contumacious Jews of His being their promised Messiah, would not decline death to convince them; and, though He had not seldom done so much to make Himself the object of their faith, would not be invited from the cross, though the chief priests and scribes themselves said, at His crucifixion, “Let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe on Him." And Christ, to convince the world of their unableness to emerge and recover out of that deep abyss wherein the load of sin (which in Scripture is called a weight) had precipitated fallen man, came not into the world until well nigh four thousand years of sickness had made the disease desperate, and the cure almost hopeless: so inveterate an obstinacy at once widening the distance betwixt God and man, and proclaiming the latter's disability to find, by his own wisdom, expedients of reunion. Thus Christ healed and dispossessed a dumb person, who was able to make entreaties but by the disability of pronouncing them, and might truly say to the secure world, "I am found of them that sought me not." And when our Saviour was come into the wretched world, of all the numerous miracles recorded in the gospel, He scarce did any for His own private relief. And to shew that as He endured His sorrows for our sakes, that by His stripes we might be healed, so were the joys He tasted in relation to us, we read not (which is highly observable) in the whole gospel that ever he rejoiced but once, and that was when His returned disciples informed Him that they had victoriously chased devils and diseases out of oppressed mortals, and that, by His authority, men had been dispossessed of both the tempter and punishment of sin. He conversed among His contemporaries with virtues, as well attesting what He was, as prophecies or miracles could do; and to teach man how much He valued him above those creatures that man makes his idols, He often altered and suspended the course of nature, for man's instruction or his relief, and reversed the laws established in the universe, to engage men to obey those of God, by doing miracles so numerous and great, that the Jews' unbelief may be almost counted one. Yet were those wonders wrought for a generation that ascribed them to the devil, and returned them with so unexemplified an ingratitude, that 'tis not the least of His wonders that He would vouchsafe to work any of them for such blasphemous wretches; who were indeed, as some of the latter Jews have too truly styled themselves, in relation to their fathers, Chometz ben ya-yin, vinegar the child of wine, a most degenerate offspring of holy progenitors. He suffered so much for them that made Him do so, that He suffered the addition of misery of being thought to suffer deservedly; and He was numbered with the transgressors. And though He lived as much a miracle as any He did, yet did His condition sometimes appear so despicable and forlorn, that men could not know His deity but by His goodness, which was too infinite not to belong incommunicably to God. And though 'twere once a saying of our Saviour's, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends," yet is not what is said of the love here mentioned to be understood of love indefinitely or generally considered, but only of the single acts or expressions of a man's love to his friends compared betwixt themselves. And so the alleged passage seems to mean but this, that among the single acts of kindness to a man's friends, there is not any one more highly expressive of a real and sincere love than to part with one's life for their sakes. This text, therefore, would not be indefinitely applied to the affection of love itself, as if it could not possibly be greater than is requisite to make a man content or willing to die for his friends, for he that sacrifices, besides his life, his fortune also, his children, and his reputation, does thereby express more love to them than he could do by parting with his life only for them. And he that is forward to die for those that hate him, or, at least, know him not, discloses a more plentiful and exuberant stock of love than he that does the same kindness THE FUNCTION OF FAITH. 199 but for those that love him. And thus our Saviour would be understood, unless we would say, that He out-practised what He taught; for He came to lay down His life even for His enemies, and (like the kind balsam-tree, whose healing wounds weep sovereign balm to cure those that made them) He refused not to die for those that killed Him, and shed His blood for some of them that spilled it. And so little was His injured love to the ungrateful world discouraged or impaired by the savage entertainment He met with in it, that, after He had suffered from wretched men (for whose sakes He left heaven to become capable of suffering) such barbarous indignities as might have made bare punishments appear mercy, and even cruelty itself seem no more than justice; when, I say, to hope for so much as His pardon were presumption, He was pleased to create confidence of no less than His love, a virtue. Nor think it, Lindamor, impertinent to our present theme, that I insist so much on what Christ has done and suffered for us, since