grand obstacle to
the fulness of his mercy, in regard of the demands of justice, is quite re-
moved, the merit of Christ hath surmounted the demerit of men ; and what
is behind is a lighter thing to the power, wisdom, and mercy of God, than
the laying the first stone of our redemption was. Since the delivery of his
Son to death, which might have found resistance from the affections of the
Father, hath been performed, what is there that can be capable of any
demur? How is it possible a believer should perish, since Christ hath
suffered to reconcile infinite justice, by the will of God ? How is it possible
he should miss of eternal happiness, since for God to give his Son to die
for reconcilement, is infinitely more than the justification of him by his
blood, and saving him through his life from wrath ? Peace is the root of
all joy and blessedness, and in the angels' song, good will towards men
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 469
follows peace on earth. When peace is made, there is no bar to the highest
manifestations of good will.
[4.] No enemies can possibly obstruct it. If God were in Christ recon-
ciling the world, who can prevent the execution of his resolution to the full ?
Since it hath been thus far carried on, all the venom of Satan spit out against
a Christian, can no more deprive him of what God will do, than it could
hinder what God hath done. He was baffled in attempting the hindrance of
it, though he engaged all the powers of hell in the contest ; and was fooled,
since the way he took to prevent it did eventually promote it ; and in his
resolving to be an hinderer, he was, by a reach of infinite wisdom beyond his
own wit, made a furtherer of it ; and if he could not prevent the foundation,
he shall be less able to deface the superstructure ; and if the greater sins of
uoregeneracy did not hinder the influence and application of it, the infirmities
after regeneration shall not obstruct the full perfection of it.
(6.) Sixth information. It shews us the unworthiness of man's dealing
with God. God cannot do anything higher to sweeten our spirits towards
him, he hath not another or a dearer Son to give ; nothing more can be acted
upon the world for the security of the creature. There are no wider channels
for the love of God to run in, no higher way to secure his honour from con-
tempt, and his creature from vengeance. He was angry with us, and with
good cause ; we were children of wrath, and deserved it ; God is appeased
by the blood of Christ, he delights in the laying aside his anger, he hath
done his utmost to assure men of it.
Then certainly,
[1.] Our rejecting Christ, and the way of his appointment, is a high con-
tempt of God. It is a slight of God in the glory of his grace, an envying
him the honour of the restoration. Adam envied his sovereignty and inde-
pendency, and every unbeliever envies his wisdom and merciful bowels. Since
his heart was set upon this work, that all the counsels of eternity centre in
it, a deafness to his proposals is a contradiction to all his counsels, and the
great desire of his heart. As faith in Christ redounds to the honour of God,
as being an approbation of all God's acts in this affair, so unbelief of Christ
redounds to the contempt of God, as slighting all those gracious manifesta-
tions of his grace and wisdom. As the murder of a man, and every degree of
murder, in the contempt of him who is the image of God, is a dishonour to
God in regard of the relation man bears to God in that respect, Gen ix. 6,
so every unworthy usage of Christ, every act of unbelief, redounds to the
dishonour of the Father, whose ambassador Christ is, and the exact image
of his person. If men do not heartily think reconciliation by Christ worth
their highest thoughts and entertainments, they reproach God, as if he were
busy from eternity about just nothing, or a sleeveless matter, and run through
so many stages in his acts about Christ to no purpose. It is a ' making
light' of a rich feast of God's providing, Mat. xxii. 5, it is a self-destroying
fury, worse than that of devils. It is a making all other sins against God
more sinful : John xv. 22, ' If I had not come and spoken to them, they had
not had sin,' their sin had not appeared with so much malice.
[2.] Our jealousies of God. Men are fond of suspicious of God when they
are struck down with a sense of their sin, though this despair is not so ordi-
nary as presumption. This is a measuring God by man, and bringing him
down to the creature's model ; a contracting God's goodness according to the
creature's scantiness. Can there be any just reflections upon God, after the
manifestation of his earnestness for the reconciliation of man ? If the own-
ing God in those acts be a justifying God,— Luke vii. 29, ' They justified God,'
— the disowning him is a condemnation of God. As Abraham glorified God
470 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
when lie staggered not at the promise, but clasped it in his arms by faith,
so we dishonour God unexpressibly, when we stagger not only at one promise,
but at his whole scene of amazing acts in the founding and carrying on his
work in Christ. It is "unworthy in any truly humbled soul to imagine God
an enemy still, after all his mysterious contrivances for the relief of the crea-
ture, and his delight in his Son for answering his purposes.
[3.] Our enmity and disobedience to God ; though God be in Christ re-
conciling the world ; as therefore we disparage him by our jealousies of him,
we also deal unworthily with him by sinful presumptions. There are terms
expected to be performed by us ; it is not a lazy belief, an assent to this, ac-
companied with a love of any one sin (which was the cause of God's anger),
that gives men a title to it. As God's love in this, and his acceptation was
not a lazy love, &c, neither must our faith. The application of it is not but
to such a faith that purifies the heart. For us not to leave the love of sin,
when God hath quenched his wrath in the blood of Christ, is an unworthy
usage of God, and cuts a man off from any interest in this reconciliation.
Abraham's faith, whereby he glorified God, appeared eminent in this act of
obedience, in a willingness to sacrifice his son. Not to endeavour to please
God in a course of obedience, is to keep up our enmity under God's offers of
amity. To presume upon his goodness, to act the highest unbelief under
pretences of the contrary, to think God will be your friend while you persist
in your enmity, is a contradiction to the whole tenor of the gospel. Faith
in his promises is never accounted of, without faith in his precepts. As he
hath been a God in Christ reconciling the world, so he hath been command-
ing in Christ the world to a submission, and it is outrage and high in-
gratitude not to endeavour to please God, since he hath been so carefnl to
please us.
[4.] Omissions of prayer. Hath God done so much to render us capable
of coming to him, and bimself capable to receive ns with honour to himself?
And is it not very disingenuous and slighting to neglect this privilege, founded
upon the counsels of wisdom, and the cost of the blood of Christ ? Before,
we could with no more comfort approach to God, than a guilty malefactor
could to the judge; but since God hath laid by his fury in 'Christ, and discovers
an alluring glory in the face of Christ, what can we plead for our neglects of
his allurements, our seldom approaches to him, or our slight and lazy ad-
dresses ? He uses his friend unkindly that will not make use of his friend-
ship, and upon urgent occasions desire his assistance. All neglects imply
either an inability or unwillingness in God, and both cast dirt upon his
reconciling work, since there can be no greater evidences of his power and
willingness than he hath discovered in the whole working of it. We virtu-
ally deny the Father to be the fountain of all grace, when we go not to him ;
we deny Christ to be the purchaser of all peace, when we go not in bis name.
God sent Christ to '-consecrate a new and living way for us to enter into the
holiest by the blood of Jesus,' Heb. x. 19. By neglects we disparage God's
mission, and Christ's consecration, and the liberty he hatb procured. What
should we have done if we had been to approach to God as a judge upon a
tribunal of justice, when we will not draw near to him as a judge upon a
mercy-seat, through the reconciliation wrought in Christ ?
Well, then, let us -consider the danger of slighting this reconciliation.
Well may that man deserve doubly the curses of the law, that will not be-
lieve and obey after God's demonstrations of the riches of grace ; well may
he deserve to be crushed in pieces under the insupportable burden of his own
guilt, that will still be fond of his treason against a reconciling God. Shall
the great king descend from the throne of his majesty to become a recon-
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 471
ciler, and after that a solicitor, and feel nothing but heels lifted up (John
xiii. 18) instead of hearts ? Such an one is doubly a child of wrath : first,
by nature; and after, by a particular refusal to become a friend. The interest
of our souls lies at stake ; without changing our unworthy courses, wrath
will be executed upon us ; God hath provided no other reconciler, and is
resolved not to let his weapons fall by any other motive than the blood of
the Redeemer.
(7.) Seventh information. It shews us the way of all religious worship.
If God be in Christ reconciling the world, all our recourse to, and dealing
with, a reconciling God, must be in and through Christ. As God's motion
to us is in Christ, our motions to God must be through the same medium.
He is ' the way, the truth, and the life,' John xiv. 6. ' No man comes to the
Father but by me ;' as no man hath the Father coming to him but by Christ,
the way whereby God communicates truth and life to us, the way whereby
we must offer up our true and lively services to him. As God is the ultimate
object of faith, Christ the medium, so God is the object of worship, Christ
the medium. As Christ is equal with God, he is the object of faith, the
object of worship ; as Christ is God's servant, he is the way whereby we
believe, the way whereby we have access to God. The soul must be carried
altogether by the consideration of Christ, in presenting petitions in his name ;
in expecting answers upon the ground of his merit, we must regard him as
the meritorious cause of our access to the throne of grace, and our welcome
at it. How can we go to God as reconciled, but in the name of the reconciler ?
We cannot come with any boldness upon any other account. It is by the
knowledge of the Son we ascend to the knowledge of the Father, by the
merit of the Son we have access to the throne of the Father, by the inter-
cession of the Son we have access to communion with the Father ; in the
name of the Son, we are to ask what we want, and by the merit of the Son
we must only expect what we beg. It is as ' the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ,' that he communicates himself to us, Eph. i. 3 ; it is as the ' Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ' we must ' bow our knees' to him, Eph. iii. 14,
remembering still, that Christ is the band that links God and us together.
What confidence can we have in God, if we respect him not as the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ ; for in him only he is the Father of believers,
otherwise he is the Father of the whole world, a provoked Father ; in Christ
a reconciled Father. As the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our praises
must be offered to him, 1 Pet. i. 3. All acts of worship are only acceptable
to the Father through Christ : Heb. xiii. 15, 'By him let us offer the sacrifice
of praise to God ;' all must have the stamp of this reconciler upon them.
It is by his satisfaction we have the privilege to come to the holiest, before
the seat of God, with our prayers and services. It is in his blood, the sword,
set to prevent our entrance into paradise, hath lost both its edge and flame.
It is by the blood of Christ only we have this boldness, Heb. x. 19, 20. His
blood is our best plea, his flesh our only screen from the wrath of God in
all our services. We must, therefore, in all our services rest in his office,
propose him as the mediator of our services.
(8.) Eighth information. There is then no mediator, no reconciler, but
Christ. God is in Christ reconciling the world. In him, and none but
him ; in him, exclusively of all others. He is indeed ' the Christ, the
Saviour of the world,' John iv. 42. By way of excellency, in regard of the
danger he saves us from ; by way of exclusion, in regard of the sole designa-
tion of his person, exclusive of all others. We must believe that Christ is
he, the only person designed in the prophecies, promises, and types : John
viii. 24, ' If you believe not that I am he.' There was none anciently but
472 chaknock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
he ; he was set up from eternity, he was the only lamb slain from the founda-
tion of the world. This seed of the woman was only in the promise, only
designed by the types ; by this band only were the ancient believers united
to God ; in this Immanuel he was God with them as well as with us. None
were counted God's friends before, but by his mediation ; none can be since,
because God hath accepted no other. No ark, but that of God's appointing,
could secure Noah and resist the force of the waters. None hereafter, he is
• the same for ever ;' he is to day, as he was before, Heb. xiii. 8. The heart
of God is fixed upon him, and his resolution concerning the duration of his
office unalterable ; he hath summed up all the dispensations of former ages
in him : Eph. i. 10, ' He hath gathered together in one all things in Christ,
even in him,' in no other. All other things were preparations to him,
shadows of him. But the perfection of all was in Christ ; and God, who had
various ways of communicating himself to men, hath summed up his whole
will in his Son, and manifested that all his transactions with men did ter-
minate in his Son Christ, Heb. ii. 1, 2. These are the last days, God will
speak by no other.
[1.] None else was ever appointed by God. No other sacrifice was ever
substituted in the room of sinners ; none else was the centre of the pro-
phecies, the subject of the promises, the truth of the types, no name erected
for a shelter for the nations to trust in but this name : Isa. xlii. 4, ' The
isles shall wait for his law ;' Mat. xii. 21, ' In his name shall the Gentiles
trust.' None else hath the title of peacemaker conferred upon him, Eph.
ii. 14, which title he hath by his death on the cross, Col. i. 20. Those,
therefore, that reject this way of mediation, must infallibly perish. He that
will have any good by a prince, must go to that minister of state he hath
settled for that end. God hath ordained no other mediator. God hath
thought none else fit to trust with his concerns, to do his work, restore his
honour, receive glory from him. We must acquiesce in God's judgment,
and not set up the pride of our reason and will, in contradiction to infinite
wisdom. None else was ever honoured by the voice of the Father, testifying
him to be his beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased. None besides
him had this testimony, none in conjunction with him, none in subordination
to him in the work of mediation ; that he might be the first born among
many brethren, enjoying all the rights of primogeniture. As God employed
no other in the creation, so he employs no other in the restoration of the
world.
[2.] None else was ever fit for this. Satisfaction there must be for the
honour of God, that the law might be vindicated, justi«e glorified, holiness
illustrated ; none but Christ, an infinite person, was able to do all this.
Security there must be to the Creator, that the honour of God might not be
again at a loss. This could not be insured in the hands of a mutable creature ;
so that by any other mediator we cannot honour God by a suitable satisfac-
tion, nor promise ourselves an unshaken preservation. Without infinite
satisfaction, guilt must remain ; without infinite power to preserve it entire,
guilt would return. This mediator only had an alliance to both parties : to
God, whereby he could call him Father ; to us, whereby he could call us
brethren. That God and man might be joined in one covenant of grace, the
mediator of that covenant is God and man in one person. Had he been
only God, he had had no alliance to our nature ; had he been only man, he
had had no alliance to the divine nature, and had been an insufficient
mediator, uncapable of performing what was requisite for our redemption.
In this posture of fitness, there is none else in heaven and earth. Had the
mediator been only man, he had been uncapable of satisfying ; had he been
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 473
only God, he had been uncapable of suffering ; but being God and man,
he was capable of both. No motive was powerful enough to appease the
anger of the Father, but the blood of the cross ; and no power strong
enough to bear, no person worthy to present sufferings, but only this mediator.
It was upon no other person that the Spirit descended like a dove, to furnish
his human nature with all ability for the discharge of this trust. He is
infinite, and what can be added to infinite ? If infinite be not sufficient to
reconcile, finite beings must for ever come short of effecting it for us.
[3.] None else was ever accepted, or designed to be accepted, but this
Mediator. No other surety was ever accepted by God for the payment of
our debts. All sacrifices ' could not make the comers thereunto perfect,'
Heb. x. 1, could not set them right in the esteem of God, and make a recon-
ciliation with him ; they were an image, not the life, and God accepted them
as shadows, not as the substance ; the repetition of them was a certain
evidence of their inability to effect the reconciliation of man, Heb. x. 2,
as the iteration of a medicine daily shews its inefficacy to cure. The law
was not able after our fall, by reason of our disagreement with the terms
of it, to bring us near to God. God's justice and our sins stood in the way
of amity, therefore God commanded bounds to be set to the people when
the law was given, Exod. xix. 12, that they should not come near the mount.
But the covenant of grace, veiled in the ceremonial law, was laid in the
blood of Christ, typified by that blood sprinkled by Moses upou the people,
Exod. xxiv. 8, to which the apostle alludes, ' the blood of sprinkling speaks
better things than the blood of Abel,' Heb. xii. 24, than the blood of the
firstlings, which Abel sprinkled, Gen. iv. 4, which was the first eminent type
of the death of Christ upon record, which the Spirit of God mentions here
as the first sacrifice, though no question Adam did not spend all that time
between his fall and the growth of Abel to man's stature, without a sacrifice.
Those sacrifices were poor and feeble, unworthy in themselves of the accept-
ance of God, not able to expiate sin, nor ever intended for propitiation,
because they had no intrinsic value in them for such an end. But the blood
of Christ, being the blood of the Lamb of God without spot, is a worthy and
valuable price for the sins of the world. These, nor our own righteousness,
were ever intended to be of worth, or strength, to expiate the sin of the soul
and reconcile us to God ; Christ is the only peacemaker, the only peace-
conveyer ; no other righteousness is called the righteousness of God, the
righteousness of God's appointment, or the righteousness of God's accept-
ance. Anything in ourselves is too low and sordid to be joined with him.
God hath accepted none else, and we must have recourse to none else.
Whatsoever we would join with him is unworthy of God's acceptance. None
else was set forth to be a propitiation, and no means appointed of enjoyment,
but faith in his blood. This blood was sprinkled upon the mercy-seat in
heaven, as the blood of sacrifices was in the temple, which stilled justice,
refreshed mercy, and revived it towards us.
[4s.] None else ever did do that for us which was necessary to our recon-
ciliation with God. None else ever interposed as a shelter between the irre-
sistible wrath of God and our souls. He alone ' bore our griefs, and carried
our sorrows,' Isa. liii. 4 ; he received into his own bowels that sword which
was sharpened and pointed for us ; ' by his stripes we are healed ;' upon him
alone did the scorching wrath of his Father fall for our peace. He trod the
wine-press alone, none of the people were with him ; he endured the bruises
of his Father, and the reproaches of his enemies, and would not desist till
he had settled the foundation of our peace. He bore the punishment of our
bins, all our iniquities were considered by God in his person, and he paid
474 charnock's works. [2 Cur. V. 18, 19.
what we owed. 'In one body' he reconciled us, Eph. i. 16; 'his own
body,' saith Peter, 1 Peter ii. 24. None drew in the same yoke with him,
none were partners with him in his sufferings, none sharers with him in his
office. He scaled heaven alone, and alone made the entrance to his Father
easy. None ever did, none ever could, answer the demands of the law,
silence the voice of justice, by removing the burden of our guilt. He only
filled up that gap and gulf which was between God and us ; why should any-
thing in our hearts carry away the honour of a Mediator from him, since
none else removed the miseries we had deserved, and purchased the mercies
we wanted ? Till God therefore confers the title of peacemaker, and prince
of peace, upon any other, own nothing else as a sharer with him in this
honour; that would be to contradict God's order, deny his sufficiency, and
contemn his kindness, and turn our backs upon the only tower that can
hinder us from being crushed by the wrath of God. But, alas ! men delight
in their wrorm-eaten, withered righteousness, which they set up in the room
of the Mediator ; this, the grand cheat of the world, claims a precedency of
Christ.
[5.] None else is appointed, or can secure to us the fruits of reconciliation.
As God is in Christ reconciling the world, so he is in Christ giving out the
fruits of that reconciliation, not imputing our trespasses to us. He is not
only the Mediator of reconciliation, to make our peace, but the Mediator of
intercession, to preserve it. He only took away our sins by his death, he
only can preserve our reconciliation by his life. As he suffered effectually,
by the strength of his deity, to make our peace, so he intercedes, in the
strength of his merit, to preserve our peace. He did not only take away,
but ' abolish and slay the enmity,' Eph. ii. 15, 16. He slew it, to make it
incapable of living again, as a dead man is ; and if any sin stands up to
provoke justice, he sits as ' an advocate' to answer the process, 1 John ii. 2.
All the gifts of grace, not only in their first purchase, but in their full con-
veyance and abundant communication, are 'by and through him,' Rom. v.
15. By him only we can come to the throne of grace ; in this beloved Son
only we are accepted for adopted sons, Eph. i. 6. To none else God gave
children for a seed ; children to beget, and preserve, and offer up to him at
the last day. He rent the veil by his death, opened the holy of holies by
his passion, and keeps it open by his intercession, that we may have a
communion with God and a fellowship with angels by this only Mediator.
lmmanuel is a name only belonging to him, Isa. vii. 14 ; not that this was
the name by which only he was called, but that this was his work, to make
way for God's dwelling among the sons of men, and communicating to them
the richest of his gifts. Not an angel in heaven but hath his standing upon
the account of Christ as their head ; and therefore not a man upon earth
can be secure under any other wing, or have the conveyance of grace through
any other channel. He is the vpoeayuyivg, the introducer of us into the in-
ward chambers of the Father's goodness, where our bonds are cancelled, our
pardon assured, and our Father, who was angry with us, falls upon our
necks and kisseth us. Our constant access to the Father is ' by him,' Rom.
v. 2, Eph. iii. 12, ' access,' ^ceayuyfi. He sits in heaven to lead us by the
hand to the Father for whatsoever we want, as a prince's favourite brings a
man into the presence of a gracious prince. The ' grace of Christ ' is put in
order by Paul before the ' love of God' and the ' communion of the Holy Ghost'
in the benedictions, because it is the only band that knits us to God, and the
foundation of every expression of love from the Father, and of every act of
communion we have with the Holy Ghost. Whatsoever grace God works
in us is ' through Jesus Christ,' Heb. xiii. 21 ; he is therefore ' made to us
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 475
wisdom and sanctification, as well as righteousness and redemption,' 1 Cor.
i. 30. God transmits his virtues through Christ; as the heavens, which im-
pregnate all things, transmit their virtues hither by the sun.
Well, then, let us have recourse only to this Mediator; the fire of God's
wrath will consume us without this screen. It is the blood of the Lamb of
God's appointment which can only secure us from the scorching heat of the
wrath to come, typified by the blood of the paschal lamb sprinkled upon the
posts of the Israelites' doors ; not so much to be a mark to the angel, who
could have known both the houses and persons of the Israelites from the
Egyptians without that sign on the post, as to represent this mediatory blood
of the Lamb of God as our only security from destroying fury. Let men
make lies their refuge, and hide themselves under falsehood, the false cover-
ings of their own righteousness, and think to shelter themselves from the
overflowing scourge, Isa, xxviii. 15-17. It will be a miserable self-deceit,
the hail will sweep away such a refuge, and the waters will overflow such a
hiding-place. It is the corner-stone which God lays in Sion that is our only
security, because he is only elect, 1 Peter ii. 6, chosen by God, and pre-
cious in his account, ver. 6 ; which is inserted (as some observe) between
those two verses to shew the miserable shifts of men to provide shelters for
themselves, other mediations and mediators, not regarding the foundation God
hath laid, all which will end in self-destruction, as they began in self-deceit.
All human satisfactions, intercessions of saints, refuge in any other righteous-
ness, are weak hiding-places to preserve us from the overflowing waters of
divine vengeance. No sure foundation but the stone God hath laid in Sion.
One would think there were not so much need to press this information ;
but whosoever will look into the world, and into his own heart, will find it
necessary. What the papists do one way, many protestants do another ;
one sets up mediators without him, others set up mediators within them.
The great business Christ urged in the days of his flesh was this, that he
was the Messiah, the only person sent of God to redeem. Though men pro-
fess Christ is so, yet it is too common to bring in some sharer with him.
(9.) Ninth information. We may here see the incomprehensible love of
God, in that he did not deal with us summo jure, as a severe law-giver. We
are not deeply sensible of it ; if we had a due sense of this love, we should
have little kindness for sin. It was not a low kind of love, but' ' exceeding
riches of grace in his kindness towards us in Jesus Christ,' Eph. ii. 7.
Grace never appeared in all its royalty but in Christ. A sweet combination
of grace in the Father and the Son. Had the Son manifested his love in
offering himself, nothing could have been done without the acceptation of tbe
Father; had the Father manifested bis love in moving it, nothing could
have been done without the Son's undertaking it. The first motion was from
the Father, as the fountain of the Trinity ; the execution was from the Son,
by a free and dutiful acceptance of the offer of the Father. In this work
God ' set his heart upon man,' Job vii. 17 ; the glorifying his name in the
redemption of man was that which ran in his mind, and had the chiefest
place in his heart from eternity. How great also is the love of Christ, since
he was the person that the first sin was particularly against, as well as
against the Father ; it being an affecting of wisdom to be like God, and
Christ was the wisdom of God. Every day's mercy is a miracle, but the
mercies of our lives are to this of reconciling us by his Son, as a molehill to
a mountain, a grain of sand to the whole frame of nature. When by our
offence we were fallen under the sentence of the law, and shut up in the
hands of justice, and could not satisfy for the offence, God pays a ransom
out of the treasures of his own bowels, opens the heart of his dearest Son,
476 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18. 19.
and redeems us by the most precious thing he had : here love doth come to
the top of its glory, and doth perfectly triumph.
[1.] His own love and compassion was the first rise of this reconciliation.
This way by Christ was a ' new ' as well as a ' living way,' Heb. xi. 20, not
known by all the wisdom of man. New to men, new to angels, it could not
enter into any of their hearts to conceive of it before it was declared. He
purposed in himself, Eph. i. 9. It lay hid in the womb of his own love.
There was none beside him from eternity to put up a request. It was the
result of his bowels, before the being of any creature was the effect of his
power. Though our justification, sanctification, and eternal blessedness be
the fruits of the meritorious death of the Redeemer, yet the first source of
all, in his mission and commission, was absolutely from the inconceivable
love of God ; whatsoever is merited by Christ for us, his first mission was
not merited by himself ; his personal relation to God rendered him fit for
the honour and office of a mediator, but as mediator he did not merit his
own sending into the world, because he was settled mediator by God, and
sent, too, before he could as mediator merit. Christ did not die to render
God compassionate to us, but to open the passage for his bowels to flow
down upon us, with the honour of his justice. God's bowels wrought within
himself, but the sentence pronounced by justice was a bar to the flowing of
them upon man. Christ was sent to remove that by his death, that the
mercy which sprang up from eternity in the heart of God might freely flow
down to the creature. And when the time came, God looked about and
• saw that there was no man,' none to deprecate his wrath, and therefore
' his own arm brought salvation,' Isa. lix. 16, and 'his own righteousness
sustained him,' i. e. his own truth and righteousness engaged in the promises
made to the fathers. The satisfaction of Christ doth not impair the kind-
ness of God ; his pity to us did precede the constitution of Christ. Had
there been no compassion, there had been no contrivance, no acceptance of a
mediator ; but since he had threatened eternal death to sinners, there was
need of an honourable reconciliation by death to maintain the honour of
God's truth engaged in that sentence, and content his justice, which was
obliged to execute the sentence for the honour of his truth. It was by the
grace of God that Christ tasted death for us, Heb. ii. 9.
[2. J It is the greatest love that God can shew. As Abraham could not
shew a greater proof of faith and obedience than by offering his son, the
son of his affections, and his only son, so neither can God shew a richer
testimony of his affections to us than by making his own Son an oblation for
us. How mighty tender was God of our salvation ! How valuable was
man to him, when he prized him at the rate of his only Son ! As high as God
did esteem Christ, so highly did he value his own glory in man's reconcili-
ation.
First. His love was more illustrious than if he had pardoned us by his
absolute prerogative without a satisfaction. It had been a glorious mercy,
but had wanted that enriching circumstance, the death of his Son ; in this
way he honours his mercy more than our sin had abused it. His mercy
had not appeared in such sweetness had not Christ drunk the bitter cup ;
mercy sung sweetest when justice roared loudest against the Redeemer.
