Fourthly and lastly, The time of his coming.

Of all which in their order. And, 1. First for the person who came. It was the second Person in the glorious Trinity, the ever blessed and eternal Son of God, concerning whom it is a miracle, and a kind of paradox to our reason, (considering the condition of his person,) how he could be said to come at all: for since all coming is motion or progression from a place in which we were, to a place in which we were not before; and since infinity implies an actual comprehension of, and a presence to, all places, it is hard to conceive how he who was God could be said to come any whither, whose infinity had made all progression to, or acquisition of a new place impossible. But Christ, who delighted to mingle every mercy with miracle and wonder, took a finite nature into the society and union of his person; whereupon what was impossible to a divine nature was rendered very possible to a divine person; which could rightfully and properly entitle itself to all the respective actions and properties of either nature comprehended within its personality; so that being made man, he could do all things that man could do, except only sin. Every thing that was purely human, and had nothing of any sinful deficiency or turpitude cleaving to it, fell within the verge and compass of his actions. But now, was there ever any wonder comparable to this; to behold divinity thus clothed in flesh the Creator of all things humbled, not only to the company, but also to the cognation of his creatures! It is as if we should imagine the whole world not only represented upon, but also contained in one of our little artificial globes; or the body of the sun enveloped in a cloud as big as a man's hand; all which would be looked upon as astonishing impossibilities: and yet as short of the other, as the greatest finite is of an infinite, between which the disparity is immeasurable. For that God should thus in a manner transform himself, and subdue and master all his glories to a possibility of human apprehension and converse, the best reason would have thought it such a thing as God could not do, had it not seen it actually done. It is, as it were, to cancel the essential distances of things, to remove the bounds of nature, to bring heaven and earth, and, what is more, both ends of the contradiction together.

And thereupon some, who think it an imputation upon their reason to believe any thing but what they can demonstrate, (which is no thanks to them at all,) have invented several strange hypotheses and salvos to clear up these things to their apprehensions; as, that the divine nature was never personally

united to the human, but only passed through it in a kind of imaginary, phantastic way; that is, to speak plainly, in some way or other, which neither Scripture, sense, nor reason know any thing of. And others have by one bold stroke cut off all such relation of it to the divine nature, and in much another sense than that of the Psalmist, made Christ "altogether such an one as themselves," that is, a mere man; ψιλὸς ἄνθρωπος: for Socinus would needs be as good a man as his Saviour.

But this opinion, whatsoever ground it may have got in this latter age of the church, yet no sooner was it vented and defended by Photinus, bishop of Sirmium, but it was immediately crushed, and universally rejected by the church; so that although several other heresies had their course, and were but at length extinguished, and not without some difficulty, yet this, like an indigested meteor, appeared and disappeared almost at the same

time.

However, Socinus beginning where Photinus had long before left off, licked up his deserted forlorn opinion, and lighting upon worse times, has found much better success.

But is it true that Christ came into the world? Then sure I am apt to think that this is a sordid inference, that he had an existence and a being before he came hither; since every motion or passage from one place or condition to another, supposes the thing or person so moving to have actually existed under both terms; to wit, as well under that from which, as that to which he passes. But if Christ had nothing but a human nature, which never existed till it was in the world, how could that possibly be said to come into the world? The fruit that grows upon a tree, and so had the first moment of its existence there, cannot with any propriety of truth or speech be said to have come to that tree, since that must suppose it to have been somewhere else before. I am far from building so great and so concerning a truth merely upon the stress of this way of expression; yet till the reasoning grounded upon it be disproved, I suppose it is not therefore to be despised, though it may be seconded with much better.

But the men whom we contend with, seem hugely injurious to him, whom they call their Saviour, while they even crucify him in his divinity, which the Jews could never do, making his very kindness an argument against his prerogative. For his condescending to be a man makes them infer that he is no more; and faith must stop here, because sight can go no farther. But if a prince shall deign to be familiar, and to converse with those upon whom he might trample, shall his condescension therefore unking him, and his familiarity rob him of his royalty? The case is the same with Christ. Men cannot persuade themselves that a Deity and infinity should lie within so narrow a compass as the contemp

