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you, mortifying all your corrupt affections and sinful actions; that ye may truly say with St. Paul, I am crucified with Christ.

Six several times, do we find that Christ shed blood; in his Circumcision, in his Agony, in his Crowning, in his Scourging, in his Affixion, in his Transfixion: the instrument of the first was the Knife; of the second, vehemence of Passion; of the third, the Thorns; of the fourth, the Whips; of the fifth, the Nails; of the last, the Spear. In all these we are, we must be Partners with our Saviour.

In his Circumcision, when we draw blood of ourselves by cutting off the foreskin of our filthy, if pleasing, corruptions; Col. ii. 11: in his Agony, when we are deeply affected with the sense of God's displeasure for sin, and terrified with the frowns of an angry Father: in his Crowning with thorns, when we smart and bleed with reproaches for the name of Christ; when that, which the world counts honour, is a pain to us for his sake; when our guilty thoughts punish us, and wound our restless heads with the sad remembrance of our sins: in his Scourging, when we tame our wanton and rebellious flesh with wise rigour and holy severity: in his Affixion, when all the powers of our souls and parts of our body are strictly hampered and unremovably fastened upon the Royal Commandments of our Maker and Redeemer: in his Transfixion, when our hearts are wounded with divine love, with the Spouse in the Canticles; or our consciences with deep sorrow.

In all these, we bleed with Christ; and all these, save the first only, belong to his crucifying.

Surely, as it was in the Old Law, xwpis aipalexxvoías without bloodshed there was no remission; Heb. ix. 22: so it is still and ever in the New. If Christ had not thus bled for us, no remission: if we do not thus bleed with Christ, no remission,

There is no benefit where is no partnership. If Christ therefore bled with his agony, with his thorns, with his whips, with his nails, with his spear, in so many thousand passages as tradition is bold to define; and we never bleed, either with the agony of our sorrow for sin, or the thorns of holy cares for displeasure, or the scourges of severe Christian rigour, or the nails of holy constraint, or the Spear of deep remorse; how do we, how can we for shame say, we are crucified with Christ?

Divine St. Austin, in his Epistle or Book rather to Honoratus, (Epist. 120. ad Honoratum), gives us all the dimensions of the Cross of Christ. The Latitude he makes in the transverse: this, saith he, pertains to good works; because on this his hands were stretched. The Length was from the ground to the transverse: this is attributed to his longanimity and persistance; for on that his body was stayed and fixed. The Height was in the head of the cross above the transverse; signifying the expectation of supernal things. The Depth of it was in that part, which was pitched below within the earth; importing the profoundness of his free grace, which is the ground of all his beneficence.

In all these must we have our part with Christ. In the Transverse of his cross, by the ready extension of our hands to all good works of piety, justice, charity; in the Arrectary or beam of his cross, by continuance and uninterrupted perseverance in good; in the Head of his cross, by a high elevated hope and looking for of glory; in the Foot of his cross, by a lively and firm faith, fastening our souls upon the affiance of his free grace and mercy. And thus shall we be crucified with Christ upon his own Cross.

2. Yet, lastly, we must go further than this; from his Cross to his PERSON. So did St. Paul, and every believer, die with Christ, that he died in Christ: for, as in the First Adam we all lived, and sinned; so, in the Second, all believers died, that they might live.

The First Adam brought in death to all mankind; but, at last, actually died for none but himself: the Second Adam died for mankind, and brought life to all believers. Seest thou thy Saviour therefore hanging upon the Cross? all mankind hangs there with him as a Knight or Burgess of Parliament voices his whole borough or country.

What speak I of this? The arms and legs take the same lot with the head. Every believer is a limb of that body: how can he therefore but die with him, and in him? That real union then, which is betwixt Christ and us, makes the Cross and Passion of Christ ours; so as the thorns pierced our heads, the scourges blooded our backs, the nails wounded our hands and feet, and the spear gored our sides and hearts: by virtue whereof, we receive justification from our sins, and true mortification of our corruptions.

Every believer therefore is dead already for his sins, in his Sa viour: he needs not fear, that he shall die again. God is too just, to punish twice for one fault; to recover the sum, both of the surety and principal. All the score of our arrearages is fully struck off, by the infinite satisfaction of our Blessed Redeemer.

Comfort thyself therefore, thou Penitent and Faithful Soul, in the confidence of thy safety: thou shalt not die, but live; since thou art already crucified with thy Saviour: he died for thee; thou diedst in him. Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies. Who shall condemn? It is Christ that died; yea rather that is risen again, and lives gloriously at the right hand of "God, making intercession for us. To thee, O Blessed Jesu, together with thy Coeternal Father and Holy Spirit, Three Persons in One Infinite and Incomprehensible Deity, be all praise, honour, and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

SERMON XXVII.

CHRISTIAN LIBERTY LAID FORTH:

IN A SERMON PREACHED TO HIS LATE MAJESTY AT WHITEHALL, IN THE TIME OF THE PARLIAMENT HOLDEN ANNO 1628.

BY JOSEPH BISHOP OF EXON.

GALATIANS v. 1.

Stand fast therefore in the Liberty, wherewith Christ hath made you free.

As if my tongue and your ears could not easily be diswonted from our late parliamentary language, you have here, in this Text, Liberty, Prerogative, the Maintenance of both: Liberty of subjects, that are freed; Prerogative of the King of Glory, that hath freed them; Maintenance of that liberty, which the power of that great prerogative hath atchieved: Christian Liberty; Christ's Liberation; our Persistance: Stand fast in the Liberty, wherewith Christ hath made you free.