Every attribute had a signal elevation in this way of reconciliation, but espe-
cially his kindness. We should have been happy had he pardoned us with-
out a satisfaction, but neither his love nor his justice had been wound up to
so high a strain. God did not aim only at the praise of his grace, but the
praise of the glory of his grace, Eph. i. 6 ; he would have his grace appear
in the richest attire, and with all the ornaments heaven could clothe it with.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 477
This is evident,
First, By the condition of the person. He was his Son. Was it not the
victorious triumph of mercy to make his Son a sufferer when we were the
sinners, to make his own Son a servant to his justice when we were the
debtors ? He was his ' only begotten Son,' John iii. 16, not merely his
own Son, but his only Son ; he had but one Son in the world, and that Son
he made a sacrifice for the world ; he had not another begotten Son in
being. He was ' the express image of his person,' one who was equal with
God without robbery, or detracting anything from his glory, Philip, ii. 6 ;
an only Son, enjoying the same majesty and perfections in the Deity with
the Father ; a Son dearer to him than heaven and earth ; the Son he
solaced himself with from all eternity, Prov. viii. 30, before ever any stone
of the world was laid ; and if we could suppose numberless worlds created
before this, yet all his joy was placed in him. Can there be a greater
assurance of the immensity of his love than in sending a Son that lay in his
bosom ; a Son who never in the least offended him, nor ever could ? He
always did the things which pleased him ; and when he was in the world
there was nothing in him that the devil could fasten upon as any resem-
blance to himself, John xiv. 30. In this Son was God reconciling the
world. The nearer and dearer the Son was to the Father, the greater is the
Father's love in pitching upon him to undertake this work. His love bore
proportion to the greatness of that Son whom he sent.
Secondly, The condition in which he was sent. He was made lower than
angels to stoop to the condition of a servant. To send an only Son out of
his bosom to the cross, an innocent Son from glory to ignominy, and not
upon a sudden resolve (which might be thought a passion), but by' a deliber-
ate counsel, never repenting of it, always glorying in it, even to this day, is
a discovery of the most rooted affection. The lower the condition of Christ
was, the more wonderful is the kindness of God in sending him in it. If we
would walk into the garden and see Christ besmeared with clods of blood,
step up to mount Calvary and see him hanging upon the cross, look up to
heaven and see the bright sword sheathed in the bowels of the Son of God,
see him with his scourged baek, his nailed hands, his pierced side, ask then
your souls this question, whether here be not bottomless love ? whether
any affection of God can be more miraculous than this, to give his Son to
endure all this for our ransom, the Lord of glory to suffer this for rebellious
malefactors ? whether this is not greater kindness to you than if he had
pardoned you without the sufferings of his only Son ?
Secondly, It is a love that cannot be wound up to a higher strain. It is
the utmost bound, if I may so speak, of an infinite love : ' God so loved the
world,' John iii. 16. So, above the conception of any creature; so, that
his affection cannot mount an higher pitch. His power could discover itself
in laying the foundation of millions of worlds, and his wisdom could shine
brighter in the structure of them ; but if he should create as many worlds
as there are sands and dust upon th« face of this, and make every one of
them more transcendent in glory than this, than the sun is above a clod of
earth or an atom of dust, yet he could not confer a greater love upon it than
he hath done upon this ; than to be, upon their revolt, a God in Christ
reconciling those worlds to himself. There is not a choicer mercy than to
be in amity with God, nor a more affectionate way of procuring and establish-
ing it, than by giving his only Son to effect it : in giving whom, he contracts
to give himself to be our God, and live with us for ever. If God should
take the meanest beggar that lives upon common alms, and transform him
into an angel, and make him the head of that heavenly host, it would be
478 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
incomparably a far less love than the gift of his Son for him. A more con-
descending kindness cannot be conceived, unless the Father himself should
become incarnate, and die for man ; but that cannot be supposed. If the
fountain of the Trinity, tbe Judge of all, should take flesh, and suffer, to
whom should the offering be made ? The rector and judge is to be satis-
fied, and it is not fit for the judge to make satisfaction to himself; but the
Father hath given that person next to himself to be our propitiation ; most
fit, as having the Father, the fountain of the Trinity, to offer the sacrifice of
himself unto.
Thirdly, It is a greater love than has yet been shewn to angels. The
angels in heaven never did partake of such a vast ocean of love, for the Son
of God never died for them, though they came under his wing, as a head
exalted to that dignity, as a reward of his death. The angels came under him
as an exalted head, but not as a crucified Saviour r they have their grace by
the will of God, without the death of his Son; we by the will of God, through
the death of his Son. What confirmation they have, they have it from
Christ, by virtue of his headship over them, not by virtue of any death for
them ; and therefore they are, in the opinion of several, understood by the
' things in heaven,' which are ' reconciled to God,' Col. i. 20. What recon-
ciliation is to us, confirmation is to them ; yet there is not such an excess
of love in their confirmation, as in our reconciliation by the blood of the
cross. As the preservation of a life from death is less than the restoring
life to one that is dead, the latter argues more of kindness, as well as more
of power.
Fourthly, Take a prospect of this love by a review of the condition we
were in.
First, Our vileness and corruption. What are we in our being but dust,
slight and empty pieces of clay ? Is it not wonderful that God, who hath
angels to attend him, should busy his thoughts about worms ; that he,
who hath the beauty of angels, the most glorious piece of the works of his
hands to look upon, should cast his eye upon such noisome dunghills ; that
he should not rest in the praises of angels, but repair such broken instru-
ments as men are, to bear a part in the concert ? If the sun knew its own
excellency, it would think it a condescension to bestow a beam upon so dark
and miry a body as the earth, that can return to it no recompence ; much
more is it in God, to look upon such pieces of clay as we are ; much more
to give out his grace and love to man, who can give him no requital. We
would be loath to take a toad into our bosoms, and bestow our friendship
upon it. By corruption we are worse than the most venomous toad that
creeps upon the ground ; yet God entertains thoughts of amity, and estab-
lished it for us in the blood of his Son. We are unworthy of any one thought
of unbounded goodness, much more unworthy of a thought of so high a
strain. Would not any man think that king distracted,* that should send
his son to keep company with grooms and scullions, to wear the same livery,
to advance them to a better state by his own blood ? Nothing but the end
for which he doth it, and the love which moved him to it, could excuse him.
How much more condescending is God than the greatest prince in the world
would be in this act !
Secondly, Impotence. When we lay wallowing in our blood, and it was
the time of our weakness, that was the time of his love ; when we had
1 no eye to pity' us, nor a heart to pity ourselves, then were we the objects
of his compassion, Ezek. xvi. 4-6, &c. When there was not one solicitor
for us among all the holy angels, the peace was broke with them as well as
* Nerimberg.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19. J god the author of reconciliation. 479
with God, and we were justly hated by those holy spirits upon the Creator's
account ; when not a man in the whole race of mankind had any thoughts
of presenting a petition for recovery ; when God looked about, and to his
astonishment, ' found none' that had any thoughts of interceding and solicit-
ing a restoration, Isa. lix. 16 ; when there was not a person in heaven or
earth besides himself could save us, ' his own arm,' without the least auxi-
liary force, ' brought salvation.' It is the glory of his love, that he was
1 found of us when we asked not for him,' Isa. lxv. 1. What allurements
were there in our nature, unless deformities and demerits could pass for
attractives ? We had not virtue to merit his love, nor ever shall have power
to requite it ; both are utterly impossible in a ereature. God saw our de-
merits, it was in his thoughts, otherwise a reconciler had not been appointed;
one to merit that for us, which we had forfeited, and never could have
recovered. Justice might find cause of punishment in the rebellion of the
delinquent, but grace could find no reason but in the pity of our Creator ;
the amazement of a true believer, when he comes to be seriously sensible of
it, doth manifest the impossibility of ever thinking of it himself.
Thirdly, Rebellion, which is worse than vileness and impotence. He was
a God in Christ reconciling the world, when our enmity to him was as great
as our misery; when we had not one spark of love for him, who had a
boundless ocean of compassion for us. We had entered a league with Satan,
the only enemy God had, rendered ourselves his bondslaves, and that pre-
sently after our creation by his powerful hand ; and it was far worse if Adam
did know the sin and state of the fallen angels ; howsoever his pride in his
aspiring thought to be like his Maker was less excusable than that of the
devil's, in regard that he was an inferior creature (though the devil's was
greater, in regard of his greater knowledge of the excellency of God above
him). Pride in a mean person is more odious than in one upon a throne.
Then it is that he contrives with his Son, and by the blood of his Son, to
redeem rebels ; and though he disrelished and loathed the crime, yet he
had a tenderness and pity for the malefactor, assured by an oath : Heb.
vii. 28, ' The word of the oath, which was since the law, makes the Son, who
is consecrated for evermore.' As the word of the oath was after the law,
the declaration of the oath after the declaration of the law, so in the eternal
counsel of God, the constitution of the reconciler supposed a law enacted,
and a law violated by transgression. After this, the cry of our sins for ven-
geance could not alter his resolve of sacrificing his Son, and bringing that
vengeance upon the sins which they solicited against the sinner. How easy
was it for God to have spurned us into hell, when we lay under his foot,
without all this expense ! One touch of his iron rod would have broke us
like a potter's vessel ; yet he takes occasion to display his grace, where we
give occasion to pour out his wrath. He would inflame us by his love,
rather than turn us into ashes by his fury ; and reconcile us to himself by
the blood of his Son, rather than satisfy justice by our own.
Fifthly, It was a love in the freest manner; without cost to us, but expen-
sive to God. We hear of no strugglings in the heart of God, from the first
foundation to the topstone ; his affections travel through every stage, with-
out the least relenting ; he was in Christ reconciling the world, from one
end of his counsel to the other, without any repenting reflections. It cost
him the blood of his Son, more expensive than the making millions of
worlds. There was no need of any combat in 'his affections, to make
as many worlds as he pleased ; but we may wonder (since God repre-
sents himself to us often in Scripture according to the manner of men),
that there were no pull-backs in his affections to the delivering up of his
480 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
Son. If there he a conflict in his heart when he is to give up a creature, —
Hosea xi. 8, ' How shall I give thee up, 0 Ephraim ? How shall I deliver
thee, Israel ? My heart is turned within me,' — could we reasonably sup-
pose less in giving up his Son ? (though indeed the one was eternal, the
other temporary), yet in this case we read of no such turnings of bowels,
no such kindlings of repentings together. His soul was free in it, and let
the peace cost what it would, he would procure it, though with the greatest
charge.
Sixthly, Consider what it was his love designed in this. Not a petty in-
considerable thing, but a ' propitiation for sin,' 1 John iv. 10, the non-impu-
tation of guilt, the removing all the bars between him and us, the turning
the edge of the sword that was pointed against us, reducing us to an eternal
amity. He would draw us out of the condition into which we were fallen,
and from a wrath we had merited, to elevate us to an eternal life we had
rendered ourselves unworthy of, and exposed his Son to the curses of the
law, that the edge of them might be turned from us. And that we might
have a free converse with him, he makes the mediator of kin to us, that by
reason of the communication of our nature we might with more boldness
approach to him. All delightful converse is between those of the same
species ; we could not have conversed freely with a reconciler of a different
nature from us.
Seventhly, This love is perpetual. He was in Christ reconciling the world ;
he will to the end of the world beseech men to be reconciled to him. Love
was the motive, the glory of his grace was the end ; what was so from eter-
nity, will be so to eternity. His love is as strong as it was, for infinite re-
ceives no diminution ; his glory is as dear as it was, for to deny his glory is
to deny himself. How great will be the joy of those that accept it ! how
dismal the torment and sorrow of those that refuse it ?
Second use ; of comfort. How great may the joy of believing souls be, to
be brought by God, and by ways of his own contriving, into actual favour
with him, after they had lain in a state of wrath ! To have an almighty,
infinite, just God at variance with us, cannot but be a matter of sadness ; to
have a peace struck, and the light of his countenance shine upon us, cannot
but beget a transcendent joy ; it is in the very notion of it, to the under-
standing joyful, yea, tidings of great joy, and in the sense and feeling of it
triumphant. The publication of it was ushered in with words of comfort
in the prophet : Isa. xl. 1, ' Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, speak com-
fortably to Jerusalem ; cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that
her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received of the Lord's hand double
for all her sins.' Three words to note the great comfort should be taken in
the gospel administration : the matter of it is the ceasing of the war between
God and the creature, the pardon of then* iniquities upon the satisfaction of
Christ, the fruit whereof is received by the believer; the satisfaction of
Christ, in regard of the infiniteness of his person, was great, which is ex-
pressed by double ; and the fruits of it received by the church are great and
double, freedom from the wrath of God, from the tyranny of the devil, and
the collation of the gifts and graces of the Spirit. Those words, ' for she
hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins,' cannot be meant
of the punishment which they lay under, for that could be no cause of the
pardon (as the particle for seems to be causal), neither is it a comfort to
think of the greatness of punishment after it is past. But if we consider
what follows, ver. 3, &c, it will appear to be a gospel promise, and the be-
liever ' receives of the Lord's hand double :' either it is meant of Christ,
who made the satisfaction, the fruits whereof the believer receives ; or of the
2 COE. V. 18, 19.] GOD THE AUTHOR OF RECONCILIATION. 481
Father, who spared not his own Son, but exacted of him the punishment of
our sins, and gives out to us the fruits of his reconciling death. This is the
comfort, that the enmity is slain, the war ceased, an end of sin made, and
God beheld with comfort, taking away the power of the devil, who first raised
this war between God and man ; as it is, ver. 9, 10, ' Behold your God,
behold the Lord God will come with a strong hand, and his arm shall rule
for him ; he shall feed his flock as a shepherd, he shall gather his lambs with
his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with
young.' All this is the fruit of reconciling grace. God is well pleased with
those that are sprinkled with the blood of Christ. As after the ' sprinkling
of the blood of the covenant,' God appeared to the elders of the people in a
clear, not a cloudy and stormy heaven, Exod. xxiv. 8, 10 (a cloudy and
stormy heaven is a sign of God's anger), and his feet, the instruments of
motion, standing in a clear heaven, shew that all the passages of his provi-
dence to his people, are mercy, truth, and kindness, upon the account of the
blood of the covenant of peace. God cannot hate those who accept of this
reconciliation. Though God hates the remainders of sin in them, yet it is
not with sucb a hatred as redounds to their persons, because their persons
are reconciled to God ; they believe and apply the reconciliation made by
God in Christ. If God deny the acceptance of such, he denies his own act
and deed, he denies himself and his whole contrivance from one end to the
other. This would be to publish, that he was mistaken in his first design,
that it was a fruitless thing, that there was a defect in his wisdom laying the
scene of it, or a defect in Christ who undertook to accompbsh it, and that
things issued not according to his will. If any accept it upon the terms God
offers it, nothing can be charged upon him. God must deny his whole con-
trivance, his commission to Christ, or find some flaw in the execution of it,
before salvation can be denied to such a person ; but God hath already testi-
fied again and again how highly pleasing the whole negotiation of Christ was
to him, and therefore it is not possible that God (who cannot be deceived
in his foresight of events, to whom nothing is contingent) should delight in
this before it was acted, please himself with it after it w^as acted, and yet
dart out the frowns of an enemy upon the accepters of it, who are called
* sons of peace,' Luke x. 6. No ; the proper effect of this is non-imputa-
tion of sin, as it is in the text, ' God was in Christ reconciling the world
unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them ;' and reconciliation
and justification are one and the same thing in the apostle's doctrine ;
Rom. v. 9, what is called 'justification by his blood,' is called, ver. 10,
* reconciliation to God by the death of Christ.' Sincere acceptance of it,
with a resolution to obey him, gives an interest in this : Luke ii. 14,
' Good will towards men.' Some read it, ' Peace on earth to men of good
will,' actively, that bear a good will to Christ, that are upright in heart
towards God in Christ. But the psalmist is clear in it, that where there is
no guile in the spirit in accepting this righteousness, God will not impute
sin, Ps. xxxii. 2, and though a believing person may not be sensible of his
happiness, yet his happiness is ensured upon faith, though not testified to
the boul. Reconciliation and the sense of it are two distinct things ; a name
may be written in the book of life, and the eye not clear enough to discern
it. The prince may have a favour for a malefactor, and his pardon sealed
too, yet the prisoner know it not, and perhaps have little hopes of it, but
casts himself at the foot of the prince's mercy. How comfortable is it to
have this peace, and a sense of it too, in our consciences, by the sprinkling
of the blood of Jesus ! Worldly goods are small ; corn, wine, and oil are little
vol. in. h h
482 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
things, to the light of God's countenance, shining upon the soul ; here is
the ground of joy and glorying, that God ' exerciseth loving-kindness :' Jer.
ix. 24, ' Let him that glories, glory in this that he knows me, that I am
the Lord which exercises loving-kindness.'
There are several particular comforts arise from hence.
1. The angels, the whole host of heaven, are at peace with the believer.
The angels, upon the sin of man, by virtue of their obedience, took part with
God, and could not, because of their purity, be friends to a defiled creature ;
nor because of their affection to God, bear any respect to him to whom the Lord
■was an enemy. They were placed as a guard to bar man from re-entrance
into paradise after his fall, and to ' keep the way of the tree of life,' Gen.
iii. 24. Our sins broke the alliance between heaven and earth, so that the
good angels could have no converse with the enemies of God ; had it not
been for this disobedience, they could have had no aversion to man. But
since their Lord is satisfied, those obedient spirits cannot be discontented,
for this reconciliation ties their hands, and makes all ill intelligence cease
between them and believers. The death of Christ expiating our sin, estab-
lished a good correspondence between the two great parties of the world,
angels and men.* The monarch being reconciled, the two states of men and
angels reassume a mutual commerce. By this they are reduced into one
corporation, into one family, and combined under one head : Eph. i. 10,
' All things which are in heaven and on earth, are gathered together in Christ.'
That place, Col. i. 20, ' It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness
dwell, and by him to reconcile all things unto himself ; by him, I say, whether
they be things in earth or things in heaven,' is understood by some of the
reconciliation of things in heaven to God, i.e. believers in the promised
Messiah, who died before the coming of Christ, shewing thereby the extent
of the death of Christ which looked backward ; by others, of the reconcilia-
tion of heavenly spirits unto us, as being a grand state of the world depend-
ing upon the universal monarch. Hence the angels rejoice and sing a hymn
at the publishing the gospel, Luke ii. 13, and rejoice more in it than men
do ; for they delight in the glory of God, but men delight naturally in their
enmity to God. They rejoice at the repentance of a sinner, and his accept-
ance of this reconciliation. They cannot rejoice at men's reconciliation to
God, and be unreconciled themselves. They are • ministering spirits to the
heirs of salvation,' Heb. i. 14, instruments of God in the deliverance of his
church and people, furtherers of the conversion of men as to outward means,
as in the example of the eunuch, Acts viii. 26 ; and at last conduct the
heirs to the possession of their inheritance ' reserved in the heavens for
them,' Luke xvi. 22. They are ministers of wrath upon the unbelieving
world, ministers of good to the believing creature, and guard him with those
weapons wherewith they fought against him, from whence we have many
invisible assistances. As God did not hate his creatures as creatures (for
then he had hated man as made by him, which is inconsistent with the pure
goodness of God), but as sinners, so the angels followed their great pattern
in the hatred of men ; but now they are reconciled to man, because God, to
whom they pay an obedience, is reconciled. They are put under the govern-
ment of Christ as their head, as he is the mediator, and cannot be enemies
to us till Christ, as head, become an enemy to himself as mediator. Their
commission for guarding the heavenly paradise against us is cancelled, and
should they now obstruct the way, they would be no longer good angels, but
impure aud disobedient devils. There is one place which some understand
of this peace we have with angels : Kev. i. 4, 5, ' Peace from him which was,
* Daille, Serm. snr naissance da Seigneur, p. 83.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 483
and which is, and which is to come, and from the seven spirits which are
before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness,' &c.
The seven spirits are said to be before his throne, as waiting for the com-
mands of God, as the seven angels are said to stand before God, Rev. viii. 2.
But it is more likely it is meant of the Spirit of God ; it is not reasonable
to think the salutations of creatures to the church should be mixed with the
benedictions of the Deity, with the exclusion of the third person, who is here
to be understood, and called seven spirits in regard of the variety of gifts and
graces, given out by him to the church, seven being a perfect number ; and
placed in the midst of this benediction, perhaps because of his procession
both from the Father and the Son.*
2. Peace with all creatures. If the Lord of the creation be the author of this
peace, then no creatures which are under his conduct can be at enmity with a
believer. When Adam fell, he did deserve that all creatures should act in hos-
tility against him, as the rebel against the sovereignty of their common creator.
But when God enters into a new amity with man, and ceaseth to be pro-
voked, he renews the covenant with the beasts, that all creatures shall be
serviceable to the reconciled believer: Hos. ii. 18, 'In that day I will make
a covenant for him with the beasts of the field;' in the day of the evan-
gelical espousals, as he had before promised if they continued in obedience,
Lev. xxvi. 6. Though no formal covenant can be made between God and
irrational creatures, yet they shall hurt no more than if they were tied up by
a formal covenant, and were honest and wise enough to observe it ; as in
the first covenant made with Adam, while he stood on terms of peace with
God, and owned a subjection to him as his Lord, all creatures were spon-
taneously to be under his dominion, which right depended upon the observ-
ance of the terms of the covenant which was between God and him. This
right is renewed by the satisfaction of Christ procuring the restoration of
that which Adam forfeited, and disarming nature, which was before armed
against man. The corn and the wine shall hear Jezreel, the seed of God,
Hos. ii. 22. The right to all things present, things to come, ' life, death,' all
intermediate things, is restored by Christ, 1 Cor. iii. 22, 23. The world, uni-
versal nature, all is yours for your good, because you are Christ's, who hath
purchased those things ; and Christ is God's, settled by him in this office
for the purchase of them, and accepted by God to that end. The right to
all creatures is perfect, the possession insured in the head, who hath taken
livery and seisin of all ; and shall be perfect in the members, when there
shall be a new heaven and a new earth ; all shall be in an harmonious
combination for the glory of the believer. They do yet often instrumen-
tally afflict them, but not hurt them. They hurt the man, not the Christian;
they hurt a believer no more than death can, which, though it kills him, yet
without a sting ; they hurt us, yet without a curse ; they are in the hand of
a reconciled Father, who useth their natural enmity against us for our good,
as the shepherd doth the currishness of the dog to reduce the wandering sheep
to the fold.f The hurts we seem to feel from, them issue in mercy, and are so
intended by that reconciled God who guides them ; they wound us, and thereby
break onr imposthumes. The same instrument may convey kindness to a
believer, which is a mark of wrath upon an enemy; the same knife, which in
the hand of an executioner may cut off the arm of a malefactor, in the hand
of a chirurgeon may cut off the gangrened member of a patient ; the same
knife performs a friend's office to the one and a wrathful to the other. Since
we are not perfect in our services of God, we cannot expect the creatures
should be perfect in their services of us ; as our obedience is only inchoative
* Illyricus in locum. f Manton on Jude, p. 92.
484 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
here, so the performance of God's promises are here in their hlade, not in
their full harvest.
3. Access to God is another comfort arising from hence. As God was in
Christ reconciling 1ha world, so he is in Christ giving believers access to him.
As he was in Christ reconciling our persons, so he is in Christ receiving our
prayers. As Christ made satisfaction for us by his death, so he sweetens
our services by his merit. As Christ was the means of our reconciliation, so
is he the means of our access : Rom. v. 1, 2, 'By whom also we have access.'
The word also intimates this freedom of access to be as great a benefit as
justification. Though justification is a transcendent mercy, yet it would not
complete the happiness of a creature, without communion with God. Peace
was not the thing God ultimately aimed at ; it was but the medium. He
would be our friend, that there might be sweet interviews between him and a
believer. Before, guilt on our side, and justice on God's, stood as bars to our
access. Guilty souls cannot converse with a severe judge ; a provoking
creature and an offended God can have no commerce ; but when the guilt is
taken away, the distance is removed. How may an humble believing crea-
ture come to a reconciled God, whose own heart put him upon laying the
foundat:on tf friendship, without any desires, or so much as expectations of
the creature. We could no more before endure the presence of God than
the devil ; but by this the bar is taken from us, though not from him. This
access is consequent upon this reconciliation. As there was a communion
between God and man in innocence, which was broken off by the entrance
of the enmity, so upon the restoration of the friendship there is a renewing
of a mutual converse : that as God reveals his gracious will to the soul, the
soul puts up holy desires to God ; that as God descends to us in Christ, we
may ascend through Christ to him in fruitful meditations, and take a delight-
ful view and prospect of God. It was not only peace that Christ came to
procure, but also good will ; not only to slay the enmity, but to raise an
entire and intimate friendship. The message the angels proclaimed was
made up of the one as well as the other : Luke ii. 14, ' Peace on earth, good-
will towards men,' zudoxla, a good pleasure in men.
(1.) Access with confidence. We go to our Father, who hath had the great-
est hand in all this affair. Since he is the author of this peace, what ground
of dejection ? We have God in Christ to receive us, and Christ by God's
order to introduce us. It was the purpose of God, and his eternal purpose, that
by the faith of Christ, and in him, we should have boldness and access, with
confidence, Eph. i. 12, na^r^'iav. And what higher ground of confidence
than the consideration of God's appointing and giving this mediator to us
for that end ? How can a faithful, holy, true God deny his own act, in
denying us when we come in the way of his own appointment ? for since
he hath settled such an high priest over his house, we may well draw near
in full assurance of faith, if we come with sincere and true hearts, Heb. x,
21, 22, flying with a deep humility to his throne of grace, with a plerophory
of faith, a full sail filled by this wind of love. It is not meant of a personal
assurance, or a cerlitudo subjecti, but objecli, a full belief of the doctrine of
propitiation, and God's setting forth Christ and preparing him to take away
sin, which was the cause of the enmity between God and us ; for this is but
the use the apostle makes of what he had doctrinally in this point delivered
in the foregoing part of the chapter. We may go to God with more confi-
dence upon this account than Adam could in innocence. He had access to
a God of goodness, we to a God of grace ; he could not look upon God as
reconcilable if he should sin ; God threatening was a bar to that. If he
knew anything of God, he knew him to be just and true to his word, from
2 Cor. Y. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 485
which knowledge did arise those terrors of conscience upon his face, and his
endeavouring to run and hide himself from God ; but God in this dispensa-
tion hath given us other notions of himself than Adam had, therefore we may
go with more confidence than he could, and pour out our souls before him :
Lam. iii. 24, ' The Lord is my portion, therefore will I hope in him.' The
Lord is my reconciled friend, therefore will I hope in him for the mercy I beg.