tible dimensions of a human body; that omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence should ever be wrapt in swaddling clothes, and abased to the homely usages of a stable and a manger; that the glorious artificer of the whole universe," who spread out the heavens like a curtain, and laid the foundations of the earth," could ever turn carpenter, and exercise an inglorious trade in a little cell. They cannot imagine, that "He who commands the cattle upon a thousand hills, and takes up the ocean in the hollow of his hand," could be subject to the meannesses of hunger and thirst, and be afflicted in all his appetites; that he who once created, and at present governs, and shall hereafter judge the world, should be abused in all his concerns and relations, be scourged, spit upon, mocked, and at last crucified. All which are passages which lie extremely cross to the notions and conceptions that reason has framed to itself of that high and impassible perfection that resides in the divine nature. For it is natural to men to be very hardly brought to judge things to be any more than what they appear; and it is also as natural to them to measure all appearances by sense, or at the farthest by reason; though neither of them is a competent judge of the things which we are here discoursing of.

2. The second thing to be considered is the state or condition from which Christ came; and that was from the bosom of his Father, from the incomprehensible, surpassing glories of the godhead, from an eternal enjoyment of an absolute, uninterrupted bliss and pleasure, in the mutual, ineffable intercourses between him and his Father. The heaven of heavens was his habitation, and legions of cherubims and seraphims his humble and constant attendants. Yet he was pleased to disrobe himself of all this magnificence, to lay aside his sceptres and his glories, and, in a word, to "empty himself," as far as the essential fulness of the Deity could be capable of such a dispensation.

And now, if by the poor measures and proportions of a man we may take an estimate of this great action, we shall quickly find how irksome it is to flesh and blood to have been happy, to descend some steps lower, to exchange the estate of a prince for that of a peasant, and to view our happiness only by the help of memory and long reflections. For how hard a task must obedience needs be to a spirit accustomed to rule and to dominion! How uneasy must the leather and the frieze sit upon the shoulder that used to shine with the purple and the ermine! All change must be grievous to an estate of absolute, entire, unmingled happiness; but then to change to the lowest pitch, and that at first, without inuring the mind to the burden by gradual, intermediate lessenings and declensions, this

is the sharpest and most afflicting calamity that human nature can be capable of. And yet what is all this to Christ's humiliation? He who tumbles from a tower, surely has a greater blow than he who slides from a molehill. And we may as well compare the falling of a crumb from the table to the falling of a star from the firmament, as think the abasement of an Alexander from his imperial throne, and from the head of all the Persian and Macedonian greatness, to the condition of the meanest scullion that followed his camp, any ways comparable to the descension of him who was "the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person," to the condition of a man, much less of a servant and a crucified malefactor,- for so was Christ treated this was the strange leap that he made from the greatest height to the lowest bottom: concerning which it might be well pronounced the greatest wonder in the world, that he should be able so far to humble himself, were it not yet a greater that he could be willing. And thus much for the second circumstance.

3. The third is, the persons to whom he came, expressed by that endearing term "his own :” and this in a more peculiar, advanced sense of propriety. For all the nations of the world were his own by creation, and, what is consequent to it, by the right of possession and absolute dominion; but the Jews were his own by a fraternal right of consanguinity. He was pleased to derive his humanity from the same stock, to give them the honour of being able to call the God of heaven and the Saviour of the world their brother.

They were his own also by the right of churchship, as selected and enclosed by God from amidst all other nations, to be the seat of his worship, and the great conservatory of all the sacred oracles and means of salvation. The Gentiles might be called God's own, as a man calls his hall or his parlour his own, which yet others pass through and make use of; but the Jews were so, as a man accounts his closet or his cabinet his own, that is, by a peculiar uncommunicable destination of it to its own use.

Those who have that hardy curiosity as to examine the reason of God's actions, (which men of reason should still suppose,) wonder that, since the design of Christ's coming was universal, and extending to all mankind, he should address himself to so inconsiderable a spot of the world as that of Palestine, confining the scene of all his life and actions to such a small handful of men ; whereas it would have seemed much more suitable to the purposes of his coming, to have made Rome, at that time the metropolis of the western world, and holding an intercourse with all nations, the place of his nativity and abode; as when a prince would promulge a law, because he

cannot with any convenience do it in all places, therefore he does it in the most eminent and conspicuous. To which argument, frequently urged by the enemies of Christianity, he who would seek for a satisfactory answer from any thing but the absoluteness of God's sovereignty, will find himself defeated in his attempt. It was the mere result of the divine good pleasure, that the fountain of life should derive a blessing to all nations, from so narrow and contemptible a head.

