SERM.
LXX.

your treasure is? Where should your affections be but [Matt. 6. where your Lord and Saviour is, the best friend, the greatest 21.] treasure that you have in the whole world? Let us therefore now bid adieu to all things here below, and go up to live with Christ in Heaven; that our hearts may be there now, where we hope both our souls and bodies shall be for ever, in and through Him Who is risen from the dead, and become "the first-fruits of them that slept."

SERMON LXXI.

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION A PROOF OF HIS DIVINITY.

ROM. i. 4.

And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the Resurrection from the dead.

20.]

ALTHOUGH Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ subsisted from all eternity in the form of God, and was Himself "God [Rom.9.5.] blessed for ever," yet when He had "taken upon Him the [Phil. 2. 7.] form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, He humbled Himself" to the lowest degree among them; though all the world was His, as God, yet as Man He had not where [Matt. &. to lay His head. Though all mankind lived continually upon His bounty, He for some time lived upon the bounty Luke 8. 3. of certain women who ministered to Him of their substance. Though He was honoured and adored by all the Angels in Heaven, yet upon earth He was rejected and despised of [Isa. 53.3.] men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Thus He lived while He was here below, in the lowest and meanest condition that He well could, and He doubtless chose to do so for great and wise ends. To us the difference between the several ranks of men among us seems great and considerable, but it seemed not so to Him; to Him they were all alike, the greatest monarch upon the earth was as much below Him as the poorest beggar, and therefore in itself it was all one to Him what outward state and condition of life He should lead while He conversed upon earth; but He was pleased to choose that which we call the lowest, not only to teach us by His example, as He did by His precepts, to contemn this world, but especially that by that means He

SERM. might the better attain the great end of His coming into it, LXXI. even to offer up Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of man

kind. If He had appeared here in pomp and grandeur, like a mighty prince and conqueror, as the Jews expected the Messias to be, He would have been so much above them, that they neither durst nor could have touched His life; but He seeming to be in a much lower degree than most of themselves were; they had Him as it were at their foot, and could trample upon Him as the pleased; and accordingly they slighted, reviled, and reproached Him all the while He was among them, and at last arraigned, condemned, and hanged Him on a Cross, as if He had been some great malefactor, little thinking all the while that they crucified the Lord of Glory, and did that to Him which He came into the world to suffer for the sins of it.

But as all the while He lived among them, notwithstanding the meanness of His outward appearance, He demonstrated Himself by the works He did to be Almighty, so He made His death too an occasion of demonstrating the same thing to them by His rising again to life; for as His death shewed Him to be a real and true Man, so His Resurrection as plainly shewed Him to be the One living and true God. This is that which the Apostle here asserts, and I shall endeavour to prove from the words I have now read, compared with other places of the Holy Scriptures.

The Apostle, the better to recommend what He was about to write to the Romans, begins his Epistle to them with a catalogue of the titles which God had given him, and which he esteemed, as they were, the greatest that could be conferred upon him, saying, "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an Apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God (which He had promised afore by the Prophets in the Holy Scriptures);" and that they might better understand what this Gospel of God was, which he was now to preach to them, he tells them first in general that it was "concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord," and then he gives them a particular description of His Person, who or what this Jesus Christ was, "Which," saith he, " was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, by

16.

the Resurrection from the dead." Where he describes our Saviour according to both His natures, "according to the flesh," that is His human nature, and "according to the spirit of holiness," that is His Divine nature. For so the word spirit, when it is used of our Saviour in opposition to the flesh, always signifies, as might easily be 1 Pet. 3. 18. shewn. Now the Apostle here saith that our Lord ac- 1 Tim. 3. cording to the flesh, or human nature, was of the seed of David, of that royal family of which David was the head; but according to His spiritual or Divine nature, He was the Son of God, and declared and manifested to be so with power, by the Resurrection from the dead; so that he here makes Christ's Resurrection from the dead to be a most powerful, invincible argument and demonstration that He was the Son of God; the Only-begotten of the Father, of the same nature and substance with Him; the only Almighty and Eternal God. To the same purpose is that of the same Apostle, where, speaking of Christ's Resurrection, he quotes those words which God spoke of His Son by the Psalmist, "Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Acts 13. 33. Thee;" that is, This day I have declared and manifested to the world that Thou art My Only-begotten Son. For in Scripture things are then said to be, when they appear to be so, as David after Absalom's rebellion said, "Do not I know 2 Sam. 19. that I am this day king over Israel;" he had been king over Israel many years before, but he was now publicly owned and declared to be so, and therefore speaks as if he had been made but that day. So here Christ was the Son of God from all eternity, but by His Resurrection from the dead He appeared to be so to men, and therefore is said to be then begotten, because He was then declared by God Himself to be begotten of Him, and so His essential and eternal Son.

And verily among the many, I may say innumerable arguments which are dispersed all over the Bible to confirm us in this great fundamental article of our faith, this is so plain and strong, that if there were no other, this of itself is sufficient to do it. For that there was something extraordinary in Christ's Resurrection, appears in that He was not only the first, but the only Person that ever yet rose

BB

22.

LXXI.

Rev. 1. 5.

SERM. from the dead so as never to die any more; there were some raised by His Prophets in the Old Testament, and some by Himself in the New; but they were raised only to a mortal life, and therefore soon died again: whereas He rose from the dead, so as to conquer death itself, and was never after Col. 1. 18. subject to it, and therefore is called rgwróroxos èx rŵv vexgüv, 'the first-born from the dead.' He that hath been dead, and is made alive again, hath a new life given him, and therefore may be properly said to be born again. In which sense Christ is properly said to be the first-born from the dead, He being the first that ever rose again to an immortal life, and and it is only by virtue of His Resurrection that all others shall rise again at the Last Day, He being, as the 1 Cor.15.20. Apostle saith, "The first-fruits of them that slept."

But that which was most extraordinary in the Resurrection of Christ was, that it was a plain declaration and demonstration of His eternal power and Godhead, as might be easily shewn from those words of St. Peter, where speaking Acts 2. 24. of Christ, he saith, "Whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be holden of it." For if He had not been God Himself, but one of His creatures, it would have been possible with God to have held Him in the state of death, for all things are possible with God: He can annihilate, or destroy, or keep any of His creatures in what state He pleaseth; and therefore if Christ had been only a creature, it would have been possible for Him as well as others, to be holden of death, which God Himself by His Apostle absolutely denies, and thereby declared Him not to be a mere creature, but His Own Eternal and Only-begotten Son.

But that God declared Him to be so by raising Him from the dead, appears most plainly in that He thereby declared Himself fully satisfied and well pleased with what He had said and done while He lived upon earth; for if Christ had done any thing contrary to God's will, or said any thing that was not perfectly true, He would have been a sinner as other men are, and so obnoxious to that death which God hath threatened against all sinners, never to rise again so as to die no more till the Last Day, when all sinners must be judged. And therefore His Resurrection from the dead so