(2.) Delight and joy in our access. We could not come to him before,
no, nor think of him, without a slavish trembling ; but now we may think
of him, and approach to him with joy and comfort, for he deals not with us
as an enemy by a strict justice, but as a friend in a way of an obliging
mercy. If Adam had a sense that he might fall, he could not come to God
without some dejection; the very possibility of falling would not be without
fear attending it. But since God was in Christ reconciling the world, we go
to him upon the account of an immutable righteousness, a righteousness he
settled as an act of grace to us, and security to his own glory ; whereas
Adam could approach to him but upon the account of a mutable righteous-
ness, which might be as the grass, standing this day and withered to-morrow.
Our access to God is with 'a joy in the hope of the glory of God,' Rom. v. 2 ;
and when we take hold of his covenant, this covenant of peace, we have his
word that he will make us 'joyful in the house of prayer,' Isa. lvi. 6, 7 ;
actively joyful, full of delight in his service, solacing ourselves in a sweet
consideration of the infinite grace of a reconciling God, whereby a trans-
cendent delight is raised in the soul, which is a direct delight in God as the
object of faith, discovered in Christ and apprehended by spiritual reason
and sense ; passively joyful, by receiving in his service more of the refresh-
ing waters of life, and being fed with the ' hidden manna' which God com-
municates in and by Christ to his friends. And beside, though our services
are imperfect, God expects not a perfect obedience from us, but from his
Son Christ. It is a full assurance of faith he expects from us, and a true
heart, not a perfect obedience ; his promise gives us joy, though the sense
of our imperfections create a sorrow. Though we cannot delight in our-
selves, we may in God, in his promise, in his gracious condescension, in
the compensation he hath from his Son for us, in his acceptation of it, and
application of it to our souls. You are, upon believing, God's friends, not
only his servants. It is Christ's speech to his disciples : John xv. 15,
* Henceforth I call you not servants.' It must not be understood of a
freedom from all kind of service, which cannot be conferred upon a creature ;
(it were injustice in God to free a creature from so righteous and noble a
virtue as gratitude to himself; God cannot command a creature not to love
him, for he should then command the creature not to love the chief good);
but it is a freedom from a bondage and servile fear in duties, and bringing
to a filial and more dutiful manner of service, — a service from principles of
grace, and encouraged by the views of God's reconciled face. Service is not
excluded by admission to this friendship, but perfected to a more delightful
garb- Peace opens the way for a delightful and sucessful trade, which war
and enmity locks up.
4. The conquest of Satan is insured by this. When we are at peace with
God, the devils themselves are subject to us. When God was in Christ re-
conciling the world, he was in Christ ' destroying him that had the power
of death,' Heb. ii. 14, and bringing Satan under the feet of the Mediator,
and the feet of his members. This was the intent of God in the first pro-
mise of a Mediator, to destroy him who had infected mankind, and brought
death into the world. The bruising his head was the design of Christ's
mission, Gen. iii. 15, that the great incendiary who had broken the league,
486 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
and set afoot the rebellion, might feel the greater smart of it. And ever
since it is by the gospel of peace, and the shield of faith, that we are only
able to ' quench the fiery darts of the devil,' and make his attempts fruitless,
Eph. vi. 15, 16, by the reconciliation God hath wrought and published by
the gospel. God, ' as a God of peace,' ' shall tread him under the feet' of
believers, Rom. xvi. 20. Unless he had been a God of peace, we had never
been delivered from that jailor who held us by the right of God's justice.
And since we are delivered, God, as a God of peace, will perfect the victory,
and make him cease for ever from bruising the heel of the spiritual seed.
As God hath given peace in Christ, so he will give the victory in Christ.
Peace cannot be perfect till it be undisturbed by invading enemies, and
subtle adversaries endeavouring to raise a new enmity. Our Saviour spoiled
him of his power upon the cross, and took away the right he had to detain
any believer prisoner, by satisfying that justice, and reconciling that God
who first ordered their commitment. He answers his accusations as he is
an ' advocate ' at the right hand of God ; and at the last, when death comes
to be destroyed, and no more to enter into the world, the whole design of the
devil for ever falls to the ground. Since we are at peace with God, while we
are here, the devil himself shall serve us ; and the messenger of Satan shall
be a means to quell the pride of a believing Paul by the sufficiency of the
grace of God, while he fills the heart of an unbelieving Judas with poison
and treason against his Master.
5. Comfort in all afflictions. It is a cordial to cheer in the hottest services
and sharpest difficulties. What can the greatest danger signify, while God
remains reconciled to the soul in Christ, and the peace remains unbroken ?
God thought the promise of it support enough in all the standing puuish-
ment Adam was to endure ; he therefore made this promise to him before
he denounced the punishment after the fall. We may as well digest all
crosses with this peace purchased, as Adam could do with this peace pro-
mised ; God was then in Christ promising it, God hath now been in Christ
performing it. The peace as designed was offered to the ancient Israelites
as a ground of joy and relief under their oppressing calamities, Isa. ix. ;
Micah v. 5, ' This man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come
into our land.' The peace God hath effected in Christ is a more firm matter
of joy under oppressions, by how much the comfort of the performance ex-
ceeds the joy of the promise, as the joy of harvest doth the joy of seed-time.
Mercy was manifested in' the making the promise ; truth as well as mercy
glorified in the performing. If it were a ground of joy before he wrought it,
what a rise is there for a triumphant joy since he hath laid an unalterable
foundation for it. This was the armour Christ furnished his disciples with
against the injuries of the world : John xvi. 33, ' In me you shall have
peace, in the world you shall have tribulation.' This was thought by our
Saviour to be a sufficient defence for his weak disciples against all the furies
of men and rage of devils, an universal remedy against all discouragements.
In Christ, God smiles when the world frowns : ' Cause thy face to shine upon
us' is thrice repeated, Ps. lxxx. 3, 7, 19, as the chief confidence of a gracious
soul under smart distresses. Reconciliation with God changeth the nature
of everything that is terrible, dungeons into palaces and tears into cordials.
It is a shield against fears, a treasure against poverty, physic against dis-
eases, security against danger, and life against death. Indeed, under sharp
afflictions a believing soul may not have a strength of faith to discern God
as a father from God as a judge; sense and carnal reason may dispute against
faith and stagger it. If he be reconciled, why then doth he make me his
mark to shoot at ? There may be a fatherly displeasure when there is not
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 487
a wrathful anger ; the satisfaction of justice excludes not the rod of mercy.
Justice hath no plea against a believer, because it is satisfied ; mercy is the
only attribute that orders all for a reconciled person. The visiting the trans-
gression of the seed of Christ with a rod was knit together with the continu-
ance of God's kindness to them in the covenant of redemption God made
with Christ, Ps. lxxxix. 30-33. ' God was in Christ reconciling the world;'
it is a less thing for him to be in every affliction, ordering it for good.
6. Comfort in the expectation of all other mercies. If God were in
Christ reconciling us to himself, he will be in Christ giving forth all other
suitable mercies. If he detains any you seem to want, it is a part of his
reconciled wisdom when he sees them not good for you. It is inconsistent
with his amity to withhold any you have real need of ; it would not be then
a much more, as Christ argues, but a much less : Mat. vii. 11, ' If you, being
evil, know how to give good things to your children, much more your Father
which is in heaven.' But consider, they are only good things he hath obliged
himself to give, and he is the proper judge of what is good, not we ourselves.
If, as a God of patience and goodness, he feeds the unclean birds, will he
not, as a God of grace and peace in Christ, feed his friends ? Will he let them
starve while his enemies fatten ? He hath struck a covenant of amity and
friendship, what may not be expected from a sincere and powerful friend,
and one who made it his business from eternity to be casting about for the
working of this peace ? If this, which neither men nor angels could have
imagined, be effected by his wisdom and grace, all subsequent blessings are
far easier to God than this could be, since in this he hath conquered his own
affection to his Son. What can remain unconquered by him, which stands in
the way of a believer's happiness ? It was a greater act to be in Christ recon-
ciling the world, than to be in Christ giving out the mercies he hath pur-
chased. If he hath overcome the greatest bank that stopped the tide of mercy,
shall little ones hinder the current of it ? Justice, and the honour of the
law, were the great mountains which stood in the way. Since those are re-
moved by a miraculous wisdom and grace, what pebbles can stop the flood
to believing souls ? If God be the author of the greatest blessings, will he
not be of the least ? If he hath not spared his best treasure, shall the less
be denied ? It is the apostle's arguing, Rom. viii. 32, ' He that spared not
his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him
freely give us all things ?' He cannot but be as free in the least as he was
in the greatest ; there were more arguments to dissuade him from that, than
there can be to stop his hands in other things. If anything you desire be
refused by God, know it is your Saviour's mind you shall not have it ; for
God would deny him nothing of his purchase. Oh how little do we live in
the sense of those truths ; how doth our impatience give God the lie, and tell
him he is a deadly enemy, notwithstanding his reconciling grace !
7. There will be peace of conscience. If God be reconciled, conscience
cannot charge. If God be the author of this peace, conscience, God's deputy,
cannot keep up an enmity against us, for that must speak as God speaks.
Peace with the viceroys and governors depends upon peace with the prince.
The same blood which was sprinkled on the mercy-seat, is sprinkled upon
the conscience of the believer. As it procured peace with heaven, it will
produce peace in the soul : Heb. x. 22, ' Having our hearts sprinkled from
an evil conscience.' An evil conscience is an accusing conscience ; when
sprinkled by this blood, it is an acquitting conscience, not from the facts, but
from the guilt of them. Whatsoever hath a power to satisfy God, cannot be
invalid to satisfy conscience. Where infinite knowledge can raise no objec-
tion, a purblind conscience is too weak to find out any. If God hath been
488 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
the contriver of this reconciliation, and accepted it as fully finished, con-
science must acquiesce. Adam's conscience flew in his face upon his sin, and
did not leave quarrelling till its mouth was stopped with the promise of a re-
conciler. Guilt sets conscience on fire ; when the guilt is quenched, conscience
must be at ease. Nothing will satisfy conscience but that which satisfies
God, and whatsoever satisfies God must satisfy conscience, for that acts by
commission and a derived authority. All other things are too weak to take
away the conscience of sin : ' the blood of bulls and goats,' of God's institution,
could not do it, Heb. x. 2, it is the proper effect of this peace ; all the waters
in the world cannot quench the flame of conscience, till God be reconciled.
The foundation of this peace of conscience is laid in peace with God, though
present actual comfort may not be enjoyed ; the day may be clouded, though
the winds be still ; there may be no storms, yet no sunshine.
8. Comfort against death. If God be the author of reconciliation by Christ,
then death, which was the fruit of that sin which is now removed, can be no
dreadful apparition. God was in Christ, and is still, conquering his enemies;
and this is one enemy which must fall under his sword, and be made his
footstool. As God was in Christ reconciling you, he is in death calling for
you to enjoy the full-blown felicities of that peace. It is no more than a
departure in peace, when God is a God of peace. Old Simeon thought so,
Luke ii. 29 ; he speaks, saith one,* like a merchant that had got all his goods
on shipboard, and now desires the master of the ship to hoist sail and be
gone homeward. Death was before a servant of divine justice ; since justice
is satisfied, it is the messenger of divine mercy. It was a jailor to enclose us
in the prison of the grave, it is now a conductor to the glories of heaven.
Where this peace is in maturity, where God's face shines clearly without
disguises, veils, and cloudy interruptions, the name death is terrible, but the
reconciled soul is beyond the fears of it. It hath lost its sting, which was
God's justice ; Christ satisfying the one, hath disarmed the other of what is
hurtful. There is a knot between justification (which is termed reconcilia-
tion) and glorification ; death comes between them, but doth not dissolve it :
Rom. viii. 30, ' Whom he justifies, them also he glorifies ;' which knot can-
not be untied by death, though that between our soul and body is : it sends
the body to the grave to endure the sentence against sin denounced in para-
dise, and the soul to heaven, to enjoy the benefit of the promise.
9. This reconciliation is effectual. It is upon this all the other comforts
depend. If God was the author of it, contriving, counselling Christ to effect
it, furnishing him for the accomplishment of it, it cannot be a weak and im-
perfect peace. Infinite wisdom would not have spent innumerable ' thoughts,
which cannot be reckoned up' (as the expression is, Ps. xl. 5), about a fruit-
less thing, a peace which might be easily blown away ; he would never have
sent his Son to shed his blood, and endure his wrath to no purpose, and make
his own contrivance to end in a mere chimara, as though he would be so busy
only to deceive his creatures. ' The counsel of the Lord shall stand,' every
counsel of his, much more his choicest purpose, to which all his other re-
solves are as small rivers which run into this great sea, and combine together
for the perfecting this counsel ; all other thoughts are lines drawn to or from
this centre. As all things in heaven and earth are gathered in one, even in
Christ, so all the counsels of God gather into this one of Christ and peace
in him. This was the great source and pattern of all the rest, Eph. i. 10, 11.
Besides, God hath received this reconciler into heaven, whereby he hath re-
moved all ground of suspicion of his remaining yet unreconciled. If justice
had any exception against his sacrifice, it would not have opened heaven's
* Gurnal.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 489
gates to Christ, but have barred, with a flaming sword, Christ's entrance into
heaven, as well as Adam's return to paradise. The honourable title of our
peace, had not been conferred upon Christ, had an imperfect reconciliation
been all the fruit of his blood. By this name he is called, Mic. v. 5, Eph.
ii. 14, and by that of our righteousness, Jer. xxxiii. 16. God is the author,
and Christ the prince of peace ; the reconciliation must be full, and righteous,
and effectual, that hath such a contriver, such a procurer. We are apt in
our unbelieving moods to suspect God ; because we have been unfaithful to
him, we are jealous he will be unfaithful to us ; but he asks the question,
' What could I have done more for my vineyard ?' He appeals to men in
that case, as if he should say, If men can tell me what I can do more, I will
do it, do it to engage them, do it to encourage them. He hath contrived it
with the choicest wisdom, laid the foundation of it in the richest blood, given
the fullest assurances of his sincerity in it, and never refused it to any that
desired it ; but it hath been rejected by many whom his Spirit hath solicited.
Christ, whose honour lay upon it, would never have assured his disciples of
it, after his return from paradise : John xx. 21, ' Peace be unto you,' had it
been imperfect ; a salutation he used, which is not recorded to be used by
him in the time of his life.
10. This reconciliation is perpetual, as well as perfect and effectual ; it is
durable and fixed. It was an eternal redemption obtained :* eternal in re-
gard of its efficacy, eternal in regard of application, eternal in regard of the
good things procured for us by it. Man nor devils cannot undo it, because
of their weakness, nor God because of his faithfulness. It is a ' grace
wherein we stand by faith,' Rom. v. 1, 2, not a tottering, but stable grace.
Believers are received into the grace of God's good will, and God is not a
light and unstable friend. All human friendship is perfidiousness in respect
of this. The tie is everlasting, and knows no dissolution. His own grace
and good will moved him to it, and the same good will in an immutable God
will preserve it. Good will made the motion, justice acquiesced in it; but
since the death of Christ, the righteousness and mercy of God join hand in
hand to keep it entire ; ' Righteousness and peace have kissed each other,
mercy and truth have met together,' and congratulated one another for their
mutual satisfaction. The mercy of God is as prevalent with him to keep the
covenant of peace from being removed, as for the first settlement of it : Isa.
liv. 10, ' Neither shall my covenant of peace be removed, saith the Lord, that
hath mercy on thee.' Such consultations, such expensive accomplishments
of it, cannot be mutable ; mercy made it, and mercy perpetuates it. He can
no more condemn a believing soul when he looks upon Christ, than he can
drown the world against his own promise when he looks on the rainbow.
His throne is encompassed with a rainbow, an emblem of a perpetual peace.
It was so encircled in Ezekiel's time, Ezek. i. 28 ; with the same garb he
appeared to John some ages after, Rev. iv. 3 ; and the predominant colour
was green, that of an emerald, to note that this peace is always green and
flourishing, as fresh in after ages as in the first. God was in Christ recon-
ciling the world, God is in Christ as a priest keeping up that reconciliation.
The intercession of Christ, which is a part of his priestly office, was as much
in the thoughts of God, for his keeping firm this reconciliation, as the death
of Christ was upon his heart to effect it. He confirms his eternal priesthood
by an oath, Ps. ex. 1, and therefore his intercession for it, otherwise there
would be no priestly act for Christ now to perform. Christ by his death
quenched the flame of the sword which guarded paradise against us ; at his
resurrection he sheathed the sword itself ; and by his intercession keeps it
* Illyric. in loc. Ileb. ix. 12.
490 chaekock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
perpetually in its scabbard, keeps the edge from ever being turned against a
believer. Reconciliation is wrought by the death of Christ, and preserved
by his merit. Christ's affections remain in his heart to solicit, the Father's
affections remain in his heart to grant ; Christ hath an irrepealable liberty
to approach to God to present his reconciling merit. Till, therefore, the un-
changeable God change his resolution, and repent of all his counsel, cares,
furniture, commission and acceptance of Christ ; till Christ's merit become
invalid, distasteful, and nauseous to the Father, this peace will stand firm.
Christ's merit hath been paid, it cannot be unpaid ; it hath been accepted,
it cannot now be refused. If the soul he hath redeemed be not safe, Christ
can have no satisfaction for all his sufferings. Keep therefore your wills
from sin, strive against the motions of it, agree not with it, and the peace
will not be broken. As princes enter not into war, but where there is a
real affront done, and no satisfaction given, so God breaks not the peace he
hath made upon every failing. When the will is not engaged, the sin is
resisted ; but where any give up their wills to sin, and delightfully wear its
chains, they are so far from having this reconciliation perpetual, that they
never had so much as the least interest in it. It is perpetual to them that
embrace it, not by a pretended faith, but a real and obedient faith.
11. The state believers have by this reconciliation is far happier than that
Adam had in innocence. It is likely had he persisted in it some time, he
might have been confirmed in that state ; but how long time he might have
lived in that mutable condition, and whether, if he had persisted, he would
have enjoyed such a degree of glory, is not upon record. God was in Adam
making a covenant of works, he is in Christ making a covenant of peace.
Christ came not only to give a simple life or a simple peace, but to give it
1 more abundantly,' John x. 10, more abundantly than we had it by creation
in innocence. After the fall, we were dead, and Christ restored us to life,
but to a more abundant life ; not that we had after the fall, for we had none
at all, we were dead in trespasses and sins ; but more abundantly than we
had in Adam before the fall, a better life than man could challenge by the
covenant of works. The second creation must be greater than the first,
because the thoughts of God about the first were but a step to a second.
In the first creation, mere man was the head, God in him gave out the pre-
cepts and promises to his posterity ; in the second creation, God is in
Christ giving out his covenant. As the means of conveyance are higher, so
the things conveyed are more glorious. God would provide a way of peace
that should not fail again, the security should be built upon a stronger
bottom. The Lord give every one of us an interest in this reconciliation,
and the comforts of it !
Third use ; of exhortation. Is God in Christ reconciling the world ? Then
it is fit we should join issue with God, and be in Christ reconciled to him.
We must comply with God in this his great ordinance. The consideration
of it should work relenting, should work believing. Let the design of God
prevail with us. It is in this we shall find expiation of sin, the grace of
God, peace of conscience ; in a word, whatsoever God as reconciled can give,
whatsoever Christ as reconciling hath purchased. Better to be the vilest
slave in the galleys, the scoff and reproach of men, spurned by every foot,
than be unreconciled. It was tender mercy, bowels of mercy, whereby the
day-spring from on high hath visited us,' Luke i. 8. When we lay wallow-
ing in a miry sink, ready to ba crushed by God's righteous hand, then he
pitied us ; the more disingenuous to refuse his amity. The dignity of the
donor renders a gift more valuable than it is in itself ; a present from a
prince is more prized than that which is bestowed by an ordinary merchant.
2 Cor. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 491
The gift of Christ and the offer of peace by him is incomprehensible in itself,
and receives a value from that God that prepared and offers it. What
pleasure can we taste in any earthly comfort, though we had a confluence of
all princely delights, if we have no share in a reconciled God by a reconciling
mediator, while we will force that God, who is the author of peace, to stand
over us with a drawn sword pointed to our breasts ? Corn, wine, and oil are
little things to the light of God's countenance.
1. Something must be done on our parts. Though God be the author of
our reconciliation by Christ, yet something is incumbent upon us. If all
men were reconciled without any condition on their parts, the apostle might
have held his pen, and not have added the other clause, ver. 20, after the
text, ' We pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God,' there had
been no need of that inference. In the text, he speaks of the fundamental
reconciliation ; in this, of the actual. If all men had been reconciled to God,
it had not been sense to say, You are reconciled, therefore be reconciled.
It would have been an exhortation to do that which had been already done
to their hands. If all men be actually reconciled, how come any to miss of
the fruit of it ? why is it not applied to all '? Because all that are called do
not comply with their call, answer not God's command and entreaty. The
purchase and application are two distinct things ; the purchase was made by
Christ alone upon the cross, without, any qualification in us ; the application
is not wrought without something in us concurring with it, though that also
is wrought by the grace of God. God hath ordained peace for us. But
there is a work to be wrought within us for the enjoyment of that peace :
Isa. xxvi. 12, ' Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us, for thou also hast
wrought all our works in us.' The one is grace in the spring, the other is
grace in the vessel ; the one is the act of God in Christ, the other is the act
of God by his Spirit. Though the fire burn, if I would have warmth I must
not run from it, but approach to it.
2. This qualification is faith. As grace in God qualified God (if I may
use the expression) for effecting it, so faith in us qualifies us for applying
and enjoying it. Though Christ be the purchaser, yet faith is the means of
instating us in it : Rom. v. 1, ' Being justified by faith, we have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ.' Not a man hath peace with God
till justified by faith. This inestimable mercy is not conferred but upon
men of good will, men that affect it, value it, consent to it. We must lay
our hands upon the head of the sacrifice, and own him for ours. This is the
band which unites us to Christ as the purchaser, and by him to God as the
author of this reconciliation ; it gives us a right to this peace, and at the
last the comfort of it.
3. The order is, first an acceptance of Christ, then of God in and through
him. We must first comply with the means before we can attain the end.
Our nearness to God was purchased by the blood of Christ, and is actually
conferred by union with Christ : Eph. ii. 13, ' But now in Christ Jesus ye
who sometimes were afar off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.' Faith
hath recourse first to the atoning blood of Christ, and by that blood to God :
Rom. hi. 25, ' Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith
in his blood.' This blood only quenched the consuming fire of God's wrath.
By him we are reconciled, and by him only we can receive the atonement :
Rom. v. 11, 'We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we
have now received the atonement.' As God was in Christ reconciling, so we
must be in Christ accepting this reconciliation with God. ' You are Christ's,
and Christ is God's,' 1 Cor. iii. 23. We must first be Christ's by the
acceptance of him, as Christ was God's by his calling and mission. As God
492 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
goes ont to us in him, our return must be by him to God. He paid the
debts, made an end of sin, removed the wrath which we had merited. God
was the judge, Christ the mediator ; we must first go to the mediator, to be
conducted by him to the judge. We had offended tbe law-maker, we must
first go to him who is the repairer of the honour of the law ; we must take
the redemption of Christ along with us, tbe pacifying blood to present it to
God, by whose authority we were under wrath. It is that blood only joins
us to God, no cement without it. If we are not first by faith in Christ
satisfying, we are still but as stubble before God, who is a consuming fire.
Christ is the only band of union between us and God. Think not of stand-
ing secure by absolute mercy ; mercy through Christ only saves us ; it
breathes in no other air. We must first take hold of the strength of God
before we are at peace with him : Isaiah xxvii. 5, ' Let him take hold of my
strength, tbat he may make peace with me, and he shall make peace with
me ;' of Christ, who is as well ' the power of God as the wisdom of God,'
1 Cor. i. 24, where you have a direction bow to gain it by laying hold of his
strength, the end to be aimed at in the act, ' that he may make peace with me,'
and an assurance to obtain it in that method, ' he shall make peace with me.'
Motives.
1. Here is the highest encouragement and ground of acceptation. There
is no room for any hard thoughts of God after so signal a discovery of him-
self. He is not a God of unquenchable wrath ; he is willing his justice
should be appeased : he took all the course that was possible for infinite
wisdom to invent, for infinite power to effect, for infinite love to propose.
What greater security for our blessings, than that he should make his Son a
curse, that we might be blessed by him ! How should so much love make
us change our unworthy opinions of God ! Here are the three persons em-
ployed in it : the Father contrives it, the Son effects it, the Spirit stands
ready to apply it to every believer. A refusal puts a scorn upon all the three
persons. As soon as ever Adam sinned, even the same day, Gen. iii. 15,
God applies this remedy of a Redeemer. He did not let a day slip, for any
thing we know, not an hour, before he made it known to him. His heart
was in travail, and longed to be delivered of the gracious promise of a Media-
tor. He armed our first parents with this cordial, before he subjected them
to their standing miseries. What his heart was then, it is the same still.
His kindness was desirous to publish the promise, can his truth have less
zeal to perform it ? His kindness which moved him to assure it, hath
moved him to effect it, and will move him to apply it to every one that seeks
to him for it in and by his beloved Son. His wrath, which we were subject
to, is overcome by his love to the mediation of his Son, who hath honoured
him more than sin had dishonoured him. By accepting this, we own the
glory of God, and honour him as much by faith as we have dishonoured
him by sin ; for thereby we own that satisfaction which was as grateful to
him as our sins were hateful. As he honoured himself by the death of his
Son, so he honours himself by giving forth the fruits of his death. He de-
lights to honour Christ, and to see him honoured by us : we contribute to
God's delight, when we approach to him by faith in his blood. Did God
make this provision ? Did he contrive an expiatory offering before the
world was ? And will he not communicate this ? Would he provide him
never to bestow him ? Did he bruise him for nothing, but to keep him up
as a jewel in a cabinet, not to give out? To whom should God give him,
but to those that desire him ? Would any father lay up treasures for his
children, and not dispense them, when they are earnest for them in their
necessities ? Can there be a greater argument than this doctrine, to over-
2 COE. V. 18, 19. J GOD THE AUTHOR OF RECONCILIATION. 493
come our rebellion, extinguish our fears, hasten our approach, and add con-
fidence to our desires ?