And here I cannot but think it observable, that all the passages of the whole work of man's redemption carry in them the remarks, not only of mercy, but of mercy acting by an unaccountable sovereignty; and that for this very reason, as may be supposed, to convince the world that it was purely mercy on God's part, without any thing of merit on man's, that did all. For when God reveals a Saviour to some few, but denies him to more; sends him to a people despised, but passes over nations victorious, honourable, and renowned; he thereby gives the world to know, that his own will is the reason of his proceedings. For it is worth remarking, that there is nothing that befalls men equally and alike, but they are prone to ascribe it either to nature or merit. But where the plea of the receivers is equal, and yet the dispensation of the benefits vastly unequal, there men are taught, that the thing received is grace; and that they have no claim to it, but the courtesy of the dispenser, and the largess of heaven; which cannot be questioned, because it waters my field, while it scorches and dries up my neighbour's. If the sun is pleased to shine upon a turf, and to gild a dunghill, when perhaps he never looks into the bedchamber of a prince, we cannot yet accuse him for partiality; that short, but most significant saying in the evangelist, May I not do what I will with my own?" (Matt. xx. 15,) being a full and solid answer to all such objections.

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4. The fourth and last circumstance of Christ's coming related to the time of it; he came to the Jews, when they were in their lowest and worst condition, and that in a double respect, national and ecclesiastical.

1. And first upon a civil or national account. It was not then with them as in those triumphant days of Solomon, when for plenty, riches, and grandeur, they had little cause either to make friends or to fear enemies, but shone as the envy and terror of all the surrounding neighbourhood. At the best now they were but a remnant, and a piece of an often scattered, conquered, and captivated nation: but two tribes of twelve, and those under the Roman yoke, tributary and oppressed, and void of any other privilege but only to obey, and to be fleeced quietly by whosoever was appointed their governor. This was their condition; and could there be

any inducement, upon the common principles and methods of kindness, to visit them in that estate? which could be nothing else but only to share with them in servitude, and to bear a part in their oppression.

The measure of men's kindness and visits bestowed upon one another, is usually the prosperity, the greatness, and the interest of the persons whom they visit; that is, because their favour is profitable, and their ill-will formidable; in a word, men visit others because they are kind to themselves. But who ever saw coaches and liveries thronging at the door of the orphan or the widow, (unless peradventure a rich one,) or before the house or prison of an afflicted, decayed friend? No, at such a time we account them not so much as our own; that unfriends and unbrothers, and dissolves all relations, and it is seldom the dialect of my good friend, any longer than it is my great friend.

But it was another sort of love that warmed the breast of our Saviour. He visits his kindred, nay, he makes them so in the lowest ebb of all their outward enjoyments, when to be a Jew was a name of disgrace, and to be circumcised a mark of infamy: so that they might very well be a "peculiar people," not only because God separated them from all other nations, but because all other nations separated themselves from them.

Secondly. Consider them upon an ecclesiastical account, and so we shall find them as corrupted for a church, as they were despised for a nation. Even in the days of the prophet Isaiah, (i. 21,) it was his complaint. "that the faithful city was become an harlot;" that is, notable for two things, as harlots usually are, paint and impurity. Which growing corruption, in all the intervening time, from thence to the coming of Christ, received a proportionable improvement: so that their teachers, and most seraphic adored doctors of the law, were still ranked with hypocrites. For the text of Moses was used only to authorize a false comment, and to warrant the impiety of a perverse interpretation. Still for all their villainies and hypocrisies they borrowed a veil from Moses; and his name was quoted and pretended as a glorious expedient to countenance and varnish over well contrived corruptions: nay, and they proceeded so high, that those who vouched the authority of Moses most, denied the being of immaterial substances, and the immortality of the soul, in which is wrapt up the very spirit and vital breath of all religions: and these men had formed themselves into a standing and considerable sect called the Sadducees; so considerable, that one of them once stepped into the high priesthood: so that whether you look upon the Sadducees or the Pharisees, they had brought the Jewish church to that pass, that they "established iniquity by

a law," or, which is worse, turned the law itself into iniquity.