both He himself informs us, that He and His Father are one; and some of the texts already mentioned have taught us, that 'twas an effect of God's love also to the world, that He gave His only begotten Son to redeem it; and that God commendeth His love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Wherefore, I shall without scruple proceed to observe to you, that so free is Christ's dilection, that the grand condition of our felicity is our belief that He is disposed to make us happy, on terms not only so honourable to Him, but so advantageous to us, that-I was about to say, that possibly faith itself would scarce be exacted as requisite to our happiness- but that the condition does increase the benefit, by vouchsafing us bold and early anticipations of it: for, faith being (as the apostle terms it) the substance of things hoped for, and evidence (or conviction) of things not seen, wafts our joys to this side of the grave, bows heaven down to us, till our freed spirits can soar up to heaven; and does us such a service as the Jewish spies did to their countrymen, by bringing them over to this side Jordan into the wilderness some of the pleasant and delicious fruits of the blest Land of Promise. I said, Lindamor, that faith was the grand condition required in God's free grant of eternal life. Not that I would ascribe anything to a lazy, speculative, and barren faith, in opposition to that lively and active one, which is called by the apostle, πίστις δι' ἀγάπης ἐνεργουμένη (faith operating by love), since I am informed by St James, that the divorce of faith and works is as destructive to religion as that of soul and body is to life; but that I was willing to mind you, that though true faith (which cries, like Rachel, "Give me children, or else I die") be ever the pregnant mother of good works, yet are not those works the cause, but the effects and signs of God's first love to men (however afterward the children may nurse their parents). As, though the needle's pointing at the poles be, by being an effect, an argument of its having been invigorated by the loadstone, or received influence from some other magnetic body, yet is not that respect unto the north the cause, but the operation of the iron's being drawn by the attractive mineral. "Thou art good, and dost good," says the Psalmist to his Maker. The greatness of His goodness is that which makes it ours; nor doth He do us good because that we are good, but because He is liberally so, as the sun shines on dunghills, not out of any invitation his beams find there, but because it is his nature to be diffusive of his light: yet with this difference, that whereas the sun's bounty, by being rather an advantage to us than a favour, deserves our joy, and not our thanks, because his visits are made designlessly, and without any particular intention of address (by such a bare necessity of nature as that which makes springs flow out into streams, when their beds are too narrow to contain the renewed water that doth incessantly swell the exuberant sources), God, on the contrary, for being necessarily kind, is GOD'S MUNIFICENCE. 201 not less freely or obligingly so, to you or me; for, though some kind of communicativeness be essential to His goodness, yet His extension of it without Himself, and His vouchsafing it to this or that particular person, are purely arbitrary. To omit His love to the numberless elect angels, the strict relations betwixt the persons of the blessed Trinity supplying God with internal objects, which employed His kindness before the creation, and Himself being able to allow His goodness the extent of infinity for its diffusion. But (having glanced at this only by the by) we may yet further admiringly observe, that whereas men usually give freeliest where they have not given before, and make it both the motive and the excuse of their desistance from giving any more that they have given already, God's bounty hath a very different method; for He uses to give because He hath given, and that He may give. Consonantly to which, when the revolting Israelites had broken the contents, whilst Moses was bringing them the tables of the Law, and had thereby provoked the incensed Giver of it to the thoughts of a sudden extirpation of so ingrateful and rebellious a people, we may observe, that whereas God, as unwilling to remember His former goodness to them, speaking to Moses, calls them, "Thy people which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt;" Moses, on the other side, to engage God to the new mercy of a pardon, represents to God His former mercy to them, and calls them God's people, which He brought forth out of the land of Egypt, with great power, and with a mighty hand. And so conspicuous in the Eternal Son was this property of the merciful Father, that when sick Lazarus's sisters implored His rescue for their expiring brother, the motive they employ, and which prospered their addresses, was, "Lord, behold (not "he who loveth thee," but) he whom Thou lovest is sick." And as He takes the first inducements of His bounty from Himself, so do His former favours both invite and give rates to his succeeding blessings. And there is rea |