2. The terms required are as low as can be imagined. Nothing can be
objected against the conditions he requires, repentance and faith. Can any
malefactor expect peace with his arms in his hand ? Is it not fit there should
be such conditions to justify God, since we were the guilty offenders ? Can
there be less than to cast away our weapons, bewail our crimes, receive his
Son as our Mediator, serve him with newness of life, all which are desirable
privileges ? It was in his power to appoint what conditions he pleased,
because he was the free and sole benefactor ; what could be less than the
believing and receiving the reconciliation ? It was impossible the benefit
could be without it : it is no benefit unless it be esteemed so ; no reason
any should enjoy a benefit, that doth not think it a benefit. All the self-love
of men could not have framed more reasonable terms. Men would have
thought of ' rivers of oil, and thousands of rams,' mere impossibilities,
Micah vi. 6, 7. God requires no more than to lie humbly at his feet, and
reach out our hands to receive the assurance he gives. What can be easier ?
If faith be difficult, it is so, not in regard of itself, but in regard of our na-
tural enmity to God, and the pride of our own wills ; it is hard only as ' the
law is weak, through the flesh,' Rom. viii. 3 ; but nothing could be more
reasonable, nothing more easy in itself. An ingenuous amazement at unex-
pected kindness should make us run more swiftly to embrace God, than ever
we ran from him. We should subscribe to his articles. As he is a God to
contrive the peace, let him be your God to impose the methods of enjoying
it, since he hath given this gift to a brutish world, who he knew would grieve
and despise him, yet requires no more at your hands than that you should
believe and accept him, which is but a just due to the greatness of the blessing.
3. There is an absolute necessity for this compliance for our happiness.
If j'ou have not a peace of God's ordaining, you can have none of your own
inventing. There can be no fellowship with God without it. We cannot
be happy, because we cannot enjoy God, wherein all the felicity of a creature
consists. How can guilt and purity converse together ? What society can
stubble have with fire, but to its destruction ? We cannot see God's face
without it ; and if the sight of God's face be wanting, felicity is at a dis-
tance. The greatest part of hell remains, though there be no positive
punishment. This cannot be without a reconciled face. ' How can two
walk together unless they be agreed ?' Amos iii. 3. What intercourse can
there be between a guilty rebel and a frowning judge ? between a sinful
creature and a provoked Deity ? ' If he hide his face, who can behold him ?'
Job xxiv. 29 ; but when an agreement is made, there may be mutual endear-
ments. We are enemies to God by birth, God an enemy to us by his law ;
the enmity will remain on God's part, while enmity remains on ours. Strike
up then the treaty with God, since there is a necessity for it, and God hath
provided all things to that end. Shall not God's love melt you, and your
own necessities move you ?
4. Wrath is unavoidable without a compliance with God. If we will not
enter into these terms of reconciliation, the heart of God, which was before
incensed by our sin, cannot but rise with an higher indignation at a resolve
to persist in it. Abused love kindles the hottest wrath. What fence can
inexcusable guilt have against an equitable justice ? When man, after his
creation, proved perfidious to God, there commenced a dreadful war, which
only can be ended by him who hath put an end to sin, or else it will endure
for ever in hell. All must have endured what Christ suffered, had he not
stood in theh stead ; and those that refuse him, as he is proffered by the
494 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
grace of God, must endure the same for ever. If we will not receive him
as a friend, we cannot avoid him as an enemy ; his eye will behold us, ' and
his hand will reach us, in the thickest coverings of darkness,' Ps. cxxxix.
9, 11. Where he is not accepted as the author of reconciliation in his own
way, he will be the author of judgment in his own way. If the satisfaction
of his justice, which he hath provided, be slighted, that justice will be satis-
fied upon our own persons. If we deny him his honour by the sufferings of
Christ, he will vindicate it by the sufferings of our own persons. The law
was in full force against us, whereby God hath obliged himself to inflict
death upon the sinner, Gen. ii. 17. It is his law upon record, that damna-
tion shall be inflicted upon every, one that believes not. There is no dis-
covery out of Christ, but of wrath prepared against the day of wrath : the
day wherein God and his unreconciled enemies shall meet together, is called
a ' day of wrath,' Eom. ii. 5, 6; a day wherein there shall be an appearance
of wrath only to such. The angel that hath a rainbow about his head, hath
feet as pillars of fire, Eev. x. 1, to consume them that refuse the peace.
Consider, then, we are sunk under infinite guilt, and cannot rise up without
an almighty hand ; we are defiled with an universal filth, and cannot be
cleansed without infinite purity ; sin is strong in its accusations, our right-
eousness imperfect in its defence, and can make no compensation for the
wrongs by the other ; our duties are bespotted, and are not fit for a pure
eye. An eternal weight of wrath is due to all those ; there is but one way
of escape which God hath provided, but one city of refuge whereby we
may escape the edge of the revenging sword. The sword of divine justice
reaches all that are without this shelter, toucheth none that are under
Christ's wings, but like a consuming fire devours every thing else. We can-
not perpetuate the war against him, but to our own sorrow ; one spark
of wrath will be enough to consume stubble ; death will put a period to all
treaties.
5. All other ways of reconcilement are insufficient. To pretend to any
other ways is an injury to divine wisdom, as though his contrivance were
not sufficient for the creature's restoration and support. Divine mercy will
clasp no man in its arms with a wrong to any one attribute, nor to the dis-
honour of Christ. It will therefore never receive any who denies Christ
and the efficacy of his priesthood. Men naturally are studious of making
God compensation, applauding themselves in their own inventions and
satisfactions of their own coining, unwilling to acquiesce in the wisdom and will
of God. Two great things God would advance in the world by his grace, is his
wisdom and authority ; these are the things men oppose, his wisdom by the
pride of reason, his authority by the perversity of will. But consider, do
we need reconciliation or no ? If we need it not, how came we friends
with God, since we were born enemies ? If we do need it, is it not safer to
enter into the terms God hath proposed, wherewith he is satisfied, than to
stand to our false, or, at best, but uncertain methods ? The safest way is
always the choice of wise men. Let us not be fools then in refusing the
gospel method, unless we can meet with anything that hath as fair a plea to
divine revelation. Had we all the angels on our side, and all the men on
earth to entreat for us, it would be ineffectual. God never was in them
reconciling the world ; this one mediator, whom God hath appointed, hath
done and can do that which neither men upon earth nor angels and saints
in heaven can do by their joint intercessions. Place^no confidence then in
your own humiliations, services, duties; God never was in those reconciling
any man ; all that is done without faith is but enmity, and that in the best
part, your minds, Rom. viii. Whatsoever fair colours they are painted with,
2 Cor. Y. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 495
they cannot please God. The Scripture settles an impossibility on the head
of all of them : Heb. xi. 6, ' Without faith it is impossible to please God,'
to gain or keep his favour. Were your righteousness of the highest eleva-
tion, it is but a creature, and therefore not the object of trust. Though
Adam, while he continued in his natural righteousness, might have entered
it as a plea, yet because mutable, it was no fit object of trust for him. But
since the fall all pleas of a fleshly corrupted righteousness are overruled in
the court of heaven. Absolute mercy, without faith in Christ, cannot save
you. As God could not, after the sanction of the law, in regard of his truth,
pardon the violations of it without a satisfaction, so since he hath settled
the way of reconciliation by faith in the blood of Christ, he cannot upon the
same score of his truth save any in a way of absolute mercy, especially
when that way which he hath appointed is refused. As it would be against
his truth, against his justice, so also against the honour of his obedient Son ;
for if he be at peace with one man by absolute mercy, why might he not
upon the same terms have reconciled others, and then what need of the
sufferings of his only Son to make up the breach ? If anything else there-
fore be chosen as the way of this peace, God at the hour of judgment may
remit us to our righteousness, services, carnal confidences, saying, Go to the
reconcilers that you have chosen, and see whether they can make your
peace, as he did to the Israelites: Judges x. 14, ' Go cry to the gods which
you have chosen ; let them deliver you ;' a dreadful, but a just speech.
6. God seeks it at our hands, and is willing to receive us. He is not only
a God in Christ reconciling the world, but he is a God in his ambassadors
entreating : ' As though God himself did beseech you by us,' ver. 20, after
the text. This is the tenor of his proclamation, ' Be you reconciled to God.'
If he had not desired it, he would not have spent so many thoughts about it,
and been at such expense to effect it. He was not bound to it ; for he
might have left Adam to sink into the death he had merited, without expos-
ing his Son to a death he had not deserved, and contracted a necessity of,
only as our surety ; he was no more bound to seek out Adam and make him
a promise of redemption than he was bound to make him a creature. He
might have raised a new world, and have filled it with new inhabitants. It
must be something of a vast concernment to us, that God hath been so busy
about, and so desirous of our acceptance of. Doth God seek to us to receive
wealth and worldly honours ? No. This therefore must be a thing of higher
value. A God seeks to us, who is infinitely more glorious than we are
vile ; a God who never did us the least wrong, but hath borne with many
injuries from us ; a God who could as easily send us into hell with his
breath, as breathe out a kind invitation to us ; a God who needs our friend-
ship no more than he fears our enmity ; a God no more benefited by it than
the sun by darting a beam upon a grain of sand. Sure that soul never was
sensible of the misery his war with God hath sunk him into, who refuseth to
receive the peace he offers, nor can without an unconceivable shame look
God in the face at the last day, after so notorious a rejecting an entreating
God. He seeks it this day, perhaps he will not seek it at our hands to-mor-
row. There is ' a day ' wherein we may ' know the things that concern our
peace,' Luke xix. 41. When the day is over, peace will not return. There is a
day wherein he will pour out his wrath upon the unbelieving world. While he
is yet a great way off, and his thunders at a distance, he sends an ' embassy of
peace,' Luke xiv. 33. He yet seeks to his sworn enemies, and those that
were in league with Satan : You may be in league with me, I have not yet
shut the door. Listen, do you not hear God's voice in the gospel? He
shuts out none that do not shut out themselves. What a guilt will the
496 chabnock's wokks.' [2 Cob. V. 18, 19.
refusal amount to, when we are to answer for not only the first publication,
but repeated offers ? Besides, he is willing to receive us into favour, more
willing to embrace us than we to receive him. The eternal motions in his
heart which gave birth to this gracious design, are of the same force and
strength still ; he can never forget them. As tbe remembrance of the years
of the right band of tbe Most High is our comfort in times of trouble, so
God's remembrance of the years of his own right hand, the workings of his
own heart, hath tbe like force to excite him to a reception of us, as they bad
to commission Christ for us. He never broke his word ; and less will he
do it at the upshot of all, when his people are almost gathered, the world
near its period, and the proclamation of the gospel ready to be taken down
and folded up for ever ; he will not at the end be worse than he hath been
all along. Let us be as willing to be at peace with him as he is to be at
peace with us. God sets us a pattern, he seeks to us, it is an imitation of God
to seek to him.
2. Exhortation. Is God in Christ reconciling the world ? i Then we must
be at enmity with sin. God was in Christ reconciling sinners, not sin.
God and sin are irreconcileable enemies, so that where there is a peace with
one, there must be a war with the other. Fire and water may sooner agree
than God and sin, than a peace with God and a psace with sin. The traitor
may be reconciled to the prince, and the treason as hateful to him as before.
This is the best evidence to any that he is actually reconciled, when he hates
that which made the first separation. Christ expiated sin, not encouraged
it; he died to make your peace, but he died to make you holy: Titus ii. 14,
' To purify a people to himself.' The design of God in the manifestation of
Christ in the flesh, wras ' to destroy the works of the devil,' 1 John iii. 8.
The chief work of the devil was to enter man in a league with himself and
rebellion against God. God aimed at the death of our sins, when he aimed at
the life of our souls. The ends of Christ's death cannot be separated ; he is
no atoner, where he is not a refiner. It is as certain as any word the mouth
of God hath spoken, that ' there is no peace to the wicked.' A bespotted
conscience, and an impure, will keep up the amity with Satan, and enmity
with God. He that allows himself in any sin, deprives himself of the benefit
of reconciliation. This reconciliation must be mutual ; as God lays down
his wrath against us, so we must throw down our arms against him. As
there was a double enmity, one rooted in nature, another declared by wicked
works ; or rather, one enmity in its root, and another in its exercise, Col.
i. 21; so there must be an alteration of state, and an alteration of acts.
The end of Christ's death was to reconcile God to us, and bring us back to
God. We are not therefore linked in a peace with him, unless we be trans-
formed into the image of his Son. How can we expect to be taken into the
bosom of God, when we every day wilfully defile our souls ! Can familiarity
with God be kept up, when daily bars are laid in the way ? Why was God
in Christ reconciling the world? Because he was a holy as well as a
gracious God ; and to shew his detestation of sin, as well as his affection to
the creature. Shall this encourage any practice against the holiness of God ?
God is of as pure eyes, and can as little endure to behold iniquity, since the
reconciliation, as before. God was sanctified in Christ when he was recon-
ciling the world in him, and he will be sanctified in us if we have interest in
this reconciliation. All God's acts about Christ are the highest obligation
to be at enmity with that, for which the Son of God was appointed, and
made a sacrifice ; to receive encouragement from hence to sin more freely,
is to act Judas his part with God's grace, and betray it to serve our lusts.
Be afraid therefore to offend God, not so much because of his power to hurt
2 Cob. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 497
you, as because of his love whereby he hath obliged you. The peace was
broken by the disobedience of Adam ; it was restored by the obedience of
Christ. But onr obedience is necessary to the joyful fruits of it. ' Great
peace have they which love thy law,' Ps. cxix. 165.
3. Be industrious and affectionate in the service of God. Hath God
been in Christ reconciling the world, manifesting his desire for it and affec-
tion to it by such various acts, and shall we put God off with a little service,
who hath not put us off with a scanty grace ? God hath done his utmost to
engage our affection and encourage us in the choicest services : there could
not be an higher way to procure it and deserve it of us. The view of the
creatures, and God's goodness in them, raises a common love to God in the
more ingenious natural minds. To what heights should our love ascend,
who have such steps to mount by ? A weak love is less than is due to him
who hath discovered such an immensity to us. Shall we return not a drop,
or but a drop, for an ocean ? How much should we think ourselves obliged
to a prince who should but stop a torrent of legal penalties deserved by us ?
God hath done this and more. How should we combine all our thoughts
and affections together to serve that God acceptably, who hath made all his
thoughts conspire to reduce us honourably and successfully ? ' I am the
Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage,' is the preface to the Decalogue, as an incitement of them
to a choice respect to all his precepts. ' I am the God reconciling you in
Christ,' is the tenor of the gospel, and much more an incitement to service,
by how much the deliverance in the antitype exceeds that in the type ; this
being spiritual and eternal, that temporal. If you are actually reconciled,
serve God as your friend. As God hath given you an higher state, give him
a greater honour. Do all things out of love to God as reconciled, without
any base ends and sordid designs. God had no other end in being the
author of peace but his own glory and your good ; have then no other end
but God's glory in your own welfare, advancing further to him and enjoying
his reconciled favour. Serve him with a delight in him ; a dull, slavish
spirit becomes not any in his approach to so hearty a friend. Every duty
should be performed with a triumph and glory in the God of salvation :
Hab. iii. 18, ' I will joy in the God of my salvation.' God would then
delight in us ; next to the delight he hath in his reconciling Son, he hath the
choicest delight in his reconciled servants, and services springing up from a
sense of his love to them.
4. Let all our approaches to God be begun and attended with a sense of
this. God in all his communications to his people acted as a reconciled
God ; we should eye him so in all our approaches to him. As there is not
one mercy, one act of grace, God shews to us, but springs from this restored
affection, so not any duty we offer up to God but should rise from a sense
of it. Whatsoever is not by and through Christ, is not accepted as a duty.
This consideration before all addresses would animate them with all those
graces necessary to be acted in them. It would make us humble to consider
what we were, and how freely God reduced us. It would make us believing
with an holy boldness. What despondency can there be, when God hath
given so many tokens of his heartiness in it ? It would make us earnest ;
it would be a fetching fire from heaven for the inflaming our souls. Earnest-
ness is grounded upon hope ; what greater foundation for hope than the
consideration that this was God's sole act ? Think before every duty of the
great love God bears to Christ as mediator, greater than to all men and
angels ; this will be a ground of confidence. For the love of God to Christ
vol. in. i i
498 chaiwock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
as mediator, was with respect to all that believe in him. Think much of
the virtue of Christ's death, wherewith he sprinkled the throne of God, and
turned the seat of justice into a throne of grace. It is the best way to
receive answers ; by pleading this, we mind God of all his engagements.
Every act about Christ is an argument fit to be used in prayer. God will
never deny his own acts, nor the ends of them, which was to make a way
for communicating himself to his creatures. God is only in Christ enter-
taining us, as well as reconciling us. Let us not lift up an eye to him
without faith in him as a God in Christ, and carry this atoning blood in the
hands of faith, in every act of communion with him.
5. Look for grace and spiritual strength from God in Christ. The con-
duct of mercy and grace is unstopped by Christ, to flow freely down to man.
This is the foundation of the regeneration of any soul s 2 Cor. v. 17, 18,
1 All things are become new, and all things are of God, who hath reconciled
us to himself by Jesus Christ.' Having spoken of the new creation, ver. 17,
he lays down the true cause, God ; the foundation, the reconciliation by
Christ. All things are of God, all the powerful effects and operations of the
gospel in the hearts of men are from God as a reconciler by Christ, not
from God as creator. The deep meditation of and closing with the pro-
mise of God in and through Christ, brings grace into the heart, not a
consideration of God's precepts, but of God's promises. The application
of the reconciling love of God in Christ by faith, is attended with a powerful
benediction of the Spirit, pulling up the foundations of the enmity on our
parts ; the Spirit is received by the preaching of the gospel, the meditations
of the gospel, the applications of the gospel ; the Spirit is conveyed with
those, not with the precepts of the law, Gal. iii. 5. Men begin at the
wrong end, they would rise from obedience to faith, and deal with God as if
he were to be appeased and satisfied by them. But begin at faith, a firm
assent, a full consent to the gospel and the offers of redemption, and go
down, by virtue of that, to obedience ; it is by casting ourselves upon God
in Christ that we receive vigour for all spiritual obedience. The spirit of
holiness is the principle whereby we obey, not the effects of our obedience.
Christ is first redemption, then sanctification ; God a God of peace, and
then a God of grace. We should look upon God as a God of peace, and
under that title implore him for increase of habitual grace. As a God of
peace, he ' works in us that" which is well-pleasing in his sight,' Heb. xiii.
20, 21. Our sanctification depends upon our justification. God promised to
be as a dew to his people under the gospel, Hosea iv. 5. Dew descends
from a clear sky, and grace from a reconciled God. As God in Adam had
conveyed a natural righteousness to his posterity, had Adam stood, so God
in Christ only conveys a spiritual righteousness to Christ's spiritual offspring.
6. When any rising of enmity is in the soul, go to God in Christ. As
God was in Christ reconciling the world, so he is in Christ reconciling a
soul after the readmission of guilt through temptation ; not that the guilt of
the whole mass of sins of a believer returns upon his fall, but a particular
guilt of that sin he hath committed lies upon him, for which he must have
a fresh application of reconciling mercy. He must go to God in Christ for
this ; as the first application was made in and through Christ, so must the
second and third, as often as we need it, even in our daily pardons. Christ
sits an officer in heaven to this purpose, and God hath constituted him an
officer to this end, and is in him in his intercession accepting it, as well as
in his first satisfaction. The Corinthians the apostle writes to, some of
them at least, were reconciled, yet he beseecheth them to be reconciled to
God, i. e. renew their reconciliation upon every new breach, and regain the
2 Cob. V. 18, 19.] god the author of reconciliation. 490
favour of God which they had forfeited by their sins, for which he had
reproved them in the former epistle. This must be sued out every day.
What was the foundation of the first peace is the foundation of the renewals
of it ; the same course you took at the first, will be successful for the second.
God was not out of Cbrist in the first, and he will not be out of Christ when-
ever there is any need. As God was willing and desirous to make recon-
ciliation by the blood of Christ, when all your sins lay before him with their
crimson aggravations, much more will he renew it upon a particular fall.
But he may hide his face till you sue out a pardon upon his own proclama-
tion and contrivance ; and if it be a presumptuous sin, he may deny you the
comfort of this peace a long time, perhaps as long as you live. Let not any
presume upon this, for it belongs not to any man that lives in a course of
known sin, which is inconsistent with a reconciled state.
7. How contented should those that are reconciled be in every condition !
The peace of God should bear rule in our hearts, to compose them upon any
emergency: Col. iii. 15, this will 'keep the heart and mind' from solicit-
ousness, Philip, iv. 6, 7, this will make us despise the promises of the world
alluring us, and the threatenings of the world to scare us. This peace should
be the guard of our souls, and will render us happy when the world may
account us most miserable, and therefore should render us contented. If
you would not have the riches and honours of the world without it, you may
well bear the scorns and reproaches of the world with it. The world could not
secure you, if you had a war with God, nor defend you from the arrows of
his wrath. But since you have peace with God, you are mounted above the
enmities of the world, and your spirits should be guarded by it from any
tumultuous passions. If the wrath of God be ceased towards us, we may
well bear the strokes of a Father, since we are not like to feel his sword as
a Judge. How cheerfully may we kiss the afflicting hand of God, when he
is at peace with us ! Look upon all your mercies too (though they are of a
meaner bulk outwardly than others), as flowing from this fountain, which
may make you not only contented with them, but highly value them. It
gives a sweeter relish to mercy than Adam could have ; he had the good-
ness of God, but not the goodness of a reconciled Father, while he was in
innocence. If this makes heaven the sweeter, it should make mercies here
more savoury.
8. Let us then be reconcilable to others. Not only where we offer, but
rom whom we receive an injury. God's reconciliation should be our rule
in dealing with others. Hard hearts and uncharitable dispositions are unlike
to God, who had a heart full of tenderness to them, who will not part with
a grain of their right to their brethren, when God parted with his Son to
work their peace with him ; and had he not been more forward in it than
they, they had perished for ever. God sets his own actions to us as a
pattern of ours to others : Luke vi. -36, ' Be ye therefore merciful, as your
Father also is merciful;' if we are irreconcilable to others, we are not imita-
tors of God, but reject the noblest pattern, and discover no sense of the
kindness of God to us. Since God hath made Christ a propitiation for sin,
the apostle makes this inference, that ' if God so loved us, we ought also to
love one another,' 1 John iv. 10, 11. Did God send his Son out of his
bosom, and veil his glory, to be at peace with us, and entreat us to accept his
favour, and shall we be upon every occasion at sword's point with our
brother ? Such a disposition is against the whole tenor of the gospel, and
a keeping up a wolfish and brutish nature against the design of the gospel
administration, Isa. xi. 0. Christ came to slay the enmity between God and
us, between Jew and Gentile; it is a crossing the design of God, to preserve
500 charnock's works. [2 Cor. V. 18, 19.
enmity between Christian and Christian; it is to keep up the partition wall,
and frustrate (what in us lies) the end of Christ's death, which was to demolish
it. The peace God wrought was a matter of grace, the peace we owe to our
brother is a matter of debt ; it is due to the command of God. God first
laid the scene of our reconciliation, not assisted by the counsels of others ;
not sought to by ourselves, but seeking us. Our doing the like to others is
an imitation of God, whereas to be implacable in revenge is to partake of the
devil's nature.
9. Glorify God for this. Since God sends out such a blessing to us, we
should send out loud prayers to him.* Heaven smiles upon earth, and
earth should bless heaven. Glorify God as the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Though we have all immediately from Christ, yet Christ hath all
from the Father. He is the propitiation for our sins, but he was appointed
by the Father. He came to redeem, but he was sent by God upon that
errand. He paid our debts as a surety, but he was accepted by God. He
was a mediator to bring us to God, but he was commissioned by God to
that end. What a love did God retain to his creatures, though he abomi-
nated their sins, and in the midst of his indignation against their iniquities
had bowels for their persons ! How did God forecast for us, when we were
' prisoners in the pit wherein was no water,' Zech. ix. 11, the captives of the
mighty, and the prey of the terrible ! Isa. xlix. 25. When the law of God
was against us, and his truth taking part with his law, his wisdom and
mercy found a way to preserve his truth, and satisfy the curses of the law,
that we might enjoy the blessings of the gospel, when we could not in the
least deserve it, unless peevishness and perversity, treachery and disloyalty,
weakness and wilfulness could pass for. allurements ; we had then been
unconceivable meriters. Such free and full compassion deserves our thank-
fulness, though we could not merit his grace. It is not a contracted, half-
made, or oppressive peace, it is an extensive, tender, and abundant peace,
like a river and a flowing stream, a peace whereby we are borne in his
bosom, Isa. lxvi. 12. How should we adore the depth of that wisdom
which found a refuge for us, when heaven and earth were at war with us ;
adore his goodness, that when we were no sooner born, but we were the
objects of a cursing law, the scom of a malicious devil, our Jesus should be
sent to pacify the law, and shame the devil our enemy ! Angels glorify him
for this peace ; should we be outstripped by beings less concerned in it ?
God- is only praised in and through Christ ; God and Christ are joined
together in the saints' praise : Rev. v. 13, • Blessing, honour, glory, and
power be unto him that sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and
ever;' and so they should be in ours. How beautiful will this whole work
appear, when the whole methods of it come to be read in heaven in the
original copy, when they shall be seen in the face, in the bosom of God,
in fair and plainer characters ! To conclude. If all the sparks that ever
leapt out of any fire since the creation, and all the drops of rain that have
fell upon the world, were so many angelical tongues, their praise would
come short of the excess of this love. Let the praise of God for this, be
not the business of a day, but the work of our lives, since eternity is too
short to admire it.
* Duille.
A DISCOURSE OF THE CLEANSING VIRTUE
OF CHRIST'S RLOOD.
And the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. —
1 John I. 7.
The apostle, in the beginning of the chapter, puts the saints to whom he
writes in mind of the Gospel he had writ, wherein he had declared to them
that Word of life which had been with the Father, and was manifested to the
world, arid which he now declares again, that they might have a fellowship
with the apostles in the truth, and not with the false teachers in their errors ;
and for an incentive, assures them that the fellowship of those that kept the
truth as it is in Jesus was with the Father and with the Son : ver. 3, ' That
which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that you also may have
fellowship with us ; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his
Son, Jesus Christ : ' with the Father, as the source and spring of eternal
life and happiness ; with the Son, as mediator, who hath opened the way to
us, removed the bars, and given us an access to and a communion with the
Father. For by sin we were alienated from God, our sin had caused justice
to lock up the gates of paradise, and forbid such guilty and polluted offenders
to approach to the pure majesty of God. The apostle, to encourage them
to cleave to the gospel, proposeth to them a fellowship with God by the
means of Jesus Christ, his Son and our Mediator, as the chief happiness and
felicity of man, and that which can only afford them a full and complete joy.
