ing into one another: which those who understand the nature of body know to be a contradiction, and consequently impossible.

As for those scriptures which seem to give colour to the opinion that Christ, after his resurrection, had such an aerial fantastic body, before I answer them, I shall premise that great instance and affirmation that Christ gave of the reality of his body, to his disciples, being frighted at his presence, and supposing they had seen a spirit or apparition, Luke xxiv. 38, 39. Why, says he, do such thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. What could be more plain and positive for the clearing of this particular? Certain it is, therefore, that he had the very same body, be the explication of other places that seem to imply the contrary never so difficult.

The first is in Luke xxiv. 31. He vanished out of their sight. To which I answer, that it is not at all absurd, to affirm, that Christ, by his divine power, might cast a mist before their eyes; or suspend the actings of their visive faculty in reference to himself, while he conveyed himself in the mean time away; or possibly he might depart with so quick a motion, that it was almost instantaneous, and so indiscernible for either the exceeding quickness or slowness of motion makes the successive progress of it not observable to the eye, as is manifest from an hundred daily experiments.

For the second place in John xx. 19, where it is said, that he came amongst his disciples, the doors being shut: this is capable of an explication that is obvious, and removes all difficulty. For it is not to be understood of the doors being shut in the very act of his entrance, but just antecedently to it; that is, Christ coming to the place found the doors shut; yet notwithstanding, by his immediate power, he caused them to fly open, as the angel did the prison doors at the release of Peter, Acts xii. and then he entered. Thus we read, that the lame walk, the blind see; not indeed while they continued lame and blind, but the lame and blind were first cured of those infirmities, and so made to walk and see.

So Christ did not enter, the doors continuing shut, but the

doors that he found fast shut, he by a strange power opened, and so came amongst his disciples, which was enough to affright and amaze them.

But to reduce this to a familiar instance: Suppose a stranger or suspicious person should come into an house, and the master of the house should ask his servant, whether the doors were shut or open when he came in? Surely his meaning is not, did he pass through the door while it was shut? But his sense is, did he find the door shut, and so broke it open, or did he find the door standing open, and so entered? This exposition is natural, and so clears the doubt, that the difficulty itself vanishes, and is but an apparition: and so much for the third thing.

IV. I proceed now to the fourth and last thing; which is, the end of Christ's ascension, that he might fill all things.

This also is capable of various interpretation, for this term, all things, may refer,

1. Either to the scripture, that he might fill, or rather fulfil, (for the Greek λŋрów signifies both,) all those prophecies and predictions recorded of him in the books of the prophets.

2. Or secondly, it may refer to the church, that he might fill all things belonging to that with his gifts and graces; for it is subjoined, that he gave some, apostles; some, prophets; some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers: for the perfecting of the saints, and for the edifying of the body of Christ. Both these expositions, I confess, are probable. But,

3. In the third place, it may relate to all things in the world, within the whole compass of heaven and earth; and since the words so taken afford us an eminent proof, both of Christ's essential deity, as also of the power with which he was endued as mediator; we shall not let so great a prize slip out of our hands, but prefer and follow this as the most genuine interpretation.

Now Christ may be said thus to fill all things in a double respect.

1. In respect of the omnipresence of his nature and universal diffusion of his godhead. The schools, in stating the manner how one thing is in another, whereas they make bodies

present by circumscription, finite spirits definitive, that is, by being so here, as at the same time not to be there; not improperly, I think, make God to be in all things by repletion ; that is, he is so in them, that they are rather in him; spreading such an immense fulness over all things, as in a manner swallows and folds them up within himself.

Such a fulness has Christ as God, by which he fills, or rather overflows the universe, et ad omnia præsentialiter se habet. Could there be a more full and apposite proof of this than that place, John iii. 13. No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man, which is in heaven. He came down from heaven, and at that time was talking with Nicodemus upon earth; and yet even then he was still in heaven. How, but by the omnipresence of his divine nature, that scorned the poor limitations of place, diffused an immense presence every where, and could be in heaven without ascending thither?

But what I say of Christ, as to his divine nature, should I assert the same of his human, it would be both an error in divinity, and a prodigious paradox in philosophy.

