Being fect freedom." St. Paul saith as much; Rom. vi. 18, 20. freed from sin, ye are made, servi justitia, the servants of righteousness. What is liberty, but freedom from bondage? and, behold, our freedom from the bondage of sin ties us to a sure liberty, that is our free obedience to God. Both the Orator and the Philosopher define liberty, by Potestas vivendi ut velis; but, withal, you know he adds, quis vivit ut vult, nisi qui recta sequitur? See how free the good man is: he doth what he will; for he wills what God wills, and what God would have him will: in whatever he doth therefore, he is a free man. Neither hath any man free-will to good, but he. Be ambitious of this happy condition, O all ye Noble and Generous Spirits; and do not think ye live, till ye have attained to this true liberty; The liberty, wherewith Christ hath made us free. II. So from the Liberty, we descend to the Prerogative: CHRIST'S LIBERATION. Here is the glorious prerogative of the Son of God, to be the Deliverer or Redeemer of his people. They could not free themselves. The angels of heaven might pity, could not redeem them: yea, alas, who could, or who did redeem those of their rank; which, of lightsome celestial spirits, are become foul devils? Only Christ could free us, whose ransom was infinite: only Christ did free us, whose love is infinite. And how hath he wrought our liberty? By force, by purchase. By Force, in that he hath conquered him, whose captives we were; by Purchase, in that he hath paid the full price of our ransom, to that supreme hand whereto we were forfeited. I have heard lawyers say, there are in civil corporations three ways of freedom; by birth, by service, by redemption by Birth, as St. Paul was free of Rome; by Service, as apprentices upon expiration of their years; by Redemption, as the centurion, with a great sum purchased I this freedom. Two of these are barred from all utter possibility, in our spiritual freedom: for, by Birth, we are the sons of wrath; by Service, we are naturally the vassals of Satan: it is only the precious Redemption of the Son of God, that hath freed us. Sin, Whereas freedom then hath respect to bondage, there are seven Egyptian Masters, from whose slavery Christ hath freed us. an accusing Conscience, danger of God's Wrath, tyranny of Satan, the curse of the Law, Mosaical Ceremonies, human Ordinances: see our servitude to, and our freedom from, all these, by the powerful Liberation of Christ. 1. It was a true word of that Pythagorean, Quot vitia, tot domini: SIN is a hard master. A master? yea, a tyrant: let not sin reign in your mortal bodies; Rom. vi. 12. and so the sinner is not only serous corruptitia, a drudge of corruptions; 2 Pet. ii. 19: but a very slave, sold under sin; Rom. vii. 14. So necessitated to evil by his own inward corruption, that he cannot but grind in this mill; he cannot but row in this galley: for, as posse peccare is the condition of the greatest saint upon earth, and non posse peccare 4 is the condition of the least saint above; so, non posse non peccare 2. An ACCUSING CONSCIENCE is a true task-master of Egypt. It will be sure to whip us, for what we have done, for what we have not done. Horror of sin, like a sleeping mastiff, lies at our door; Gen. iv. 7: when it awakes, it will fly on our throat. No closer doth the shadow follow the body, than the revenge of self-accusation follows sin. Walk eastward in the morning, the shadow starts behind thee soon after, it is upon thy left side: at noon, it is under thy feet; lie down, it coucheth under thee: towards even, it leaps before thee. Thou canst not be rid of it, while thou hast a body, and the sun light. No more can thy soul quit the conscience of evil. This is to thee instead of a hell of fiends, that shall ever be shaking firebrands at thee; ever torturing thee with affrights of more pains, than thy nature can comprehend: Sava conturbata conscientia; Wisd. xvii. 11. If thou look to the punishment of loss, it shall say, as Lysimachus did, "How much felicity have I lost, for how little pleasure!" If to the punishment of sense, it shall say to thee, as the Tyrant dreamed his heart said to him out of the boiling cauldron, ἐγώ σοι τέτων αἰτία; “ I am the cause of all this misery." Here is our bondage: where is the liberty? Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil Conscience; Heb. x. 22. Sprinkled, with what? Even with the blood of Jesus; verse 19. This, this only is it, that can free us. It is with the unquiet heart, as with the troubled sea of Tiberias: the winds rise, the waters swell, the billows roar, the ship is tossed, heaven and earth threat to meet; Christ doth but speak the word, all is calm. So Christ hath freed us, secondly, from the bondage of an Accusing Conscience. 