And afterwards, ver. 5, ' This then is the message which we have heard of
him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him there is no darkness
at all ; ' he prescribes to them the means whereby they may keep up a
communion with God, which he infers from the transcendent excellency of
the divine nature, who is light : light, in regard of the clearness of his know-
ledge ; light, in regard of his unstained purity, not tainted with the least
spot or dust of evil, not having anything unworthy in his nature, nor doing
anything unbecoming in his actions. If, therefore, our conversations be in
darkness, if we wallow in the mire of any untamed, unmortified lust, what-
soever our evangelical professions may be, or howsoever we may fancy our-
selves entered into a fellowship with the Father by the means of the mediator,
it is but a lying imagination ; for how can there be a communion between
two natures so different, between light and darkness, purity and impurity,
heaven and hell, God and the devil ? But if our conversation be agreeable
502 chaenock's works. [1 John I. 7.
to gospel precepts, we have then a fellowship with him : ver. 7, ' If we walk
in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another,' i.e.
God bath a fellowship with us in affection and delight, and we have a fellow-
ship with Gad in salvation and happiness ; God gives himself to us, and we
give ourselves to God. He bestows grace and pardon on us, and we resign
up our hearts and affections to him. And this is a certain proof that we
are interested in the expiatory virtue of the blood of Christ. Or else those
latter words may be a prevention of an objection which might result from
the apprehension of the relics of corruption in the best man in this life.
Since God is infinitely pure light, without darkness, and we have so much
darkness mixed wTith our best light, we must for ever despair of having any
fellowship with God ; the infinite distance, by reason of our indwelling cor-
ruption, will put us out of all hopes of ever attaining such a sovereign
felicity. But this reply is preveuted by this clause of the apostle : ' And
the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin.' Let not the
sense of your daily infirmities animate any desponding fears. If you square
your hearts and lives in all sincerity according to the gospel rule, there is a
provision made for your security in the blood of Christ. God will wipe off
the guilt of your defects by the virtue of that precious blood which hath been
shed for your reparation. The apostle here supposeth remainders of sin in
those that have the privilege of walking with God, and interest in the bless-
ings of the covenant.
The blood of Jesus Christ. By this is meant the last act in the tragedy of
his life, his blood being the ransom of our souls, the price of our redemption,
and the expiation of our sin. The shedding his blood was the highest and
most excellent part of his obedience, Philip, ii. 8. His whole life was a
continual suffering, but his death was the top and complement of his obedi-
ence, lor in that he manifested the greatest love to God and the highest
charity to man. The expiatory sacrifices under the law were always bloody,
death was to be endured for sin, and blood was the life of the creature ; the
blood or death of Christ is the cause of our justification.
His Son. His sonship makes his blood valuable. It is blood, and so
agreeable to the law in the penalty ; it is the blood of the Son of God, and
therefore acceptable to the lawgiver in its value. Though it was the blood
of the humanity, yet the merit of it was derived from the divinity. It is not
his blood as he was the son of the virgin, but his blood as he was the Son
of God, which had this sovereign virtue. It is no wonder, therefore, that it
should have such a mighty efficacy to cleanse the believers in it, in all ages
of the world, from such vast heaps of guilt, since it is the blood of Christ,
who was God ; and valuable, not so much for the greatness of the punish-
ment whereby it was shed, as the dignity of the person from whom it flowed.
One Son of God weighs more than millions of worlds of angels.
Cleanseth. Cleansing and purging are terms used in Scripture for justify-
ing as well as sanctifying. The apostle interprets washing of both those
acts : 1 Cor. vi. 11, ' But you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you
are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.'
The latter words are exegetical of the former ; they both are the fruits of the
merit of the blood of Christ. The one is the act of the Father as a judge
appeased by that blood, the other the act of the Spirit as a sanctifier pur-
chased by that blood. And so the ' washing of us in the blood of Christ,'
spoken of Rev. i. 5, is to be understood of justification. Sanctification is
expressed, ver. 6, by ' making us kings and priests to God,' giving us royal
and holy natures, to offer up spiritual sacrifices unto God ; and several times
the word 1M, which signifies to expiate, appease, is translated to sanctify,
1 JOHX I. 7.] THE CLEANSING VIRTUE OF CHRIST'S BLOOD. 503
Exod. xxix. 33, 36, and to cleanse, ver. 37 ; and a word that signifies
cleansing is sometimes put for justifjdng, as in the third commandment,
Exod. xx. 7, ' The Lord will not hold him guiltless that takes his name in
vain,' np)'' iO, will not cleanse or purge them. But it must be understood
of cleansing from guilt, because it refers to the penalty of the law. It is
here used in this sense ; it is spoken to them that are sanctified and have a
fellowship with God, that if they walk in the light, God will impute to them
the blood of his Son for their absolution from the guilt of all their infirmities.
The blood of Christ cleanseth.
1. It hath a virtue to cleanse. It doth not actually cleanse all, but only
those that believe. Nor doth it cleanse them from new sins, but upon
renewed acts of faith. There is a sufficiency in it to cleanse all, and thorn
is an efficacy in it to cleanse those that have recourse to it. As when we
say a medicine purgeth such a humour, we understand it of the virtue and
quality of the medicine, not that it purgeth unless it be taken in, or other-
wise applied to the distempered person.
2. The blood of Christ cleanseth, not hath cleansed, or shall cleanse. This
notes a continued act. There is a perpetual pleading of it for us, a continual
flowing of it to us. It is a 'fountain set open for sin,' Zech. xiii. 1. There
is a constant streaming of virtue from this blood, as there is of corruption
from our nature. It was shed but once, it is applied often, and the virtue
of it is as durable as the person whose blood it is.
3. The blood of Christ cleanseth. The apostle joins nothing with this
blood. It hath the sole and the sovereign virtue. There is no need of
tainted merits, unbloody sacrifices, and terrifying purgatories. The whole
of cleansing is ascribed to this blood, not anything to our own righteousness
or works. It admits no partner with it, not the blood of martyrs nor the
intercessions of saints.
4. The blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin. It is an universal
remedy. Whatsoever hath the nature of sin, sins against the law and sins
against the gospel. It absolves from the guilt of sin, and shelters from the
wrath of God. The distinction of venial and mortal sins hath no footing
here ; no sin but is mortal without it, no sin so venial but needs it. This
blood purgeth not some sort of sins, and leaves the rest to be expiated by a
purgatory fire. This expression of the apostle, of all sin, is water enough
to quench all the flames of purgatory that Rome hath kindled ; what sins are
not expiated by it are left not to a temporary, but an eternal death ; not to a
refining, but a consuming fire. So that we see these words are an antidote
against fears arising by reason of our infirmities, a cordial against faintings,
an encouragement to a holy walk with God. It is a short but a full pane-
gyric of the virtue of the blood of Christ.
1. In regard of the effect, cleansing.
2. In regard of the cause of its efficacy. It is the blood of Jesus, a sa-
viour ; the blood of Christ, one appointed, anointed by God to be a Jesus ;
the blood of the Son of God, of one in a special relation to the Father, as
his only begotten, beloved Son.
3. In regard of the extensiveness of it, all sin. No guilt so high but it
can master, no stain so deep but it can purge jjbeing the blood of the Son of
God, and therefore of infinite virtue, it hath as much force to demolish
mountains of guilt as level mole-hills of iniquity.
The words are a plain doctrine in themselves :
Doct. The blood of Christ hath a perpetual virtue, and doth actually and
perfectly cleanse believers from all guilt. This blood is the expiation of
our sin and the unlocking our chains, the price of our liberty and of the purity
504 charnock's works. [1 John I. 7.
of our souls. The redemption we have through it is expressly called the
forgiveness of sin, — Eph. i. 7, ' In whom we have redemption through his
blood, the forgiveness of sin,' — by a metonymy of the effect for the cause;
remission was an act of redemption. When the apostle, Heb. x. 14, tells,
1 That by one offering he hatb for ever perfected them that are sanctified,'
he placeth this perfection in the remission of sin, ver. 17, 18.* He did in
the offering himself so transact our affairs, and settle our concerns with God,
that there was no need of any other offerings to eke it out or patch it up.
As the blood of the typical sacrifices purified from ceremonial, so the blood
of the anti- typical offering purifies from moral uncleanness. The Scripture
places remission wholly in this blood of the Redeemer. When Christ makes
his will and institutes his supper, he commends this as our righteousness):
Mat. xxvi. 28, ' This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for
many for the remission of sins,' according to the title and end given it in the
prophet, Zech. ix. 11. By this blood of the covenant the prisoners are
delivered from the pit of corruption, wherein there was no water ; no water
to quench our thirst, no water to cleanse our souls, but mud and mire to
defile them. This was the design of his death, as himself speaks : Luke
xxiv. 46, 47, ' That repentance and remission of sins should be preached in
his name amongst all nations.' And Peter, in his discourse at Cornelius
his house, compriseth in this the intent of the whole Scripture : ' To him
give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believes in
him shall receive remission of sins,' Acts x. 43. As this was the justifying
blood in the time of the prophets, so it will be the justifying blood to the
end of the world. By this blood only the robes of any are made white,
Rev. vii. 14 ; by this blood the accuser of the brethren is overcome and cast in
his suit, Rev. xii. 10, 11. The maintaining of justification by this blood seems
to be the great contest between the true church and the anti-christian state.
(1.) The blood of Christ is to be considered morally in this act. The
natural end of blood in the veins is a reparation of the substance of the body
by a conversion of the blood into it. And the proper use of blood is not to
cleanse, for it defiles and bespots anything whereon it is dropped ; but
morally considered, as the shedding of blood implies loss of life and punish-
ment for a crime, so blood is an expiation of the crime, and a satisfaction to
the law for the offence committed against it. As the shedding innocent
blood doth morally pollute a land, so the shedding the blood of the male-
factor and murderer doth morally cleanse a land : Numb. xxxv. 33, ' Blood
defiles the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed
therein but by the blood of him that shed it.' Had not this blood of Christ
been shed, our sins had not been pardoned, our souls had not been secured,
our chains had continued, and our terrors had been increased ; the strokes
of justice had been felt, and the face of mercy had been veiled ; we had
wholly been the vassals of the one, and foreigners to the other.
(2.) The cleansing is to be doubly considered. There is a cleansing from
guilt, and a cleansing from filth; both are the fruits of this blood : the guilt
is removed by remission, the filth by purification. Christ doth both : he
cleanseth us from our guilt as he is our righteousness, from our spot as he
is our sanctification ; for he is both to us, 1 Cor. i. 30, the one upon the
account of his merit, the other by his efficacy, which he exerts by his Spirit.
The proper intendment of the blood of Christ was to take off the curse of
the law, and free us from our guilt ; the washing off our stains is the proper
work of the Spirit, upon that account signified to us by water in the pro-
phets. The blood and water flowing from the side of Christ upon the cross
* Illyricus de Justificat. p. 179.
1 John I. 7.] the cleansing virtue of cheist's blood. 505
were distinct, John xix. 34, 35, as appears by the great seriousness where-
with John affirms the relation : ' He that saw it bare record, and his record
is true, and he knows that he saith true.' These two liquors flowed from
his side distinctly, and do not mingle in their streams ; and this seems to
be so disposed by the providence of God, to signify that from the death of
Christ there flow two sorts of benefits of a different nature, and which ought
to be differently considered ; viz., sanctification, represented by water
destined to washing ; and justification, which ariseth from satisfaction,
represented by the blood shed for remission of sin. These both spring up
from the death of Christ, yet they belong to two distinct offices of Christ.
He justifies us as a surety, a sacrifice by suffering, as a priest by merit; but
he sanctifices us as a king, by sending his Spirit to work efficaciously in our
hearts. When we consider the blood of Christ, we consider Christ as a
sacrifice ; and sacrifices were called purifications, xaddt/Aara, not in regard
of washing away the filth, but expiating the guilt of sin ; yet indeed the
justifying virtue of this blood is never exerted without a sanctifying virtue
accompanying it. As blood and water flowed out of the side of Christ to-
gether, so blood and water flow into the heart of a sinner together. The
typical blood of the covenant, when sprinkled by Moses upon the book and
people, was mixed with water, Heb. ix. 19, 20, to signify that holiness,
signified by water, accompanies the application of propitiation, signified by
blood. All the force of sin consisted in condemnation, to which it had sub-
jected men as it was a transgression of the law, and in conjunction there-
with it had defiled the soul as it was loathsome and filthy. Now Christ shed
his blood to make an expiation of sin, and sent his Spirit to make a destruc-
tion of sin. By virtue of his death there is no condemnation for sin, Rom.
viii. ^ 3 ; by virtue of the grace of his Spirit there is no dominion of sin.
Rom. vi. 4, 14.
(3.) This cleansing from guilt may be considered as meritorious or appli-
cative. As the blood of Christ was offered to God, this purification was
meritoriously wrought ; as particularly pleaded for a person, it is actually
wrought ; as sprinkled upon the conscience, it is sensibly wrought. The
first merits the removal of guilt, the second solicits it, the third ensures it ;
the one was wrought upon the cross, the other is acted upon his throne, and
the third pronounced in the conscience. The first is expressed, Rom.
iii. 25, his blood rendered God propitious ; the second, Heb. ix. 12, as he
is entered into the holy of holies ; the third, Heb. ix. 14, Christ justifies
as a sacrifice in a way of merit ; and when this is pleaded, God justifies
as a judge in a way of authority. Christ laid the foundation of a discharge
from all guilt upon the cross, and procures an actual discharge upon the
first look of a sincere faith towards him ; and when this blood is sprinkled
upon the conscience, it ' purgeth it from dead works,' Heb, ix. 14, from the
guilt of death we contracted by sinful works, and from the sentence of death
which the law pronounced by reason of those works, that thereby we may
have a liberty to appear before God, and be fit to serve him. The sprink-
ling the tabernacle and the vessels of the sanctuary, and the person officiat-
ing in it, was the applying of the propitiation made by the sacrifice to those
things for the special consecration of them unto God. No blood was
sprinkled but the blood of the victim, solemnly offered unto God upon the
altar, according to his own appointment ; no blood applied to the conscience
can cleanse it but the blood of this great sacrifice, which is peculiarly called
* the blood of sprinkling,' as it is the blood of the covenant, Heb. xii. 24.
The virtue of it conveyed as sprinkled is from the propitiation it made as
ished. A not guilty is entered into the court of God when this blood is
506 charnock's works. [1 John I. 7.
pleaded, and a vot guilty inscribed upon the roll of conscience when this
Mood is sprinkled. It appeaseth God's justice and quencheth wrath. As
it is pleaded before his tribunal, it silenceth the accusations of sin ; and
quells tumults in a wrangling conscience, as it is sprinkled upon the souk
2. The evidence of this truth well appears ; —
(1.) From the credit it had for the expiation and cleansing of guilt, before
it was actually shed, and the reliance of believers in all ages on it. The
blood of Christ was applied from the foundation of the world, though it was
not shed till the fulness of time. They had the benefit of the promise of
redemption before the accomplishment of the sacrifice for redemption. The
cleansing we have now is upon the account of the blood of Christ already
shed ; the cleansing they had then was upon the account of the blood of
Christ in time to be shed : the one respects it as past, the other as future.
We must distinguish the virtue from the work of redemption.* The work
was appointed in a certain time, but the virtue was not restrained to a
certain time, but was communicated to believers from the foundation of the
world, as well as extended to the last ages of the world.
Several considerations will clear this.
[l.J The Scripture speaks but of one person designed for this great work.
John Baptist speaks of ' the Lamb of God,' pointing to one lamb appointed
to ' take away the sins of the world,' John i. 29. The world is to be under-
stood xgovixug, for all ages, all times of the world ; as the same is meant,
1 John ii. 2, ' He is a propitiation for our sins : and not for ours only, but
also for the sins of the whole world ;' and he, and only he, is the propitia-
tion, by once offering of himself. Not for the sins of us only that live in the
dregs of time, and the declining age of the world, but of those that went
before in all ages of the world, from its youth till his appearance m the
flesh and expiring upon the cross. Christ is said to be the one mediator, in
the same sense that God is said to be the one God : 1 Tim. ii. 5, ' For
there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ
Jesus.' As there is but one creator of man, so there is but one mediator
for men. As God is the God of all that died before Christ came, as well as
of those that lived after, so Christ is the mediator of all that died before his
coming, as well as of those that saw his day. They had Christ for their
mediator, or some other ; some other they could not have, because there is
but one. They might as well have had another creator besides God, as
another mediator besides the man Christ Jesus. In regard of the antiquity
of his mediation from the foundation of the world, he is represented, when
he walks as mediator in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, with
' hair as white as wool,' a character of age, Rev. i. 14. As God is described
so in regard of his eternity, Dan. vii. 9. There is but one God from
eternity, but one mediator, whose mediation hath the same date as the
foundation of the world, and runs parallel with it ; but one captain of sal-
vation also for many sons, Heb. ii. 10, that were brought to glory. All
that were brought to glory were brought into that happy state by this cap-
tain of salvation, as made perfect by sufferings ; so that either none were
brought to glory before the sufferings of Christ, which is not true, or they
were brought to glory by virtue of the sufferings of that captain of salvation.
If that one captain were not a perfect head of salvation but by shedding his
blood, then those that were under his conduct from the beginning of the
world could not be perfect, but upon the account of his passion. For they
had no perfection but in and by their head ; the same way that he was justi-
fied for them, they were justified by him.
* Zanc. torn, vii. part i p. 236.
1 John I. 7. J the cleansing virtue of Christ's blood. 507
[2.] This one mediator was set forth ever since the fall of man as the
foundation of pardon and recovery. The covenant of grace commencing
from the time of the fall of man, the virtue of this blood, which is the blood
of the covenant, bore the same date ; and, indeed, the blood of the Re-
deemer, as the way of procuring restoration, was signified in that first
promise, which was the first dawning of the covenant of grace after that
black night of obscurity the revolt of man had drawn upon the world, G-en.
iii. 15. The recovery of man from that gulf of misery the head or subtle
brains of the serpent had cast them into, is promised there to be by a man
(for that must be signified by the seed of the woman), and some great
and worthy person able for so great an undertaking, and to be effected by
suffering, intimated by bruising his heel, which could not be without some-
thing of blood in the case. Satan would not cease, but express his enmity
against the dissolver of his works, and the deliverer of his captives. It must
also signify a deliverance from that which he was reduced to by the subtilty
of the serpent, and that was sin and destruction. It could not be meant of
a freedom from a bodily death, because this promise being made before the
pronouncing the sentence of a bodily death, which was not till ver. 19, was a
bar to any such thought, for it had been a mockery, a falsity in G-od to pro-
mise Adam a redemption for that, and afterward overturn his promise by
threatening that which he had promised before to redeem him from. This
bruise, therefore, that the seed of the woman was to receive from the devil,
at what time soever it should be inflicted, was to extend in the virtue of it
to Adam, and his believing posterity that should come upon and go off the
stage of the world before the revolution of that time wherein it was to be
transacted ; otherwise, the making of this promise to him, which should not
distill any gracious dews upon him, had been to feed him with mere smoke,
a thing unbecoming the Creator of the world. Besides, it was declared in
types and figures. As the ceremonial uncleanness, which the legal sacrifices
were appointed to purge, was an image of the moral impurity which needed
expiation, so the blood of beasts, shed for the cleansing of it, was a shadow
of that blood which was designed in the fulness of time for the expiation of
the other. Nay, there were not only types of it, but plain prophecies con-
cerning it. The righteousness whereby all believers are justified is witnessed
in the whole current of Scripture, both by the law and the prophets, to be
without the works of the law: ' Even that righteousness of God, which is by
faith of Jesus Christ,' Rom. iii. 21, 22. And therefore when there was a
conference between Moses and Elias on the one part, and Christ on the
other, the subject of it is not anything but that of his decease, Luke ix. 31 :
the declaration of that being the chief intent of the types of the law, in-
stituted by the ministry of Moses ; and of the prophets, whereof Elias was
the chief, though not in the publishing of the mediator, yet in the peculiar
mark of the favour of G-od in his translation to heaven. But Isaiah is the
plainest and most illustrious in the proclamations of the coming, the design
and methods of the Redeemer.* And particularly the pardon of sin by
virtue of his suffering is discovered : Isa. xliii. 24, 25, ' Thou hast made
me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities.' Then
it follows, ' I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgression for my own
sake.' Christ is said to serve with their sins; and Isa. liii. is a comment
upon this, shewing what kind of servitude it was that the Redeemer endured,
and what that weariness was which he sustained for our iniquity, viz. that
he was wounded, bruised, and offered up. The whole scope of the chapter
proves this, for it is spent in numbering up the benefits of the Messiah, the
* Gawer de Satisfact. p. 74, &c.
508 chaenock's works. [1 John I. 7.
calling of the Gentiles, and gathering a church from all parts of the world,
vers. 5, 6, &c, and vers. 19, 20 ; and in the last part describes the chiefest
benefit by the Messiah, viz. propitiation and remission of sin ; and to shew
that pardon was wholly free, he removes all false causes of pardon, human
merit, and legal sacrifices : ver. 22, 23, « Thou hast not called upon me,
thou hast not filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices ;' and then publisheth
the merit of the Messiah, serving with, or in their sins, upon which account
out of mere grace the sins of men are blotted out, ver. 24, 25 ; as much as
to say, Not thou, 0 Jacob, by thy duties and offerings hast merited the
blotting out of thy sins. That glory is onlj- due to me, who served with thy
sins in dying and suffering, and paid the price of redemption, that by this
means, without thy merit, thy sins might be wiped out ; and, ver. 27, 28,
he declares the rejection of the Jewish church, the giving Jacob to a curse
and Israel to reproach, for their refusal of this way of redemption.
[3.] Though these promises and prophecies of the expiation and cleansing
of sin were something obscure to them, and though they did not exactly know
the method how it would be accomplished, yet that sin should be pardoned
was fully revealed, and something of the method of it might be known unto
them.
First, That sin should be pardoned was fully revealed to them, and their
faith had something clear for their support. It was sufficient that he had
published a time wherein and a seed whereby Satan's head should be bruised,
and afterwards had proclaimed his name in text letters, to be ' a God par-
doning iniquities, transgressions, and sins,' Exod. xxxiv. 6. How could
Jacob without the knowledge of this say at his expiring hour that he had .
waited for God's salvation ? Gen. xlix. 18 ; how could David else so ear-
nestly have begged for a purging hyssop ? how could he be confident that
there was a grace to make him as white as the unspotted snow, and his
bloody soul as pure as unstained wool? Ps. li. 7; how could Manasseh have
with so much confidence laid himself at the feet of God in his prison, had he
looked upon him only as a revenging and not a pitying God ? The promise
of God's being their God was often inculcated to them, assuring them thereby
that the thing should be done, that nothing of pardon and the fruit of it
should be wanting to them, though the manner was not declared in that pro-
mise ; for the promise of God's being their God included all spiritual bless-
ings, particularly this of cleansing from sin, without which he could not be
their God in a way of grace, but their judge in a way of wrath.
Secondly, They might know something of the method and manner of it.
The mercy of God was revealed, the pardon of sin assured, and sacrifices
instituted among the Jews to keep up their faith in the expectation of this
promised expiation ; but the manner how, and the merit whereby, was not
so clearly drawn out to their view, which is fully opened to us in the gospel,
Eph. iii. 5. The types indeed were obscure ; it is a hard matter to under-
stand them now since the revelation of the gospel, much harder to spell them
out by that moonlight before the sun was risen. Yet the believers then could
not be ignorant, but there was some excellent thing wrapped up in them,
that they were not appointed for any excellency they had in themselves, or
any power to propitiate God and appease his anger, which God's disdainful
speaking of them many times, when they rested upon their external sacri-
fices, might inform them of. They might collect from thence that they all
had reference to some richer blood, and were images of some nobler sacri-
fice, besides what the foundation promise would mind them of, that some
great person in our nature was designed for the bruising the serpent's head,
by suffering the bruising of his heel by the force of the serpent. They could
1 John I. 7.] the cleansing virtue of Christ's blood. 509
not read that glorious and comfortable name of God, Exod. xxxiv. 6, but
that clause, ver. 7, that he would ' by no means clear the guilty,' (which
belongs to his name as well as the other of pardoning, and is uttered in the
same breath), might startle them, and would seem to be an exception to dash
out the comfort of all the foregoing titles. How they could reconcile such
distant terms of a God pardoning, and yet not clearing the guilty, without a
reflection upon some grand expiatory sacrifice, which might render to justice
what was due for their crimes, and draw forth from mercy what was neces-
sary for their misery, I understand not. No doubt but some of them saw
something of the Messiah's work wrapped up in the typical sacrifices and
ceremonies ; for it is not likely that they should all be wholly ignorant of
the intendment of them. It is very likely that Job, who was not a Jew, but
an Edomite, and, as some think, died that year the Israelites came out of
Egypt, had the knowledge of redemption by the Messiah, and why might
not the Israelites also have some knowledge of it as early ? No question
but they had ; the place in Job is remarkable : Job xix. 25, ' I know that
my Redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.'
Most, both of Protestants and papists, understand it of Christ. The word
is ^m a Redeemer by right of affinity, as Christ was, being our brother by
the assumption of our nature ; and he seems to speak not only of one that
was a redeemer in act, but a redeemer by office, and his appearance to be
in the latter day referreth to his incarnation in the latter age of the world,
whom himself also should behold with his eyes at the resurrection. It
is some extraordinary and remarkable thing that he would have so noted,
for ver. 23, 24, he speaks : ' Oh that my words were now written ! Oh that
they were printed in a book, that they were graven with an iron pen, and
lead in the rock for ever.' He would have it perpetually preserved and
marked ; and the comfort he took in the consideration of this his Redeemer
to be incarnate so possesses him that it is observed that he doth not utter such
heavy complaints to the end of the book as he had done before. Christ was
as much Job's Redeemer before his incarnation and passion as ours since ;
yet as to the manner how he was to redeem, the price he was to pay, there
was a veil upon him, till it was cleared up by the prophets, upon a nearer
approach of the dawning of the fulness of time ; for though they had some
revelation of the Messiah as a great person, a great priest after the order of
Melchisedec, a great king, a special favourite of God, yet how was he to
cleanse sin they were ignorant of. As they did not know what new doc-
trines he would reveal as a prophet, or what kind of kingdom he should have
as a monarch, so they did not fully know what kind of sacrifice he should
offer as a priest. They had some kind of knowledge, but not a distinct
one.
[4.] The ancient patriarchs had faith, and were actually pardoned. Thpy
had the same spirit of faith as those had which lived in the times of the
gospel, 2 Cor. iv. 13. Noah is said to be ' a just man, and perfect in his
generations,' Gen. vi. 9, when he was young and when he was old ; hut
how ? ' He found grace in the eyes of the Lord,' ver. 8.* He denied his
own righteousness, and fled to the grace of God, which could not be exhi-
bited to him but in Christ ; for no grace without contented justice. The
ground of all the comfort and joy Abraham had was the sight of the appear-
ance of this bleeding Redeemer, though afar off, John viii. 56. To what
purpose was that sight, without a benefit redounding to him from it ? And
that great patriarch was justified by faith in him ; which the apostle dis-
courseth of, Rom. iv. ; and hereupon he was called 'the father of the faith-
* Coccei. Sum. Theolog.