Now the state of things being thus amongst the Jews at the time of Christ's coming, it eminently offers to us the consideration of these two things,

First, The invincible strength of Christ's love, that it should come leaping over such mountains of opposition, that it should triumph over so much Jewish baseness and villainy, and be gracious even in spite of malice itself. It did not knock at, but even brake open their doors. Blessing and happiness were in a manner thrust upon them. Heaven would have took them by force, as they should have took heaven: so that they were fain to take pains to rid themselves of their happiness, and it cost them labour and violence to become miserable.

Secondly, It declares to us the immovable veracity of God's promise. For surely, if any thing could reverse a promise, and untie the bands of a decree, it would have been that uncontrolled impiety which then reigned in the Jewish church, and that to such a degree, that the temple itself was profaned into a den of thieves, a rendezvous of hagglers and drovers, and a place not for the sacrificing, but for the selling of sheep and oxen. So that God might well have forgot his promise to his people, when they had altered the very subject of the promise, and, as much as in them lay, had ceased to be his people.

We have here finished the first part of the text, and took an account of Christ's "coming to his own," and his coming through so many obstacles may we not therefore now expect to see him find a. magnificent reception,,and a welcome as extraordinary as his kindness? For where should any one expect a welcome, if not coming to his own? And coming also not to charge, but to enrich them; not to share what they had, but to recover what they had lost; and, in a word, to change their temporals into eternals, and bring an overflowing performance and fruition to those who had lived hitherto only upon promise and expectation; but it fell out much otherwise, "his own received him not."

Nor, indeed, if we look farther into the world, shall we find this usage so very strange or wonderful. For kindred is not friendship, but only an opportunity of nearer converse, which is the true cause of, and natural inducement to it. It is not to have the same blood in one's veins, to have lain in the same womb, or to bend the knee to the same father, but to have the same inclinations, the same affections, and the same soul, that makes the friend. Otherwise Jacob may supplant Esau, and Esau hate and design the death of Jacob. And we constantly see the grand seignior's coronation purple dipped in the blood of his murdered brethren, sacrificed to reason of

state, or at least to his own unreasonable fears and suspicions: but friends strive not who shall kill, but who shall die first. If, then, the love of kindred is so small, surely the love of countrymen and neighbours can promise but little more. A prophet may, without the help of his prophetic spirit, foresee that he Ishall have but "little honour in his own country." Men naturally malign the greatness or virtue of a fellow-citizen or a domestic; they think the nearness of it upbraids and obscures them: it is a trouble to have the sun still shining in their faces.

And therefore the Jews in this followed but the common practice of men, whose emulation usually preys upon the next superior in the same family, company, or profession. The bitterest and the loudest scolding is for the most part amongst those of the same street. In short, there is a kind of ill disposition in most men, much resembling that of dogs, they bark at what is high and remote from them, and bite what is next.

Now, in this second part of the text, in which is represented the entertainment which Christ found in the world, expressed to us by those words, "his own received him not," we shall consider these three things,

1. The grounds upon which the Jews rejected Christ.

2. The unreasonableness of those grounds, And,

3. The great arguments that they had to the contrary.

As to the first of these. To reckon up all the pretences that the Jews allege for their not acknowledging of Christ, would be as endless as the tales and fooleries of their rabbies a sort of men noted for nothing more than two very ill qualities, to wit, that they are still given to invent and write lies, and those such unlikely and incredible lies, that none can believe them but such as write them. But the exceptions which seem to carry most of reason and argument with them, are these two,

First, That Christ came not as a temporal prince.

Secondly, That they looked upon him as an underminer and a destroyer of the law of Moses.

1. As for the first. It was a persuasion which had sunk into their very veins and marrow; a persuasion which they built upon as the grand fundamental article of all their creed, that their Messiah should be a temporal prince, nor can any thing beat their posterity out of it to this day. They fancied nothing but triumphs and trophies, and all the nations of the earth licking the dust before them under the victorious conduct of their Messiah: they expected such an one as should disenslave them from the Roman yoke; make the Senate stoop to their Sanhedrim; and the Capitol do