3. The conscience is but God's bailiff. It is the displeasure of the Lord of Heaven and Earth, that is the utmost of all terribles. The fear of GOD'S WRATH is that strong wind, that stirs these billows from the bottom. Set aside the danger of divine displeasure, and the clamours of conscience were harmless. This alone makes a hell in the bosom. The aversion of God's face, is confusion : the least bending of his brow, is perdition, Psalm ii. 12: but his totus æstus, his whole fury, as Psalm lxxviii. 38, is the utter absorp tion of the creature: Ercandescentia ejus funditur sicut ignis; His wrath is poured out like fire, the rocks are rent before it; Nahum i. 6 whence there is nothing, but, Pobɛçà endoxy, a fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries; Heb. x. 27. Here is the bondage: where is the liberty? Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then Christ hath freed us, thirdly, from the bondage of the Wrath of God. 4. As every wicked man is a tyrant, according to the Philosopher's position; and every tyrant is a devil among men so, THE DEVIL is the arch-tyrant of the creatures. He makes all his subjects errand vassals; yea, chained slaves: 2 Tim. ii. 26: That they may recover themselves from the snare of the Devil, who are taken captive by him at his will: lo, here is will, snares, captivity, perfect tyranny. Nahash, the Ammonite, was a notable tyrant: he would have the right eyes of the Israelites put out, as an eminent mark of servitude. So doth this Infernal Nahash blind the right eye of our understanding; yea, with the spiteful Philistine, he puts out both the eyes of our apprehension and judgment; that he may gyre us about in the mill of unprofitable wickedness, and cruelly insult upon our remediless misery. And, when he hath done, the fairest end is death; yea, death without end. Oh, the impotency of earthly tyranny to this! The greatest blood-suckers could but kill; and livor post fata, as the old word is: but here is a homicida ab initio; and à fine, too; ever killing with an ever-living death, for a perpetual fruition of our torment. Here is the bondage: where is the liberty? Christ hath spoiled principalities and powers, and made a show of them, openly triumphing over them in the same cross; Col. ii. 15. By his death he destroyed him that hath the power of death, the Devil; Heb. ii. 14. So then Christ hath freed us, fourthly, from the bondage of Satan's Tyranny. 5. At the best, THE LAW is but a hard master, impossible to please; adúvatov Tou vous saith St. Paul: but, at the worst, a cruel one. The very courtesy of the Law was jugum, an unsupportable yoke; but the spite of the Law is naтága, a curse. Cursed is every one, that continues not in all that is written in the book of the law to do it; Gal. iii. 10. Do you not remember an unmerciful steward in the Gospel, that catcheth his bankrupt fellow by the throat, and says, Pay me that thou owest me? so doth the Law to us: we should pay, and cannot; and, because we cannot pay, we forfeit ourselves; so as every mother's son is the child of death. Here is our bondage where is our liberty? Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us. O blessed redemption, that frees us from the curse! O Blessed Redeemer, that would become a curse for us, that the curse of the Law might not light upon us! So Christ hath freed us, fifthly, from the bondage of the Law. for 6. MOSES was a meek man, but a severe master. His face did not more shine in God's aspect upon him, than it lowered in his aspect to men. His ceremonies were hard impositions: many, number; costly, for charge; painful, for execution. He, that led Israel out of one bondage, carried them into another; from the bondage of Egypt, to the bondage of Sinai. This held till the vail of the Temple rent; yea, till the vail of that better Temple, his Sacred Body, his very heart-strings, did crack asunder, with a consummatum est. And now, TÉλos vous Xpisòs, Christ is the end of the Law; Rom. x. 4. freed us; Rom. viii. 2. monies of prefiguration: Now, the Law of the Spirit of Life hath You hear now no more news of the cerethey are dead with Christ. Ceremonies of decency may and must live. Let no man now have his ear bored through to Moses's post. Christ hath freed us, sixthly, from the Law of Ceremonies. 7. Our last master is HUMAN ORDINANCES; the case of our exemption wherefrom is not so clear. Concerning which, I find a double extreme of opinion: the one, that ascribes too much to them, as equalling them with the Law of God; the other, that ascribes too little to them, as if they were no tie to our obedience : the one, holding them to bind the conscience, no less than the positive laws of God; the other, either slighting their obligation, or extending it only to the outward man, not the inward. We must learn to walk a mid-way betwixt both: and know, that the good laws of our superiors, whether civil or ecclesiastical, do, in a sort, reach to the very conscience; though not primarily and immediately as theirs, yet mediately and secondarily as they stand in reference to the Law of God with our obedience to his instituted authority; and therefore they tie us, in some sort, besides the case, whether of scandal or