510 charnock's works. [1 John I. 7.
fill,' as being ihe first express pattern of justification set down in Scripture.
For he was not the father of the faithful by carnal procreation, but upon
the account of religion ; the father, as he was the teacher by his example,
the name of fathers being given to instructors.* If he were not therefore
cleansed and counted righteous upon the account of his blood, he could not
be set forth as a pattern of justification unto others, the pattern being wrote
one way and the copies another. It was the sole promise of the blessed
seed which was the cause of his justification, not sacrifices or circumcision.
The same righteousness is imputed to the father as is to the children, and the
same to the children that was to the father. He and we have the same
faith, the same object of faith; and by what we are justified, by the same he
was justified. It was the same blessedness he and we have, the same gospel
he and we heard, Gal. iii. 8. The grace conferred upon David was from
Christ : how could his sin else have been remitted, for which no sacrifice was
appointed under the law? Ps. li. 16, 17, ' Thou desiredst not sacrifice, else
would I give it.' Supposing the legal sacrifices were sufficient, without any
relation to something else to expiate the sin for which they were appointed,
how should those sins of presumption which David was guilty of be expiated,
since there was no institution of any legal victim for them ? Surely the
Israelites were not left destitute of help in this case. And God, by provid-
ing no sacrifice for those sins, intimated that there was a nobler sacrifice yet
behind. The Messiah as a" priest was in David's eye, whom he calls his
Lord, though he was to proceed out of his loins, Ps. ex. 1, 4. David's Lord
by another right than as God, for he doth distinguish him from the Father
as Lord, and therefore David's Lord by another right, a right of redemption.
The Jews had a sufficient account that the sacrifices of the law could not
purge sin, in the sacrifice of the red heifer, Num. xix. 2, which could not
expiate their sins. If it had a virtue to this purpose, why should the priest
who sacrificed her and sprinkled ihe blood before the tabernacle, and the
person that burnt her, and the person that gathered up the ashes, wash their
clothes afterwards, and be unclean till the evening, ver. 7, 8, 9, who were
more likely than the rest to be expiated by it ? Their sins were pardoned,
but impossible to be so by the blood of bulls and goats, Heb. x. 4, yet not
without the interposition of a bloody sacrifice ; for ' without blood there is
no remission,' Heb. ix. 22, whereby the apostle proves the necessity of the
sacrifice of Christ. And could sin be pardoned without a sacrifice, the
apostle's argument to evince the unpardonableness of the sin against the
Holy Ghost, or of those that refused the sacrifice of Christ, would be invalid,
for his reason to prove it unpardonable is because there is no more sacrifice
for it; all which supposeth the necessity of a satisfaction to justice by blood,
to open the way to the throne of grace, and put any man into the favour of
God. It was this blood, therefore, shed upon the cross, whereby the trans-
gressions under the first testament were purged, and upon the account of
which the promised inheritance was received, Heb. ix. 15. Christ could not
else have pronounced a blessedness upon faith without the vision of him,
as he doth, John xx. 19, ' Blessed are they that have believed, and have not
seen,' meaning those that died in faith in the time of the law. And the
apostle is express in it, that Christ ' by that one offering perfected for ever
them that are sanctified,' Heb. x. 14, understanding those that were sanc-
tified, or cleansed, or pardoned before the actual offering, as appears by the
ground of this his inference, which was the insufficiency of all other sacri-
fices to take away sin. There was never but one God that justifies, never
but one way of justification, and that by faith, as the apostle argues, Rom.
* Illyric. Velam. Moses, p. 247.
1 John I. 7. J the cleansing virtue of Christ's blood. 511
iii. 30, and therefore but one cause of the justification of all them that went
before, because but one object of faith, the blood of the Messiah, the
Redeemer of the world. In him only all things were gathered and summed
up into blessedness, Eph. i. 12, and men are blessed in him, Ps. lxxii. 17.
In his merit, saith the Chaldee paraphrase, understanding it of the Messiah.
[5.] And this might well be, on account of the compact between the Father,
the Judge, and the Son, the Redeemer. Had he not promised the shedding
of his blood, justice had dislodged the sinner from the world. All hopes of
regaining paradise had been lost, without it the authority of the law had not
been preserved, the sacredness of divine truth had been violated, and the
rectitude of his government laid in the dust by an easy indulgence, and
passing over the sin. Christ therefore stood up, and promised his soul as
a sacrifice for sin. He was before Abraham was : John viii. 58, ' Before
Abraham was, I am ;' / am, I was what I am now, a Mediator ; by promise,
by constitution, by acceptation ; and therefore ' Abraham saw my day. and
was glad,' as it is before, ver. 56. I was a Lamb slain, accepted as a Lamb
slain, as Mediator, upon credit. His office was of a more ancient date than
his incarnation ; and he was the same in the function of a Mediator before
as he was after his taking our flesh, the same for them in his compact as he
was for us in the performance. A man may be freed from prison upon the
promise of a surety worthy of credit, though the debt be not actually paid
till some time after, according to agreement ; and the possession of a pur-
chase may be delivered, though a time afterwards be set for the payment of
the price. The payment of the ransom is not of absolute necessity before
the deliverance of the captive. Many were delivered from their bonds bv
God before the payment made by Christ, but not before the payment pro-
mised by him. The blood of this sacrifice as shed reaches us though six-
teen hundred years since it was poured out ; but the blood of this sacrifice
promised by. the Redeemer, and receiving credit with God, reached Adam
four thousand years before it was shed. God imparted the virtue before
Christ actually merited, and freed the captive before the ransom was paid ;
yet upon the account of the promised merit and contracted ransom, natural
causes must be before the effect, moral causes may be after the effect. The
blood of Christ cleanseth not as a natural, but as a moral, cause. He was
in this respect a ' Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,' Rev. xiii. 8 :
slain federally, though not actually; imputatively, though not really; sen-
tentially in the acceptation of the judge, though not executively in the en-
during the passion ; and therefore he was a Lamb slain from the foundation
of the world efficaciously, by whose blood the ancient believers were sprinkled,
as well as those of a later date.
And though some refer those words, from the foundation of the world, not
to the word slain, but to the writing of the names in the book of life of the
Lamb, ' whose names were written from the foundation of the world in the book
of the Lamb slain,' it will not much alter the thing. The slaying of the Lamb
was agreed, as well as the writing the names in the book ; and it will also
follow, that no man had any place in the book, but had also an interest in
the Lamb slain, and the benefits he enjoyed by virtue of the register were to
flow to him through the blood of the covenanting Redeemer, and their names
were writ there upon the credit of the Lamb to be slain ; for in him was the
choice made before the foundation of the world, Eph. i. 4, and through him
were the blessings of pardon given out from the foundation of the world.
Had not this Lamb offered himself to be slain, man.hadbeen cast into ever-
lasting chains as well as the devils, who had no mediator, no lamb to be
slain for them. Well, then, it follows from hence, that the blood of Christ
512 charnock's works. [1 John I. 7.
is of a full credit with God. Christ was the same to the patriarchs as to
the apostles : Heb. xiii. 8, ' He was the same yesterday, to-day, and for
ever ;' yesterday, to Adam, four thousand years since. Yesterday, in the
Hebrew phrase, often signifies all the time past ; to-day, now in the time of
his appearance ; for ever, to the generations that follow, not only in regard
of his person and deity, but in regard of his office and benefits. It is not
meant of his deity, but of his mediation, as will appear by the following
verse, where the apostle designs the alienating their judgments from too
high an opinion of the ceremonial rites and sacrifices. They never purged
sin, but Christ was the cause of the purgation of them under the law as well
as under the gospel, though he were not so distinctly known by them as by
us. The blood of Christ extended to believers in all ages ; he was a seed
for Abraham as well as Abraham's seed : Gen. xxi. 12, ' In Isaac shall thy
seed be called ;' ^P JHT, a seed for thee, it may be rendered, a seed for thy
good, and eternal deliverance ; not only a seed out of his loins, but a seed
for his benefit. As a flash of lightning out of a cloud in the night enlightens
all things both before and behind it, so the righteousness and blood of Christ
is imputed not only to men that come after him, but to those that went before
him. If the credit of it were so great then, the merit of it is as great now,
since the actual effusion of the blood. It is therefore rightly a blood that
clean seth from all sin.
(2.) This was the true and sole end of his incarnation and death. All the
ends mentioned by the angel Gabriel to Daniel centre in this and refer to it:
chap. ix. 24, ' To finish the transgression, make an end of sin, and make
reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness,' and
thereby should all the visions and prophecies concerning the Messiah and
his work be fulfilled. And to this purpose would ' the Most Holy ' be
' anointed,' as the cause and foundation of all that removal of sin mentioned
before. All the words which signify sin, and contain in them all sorts of
sin, are here expressed, to shew the completeness of the design in regard of
the subject the Messiah was to remove out of the way. The word translated
to finish., K*?3, signifies also to shut up or restrain,', and the word translated
to make an end, Drill, signifies to seal up. Sin was to be restrained from
ravaging about at pleasure like a devouring monster, or shut up and stopped
from being an accuser to condemnation ; and sealed up, not for confirmation
of sin, but for concealment of it, as things sealed are not to be looked into
but by persons authorised thereunto. It is a breach of trust, and an inva-
sion of another's right, to do it. So God is said to cover sin, and Christ
here to seal up sin by his blood, and for ever hide it from the face of God,
and to make reconciliation for iniquity, or expiate it. Since it was sin only that
was the cause of the enmity, and which separated us from communion with God,
wherein the happiness of a creature is placed, there was a necessity, for our
rescue from misery, to remove our guilt, that that which tore us might be
muzzled, that that which accused us might be silenced, that that which was
a bar to our happiness might be demolished, that so the misery we endured
might fly from us, and the blessings we wanted might flow down to us. For
this cause the Messiah was anointed, and for this end he undertook his em-
ployment on earth, to remove the obstacle which hindered our access to God.
Hence we find that the covenant of grace, when spoken of in the Old Testa-
ment to be fully revealed in the latter days, contains chiefly those promises
of ' blotting out transgressions, and remembering sin no more.'
[1.] This is the fundamental doctrine of the gospel. The apostle there-
fore, with a particular emphasis, tells them this is a thing to be known and
acknowledged by all that own Christianity : 1 John iii. 5, ' And you know
1 John I. 7.] the cleansing virtue of Christ's blood. 513
that he was manifested to take away our sins.' You know nothing of Chris-
tianity if you know not and believe not this, that Christ appeared to take
away the guilt of sin by a non-imputation, and to quell the power of sin by
a mortification of it ; to remove the punishment it had merited, and the cor-
ruption it had established in the hearts of men. Sin therefore will perfectly
be cleansed both by remission and sanctification, else Christ would fall short
of the end of his manifestation. This was the doctrine the apostles were first
charged to publish, both as the reason of Christ's suffering and of his resur-
rection, that ' remission of sins might be preached in his name among all
nations,' Luke xxiv. 46, 47 ; remission of sin, as purchased by his death, and
assured by his resurrection. The foundation of pardon was in his passion,
and the manifestation of the efficacy of his passion was by his resurrection ;
both of them therefore were to be declared in order to this end. And though
Paul was not then present at this first commission (as being one born out of
due time, and summoned into the office of apostleship afterward), yet his
instructions were of the same nature, and observed by him in the same
order : 1 Cor. xv. 3, ' For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also
received,' viz. first, ' How that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures.' Set aside this end, what attractive can there be in a crucified
man, one made the derision and reproach of bis nation, to cause any to
believe in him ? Faith particularly pitches upon the death of Christ, and
particularly eyes in that passion the intent both of the sender and of him
that is sent. The first thing himself published when he exercised his office
was this jubilee : Luke iv. 18, 19, ' The acceptable year of the Lord,'
wherein captives were to be delivered, debts to be remitted, and bonds to be
cancelled. That was the main end of his coming to die, which, when done,
was the sole reason of his advancement ; the purging sin, and our sin, was
the ground of his glorious sitting at the right hand of God, Heb. i. 3.
[2.] There could be no other end of his shedding his blood but this.
Since his death is called a ' sacrifice,' Eph. v. 2 ; a ' propitiation,' 1 John
ii. 2, Rom. iii. 25, it can be for no other end but the cleansing of sin ; for
this was the reason of the institution of sacrifices. Blood shed in a sacrifice
way implied blood criminal, and deserving to be shed. Had he come upon
the earth in a stately grandeur, to rout armies of men, batter down the walls
of cities and demolish empires, the rooting out of tyranny and monsters
might have been thought his design. But this was no way for the expiation
of sin, but the destruction of the sinner. But coming to shed his blood, to
be a sacrifice, to be the reproach of men, and to be God's servant in this
office, which he was not by nature, what end can be imagined but somewhat
in relation to sin, and that both to the expiation and destruction of it ?
For dying and shedding his blood for it was not the way to maintain sin,
but to abolish it ; not a means to render iniquity lovely, but odious. If this
were not the issue of his death, it would be useless, his blood would be shed
in vain. His death, being a punishment and by way of sacrifice, must be
for some end ; it could not be for anything relating to himself, or to merit
anything for himself; for, being God, there could be no accession of happi-
ness to him ; he needed not to merit anything, because he wanted nothing.
All merit is a desert of something which is not at present possessed, but
desired to be possessed. He had not, nor could, commit any sin for which
he should become a sacrifice. The Deity is uncapable of unrighteousness
and crime. The punishment was not therefore upon any account of his own.
No crime was committed by him in his humanity that might merit the in-
fliction of such a punishment ; this was impossible, for whatsoever crime had
vol. in. k k
614 chaenock's works. [1 John I. 7.
been committed in his humanity had been the crime of his person, and so
had been a spot upon his deity, united in one person with his humanity.
Besides, he took human nature to suffer in it ; his incarnation had an oitf/ht
to suffer linked to it, so that his shedding his blood was resolved on before
any crime could be committed, if it were to be supposed that in his humanity
he were capable of any error or miscarriage. His blood must be shed for
some other, and the punishment inflicted upon him which was merited by
some other persons. It could not be for the holy angels ; they were inno-
cent, and not criminally indebted, and therefore obnoxious to no penalty.
It being for the taking away of sin, the word sin excludes the good angels,
who never sinned, but always obeyed God, Ps. ciii. 21 ; nor could it be for the
evil angels, for the Scripture excludes them from any redemption, and binds
them for ever in chains of darkness, to bear the punishment in their own
persons. Besides that, this punishment could not properly be borne in any
other nature specifically distinct from their sinning nature, as it was. It
must be for the sin of men, or for nothing. And consequently the death of
Christ would be an insignificant thing ; but it is utterly inconsistent with the
wisdom and holiness of God to appoint, and the wisdom and honour of
Christ to agree, to a task for nothing and to no purpose.* Now since Christ
offered his life to God (which he did not owe upon his own account), a
reward was due to him upon the account of justice, which must consist in
remitting something which he owed, or imparting something which he wanted.
No debt for himself could he be charged with, no indigency could be in his
humanity upon his own account, since all happiness was due to that by vir-
tue of its union with the deity ; nothing could be bestowed upon him for
himself, because he wanted nothing ; nothing could be remitted to him,
because he owed nothing. Since therefore he so deeply humbled himself,
not for himself but for others, and that there was a merit on his part, and
consequently a just retribution on God's part due, it was necessary it should
be given to some others upon his account, that what they owed might be
remitted, and what they wanted might be bestowed. These could be no
other than men whom he came to justify, and to whom the debt owing to
God might be discounted, upon the account of Christ's payment.
3. This cleansing sin is wrought solely by his own worth, as he is the
Son of God. It is therefore said in the text, the blood not only of Jesus Christ,
but of the Son of God. The blood of Jesus received its value from his
Sonship, the eternal relation he stood in to his Father. Since sin is an in-
finite evil, as being committed against an infinite God, no mere creature can
satisfy for it, nor can all the holy works of all the creatures be a compensa-
sation for one act of sin, because the vastest heap of all the holy actions of
men and angels would never amount to an infinite goodness, which is neces-
sary for the satisfaction of an infinite wrong. One sin,f containing in it an
infinite malice, is greater in the rank of evils than all good works heaped to-
gether can be in the rank of goods. But this blood was not only the blood
of Jesus, a man, but the blood of that person that was the Son of God ; of
him who was our surety as the Son of God before he was our surety as the
Son of man ; who interposed as a surety four thousand years before his in-
carnation and shedding his blood, though he could not act the part of a
surety without his incarnation and shedding his blood. Either we had no
surety before he was incarnate, or else the Son of God in his own person
was our surety. The shedding his blood was pursuant to that interposition
he made as the Son of God in our stead before he was the Son of man ; and
it was truly the blood of that person who had offered himself to be our
* Sabund, Tit. 260. t Lessius.
1 John I. 7.] the cleansing virtue of cheist's blood. 515
surety, and been accepted in that relation, so many ages before a created
nature was assumed by him ; so that, though his humanity was a creature,
and was necessary as a subject wherein the satisfaction was to be performed,
yet it added no worth to the satisfaction of itself. The value which his blood
had was from his deity, his being the Son of God, in which condition he
entered into his relation of a mediator for us. It was the same person that
was the brightness of God's glory and the express image of his person ; the
same person that upheld all things by the word of his power, who did by
himself, in that glorious person, ' purge our sins,' Heb. i. 3. The priest3
under the law purged the sins of the people by the sacrifices of beasts ; this
was an infinitely nobler victim, a beam of brightness streaming from the
eternal Father while he was purging our sins in his eclipse ; the express
image of his person, while he was made a curse upon the cross, upholding
all things by the word of his power ; while he bowed his head under the
weight of his sufferings, he was all this while making an atonement for our
sins, whence redounded an inconceivable efficacy to his blood. The nature
of man died, but he had another nature as immortal as the person whose
brightness he was, that lived to add value to his sufferings. This divine per-
son, by his own strength and in this glorious relation, wrestled with the
flames of wrath, and took hold of thestribunal of justice, and by the value of
his sufferings, smoothed the face of a frowning God, assuaged the tempests
of a provoked justice, and placed before the tribunal of judgment a strong
and everlasting righteousness of his own composure, as a veil between the
piercing eye of divine holiness and the guilty and filthy state of a sinner. So
great a person, one equal with God, was necessary for the restoring his
honour and sanctifying his name ; so great a person was necessary for the
purging the fallen creature from his guilt and filth.
4. Hence it follows that sin is perfectly cleansed by this blood. Since it
expiated the sins of former ages, since it was the end of his coming, since he
did what he did by his own worth, sin must be perfectly cleansed, else the
end of his coming is not attained, and his worth would appear to be bat of a
finite value. All cleansing is the fruit of this blood : the cleansing from guilt
is wrought immediately by it; the purging from filth is mediately by his Spirit,
but as it was the purchase of his blood.
(1.) The blood of Christ doth not perfectly cleanse us here from sin,
in regard of the sense of it. Some sparks of the fiery law will sometimes
flash in our consciences, and the peace of the gospel be put under a veil.
The smiles of God's countenance seem to be changed into frowns, and the
blood of Christ appears as if it ran low. Evidences may be blurred and
guilt revived. Satan may accuse, and conscience knows not how to answer
him. The sore may run fresh in the night, and the soul have not only com-
fort hid from it, but refuse comfort when it stands at the door. There will
be startlings of unbelief, distrusts of God, and misty steams from the miry
lake of nature. But it hath laid a perfect foundation, and the top stone of
a full sense and comfort will be laid at last. Peace shall be as an illustrious
sunshine without a cloud, a triumphant breaking out of love, without any
arrowrs of wrath sticking fast in the conscience ; a sweet calm, without any
whisper of a blustering tempest ; the guilt of sin shall be for ever wiped out
of the conscience, as well as blotted out of God's book. The accuser shall
no more accuse us, either to God or ourselves ; no new indictment shall be
formed by him at the bar of conscience ; nay, conscience itself shall be for
ever purged, and sing an uninterrupted requiem, and hymn of peace, shall
not hiss the least accusation of a crime. As God's justice shall read nothing
for condemnation, so conscience shall read nothing for accusation. The
516 chabnock's works. [1 John I. 7.
blood of Christ will be perfect in the effects of it. As it rent the veil between
God and us, it will rend the veil between conscience and us ; no more frowns
from the one, nor any more janglings in the other. As Christ said, when
he was giving up the ghost, ' It is finished,' viz., the sense and sufferings
under a guilty state, it is then a believer may say his fears are finished,
when he is breathing forth his soul into the arms of his sacrificed Saviour.
Iniquities shall never more appear in their guilty charge to draw blood from
the soul of a penitent believer. The soul shall be without fault before the
throne of God, Kev. xiv. 5.
(2.) The blood of Christ doth not perfectly cleanse us here from sin, in
regard of the stirrings of it. The old serpent will be sometimes stinging us,
and sometimes foiling us. The righteous soul will be vexed with corruptions
within it, as well as the abominations of others without it. The Canaanite
is in the land, and therefore the virtue of the blood of Christ is expressed in
our power of wrestling, not yet in the glory of a triumph. It doth not here
perfectly free us from the remainders of sin, that we may be still sensible
that we are fallen creatures, and have every day fresh notices and expe-
riments of its powerful virtue ; and that his love might meet with daily
valuations in a daily sense of our misery. But this blood shall perfect what
it hath begun, and the troubled sea of corruption, that sends forth mire and
dirt, shall be totally removed. Then shall the soul be as pure as unstained
wool, as spotless as the dew from the womb of the morning ; no wrinkles
upon the face, no bubblings up of corruption in the soul. The blood of
Christ shall still the waves, and expel the filth, and crown the soul with an
everlasting victory. ' The spirits of just men' are then ' made perfect,'
Heb. xii. 23.
(3.) But the blood of Christ perfectly cleanseth us from sin here, in regard
of condemnation and punishment. Thus it blots it out of the book of God's
justice ; it is no more to be remembered in a way of legal and judicial sen-
tence against the sinner. Though the nature of sin doth not cease to be
sinful, yet the power of sin ceaseth to be condemning. The sentence of the
law is revoked, the right to condemn is removed, and sin is not imputed to
them, 1 Cor. v. 19. Where the crime is not imputed, the punishment ought
not to be inflicted. It is inconsistent with the righteousness of God to be
an appeased, and yet a revenging, judge. When the cause of his anger is
removed, the effects of his anger are extinguished. Where there is a cleans-
ing from the guilt, there necessarily follows a removal of the punishment.
What is the debt we owe upon sin ?* Is it not the debt of punishment,
which is righteously exacted for the fault committed ? When the blood of
Christ therefore purifies any from their guilt, it rescues them from the pun-
ishment due to that guilt. Herein doth the pardon of sin properly consist,
in a remission of punishment. The crime cannot be remitted, but only in
regard of punishment merited by it. If God should punish a man that is
sprinkled with the blood of Christ, and pleaded for by the blood of Christ,
it would be contrary both to his justice and mercy : to his justice, because
he hath accepted of the satisfaction made by Christ, who paid the debt, and
acquitted the criminal, when he bore his sin in his own body upon the tree ;
it would be contrary to his mercy, for it would be cruelty to adjudge a person
to punishment, who is legally discharged, and put into the state of an inno-
cent person, by the imputation of the righteousness of the Redeemer. Though
the acts of sin are formally the same that they were, yet the state of a cleansed
sinner is not legally the same that it was ; for being free from the charge of
the law, he is no longer obnoxious to the severity of the law. ' There is no
* Turretin. de Satisfact. p. 330.
1 John I. 7.] the cleansing virtue of Christ's blood. 517
condemnation to them that are in Christ,' Rom. viii. 1. No matter left
that shall actually condemn, since Christ for sin, or as a sacrifice for sin,
condemned sin in the fiesh, ver. 3.
(4.) The effect of this blood shall appear perfect at the last, in the final
sentence. It cleanseth us initially here, completely hereafter. It cleanseth
us here in law. Its virtue shall be manifest by a final sentence. ' He that
believes not is condemned already,' John iii. 18 ; condemned by the
threatening, but not by the pronounced sentence. So he that believes is
justified by the plea of this blood, justified in the promise of the gospel, but
not yet by public sentence, which is reserved till the last day : ' After death
the judgment,' Heb. ix. 27. As Christ was justified after he had presented
his blood, was owned to be God's righteous servant by a public declaration
in his exaltation, 1 Tim. ii. 16, so those that have an interest in this blood
have a sentential justification at tbeir dissolution, by God as a judge, and
fully complete, when their persons sball be pronounced just, at the reunion
of the soul and body at the resurrection. Whence this time is called the
• day of refreshment,' Acts iii. 19, when sins shall be blotted out,* when
God shall no more correct, and conscience shall no more reproach for guilt.
Sin is cleansed now, but said to be blotted out then, because then all the
parts of salvation shall be complete. Election was an act of eternity, but
then it shall be declared, in the separation of them for ever from the rest of
the world, to be with him in glory. Redemption was purchased by the death
of Christ, offered in the gospel, and conferred upon the believer, but then it
will be complete in a deliverance from all enemies, and the last enemy, death.
And therefore called the ' day of redemption,' Eph. iv. 30. There shall
then be an endless repose from all sorrow within, and trouble without. Sanc-
tification is begun to be wrought here by the Spirit, but sin is not abolished ;
all earthly affections are not completely put off. So it will be with our
justification, as it consists in pardon of sin ; sins are blotted out now, but
then in a more excellent, full, and visible manner. We need a daily pardon
upon daily sin, but then God will absolve us once for all, from all our faults
committed in our whole lives, and no more will be committed to need a
pardon. There is here a secret grant passed in our consciences ; there, a
solemn publication of it before men and angels. Here every one receives a
pardon in particular, as they come to him. As those under the law had a
particular expiation by the means of the sacrifices presented by them, but in
the annual day of expiation there was a general propitiation for the sins of
the people, and all their iniquities together were earned into the desert, so
the pardon that was granted to particular believers shall then resolve into
one entire absolution of the whole body ; when Christ shall pronounce them
all righteous, and present them unblameable, and without spot to his Father.
Justification is complete in this world, in regard that the guilt of sin shall
never return, and a person counted righteous shall never be counted unright-
eous ; but not so complete that the sense of sin shall never return. But
then neither David's murder shall rise up against him, nor Peter's denial of
his master ever stare him in the face. No need of fresh looks upon the
brazen serpent for cure, because there shall be no bitings by the fiery ones
to grieve and trouble.