I. Liberty is a sweet word: the thing itself is much sweeter: and men's apprehensions make it yet sweeter than it is. Certainly, if liberty and life were competitors, it is a great question, whether would carry it sure I am, if there be a life without it, yet it is not vital. Man restrained is like a wild bird shut up in a cage; that offers at every of the grates to get out, and grows sullen when it can find no evasion; and, till stark famine urge it, will not so much as feed, for anger to be confined.

Neither is the word more sweet, than large: there are as many liberties, as restraints; and as many restraints, as there are limitations of superior commands; and there are so many limits of commands, as there are either duties to be done, or sentences to be undergone. There is a liberty of the parts, and a liberty of the man.

There is a drunken liberty of the Tongue; which, being once glibbed with intoxicating liquor, runs wild through heaven and earth; and spares neither him that is God above, nor those which are called gods on earth. The slanderer answered Pyrrhus well :

"I confess I said thus, O king; and had said more, if more wine had been given me." Treason is but a tavern dialect. Anything passes well under the Rose. It is not the man, but the liquor; not the liquor, but the excess, that is guilty of this liberty.

There is an audacious and factious liberty of this loose film; which not only ill-tutored scholars take to themselves under the name of libertas prophetandi, pestering both presses and pulpits with their bold and brainsick fancies; but unlettered tradesmen, and tattling gossips too: with whom, deep questions of divinity, and censures of their teachers, are grown into common table-talk; and peremptory decisions of theological problems is as ordinary almost, as backbiting their neighbours.

There is a profane liberty of atheous swaggerers, which say, Disrumpamus vincula; let us break their bonds. Not religion only, but even reason and humanity seem fetters to these spirits; who, like the demoniac in the Gospel, having broken all their chains, find no freedom, but among the noisome graves of hateful corruptions.

There is a disloyal liberty of those rebellious spirits, which depise government; and hold it a servitude, to live within the range of wholesome laws. There is no freedom with these unquiet dispositions, but in the bold censures of authority, in the seditious calumniations of superiors, and in their own Utopical prescriptions. Every thing is good to these men, save the present; and nothing, save their own. Though all these are not so much liberties, as licentiousness.

Besides these, there are civil liberties of persons, towns, incorporations, countries, kings, kingdoms, Good reason these should be mutually stood upon. Religion was never an enemy to the due orders and rights of policy. God's book is the true Magna Charta, that enacts both king and people their own. He, that hath set bounds to the wide ocean, hath stinted the freest liberty.

But these liberties are not for the pulpit. It is the CHRISTIAN LIBERTY, wherewith we have to do: that alone hath scope enough, both for our present speech and perpetual main

tenance.

This Christian Liberty stands, either in Immunity from evil, or Enlargement to good.

The Immunity is from that, which is evil in itself; or that, which is evil to us. In itself: Sin; Satan. Sin, whether in the fault, or in the punishment; the punishment, whether inward, or outward: inward, the slavery of an accusing conscience; outward, the wrath of God, death, damnation. Evil to us: whether burdensome traditions, or the law; the law, whether moral, or ceremonial; moral, whether the obligations, or the curse.

Enlargement to good: whether in respect of the creature, which is our free use of it; or whether in respect to God, in our voluntary service of him, in our free access to him: access, whether to his throne of grace, or our throne of glory.

I have laid before you a compendious tablet of our Christian Liberty less than which, is bondage; more than which, is looseness.

Such abundant scope there is in this allowed freedom, that what heart soever would yet rove further, makes itself unworthy of pity in loosing itself. Do we think the angels are pent up in their heavens, or can wish to walk beyond those glorious bounds? Can they hold it a restraint, that they can but will good; like to our liquorous first parents, that longed to know evil?

Oh the sweet and happy liberty of the sons of God! All the world, besides them, are very slaves; and lie obnoxious to the bolts, fetters, scourges of a spiritual cruelty.

It is hard to beat this into a carnal heart. No small part of our servitude lies in the captivation of our understanding; such, as that we cannot see ourselves captive. This is a strange difference of misprision: the Christian is free, and cannot think himself so; the Worldling thinks himself free, and is not so.

What talk we to these jovialists? It is liberty, with them, for a man to speak what he thinks, to take what he likes, to do what he lists; without restriction, without controulment. "Call ye this freedom, that a man must speak and live by rule; to have a guard upon his lips and his eyes; no passage for a vain word or look, much less for a lewd; to have his best pleasures stinted, his worse abandoned; to be tasked with an unpleasing good, and chid when he fails. Tush, tell not me. To let the heart loose to an unlimited jollity, to revel heartily, to feast without fear, to drink without measure, to swear without check, to admit of no bound of luxury but our own strength, to shut out all thoughts of scrupulous austerity, to entertain no guest of inward motion but what may sooth up our lawlessness; this is liberty: who does less is a slave to his own severe thoughts,"

Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou savourest not the things of God. If this be freedom, to have our full scope of wickedness, O happy devils; O miserable saints of God! Those, though fettered up in chains of everlasting darkness, can do no other but sin these, in all the elbow-room of the empyreal heaven, cannot do one evil act: yea, the God of Saints and Angels, the Author of all Liberty, should be least free; who, out of the blessed necessity of his most pure nature, is not capable of the least possibility of evil. Learn, O Vain Men, that there is nothing but impotence, nothing but gieves and manacles in the freest sins. Some captive may have a longer chain than his fellows; yea, some offender may have the liberty of the Tower; yet, he is a prisoner still. Some gaol may be wider than some palace: what of that? If hell were more spacious than the seat of the blessed, this doth not make it no place of torment. Go whither thou wilt, thou Resolved Sinner, thou carriest thy chain with thee: it shall stick as close to thee as thy soul; neither can it ever be shaken off, till thou have put off thyself by a spiritual regeneration; then only thou art free.

It is a divine word, that in our Liturgy, "Whose service is per

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