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homage to their-Temple. Nay, and we find the disciples themselves leavened with the same conceit their minds still ran upon the grandeurs of an earthly sovereignty, upon sitting at Christ's right and left hand in his kingdom," banqueting and making merry at his table, and who should have the greatest office and place under him. So carnal were the thoughts even of those who owned Christ for the Messiah; but how much more of the rest of the Jews, who contemned and hated him to the same degree! So that while they were feeding themselves with such fancies and expectations, how can we suppose that they would receive a person bearing himself for the Messiah, and yet in the poor habit and profession of a mean mechanic, as also preaching to them nothing but humility, self-denial, and a contempt of those glories and temporal felicities, the enjoyment of which they had made the very design of their religion? Surely the frustration of their hopes, and the huge contrariety of these things to their beloved preconceived notions, could not but enrage them to the greatest disdain and rejection of his person and doctrine imaginable.

And accordingly it did so: for they scorned, persecuted, and even spat upon him, long before his crucifixion; and no doubt, between rage and derision, a thousand flouts were thrown at him: as, What! shall we receive a threadbare Messiah, a fellow fitter to wield a saw or a hatchet, than a sceptre? For " is not this the carpenter's son ?" and have we not seen him in his shop and his cottage amongst his pitiful kindred? And can such an one be a fit person to step into the throne of David, to redeem Israel, and to cope with all the Roman power? No, it is absurd, unreasonable, and impossible: and to be in bondage to the Romans is nobler than to be freed by the hand of such a deliverer.

2. Their other grand exception against him was, that he set himself against the law of Moses, their reverence to which was so sacred, that they judged it the unchangeable rule of all human actions; and that their Messiah at his coming was to impose the observation of it upon all nations, and so to establish it for ever: nay, and they had an equal reverence for all the parts of it, as well the judicial and ceremonial as the moral; and (being naturally of a gross and a thick conception of things) perhaps a much greater. For still we shall find them more zealous in tithing mint, and rue, and cummin, and washing pots and platters," (where chiefly their mind was,) than in the prime duties of mercy and justice. And as for their beloved sabbath, they placed the celebration of it more in doing nothing, than in doing good; and rather in sitting still, than in rescuing a life, or saving a soul: so that when Christ came to interpret and reduce the moral law to its in

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ward vigour and spirituality, they, whose soul was of so gross a make that it was scarce a spirit, presently defied him as a Samaritan and an impostor, and would by no means hear of such strange impracticable notions. But when from refining and correcting their expositions and sense of the moral law, he proceeded also to foretell and declare the approaching destruction of their temple, and therewith a period to be put to all their rites and ceremonies, they grew impatient, and could hold no longer, but sought to kill him, and thereby thought that they did God good service, and Moses too. So wonderfully, it seems, were these men concerned for God's honour, that they had no way to shew it, but by rejecting his Son out of deference to his servant.

We have seen here the two great exceptions which so blocked up the minds and hearts of the Jewish nation against Jesus Christ, their true Messiah, that when he came to his own, his own rejected and threw him off. I come now, in the next place,

2. To shew the weakness and unreasonableness of these exceptions. And,

First, For Christ's being a temporal monarch, who should subdue and bring all nations under the Jewish sceptre. I answer, that it was so far from necessary, that it was absolutely impossible, that the Messiah should be such an one, and that upon the account of a double supposition, neither of which, I conceive, will be denied by the Jews themselves. 1. The first is the professed design of his coming, which was to be a blessing to all nations; for it is over and over declared in Scripture, that "in the seed of Abraham," that is, in the Messiah, "all nations of the earth should be blessed." But now if they mean this of a temporal blessing, as I am sure they intend no other, then I demand how this can agree with his being such a prince, as, according to their description, must conquer all people, and enslave them to the Jews,

as

For

"hewers of wood and drawers of water," as their vassals and tributaries, and, in a word, liable upon all occasions to be insulted over by the worst conditioned people in the world? A worthy blessing indeed, and such an one as, I believe, few nations would desire to be beholden to the seed of Abraham for. there is no nation or people that can need the coming of a Messiah to bless them in this manner; since they may bless themselves so whensoever they please, if they will but send messengers to some of their neighbours, wiser and powerfuller than themselves, and declare their estates and country at their service, provided they will but come and make them slaves without calling them so, by sending armies to take possession of their forts and garrisons, to seize their lands, moneys, and whatsoever else they have, and, in a word, to oppress, beggar, aud squeeze them as dry as a