(5.) Hence, it cleanseth from all sin universally. For since it was the
blood of so great a person as the Son of God, it is as powerful to cleanse us
from the greatest as the least. Had it been the blood of a sinful creature,
it had been so far from expiation, that it would rather have been for pollu-
tion. Had it been the blood of an angel, though holy (supposing they had
* Faucheur in loc. vol. ii. p. 163, &c.
518 charnock's works. [1 John I. 7.
any to shed), yet it had been the blood of a creature, and therefore incapable
of mounting to an infinite value ; but since it is the blood of the Son of God,
it is both the blood of a holy and of an uncreated and infinite person. Is
it not therefore able to exceed all the bulk of finite sins, and to equal in dig-
nity the infiniteness of the injury in every transgressor ? The particle all
is but a rational consequent upon the mention of so rich a treasure of blood.
The nature of the sins, and the blackness of them, is not regarded, -when
this blood is set in opposition to them. God only looks what the sinners
are, whether they repent and believe. He was ' delivered for our offences,'
Rom. iv. 25, not for some few offences, but for all ; and as he was delivered
for them, so he is accepted for them. The effect, therefore, of it is a cleansing
of all, both the original and additional transgressions ; the omissions of that
good God hath righteously commanded, and the commissions of that evil
he hath holily prohibited. Men have different sins, according to their
various dispositions or constitutions. Every man hath his ' own way ;' and
the iniquity of all those various sins of a different stamp and a contrary
nature, in regard of the acts and objects, God hath ' made to meet' at the
cross of Christ, and ' laid them all upon him,' Isa. liii. 6. The sins of all
believing persons, in all parts, in all ages of the world, from the first moment
of man's sinning, to the last sin committed on the earth. In regard of this
extensive virtue, the scapegoat was a type of him ; for though there were
not particular sacrifices under tbe law, appointed for some sins, yet in that
anniversary one, all the sins of the people were laid upon the head of that
devoted goat, to be carried into the wilderness, Lev. xvi. 21, DJIXEn JIJIJ?
brpyt?&. And the same several words, signifying all sorts of sins, are there
used, as God uses, Exod. xxxiv. 7, when he proclaims himself a God for-
giving iniquity, transgression, and sin. And the first sin we read of cleansed
by this blood, after it was shed, was the most prodigious wickedness that
ever was committed in the face of the sun, even the murder of the Son of
God, Acts ii. 3G, 38. So that, suppose a man were able to pull heaven and
earth to pieces, murder all the rest of mankind, destroy the angels, those
superlative parts of the creation, he would not contract so monstrous a guilt
as those did in the crucifying the Son of God, whose person was infinitely
superior to the whole creation. God then hereby gave an experiment of
the inestimable value of Christ's blood, and the inexhaustible virtue of it.
"Well might the apostle say, ' The blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin.'
III. Thing ; How Christ's blood cleanseth from sin. God the Father
doth actually and efficiently justify ; Christ's blood doth meritoriously jus-
tify. God the Father is considered as judge, Christ is considered as priest
and sacrifice. He was a 'Priest in things pertaining to God,' Heb. ii. 17,
' to make reconciliation for the sins of the people,' He is the ' fountain set
open for sin and for uncleanness,' Zeeh. xiii. 1. And ' forgiveness of sin' is
a fruit of ' redemption through his blood,' Col. i. 14.
This is done,
1. By taking sin upon himself. God collected all the sins from all parts
of the world, in all ages of the world, bound them up together, and ' laid
them upon' Christ's shoulders, Isa. liii. 6, alluding to the manner of trans-
ferring the sins of the people by Aaron's laying his hands upon the head of
the sacrifice ; so that, as the scape-goat purged the people, Christ cleanseth
or justifies men by bearing their iniquities, Isa. liii. 11. Not by bearing
the pollution of them inherently, but the guilt of them, or the curse which
the sinner bad merited ; for our sins could no more be transmitted to
hinfin the filth and defilement of them, than the iniquities of the Israelites
could be infused into the scape-goat, but only in their curse and guilt. A
1 John I. 7.] the cleansing virtue of cheist's blood. 519
beast was not capable of spiritual pollution, because it wanted an intellec-
tual nature ; nor Cbrist, because of the excellency of his person. Christ
took our sins upon him, not thereby to become sinful, but to become de-
voted in a judicial manner, as a curse; and, therefore, his being said to
be ' made sin' in one place, ' that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him,' 2 Cor. v. 21, is to be interpreted by Gal. iii. 13, wherein he
is said to be ' made a curse to redeem us from the curse of the law,' i. e. a
person exposed to the vengeance of God, to procure impunity for the offend-
ers, that they might be absolved, and treated as if they had never been crimi-
nal. He is ' the Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world,' John
i. 29, a'isw : the word signifies to take up, as well as to take away. He took
the guilt5 upon his shoulders, that he might for ever take it away from ours.
As we are made righteousness in him, so he was made sin for us. Now we
are not righteous before God by an inherent, but by an imputed righteous-
ness, nor was Christ made sin by inherent, but imputed, guilt.* The same
way that his righteousness is communicated to us, our sin was communi-
cated to him. Righteousness was inherent in him, but imputed to us ; sin
was inherent in us, but imputed to him. He received our evils to bestow
his good, and submitted to our curse to impart to us his blessings ; sus-
tained the extremity of that wrath we had deserved, to confer upon us the
grace he had purchased. The sin in us, which he was free from, was by
divine estimation transferred upon him, as if he were guilty, that the right-
eousness he hath, which we were destitute of, might be transferred upon us,
as if we were innocent. He was made sin, as if he had sinned all the sins
of men, and we are made righteousness, as if we had not sinned at all.
2. By accounting the righteousness and sufficiency of his sufferings to
us. If we stand upon our own bottom, we are lost; our own rags cannot
cover us, nor our own imperfections relieve us. ' The whole world lies in
wickedness,' 1 John v. 19. God is a consuming fire, and we are combus-
tible matter ; the holiness of God, and the soul of the most righteous fallen
creature, cannot meet without abhorrency on the part of God, and terror on
the part of man. Divine holiness cannot but hate us, divine justice cannot
but consume us, if we have no other righteousness than our own imperfect
one, to please the one, and be a bar to the other. There is no justification
by the law, but upon a perfect righteousness, and we must be justified by
the performance of the law, or we can never be justified ; for the law of God
was not abrogated upon the fall of man : it is the authority of the lawgiver,
and not the offence of the malefactor, which doth abolish a law ; but we can-
not perform the law ourselves. Alas ! ' All have sinned and come short of
the glory of God,' Rom. iii. 23, of that righteousness which glorifies God ;
and having once broken the law, we can never be said perfectly to keep it ;
for if we had grace given us to perform it for the future, it nulls not the
breach of it for the time past. Since the law is not abrogated, it must be
exactly obeyed, the honour of it must be preserved ; it cannot be observed
by us, it was Christ only who kept it, and never broke it. and endured the
penalty of it for us, not for himself ; for the law requires obedience of a
creature, but demands not punishment but upon default of obedience. The
punishment was not inflicted on him for himself, but for us ; the virtue of
that must be transferred to us, which cannot be any other way than by impu-
tation, or reckoning it ours, as we are one body with him. Besides, justifi-
cation cannot be by any thing inherent in us, for we are ungodly before the
first instant of justification, Rom. v. 5, and sinners and enemies, Rom. v. 10.
Since there is nothing but unrighteousness in us, a righteousness must be
* Turretin. de Satisfact. p. 118, much changed.
520 charnock's works. [1 John I. 7.
fetched from something without us. If it be without us, it is not inherent
in us. What righteousness is in us after justification, cannot be the cause
of the justification which preceded that righteousness. The effect never pre-
cedes the cause. If the righteousness whereby we are justified be not inhe-
rent in us, but in another, how can it be our righteousness, but by some way
of counting it to us ? God intended Christ's suffering as the way of bearing
iniquity for us, and accepted him as one that bore our iniquities, and made
this bearing iniquity the ground of the justification of many: Isa. liii. 11,
' By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall
bear their iniquities.' In his bearing our iniquities, there was the imputa-
tion of our sins ; in our justification, there must be the imputation of his
suffering. The counting another's righteousness to us is as reasonable and
easy to conceive as the counting our sins to another. "Without this way of
reckoning it to us, we cannot conceive of the intercession of Christ, or what
pleas he can use. He is an advocate by virtue of his propitiation, and his
righteousness in it, 1 John ii. 1, 2. The plea, then, must be of this nature :
Father, I took flesh by thy order, and suffered death according to thy plea-
sure ; I gave my soul a ransom for many, and the shedding of my blood was
a sweet-smelling sacrifice. Thou wouldst have me made a curse to free
others from the curse, -and to receive wounds, that others might receive
health. Let those, therefore, that plead the merit of my suffering, be ab-
solved from their guilt. I have borne their sins, their iniquities thou didst
cause to meet on me, condemn them not to bear those iniquities I have borne
already. To what purpose did I bear them, if they must bear them too ?
And to what purpose should they believe in me, if they must sink under the
same condemnation with those that refuse me ? How this plea can be made
without accepting those sufferings for us, and counting the righteousness of
them to us, is not to be understood. Some compare this way of imputation
to the sun shining upon the wall, through a green or blue glass, whereby the
true colour of the wall is indiscernible while the colour communicated by
the glass is upon it ; yet this colour is not the colour of the wall, but the
colour of the glass, and inherent in the glass, only reflected upon the wall ;
so the righteousness whereby we are justified, and which covers our iniquities
from the sight of God, is inherent in Christ, but transferred to us. The
ground of this imputation is community of nature. Because he ' took not
the nature of angels,' it is not reckoned to them, Heb. ii. 16, 17. If he had
taken the nature of angels, it could not have been reckoned to us, because
he had not been akin to us. Had he taken the nature of angels, it could no
more have been imputed to us than the fall of angels can be imputed to us ;
which cannot be, because we have not an agreement in the same nature with
them ; and, next to that, the ground of it is his resurrection from the grave.
Had he lain in the grave, his righteousness could not have been imputed to
us, because it had not been declared sufficient in itself; and the sufficiency
of the price, and the accepting it for a ransom, must precede the account-
ing of it to another for his deliverance. That which is the evidence of the
perfection, and agreeableness of it to the judgment of God, is the ground
of the imputation of it to us ; but his going to the Father, whereof his
resurrection was the first step, and his ascension the next, is the convincing
argument the Comforter makes use of to persuade men of the fulness and
exactness of it, John xvi. 10.
(1.) This cleansing of us by imputing this blood to us, is by virtue of
union and communion with him. The apostle before the text speaks of a
fellowship with God and Christ, which implies union with Christ, and then
the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin. What Christ did as a common
1 John I. 7.] the cleansing virtue of Christ's blood. 521
person, is accepted for us, but the actual imputation of it to us depends
upon our becoming one body with him. If we had not had a union with
Adam in nature, and been seminally in him, his sin could no more have
been imputed to us than the sin of the fallen angels could be counted ours ;
so if we have not a union with Christ, his righteousness can no more be reckoned
to us than the righteousness of the standing angels can be imputed to us.
We must therefore be in Christ as really as we were in Adam, though not in
the same manner of reality. We were in Adam seminally, we are in Christ
legally; yet so that it is counted in the judgment of God as much as if
there were a seminal union. Believers are therefore called the seed of
Christ, Isa. liii. 10, Ps. xxii. 30. And they are called Christ, 1 Cor. xii.
12 ; and ' the body of Christ,' ver. 27. It is, saith one,* not numerically,
but legally such. If we had been in him seminally, as we were in Adam,
righteousness would have been communicated to all descending from him;
but God hath appointed a higher way of communication by spiritual union.
As those who were in Adam by natural propagation are made guilty by his
transgression to condemnation, so all that are spiritually united to Christ
are cleansed from their many offences to justification, Rom. v. 16. As
there was a necessity of his union with us in our nature for our redemption,
since he could not be the Redeemer of mankind by death, as he was the Son
of God, unless he were also the Son of man, so there is a necessity of our
union with him in his Spirit. As there could be no expiation without a
satisfaction, no satisfaction to be made by Christ, unless there were an im-
putation of our sins to him ; and no imputation can be supposed, unless he
were united to us in our nature ; so there can be no imputation of anything
in him to us, unless there be a strait union, whereby he becomes our
head and we his members. What doth the apostle mean in that wish of
being ' found in Christ,' but this union, whereby he might have a share in
his righteousness ? Philip, iii. 9. Not his own righteousness, but the
righteousness of God communicated through or by faith. And where is our
completeness, but in him ? Col. ii. 10. As we are reckoned one lump
and mass with him, and being joined to him, are counted one spirit with
him, 1 Cor. vi. 17. Union with him goes first in order of nature before
justification ; we are first united to him as our sponsor, and being in him we
are counted righteous. This is the apostle's assertion : 1 Cor. i. 30, ' But
of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, right-
eousness,' &c. And so ' the righteousness of the law,' Rom. viii. 4, huai-
upa ro\j v6fiov, or the just judgment of the law, ' is fulfilled in us,' saith Coc-
ceius.t We are judged to have in him a perfect obedience, or we are judged
not out of Christ as sinners, but in Christ as his members.
(2.) This union is made by faith, and upon this account we are said to
be justified by faith. This is our willingness to receive Christ upon the
terms he is offered. Since a mediator is not a mediator of one, but sup-
poseth in the notion of it two parties, there must be a consent on both sides.
God's consent is manifested by giving, our consent is by receiving, which is
a title given to faith, John i. 12 ; God's consent in appointing and accept-
ing the atonement, and ours in receiving the atonement, which is all one with
'receiving forgiveness of sin,' Rom. v. 11. God's consent in the typical
administration was evident in appointing sacrifices, and the sending down
fire from heaven for consuming them. The sinner's consent was to be
signified by laying his hands upon the head of the sacrifice, intimating his
union with that sacrifice, and so by the sacrificing of it he was counted as
quitted of that guilt for which the sacrifice was offered. We must be as
* Mr Hcrle, in Lis Treatise of Christian Wisdom. t De Faed. 442.
522 charnock's works. [1 John I. 7.
willing to accept of this sacrifice as Christ was to offer this sacrifice, with a
willingness of the same kind ; but, alas, what creature can mount to a willing-
ness of the same degree ! God might have required many sharp conditions
of us, many years' troubles and sorrows, but he requires only a willingness
of us to receive and acknowledge the depths of his wisdom and grace, and
conform to his will in the new covenant. This makes up the marriage knot
between the sinner and the Redeemer. By this the soul empties itself and
clasps about a Saviour, and then Christ and the believer are counted as one
person legally ; therefore, Christ dwelling in us, and our having faith, are
linked together as if they were the same thing, Eph. iii. 17. By God's
acceptance of this blood we are rendered cleansable and justifiable. By our
acceptance of it, it is actually imputed to us, and we actually justified.
However, when it was shed by Christ, and received as a sweet-smelling
sacrifice by God, it made us pardonable ; yet actual pardon is not bestowed
without believing. His blood avails none but those that he pleads it for,
and he pleads it not for those that come to God, but that ' come to God by
him,' Heb. vii. 25, those that plead in his name for the benefits which are
the purchase of his blood. Without him, we are combustible matter before a
consuming fire, and cannot approach to the throne of God with any success.
This faith must go in order before cleansing or justification. The righteous-
ness of God is only ' upon tbem that believe,' Rom. iii. 22. ' We have be-
lieved that we might be justified,' Gal. ii. 16. This faith is not our righteous-
ness, nor is it ever called so, but we have a righteousness by the means of
faith. Bij faith, or through faith, is the language of the apostle : Rom. iii.
22, 25, ' Faith in his blood,' faith reaching out to his blood, embracing his
blood, sucking up his propitiating blood and pleading it. Though faith is
the eye and hand of the soul, looking up and reaching out to whole Christ
as offered in the promise, yet in this act of it to be freed from the guilt of
sin, it grasps Christ as a sacrifice, it hangs upon him as paying a price, and
takes this blood as a blood shed for the soul, and insists upon the sufficient
value of it with God. Faith respects the subject wherein it is as guilty, for
it is a grace divesting a man of his own righteousness, and emptying a man
of his own strength and sufficiency, and accusing the soul of guilt, and
therefore eyes that which stands in direct opposition to this guilt, the free
grace of God accepting Christ as a propitiation. It eyes that in craving
justification, which God eyes in bestowing it, which is the Redeemer's bear-
ing iniquity, Isa. liii. 11. It hath no efficacy of itself, but as it is the band
of our uuion with Christ. The whole virtue of cleansing proceeds from
Christ the object. We receive the water with our hands, but the cleansing
virtue is not in our hands, but in the water, yet the water cannot cleanse us
without our receiving it ; our receiving it unites the water to us, and is a
means whereby we are cleansed. And therefore it is observed that our
justification by faith is always expressed in the passive, not in the active; as
we are justified by faith, not that faith justifies us. The efficacy is in Christ's
blood, the reception of it in our faith. Though we are justified by faith, yet
all our peace, and all those blessings which are bundled up in peace with
God, come in and through our Lord Jesus Christ, Rom. v. 1. 'Being
justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.'
IV. The use.
If the blood of Christ hath the only and perpetual virtue, and doth actually
and perfectly cleanse believers from all sin, then it affords us,
1. A use of instruction.
(1.) Every man, uninterested by faith in the blood of Christ, is hopeless
of a freedom from guilt while he continues in that state. Without faith we
1 John I. 7.] the cleansing virtue of Christ's blood. 523
are at a distance from God, by contracting in our natural state a guilt that
subjected us to the curses of the law, and we remain under that wrath the
state of nature put us into, till we are interested by faith in the expiating
blood of the Redeemer. All the indictments that our own consciences, and,
which is incomprehensibly more, the omniscience of God, can .charge upon
us, remain in their full force, are unanswerable by us, and we must inevit-
ably sink under them, till the blood of Christ, apprehended by faith, cancel
the bond and raze out the accusation. The blood of Christ is so far from
cleansing an unbeliever from all sin, that it rather binds his sins the faster
on him. Unbelief locks the sins on more strongly, so that the violations of
the law stick closer to him, and the wrath of God hangs over him. Those
that have no communion with Christ, have no interest in the blood of Christ;
for they are such as ' have fellowship with the Father, and with his Son
Jesus Christ,' to whom John in the text appropriates this privilege of being
cleansed from all sin by the blood of Christ. Those that slight the blood of
Christ, render themselves incapable of cleansing, because no other sacrifice
can be offered, no other blood can be presented to God of a value equal to
it : 'No more sacrifice remains for sin,' Heb. x. 26. There was but one
bloody sacrifice appointed for expiation, and there can be no less required
of us for the enjoying the benefit of it, than the receiving the atonement,
Rom. v. 11. It is not consistent with the honour of God to discharge men
upon the account of the sufferings of the surety, who will persist in that sin
for which the surety suffered, and make use of a Saviour to be freed from
suffering, but not freed from offending. It would be contrary to the end of
our Saviour's death to sprinkle that blood upon those that tread it under their
feet, which was shed for the gathering together the sons of God, John xi.
52, to let the despisers of it have an equal share in the benefits of it with
those that receive it. It cannot be imagined that God will ever make it a
-savour of life, as much to them that will not value it, as to those that do.
(2.) No freedom from the guilt of sin is to be expected from mere mercy.
The figure of this was notable in the legal economy. The mercy- seat was
not to be approached by the high priest without blood, Deut. ix. 7. Christ
himself, typified by the high priest, expects no mercy for any of his fol-
lowers, but by the merit of his blood. What reason have any then to expect
remission upon the account of mere compassion, without pleading his blood ?
Mercy is brought to us only by the smoke of this sacrifice. The very title
of justification implies not only mercy, but justice, and more justice than
mercy ; for justification is not upon a bare petition, but a propitiation. To
be pardoned indeed implies mercy. Pardon is an act of favour, whereby the
criminal is graced and gratified, but to be justified is to be discharged in a
legal way, or by way of compensation. A man may be pardoned as a sup-
plicant, but not pronounced righteous but upon the merits of his cause. He
that employs* mercy, acknowledges guilt, but insists not upon a righteous-
ness. Justification or pardon is not the act of God as Creator, for then it
had been mere mercy ; nor as a lawgiver, according to the terms of the first
covenant, for then no man after his revolted state could be justified ; but as
a judge, according to the laws of redemption, and that in a way of right-
eousness and justice, 2 Tim. iv. 8. God is not to be sought to for this con-
cern, but in Christ; nor mere mercy implored without the Redeemer's merit,
because God doth not forgive our sins, or reconcile our persons to himself,
but for the propitiating blood of his Son. To expect pardon only upon the
account of mercy, is to honour one attribute with the denial of, or overlook-
ing the other. Though God be merciful, yet he is just ; his mercy is
* Qu. ' implores ' ?— Ed.
524 chabnock's works. [1 John I. 7.
made known in remission, his justice manifested in justification. Forget
not the great demonstration of his justice when you come to plead for mercy.
Plead both in the blood of Christ, God is merciful to none out of Christ;
he is merciful to none but to whom he is just : merciful to them in regard
of themselves, and tbeir own demerits; just and righteous to them in regard
of the blood and merit of his Son.
(3.) There is no ground for the merits of the saints, or a cleansing purga-
tory. The apostle saith not you have a treasure of the merits of the departed
saints ; or you must expect a purgatory hereafter to cleanse you from all
your sins. He mentions only the blood of Christ as fully sufficient and
efficacious for this end. To set up other mediations, atonements, satisfac-
tions, is a contempt of the wisdom of God in his ordination of this only one
of his Son ; of the holiness and justice of God in accepting this, as if God
had mistaken himself, when he cheerfully received this as completely satis-
factory to him, and answering his ends ; as if, notwithstanding his full
pleasure with it, it needed some addition from creatures to eke it out to a
completeness. It is a dishonour to Christ, accusing him of an imperfect
satisfaction, of an insufficient and infirm blood, a stripping it of its infinite
value. How can that be infinite which needs a finite thing to strengthen it,
and render it efficacious ? He that goes to a muddy stream to wash him-
self, disgraces the pure fountain he hath in his own dwelling. This the
Romanists use in the form of absolution : ' Let the passion of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the merits of the blessed virgin, and of all the saints, and
whatsoever good thou hast done, and whatsoever thou hast sustained, be to
thee,' i. e. accounted to thee, or accepted for thee, ' for the remission of thy
sins, the increase of thy grace, and the reward of eternal life.'* Nor is pur-
gatoiy a small disparagement to the extensive virtue of this cleansing blood.
If the blood of Christ cleanseth, what interpretation can common reason and
sense make of it, but that the person so cleansed is exempted from any
punishment for his crime ? Is the blood of the Son of God of so weak an
efficacy, that it needs a cleansing fire in another world to purge out the
relics of guilt left behind by it in this ? If there must be such a penal
satisfaction, where is the uncontrollable virtue of this blood? If this blood,
which is the blood of God, hath not a sufficient virtue, what finite fire can
lay claim to it ? What in reason can be supposed to have it ? And if it
be perfectly purgative, what need of anything else, that can never deserve the
name of satisfaction ? Shall that God, who is goodness and righteousness
itself, punish a man for that crime which he hath remitted upon so great a
compensation ? If he be pardoned, with what justice can he be punished ?
If he be punished by the severity of fire, with what mercy, or by what merit,
was he pardoned and justified ? It is no friendship to the perfection of
God's justice to allege that he will punish that which he hath remitted, and
as little right is done to the perfection of Christ's meritorious blood, to make
it of a half validity, a lame propitiation, wThich requires something to be
done or suffered by the sinner to render it complete in the sight of God.
With what face could Christ tell sinners that came believingly to him in the
world, that their ' faith had saved them,' and they might ' go in peace,' if a
purgatory satisfaction were to be exacted of them after this life, and his own
passion had been unable to make their peace?
(4.) No mere creature can cleanse from sin. No finite thing can satisfy
an infinite justice ; no finite thing can remit or purchase the remission of an
injury against an infinite being. A finite compensation can bear no pro-
portion to an infinite wrong. If pardon as well as regeneration be a work
* Cajetan sum. p. 2. The first head, Absolution.
1 John I. 7.] the cleansing virtue of Christ's blood. 525
of omnipotence, as we have lately heard, no creature but is as unable to
remove guilt from the soul as it had been unable to remove deformity from
the first matter and chaos. A creature can no more cleanse a soul, than it
can frame and govern a world, and redeem a captived sinner.
(5.) There is no righteousness of our own, no services we can do, are suf-
ficient for so great a concern. To depend upon any, or all of them, or any-
thing in ourselves, is injurious to the value and worth of this blood ; it is
injurious also to ourselves ; it is like the setting up a paper wall to keep off
a dreadful fire, even that consuming one of God's justice. The apostle doth
more than once complain of the seducers that crept into the Galatian church,
and would sow the tares of justification by the law, and their own works, so
that they made the death of Christ in vain, G-al. ii. 2, and his work of no
effect, Gal. v. 4 ; and tells them there plainly, that the expectation of a
justification upon such an account was a falling from grace. If we are justi-
fied from our guilt by works, they must be works before faith or after faith ;
not before faith, for the corruption of nature remaining in its full force,
without any amendment, any alteration, or subduing by renewing grace,
will check men that understand anything of the woful and deplorable, the
weak and impotent, condition of man by nature, from such a thought ; and
indeed those that hold justification by works make faith in Christ necessary
to the acceptance of those works. Nor do works after faith justify, for then
a believer is not justified upon his believing, but upon his working after his
believing ; so that faith then is not the justifying grace, but a preparation
to those works which justify, which is quite contrary to the strain of the
great apostle in his epistles, who ascribes justification to faith in the blood
of Christ, and to faith without works. It is by faith we are united to Christ
as the great undertaker for us ; by that we receive the atonement, and
accept of the infinite satisfaction made by the Redeemer to the justice of
God. The acceptance of this, and embracing this as done for us, and
accepted by God for us, cannot be an act of our works, but of our faith.
All works are excluded by the apostle, Rom. iv. 5, 6, without restraining
them to the works of the law, as he doth sometimes in other places. Faith
alone is opposed to works in general, and therefore to all sorts of works ;
and works after grace he doth plainly exclude : Eph. ii. 8, ' By grace you
are saved through faith ; and that not of yourselves : not of works, lest any
man should boast.' What works are those ? Works after regeneration ;
for they are those works to which they were ' created in Jesus Christ,' which
indeed, saith he, ' God ordained that we should walk in them,' not that we
should be saved or justified by them. And so, when he desires not to be
1 found in his own righteousness, which is of the law,' Philip, iii. 8, 9, can
he understand only those works and that righteousness which he had before
his conversion to Christ ? As though works after faith were not more con-
formable to the law than works before faith ; but let them be works flowing
from what principle soever, he renounceth them all, accounts them loss for
Christ, and places no confidence in them. He did not renounce the pri-
vileges of his birth, or strip himself of a love to holy works, but of the
opinion of any value they had with God of themselves to justification.