Yet the Romanist will have Christ's whole body to be in ten thousand places together, and at once ; namely, wheresoever their host is celebrated, and in every particle of that host; which certainly is the greatest absurdity and most portentous piece of nonsense that ever was owned in the face of the rational world.

And the Lutherans, who, by a dough-baked reformation, striking off from the Romish errors, have rather changed than corrected this grand absurdity, they assert a consubstantiation, and the consequent of it, the ubiquity of Christ's human

nature.

But certainly they have some unanswerable arguments that force their assent to such uncouth propositions. What they are, we shall hear. They argue thus :

Christ, in respect of his human nature, sits at God's right hand; but God's right hand is every where, and consequently Christ's human nature must be so too.

If I might answer a foolish argument according to its folly, I might demand of them, if God's right hand be every where, where then will they place his left? But do not they know

that Christ's sitting at God's right hand is not taken in a metaphysical sense, for his coexistence with it; but is only a phrase, importing God's advancing him to high dignity and honour, as princes use to place their favourites at their right hand?

But they proceed. If Christ's human nature be united to the whole divine nature, then, wheresoever his divine nature is present, there must be also his human. But supposing that his human nature is not every where, and that his divine is, then in those places where the human nature is not, the divine is there without it; and so consequently in those places it is not united to it for things intimately united must be present together in the same places.

But what pitiful, thin sophistry is this! whatever at the first sight it may appear: for they distinguish not a spiritual union from that which is corporeal, and between things having quantity. If indeed Christ's human nature were united to his divine by way of adequate commensuration one to the other, it would then follow, that if one was where the other is not, the union so far would cease; but the union between these two natures is only by intimate, indissolvable relation one to the other; so that wheresoever the divine nature of Christ is present, though his human is not there present too, yet it still holds the same relation to it, as to a thing joined with it in one and the same subsistence. And so much in answer to a sophistical argument brought to defend a misshapen, monstrous assertion.

We see here the first way how Christ fills all things in the world; namely, by the essential omnipresence of his divine nature. But yet this is not the filling all things directly intended in the text; for that was to be consequent to his ascension; he ascended that he might fill all things; it accrued to him upon and after his ascension, not before; but his omnipresential filling all things being an inseparable property of his divine nature, always agreed to him, and was not then at length to be conferred on him.

2. In the second place therefore, Christ may be said to fill all things, in respect of the universal rule and government of all things in heaven and earth committed to him as mediator upon his ascension. This is the only filling all things that the

school of Socinus will allow him; forasmuch as they make him to be God only by office, not by nature; and that his full deity bares date from his ascension; at which time he took possession of the government of the world.

But in this, I must confess, they are so much the less injurious to Christ, since they allow the Father himself to fill all things no otherwise: they acknowledge him indeed to have such an extent of power as to reach all places, persons, and things; but his omnipresence they deny, and confine his being to a circumscribed residence within the highest heaven; as we may see in Crellius's book de Attributis Dei, chap. 1. So little ought we to wonder at their denying the deity of the Son, when they have even torn the fairest perfections out of the godhead of the Father.

But to look back upon Christ, now enjoying the end of his ascension, even the sovereignty of all things. This is he, that is now King of kings, and Lord of lords; who wields the sceptre of heaven and earth, and wears the imperial crown of the universe. Heaven is his throne, and the thrones of kings his footstool.

He now shines in the head of that glorious army of martyrs, and, wearing the trophies of conquered sin and death, possesses the kingdom of the world by the two unquestionable titles of conquest and inheritance. The angels, those immediate retainers to the Almighty, and ministers of Providence, are his attendants; they hear his will, and execute his commands with a quick and a winged alacrity.

All the elements, the whole train and retinue of nature, are subservient to his pleasure, and instruments of his purposes. The stars fight in their courses under his banner, and subordinate their powers to the dictates of his will. The heavens rule all below them by their influences, but themselves are governed by his. He can command nature out of its course, and reverse the great ordinances of the creation.

The government, the stress and burden of all things, lies upon his hands. The blind heathen have been told of an Atlas that shoulders up the heavens; but we know that he who supports the heavens is not under them, but above them. And to give you yet a greater instance of his sovereignty,