contempt. Where no man can witness, there is no scandal: where is no intention of an affront to the commanding power, there is no contempt; and yet, willingly to break good laws without all witness, without all purpose of affront, is therefore sin, because disobedience. For example: I dine fully alone out of wantonness, upon a day sequestered by authority to a public fast: I dine alone, therefore without scandal; out of wantonness, therefore not out of contempt: yet I offend against him that seeth in secret, notwithstanding my solitariness; and my wantonness is by him construed as a contempt to the ordainer of authority. But, when both scandal and contempt are met to aggravate the violation, now the breach of human laws binds the conscience to a fearful guilt. Not to flatter the times, as I hope I shall never be blurred with this crimination, I must needs say this is too shamefully unregarded. Never age was more lawless. forefathers were taught to be superstitiously scrupulous, in observing the laws of the Church, above God's: like those Christians, of whom Socrates the historian speaks, which held fornication as a thing indifferent, de diebus festis tanquam de vitá decertant, "but strive for a holy day as for their life;" we are leaped into a licentious neglect of civil or sacred laws, as if it were piety to be disobedient. Doth the law command a Friday fast? no day is so selected for feasting: let a schismatical or popish book be prohibited; this very prohibition endears it: let wholesome laws be enacted against drunkenness, idleness, exactions, unlawful transportations, excess of diet, of apparel, or whatever noted abuse; commands do not so much whet our desires, as forbiddances. What is this, but to baffle and affront that sacred power, which is entrusted to government; and to profess ourselves not Libertines, but Licentiate of disorder? Far, far is it from the intentions of the God of Order, under the stile of liberty to give scope to these unruly humours of men; the issue whereof can be no other than utter confusion. But if any power, besides divine, in heaven or earth, shall challenge to itself this privilege, to put a primary or immediate tie upon the conscience, so as it should be a sin to disobey that ordinance, because it is without relation to the command of the Highest let it be anathema. Our hearts have reason to be free, in spite of any such antichristian usurpation; while the owner of them hath charged us, not to be (thus) the servants of men; 1 Cor. vii. 23. So Christ hath, lastly, freed us from the bondage of Human Ordinances. Lo, now, ye have seen our liberation from a whole heptarchy of spiritual tyranny; stand still now awhile, Honourable and Beloved, and look back, with wondering and thankful eyes, upon the infinite mercy of our Deliverer. Sin beguiles us, conscience accuseth us, God's wrath is bent against us, Satan tyrannizes over us, the law condemns us, insolent superstition enthrals us; and now, from all these, Christ hath made us free. How should we now erect altars to our dear Redeemer; and inscribe them Christo liberatori! How should we, from the altars of our devoted hearts, send up the holy sacrifices of our best obediences, the sweet incense of our perpetual prayers! O Blessed Saviour, how should we, how can we enough magnify thee; no, not though those celestial choristers of thine should return, to bear a part with us, in renewing their gloria in excelsis, glory to God on high! Our bodies, our souls are too little for thee. Oh, take thine own from us, and give it to thyself, who hast both made and freed it. To sum up all, then we are freed from the bondage of sin, by the Spirit of Christ; from an accusing conscience, by the blood of Christ; from the wrath of God, by faith in Christ; from the tyranny of Satan, by the victory of Christ; from the curse of the law, by the satisfaction of Christ; from the law of ceremonies, by the consummation of Christ; from human ordinances, by the manumission and instruction of Christ: and now, stand fast in all these liberties, wherewith Christ hath made you free. III. And so, from the Liberty and Prerogative, we descend to the MAINTENANCE OF THIS LIBERTY; Stand fast. Is it any boot to bid a man hold fast our once recovered liberty? Did ye ever hear of a wild bird, that, once let out of the cage wherein she hath been long enclosed, would come fluttering about the wires to get in again? Did ye ever see a slave, that, after his ransom paid and his discharge obtained, would run back, and sue for a place in his galley? Casuists dispute, whether a prisoner, though condemned, may, upon breach of prison, escape; and the best resolve it affirmatively so Cajetan, Soto, Navarre, Lessius, others. Their reason is; for that he is not sentenced to remain voluntarily in bonds, but to be kept so; neither is it the duty of the offender to stay, but of the keeper to hold him there: hence chains and fetters are ordained, where otherwise twists of tow were sufficient: but never |