Whatsoever might come under the title of his own righteousness he doth
cast away, as to any dependence on it, or pleading of it before God. And
may not his works, after his giving up his name to Christ, be called his own
righteousness, as well as those in a state of nature ? Though the principle
was altered, yet the acts from that principle were his own acts, and his own
righteousness. So Abraham was not justified by his works after believing,
no more than by those before : Rom. iv. 3, ' Abraham believed God, and
526 charnock's works. [1 John I. 7.
it was accounted to him for righteousness.' For those words, cited out of
Gen. xv. 6, were spoken of Abraham, several years after his call and com-
pliance with it by faith, and here singled out as the cause of his justification,
without any concoinitancy of his own works flowing from that faith, or any
mixture of them, or consideration of them by God in this justifying act.
And David, though he was a great prophet, yet had not so distinct a know-
ledge of the gospel as those that live in the times of the gospel, yet under
that legal administration wherein he was born, and bred, and lived all his
days, had no confidence in his own works, not in those which he wrought as
God's servant, out of love to him, fear of him, trust in him ; he refuseth all
venturing his soul upon them, before the tribunal of God, when he desires
God not to enter into judgment with him : Ps. cxliii. 2, ' Enter not into
judgment with thy servant ;' • Answer me in thy righteousness,' ver. 1, not
according to my own. Enter not into judgment with thy servant; though I
be thy servant, and mine own conscience tells me I have an upright heart
towards thee, yet I dare not enter into a plea with thee upon my service, or
stand before thy judgment-seat in the strength of my works; and the reason
he renders shews that he understood it of justification, and is inclusive of
all men that ever drew breath, for it is as generally expressed as anything
can be : ' For in thy sight shall no man living be justified.') Not an apostle,
martyr, prophet, can stand before God when he compares his action with the
rule. David was far from any confident sentiment of his own works, or the
strength of the blood of legal sacrifices. How often doth he aggravate his
crimes, and debase the value of his services, and speak of the sacrifices, as
unable to render a satisfaction to God ! We see the father of the faithful,
the greatest type of Christ, and he that seems the most rational among the
apostles, disclaiming any justification by their own works, even by those
wrought by them after they were really listed in the service of God.
And there is good reason for it.
[1.] No righteousness of man is perfect, and therefore no righteousness of
man is justifying. Whatsoever works do justify, must be, in the extent of
them, and all the circumstances, fully conformed unto that precept that
enjoins them. What man hath a righteousness commensurate with the rule
of the law, whereby his works are to be tried ? Again, every man, the
moment before his justification, is ungodly, Eom. iv. 5. He is in that state
just before his justification. If he be justified by his own works, he is then
justified by ungodly works, and then a contradiction will follow, that a man
is justified by his merit of condemnation, and pronounced righteous upon the
account of his unrighteousness. It is as much as to say, a man shall be
justified by his sinfulness, and be judged an observer of the law by his trans-
gressing it.
First, The mixture of one sinful act among a multitude of good works,
renders a man imperfect, and consequently incapable of justification by them.
Suppose a man had only one sin, and all his other works clear without a
flaw, the law could not pronounce him righteous, because he fell short of
that universal and perpetual rectitude which the law requires in all things :
Gal. hi. 10, ' Cursed is he that continueth not in all things which are written
in the book of the law, to do them.' If he fails but in one thing, and that
but once in his whole life, and that but in the omission of any one circum-
stance it requires, he sinks under the curse. But since a man never per-
formed in his whole life a duty entirely exact, with what face can he expect
a justification from that law, which he never observed with that exactness
due to it in any one action that ever he did ? Works are debts ; unless a
debt be fully paid, a man cannot be said to be a righteous person. If a man
1 John I. 7.] the cleansing virtue of cheist's blood. 527
owes a thousand pound, and pays nine hundred ninety-nine pound ninetesn
shillings, and pays not that one shilling, which is as much due as the whole,
he is unrighteous in withholding that, and the bond may be put in suit
against him for that if the creditor please. What man ever paid the full debt
of works he owed to God by virtue of the law ? How far is any man from
paying all the parts of his debt but one only ? Suppose we bad not only a
perfect work, but many perfect works, all perfect works but one ; the works
might justify themselves, but not justify the person that hath a stain upon
him in the account of the law. But the case is more deplorable : for if God
will contend with man, he ' cannot answer him one of a thousand,' Job
ix. 2, 3. Some of the Jews interpret it thus : that the arguments and pleas
men can bring from their own works, for their defence before his tribunal,
are so weak and trifling, that God in scorn would not vouchsafe to give a
reply to one plea of theirs among a thousand.* But rather it is to be under-
stood, that man cannot render one little reason among a thousand pleas for
his own justification,. on any one of a thousand of those charges God can
bring against him.
Secondly, There is not one act a man doth, but there is matter of condem-
nation in if. As the Scripture excepts every man from doing good, as con-
sidered in his natural corruption, Rom. hi. 12, so it excepts every man from
doing any one pure good action : Eccles. vii. 20, ' There is not a just man
upon earth, that doeth good, and sins not,' i. e. he doth not do any good wrork
without a mixture of sin ; and therefore the Scripture pronounceth a man's
' own righteousness as filthy rags,' Isa. lxiv. 6. Righteousness in the whole
extent of it, whatsoever he doth that is righteous in a way of eminency, is but a
filthy rag, it is but a shred, and tbat filthy too. And to think it is able to
purge the soul from sin, is as much as to think to wash away one mud by
another. Tbat which is condemning cannot be justifying, that which falls
short of the holiness of the law cannot free us from the condemning sentence
of the law. But there is nothing that a man doth but is defective, if com-
pared with the law, which requires an exactness of obedience in every act,
without any stain. It requires perfection in the person, and perfection in
every service ; it allows no blemish, nor pronounceth a man righteous, where
it doth not find a completeness both for parts and time. It is so far there-
fore from justifying, that it must needs condemn. ' For the righteousness
of the law must be fulfilled in every one of us,' Rom. viii. 4. Whatsoever
plea we can raise from our own works, will represent us guilty, and that can
never be the matter of our absolution, which hath sufficient matter of con-
demnation in it. Attainted work is never able to maintain its standing before
the infinite holiness of God.
Thirdly, All the works after grace fall short of the perfection required in
them by the law. I do not say they fall altogether short of the perfection
required in them by the gospel, i. e. fall short of that integrity and sincerity
which is our evangelical perfection ; but they fall short of that perfection
which is required by the law. There is no grace in any renewed man in this
life in that perfect degree it ought to be. Corruption of nature remains in
every man, with regeneration of nature. It is true there is a new principle
put in, but not so powerful as to abolish that principle which possessed us
before, though it doth overmaster it. There is a ' flesh lusting against the
spirit,' as well as a ' spirit lusting against the flesh,' Gal. v. 17. And Paul,
that was renewed as much as any man we ever knew renewed, had a flesh
that served the law of sin, with a mind that served the law of God, Rom.
vii. 25. No grace is wrought to its full growth. There is staggering in our
* Mercer.
528 chaknock's works. [1 John I. 7.
faith, and coldness in our love, and hardness in our melting ; and therefore
it was a good speech of Luther's, We can never be saved, if God doth not
turn his eyes from our virtues as well as our sins. How can that, the
unrighteousness whereof was our burden before the throne of God, be our
righteousness before him ?* How can that heal us, which stands in need of
cure, and renders us sick ? ' Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean ?'
Or the highest righteousness out of an unclean newness, and an imperfect
regeneration ? If our duties after grace be so corrupt that they need some-
thing to render them acceptable, and accepted in the sight of God, they can
never be of that worth as to render our persons righteous ; for that which
needs something to make itself valid, can never make any other thing valid.
If our duties want a pardon, and something to cover the defects, and wipe off
the blemishes of them, they can never, upon any bottom of their own, plead
themselves to be a sufficient righteousness for a guilty sinner, guilty in the
acting that which is pleaded as a righteousness. No flesh can be justified in
the sight of God, and nothing that comes from flesh can be our righteousness.
The best man being in part flesh, all his works are in part fleshly. Where
the nature is wholly corrupt, the fruit cannot be good ; where the nature is
in part corrupt, the fruit of the new nature must be tinctured by the steams
of the old, and therefore is too defective to bottom our happiness upon.
And consider but these two things :
First, Men's own consciences cannot but accuse them of coming short of
the glory of God, in everything they do. Can any man upon earth say he
ever did a perfect action, that he dares venture his soul upon it, in the pre-
sence of God ? There is no man's conscience but must needs accuse him of
sin : 1 John i. 8, ' He that saith he hath no sin, hath nothing of the truth
in him ;' and what man's conscience ever bore that testimony to him, that
he was perfect in all his works ? Doth it not rather witness that he hath
numberless times violated the divine precepts ? Who can say he did per-
fectly exert an act of faith, so entire, fixed, steady, as might suit the divine
holiness, or that his love had such an intense flame in any service he pre-
sented to God '? No man yet, upon serious consideration, did ever judge any
one of his works perfect before God. He must have very mean thoughts of
the holiness of God, or be very inconsiderate of his own actions, and not dive
into all the matter and circumstances of them, if he so judged. Indeed,
Paul saith, he knew nothing by himself, i. e. of unfaithfulness in declaring the
mysteries of God, as to the matter and substance of them, yet would he not
venture his justification upon that bottom, 1 Cor. iv. 4. A self-justification
in this would be a self-condemnation : Job ix. 20, ' If I justify myself, my
own mouth shall condemn me : if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me
perverse.'
Secondly, But, suppose there be no accusations of conscience, durst we
stand to God's trial of our works ? The omniscience of God pierceth further
than our knowledge ; for ' who can understand the errors of his ways ? ' Ps.
xix. 12. If any action might be perfect in our account, shall we therefore
think it so in the account of God's unspotted holiness, who is greater than
our hearts, and knows more than our hearts ? ' Who can stand before so
holy a God?' 1 Sam. vi. 20. Job, therefore, chap. ix. 21, would not know
his own soul, though he were perfect, he would not approve or boast of him-
self in the presence of God ; for he might be ignorant of something in his
own spirit which never yet reached his notice, but was not unknown to God,
that knew all things ; he would despise his life, i. e. overlook all his upright
course, and bury it in silence, when he comes to appear before God.
* Illyricus.
1 John I. 7.] the cleansing virtue of Christ's blood. 529
Fourthly, Since, therefore, all our own righteousness is of this hue, it
would be contrary to the justice and holiness of God to justify a man for
imperfect works. His judgment is always according to truth, Rom. ii. 2.
If he should judge and accept that for a perfect righteousness which is
notoriously imperfect in itself, it would imply a defect in the understanding
of the judge, whereby he is changed, and judgeth that to be exact holiness
now which he judged not so before. But certainly, if it be an imperfect
righteousness, the infinite understanding of God can never imagine it per-
fect, and the holiness of God would never deceive itself in accepting that as
perfect which is not in its own nature so. If imperfect works of grace can
justify now, what reason ean be rendered for the strictness God required of
the first man in the first covenant, and his severe dealing with him upon the
transgression of it '? The best reason, and most becoming the majesty of
God, is the holiness of his nature, which is as infinite now as when he
made the first covenant. If that holiness can now content itself with an
imperfect righteousness, and pronounce us justified persons without a full
conformity to the law, it might take a little further step, and pronounce us
righteous without any conformity at all to it. If he could deny his holiness
and truth in one thing, he might upon the same account deny it in all, and
so lay it aside by degrees till it came to nothing. If we rightly understand
the infiniteness of God's holiness, we cannot conceive that anything imper-
fect can justify us before so exact and strict a tribunal, where sits the omni-
science of God to see, the holiness of God to hate, and the juetice of God to
punish, every defect and deviation from his law.
[2.] The design of God was to justify us in such a way as to strip us of
all matter of glorying in ourselves, and therefore it is not by any righteous-
ness of our own. This the apostle in many places asserts, Rorn. iii. 26, 27.
He justifies by the law of faith, to exclude boasting, which wouM not have
been excluded by the law of works ; and Eph. ii. 9, ' Not of works, lest any
man should boast.' He had before spoken of salvation or justification by
grace, ver. o ; and to strike men's hands off from resting on anvthing in
themselves, and put our own righteousness out of countenance, he repeats
it again, ver. 8, ' By grace ye are saved, and that not of yourselves ; not of
works,' because God will have all boasting excluded. The apostle's argu-
ment holds as strong against the works of grace as those of nature, the
works after the receiving of the gospel as those of the law ; it would else be
invalid, for if we were justified by our own works, wrought by us after tbe
grace of redemption communicated to us, it would but little more exclude
boasting than the works of Adam wrought by him in the rectitude of his
mature, which was the gift of God to him. The natural principle of his
actions, as well as the gracious principle of a believer's, were bestowed on
them by God. That was au act of God's goodness, this of his grace. And
they are our works by grace, as well as the acts of Adam in innocence would
have been his works by nature. For though the works of grace are wrought
from a principle implanted by the Spirit of God, vet they are not the works
of that Spirit, no more than Adam's works could be said to be the works of
God, because they were from a principle implanted in him by God. The
works would have been Adam's, by the concurrence of God as Creator, and
those works are a believer's by the concurrence of God as Redeemer. And
if we were justified by them, there would be as well matter of boasting as
there would have been in Adam had he stood and been efficiently justified
or pronounced righteous upon his innocent works. God hates any glorying
before him. The pharisee, therefore, that displayed his righteousness in
vol. in. l 1
530 charnock's works. [1 John I. 7.
the temple before God, with some kind of reflection upon his own worth,
Luke xviii. 10-12, with some kind of exaltation of himself and contempt of
the publican, went away unjustified, though he did thankfully acknowledge
his eminency in morality above the publican to stream to him from the
goodness of God. And no good man in Scripture ever pleaded his own
works in prayer to God for his justification, though sometimes they have
appealed to God concerning their integrity in a particular action. Daniel
disowns his own righteousness, Dan. ix. 18 ; and the famous cardinal* and
champion of the Romish church, upon his deathbed, would rely on the
merits of Christ, though he had disputed for the merit of works. So sen-
sible are men of the little matter they have to glory of in themselves, when
they are ready to stand before the tribunal of God. God in justification will
have the entire glory of his grace to himself ; but if any work of ours, though
never so gracious, were the cause but in part of our justification, we had
whereof to glory. If we divided it between Christ and ourselves, Christ
would have but half the glory, and the other half would be due to us.
To conclude, no man can be justified but by a covenant of grace, and by
the righteousness of God, not his own ; since all men have been under the
corruption of original sin, no man hath arrived to happiness by any right-
eousness of his own. Every man being a sinner is under the curse of the
law, and being accursed by it, cannot be justified by it. The law doth not
frown and smile upon a man at one and the same time. It proposeth no
recompence but to those that entirely observe it, and denounceth a curse
upon those that in the least do violate it; it accuseth, doth not justify, and
fills the conscience with darkness and despair, not with comfort and peace.
6. We are therefore justified by a righteousness imputed to us. ' The
blood of Christ ■cleanseth us from all sin.' It is not inherent in us, but in
the veins of Christ ; it is not physically or corporally applied to us, but
juridically, in a judicial way, and therefore imputed to us, and that for jus-
tification. Hence we are said to be justified by his blood, Rom. v. 9. If
justified by his blood, then meritoriously ; the merit of that blood must then
be imputed to us, and we upon the account of it pronounced righteous by
God, since this blood was never inherent in us. Hence forgiveness of sins
and justification is often ascribed unto it, Rom. iii. 23—25, Col. i. 14. As
our iniquities were charged upon him, so his righteousness is derived to us.
Our iniquities were never inherent in him, but imputed to him ; so his blood
never was inherent in us, but imputed to us for the satisfaction of the law,
and so for our justification from the penalty and curse of it. If it were our
righteousness that were imputed to us, it would be an imputation of debt,
not of grace, Rom. iv. 4. It cannot be inherent righteousness, because it
is a righteousness imputed without works, ver. 6 ; but no inherent right-
eousness is without works. Again, ver. 5, the object of justification is an
ungodly person, one that hath no righteousness of his own. But since there
must be a complete righteousness to justify him, it must be the righteousness
of another, for being ungodly, it cannot be his own. It is therefore by the
righteousness of one man, Christ : Rom. v. 19, ' As we are made sinners by
one man's disobedience, so we are made righteous by one man's obedience.'
Our being made sinners by one man's diso! edience, was no personal act of
our own, but a personal act of Adam's ; so we are made righteous, not by a
personal obedience of our own, but by the perpetual obedience of Christ,
which cannot be of advantage to us, unless some way or other counted to us.
* Bellarmine.
1 John I. 7.1 the cleansing virtue of Christ's blood. 531
Use 2 ; of comfort. The comfort of a believer hath a strong and lasting
foundation in the blood of Christ. All our sins met upon Christ as they
did upon the scape -goat, and were carried away with the streams of his
blood. A cleansing blood was not the language of the first covenant. It
required blood to be poured out in a way of revenge, not to be poured
out and applied for the pardon of others. What can relieve us, if this blood,
shed by a holy Saviour, and accepted by a righteous judge, cannot ? This
blood hath removed the curse, purchased our liberty, and may therefore
calm every believing conscience. What expression can be more stored with
comfort than this, ' The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from
all sin.'
1. The title is cheering. « The blood of Jesus Christ his Son.' The titles
of the blood of Godr and the righteousness of God, are enough to answer all
objections, and testify a virtue in it as incomprehensible as that of his God-
head, which elevated' it to an infinite value. What wounds are so deep that
they cannot be healed by the sovereign balsam of so rich a blood ? What
sins are too great to be expiated, and what diseases too desperate to be
cured, by the blood of him that created the world ? How great is that blood,
that must have more of value, since it is the blood of the Son of God, than
all sins can have of guilt, since they are the sins of the sons of men ! The
blood of Christ is as much above the guilt of our sins, as the excellency
of his person is above the meanness of ours.
2. And who can fathom the comfort that is in the extensiveness of the
object ? All sin. As we are not limited in the Lord's prayer to pray for
the forgiveness of some debts only, and not for others, but pray for the for-
giving of trespasses indefinitely, so there is no stint set to the virtue of this
cleansing blood. All transgressions to it are like a grain of sand, or the
drop of a bucket to the ocean, no more seen or distinguished when it is
swallowed up by that mass of waters. It is a ' plenteous redemption,' since
it redeems Israel, and all the Israel of God, from all their inicmities, Ps.
cxxx. 7, 8. His blood can cleanse as many sins as his Godhead can create
worlds, and those are numberless ; since there is no limits to his power there
can be none to his blood. Though our sins have weakened the law, and
made it unable to save us, yet they cannot weaken the omnipotent satisfaction
of the Redeemer. The multitude of sins in the sinner enhance the vastness
of the payment made by the surety. Let not any believing soul be dejected,
or any soul that would cordially believe and resign himself up to the conduct
of Christ. That blood that hath cleansed so many from sin, and from such
multitudes of sins, in their several capacities, can cleanse you from all your
sins, were they as great as all those jointly that have been cleansed by it
from the beginning of the world. For what hindrance is there but that it
can do the same in one person that it hath done in many ? When we look
upon the multitude of our sins, our pride and vain imaginations, our omis-
sions of service, our carelessness in the ways of God, there cannot but be a
hanging down the head, till we lift up our eyes to the cross and see all
balanced by the blood of the Son of God, which cannot be overtopped by the
guilt of a believing person.
3. And doth not the word cleanse deserve a particular consideration ? What
doth that note but,
(1.) Perfection. It cleanseth their guilt so that it ' shall not be found,'
Jer. 1. 20. What can justice demand more of us, more of our Saviour, than
what hath been already paid ? The everlasting death of a believing sinner
cannot be challenged by it, since the blood of a redeeming Saviour hath been
532 chaknock's works. [1 John I. 7.
shed for it. It were injustice to put the creature upon an imperfect satisfac-
tion, since the surety hath given a complete one ; and injustice to punish
him that is no longer guilty of a crime in the judgment of the law of redemp-
tion, since by faith he relies upon the blood of the Redeemer. Justice can
no more condemn any that are objects of mercy by receiving the blood of the
second covenant, than mere mercy can save any one that remaineth an ob-
ject of revenging justice under the first covenant. By this means we do not
stand before God only as innocent persons, but as those that have fulfilled
the law, both as to precept and penalty, Rom. viii. 4.
(2.) Continuance of justification ; the present tense implies a continued
act. Christ's blood is never lost and congealed, as the blood of the legal
sacrifices. His blood is called a ' new way,' Heb. x. 19, 20, ngogparos ; the
word rendered new signifies a thing newly slain or sacrificed. His blood is
as new and fresh for the work it was appointed to as when it was shed upon
the cross, as full of vigour as if it had been shed but this moment ; it is a
blood that was not drunk up by the earth, but gathered up again into his
body to be a living, pleading, cleansing blood in the presence of God for
ever.* He did not leave his body and blood putrefying in the grave, the
sacrifice had then ceased and corrupted, it had not been of everlasting
efficacy, as now it is. The justification of a believer stands upon as certain
terms as the justification of Christ himself before God. His was upon the
account of shedding his blood, ours upon the account of embracing his
blood. He was justified by God after his bleeding, Isa. 1. 6, 8, and brought
in triumph, and sending a challenge to any to condemn him, since God had
justified him, ver. 9; which words the apostle alludes to, Rom. viii. 33, 34.
to shew the unrepeatableness of justification, and applies them to believers,
though they were spoken by Christ in his own case. Christ was justified by
his resurrection : 1 Tim. iii. 16, ' Justified in the Spirit,' which is no other
than what Peter expresseth by being ' quickened in the Spirit,' 1 Peter
iii. 18. As Christ was justified by his resurrection from all the sins which
met upon him on the cross, and that for ever, so are believers cleansed
from all their guilt, and that for ever, by virtue of this blood. The meritori-
ous plea of this blood continuing for ever, is not without the perpetual act of
the righteous Judge justifying those for whom it is pleaded.
Hence will follow security at the last judgment. His blood cleanseth from
all sin here, and his voice shall absolve from all sin hereafter. He that hath
been a propitiation for your guilt, and an advocate against your accusers,
shall never as a judge condemn you for your sins. He doth not indeed judge
as a priest, but as a king ; but his kingly power is but subservient to his
priestly office, since he was more solemnly confirmed in that, viz. by an
oath, than in the other ; and therefore his royal authority shall never ruin any
whom his priestly sacrifice hath restored to their lost inheritance. Let no
believing soul therefore despond, let him draw this blood over his fears to
stifle them, as God hath done over his sins to cancel them, and drown them
in this same ocean into which God hath hurled his transgressions.
Use 3 ; of exhortation.
Have recourse only to this blood upon all occasions, since it only is able
to cleanse us from all our guilt. We have treasured up wrath, and wounded
conscience ; nothing can pacify a severe wrath, and calm a tempestuous
conscience, but this blood. Had we but the guilt of one sin upon us, we
stood in need of an expiation by it as well as if we had ten thousand. Every
* Dr Jackson.
1 John I. 7.] the cleansing virtue of Christ's blood. 533
infinite wrong must have an infinite satisfaction. Entertain no disparaging
and little thoughts of this blood, which the Scripture pronounceth of so
plenteous, unsearchable, and great a virtue. It was God's intent to cleanse
sin by it, when he agreed with the Redeemer about shedding his blood : Isa.
liii. 11, ' My righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their in-
iquities.' It was set out by him to this end, when it was shed : Zech.
xiii. 1, ' In that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David,' the
stronger spirits, aud men most according to God's heart, ' and for the in-
habitants of Jerusalem,' the weaker sort; for all a fountain to fill every
private cistern. Make not the covenant of God with his Son in vain ; slight
not his grace by refusing to drink of his open fountain. The glory of purg-
ing iniquity was reserved by God for this blood, it is committed to no other ;
the blood of bulls and goats never had, never could, have the honour of so
great a work. It is the glorious title of his blood to cleanse from all sins,
as it is the honourable signification of his name Jesus to save from all sins.
We cannot please God more than by coming to him for the pardon of our
sins, upon the account of this blood he hath so delighted to honour. If we
do not, we deny it the glory of its cleansing virtue ;. we undervalue the efficacy
of it, and would have it without any subject to exercise its power on. We
need not fear to approach to it, since God hath manifested it highly accept-
able to him, and available for us. The unsearchable riches of it should
more encourage us than the greatness of our guilt discourage our address.
Have recourse to it by faith, resting on the power of this blood, as the means
appointed by God, and intended by Christ, for the expiation of sin. Faith
as accepting Christ as a king doth not justify, but faith as accepting Christ
as a priest aud sacrifice, as shedding his blood, for we must accept him in
that office wherein he made the atonement ; and that was not as he was a
prophet or a king, but as he w:as a priest and a sacrifice ; and therefore it is
called, ' faith in his blood,' Rom. iii. 25, though indeed a faith in his blood
is not without receiving him as a king, and submitting to his precepts, as
well as relying on his sacrifice. He that receives the blood of Christ, as well
as he that names the name of Christ, must depart from iniquity, and avoid
those things which break the covenant. Mingle not any thing with his
satisfaction ; let no muddy waters of your own be mixed with this gospel
wine. If we look for a justification by anything else, we forfeit all right of
justification by him : Gal. v. 2, ' Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if you
be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing ;' — take it for a certain truth,
for I as an apostle speak it, that if you have an opinion that you shall be
justified by circumcision, or anything of the law, or of your own works, or
would make them partakers with Christ in this matter, Christ shall profit
you nothing, you had as good never have had a Christ made known to you,
lor any virtue you are like to derive from him. As none died with him to
expiate your guilt, so he will suffer none to be joined with him in justifying
your persons. Christ bears this blood only in his hand, when he pleads for
us ; we should carry this blood only in our hearts when we plead for our-
selves. It is not his blood only as shed doth justify, but his blood pleaded
in the court of heaven by himself, and pleaded before the throne of God by
the believing sinner ; without it we have no more plea than the apostate
angels have, whom God hath cast out of his favour for ever. And since we
contract guilt every day, let us daily apply the medicine. The pleas of this
blood are renewed according to the necessity of our persons. As often as an
Israelite had been bitten by the fiery serpents, he must have looked up to the
brazen one, if he would not have been destitute of a cure ; and we, upon
5U CHAENOCKS WORKS. i1 JoHN L 1 '
this blood upon any defects m our w ■D"*"*^ nn in ce, * ™
the light,' and are industrious to observethe will ot lioa,
Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.'
END OF VOL. III.
KDINBCKOIl :
•RINTUD BY JOHN GKK10, AND SON-
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