Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

16.

SERM. ture reprefented to us by that fimilitude, which is moft XXXI. apt to beget in us reverence toward God, and which indeed really doth most resemble it; by the state of a king here, fitting upon his throne, being furrounded with perfonages of highest rank, worth, and refpect; his nearest relations, his dearest favourites, the chief officers of his crown, and ministers of his affairs there attending upon him; so that yet for diftinction, fome place more eminent, and fignally honourable, is affigned to that person, to whom the King pleaseth to declare moft efpecial favour and regard; the which place by cuftom, grounded upon obvious reason, hath been of old, and continueth ftill, determined to the Pfal. cxviii. next place at the right hand; (the next place, because nearness yieldeth opportunity for all kind of converfation and address; at the right hand, because that hand hath advantage for strength and activity acquired by use, and therefore hath a special aptitude to offer any thing, or to receive, as occafion doth require :) hence for inftance of the custom among thofe from whom the phrafe is taken, when Bathsheba, king Solomon's mother, did come 1 Kings ii. unto him, it is faid, The king-fat down upon his throne, and caused a feat to be fet for the king's mother; and she fat on his right hand: thus our Lord, as man, in regard to his perfect obedience and patience, being raised by God to the supreme pitch of favour, honour, and power with him, Acts v. 31. God having advanced him to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance unto Ifrael, and remiffion of fins; having Phil. ii. 9, fuperexalted him, and beftowed on him a name above all names, to which all knees in heaven, in earth, and under Eph. i. 20, the earth must bow; having feated him in heavenly places above all principality, and authority, and power, and dominion, and name that is named, either in the prefent world, or in that which is to come; having committed to him all John iii. 35. authority in heaven and upon earth, and given all things xiii. 3. xvii. into his hand; having conftituted him heir of all things, Heb. i. 2. and fubjected all things under his feet, and crowned him with sovereign glory and honour; having, in fine, given unto him all that which in the Revelation the innumeraRev. v. 2. ble hoft of heaven acknowledgeth him worthy of; power,

19.

10.

21.

Matt.

xxviii. 18.

2.

ii. 8, 9.
1 Pet. iii.

22.

and riches, and wisdom, and ftrength, and honour, and SERM. glory, and bleffing; that is, all good and excellency con- XXXI. ceivable in the most eminent degree, fo that yíveta, èv

Matt. xxvi.

62.

Täσι ρWτeúшv, he in all things becometh to have the preemi- Col. i. 18. nence; God having, I fay, conferred all these preeminences of dignity, power, favour, and felicity upon our Saviour, is therefore said to have feated him at his right Eph. i. 20. hand; at the right hand of power, fay the Gospels; that 64. is, fo at the right hand of the Almighty Potentate, that Mark xiv. all power is imparted to him for the governance and pre- Luke xxii. fervation of his Church; at the right hand of the majesty on high, and at the right hand of the throne of God, faith the Apostle to the Hebrews; that is, fo at the right hand of the Sovereign King of the world, that royal dignity is communicated to him; in regard to which all honour and worship, all service and obedience, are due to him from all creatures.

69.
Heb. viii. 1.

34.

Thus much plainly the whole speech, fitting at God's right hand, doth import; the which matter is otherwise more generally and fimply expreffed by being at God's right hand; Who, faith St. Peter, is gone into heaven, and 1 Pet. iii.22. is at the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made fubject to him: and, It is Chrift, Rom. viii. faith St. Paul, that died, yea rather, that is rifen again, who is alfo at the right hand of God: fometimes also our Lord is represented ftanding at God's right hand, as in the Revelation feveral times, and in the vifion of St. Stephen, who faw the glory of God, and Jefus ftanding at the Rev. v. 6. right hand of God; the which pofture doth then seem Acts vii. 55, purpofely affigned to him, when he is represented affifting 56. his fervants, or in readiness to achieve fome great work for the good of his Church; but most commonly, as in our text, it is called fitting; the which word in ordinary use denoteth an abode, or permanency, in any state: but there is, perhaps, fome peculiar emphasis defigned in attributing to our Lord that pofition; it implying the folid ground, the firm poffeffion, the durable continuance, the undisturbed reft and quiet of that glorious condition, wherein he is inftated: the term fitting may also seem to augment

χίν. 1.

SERM. the main fense; for that fitting is the most honourable XXXI. pofture, and therefore implieth to the utmost that emi

xii. 32.

nency of favour and regard which our Lord enjoyeth in God's fight. It may farther alfo denote the nature, quality, and defign of our Lord's preferment; his being conftituted our ruler and our judge; fitting being a pofture most proper and peculiar to fuch perfons; whence this expreffion representeth him as feated upon a throne of majesty, or upon a tribunal of justice a.

I fhall only farther obferve, that the attainment and fettlement of our Lord in this high ftate is by one word John vii.39. frequently in Scripture called his glorification; The Spirit, xii. 16, 23. it is faid, was not yet, because Jefus was not yet glorified: xvii. 1, 5. and, When Jefus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of him: and, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified: and, Now, Father, prayeth our Saviour, glorify me with thee, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was; that is, constitute me as mediator in glory fupereminent above all creatures, accordingly as in my divine nature I was eterActs iii. 13. nally with thee moft gloriously happy: and, The God of your fathers, faith St. Peter to the Jews, hath glorified Heb. ii. 9. his child Jefus, whom ye delivered up: and, We fee Jefus,

who was made a little lower than the angels, for the fuffering of death, crowned with glory and honour, faith the Apostle to the Hebrews. So much for explication of thefe points.

II. The confirmation of them may be drawn partly from ocular teftimony, partly from rational deduction, partly from their correfpondence to ancient prefignifications and predictions.

The afcenfion of our Lord toward heaven was testified by the Apostles, who were eye-witneffes thereof; for Acts i. 9. BETÓνTwv auTav, they beholding, he was, faith St. Luke, taken up, and a cloud received him out of their fight.

a Sedere judicantis eft, ftare pugnantis; Stephanus ergo in labore certaminis pofitus ftantem vidit, quem adjutorem habuit; fed hunc poft afcenfionem Marcus federe fcribit, quia poft ascensionis fuæ gloriam Judex in fine videbitur. Leo M.

His arriving at the fupreme pitch of glory, and fitting SERM. there, is deduced from the authority of his own word, XXXI. and of his inspired difciples, the which standeth upon the Luke xxii. fame grounds with other points of Chriftian faith and doctrine; the which it is not feasonable now to infift 64. upon.

69.

Matt. xxvi.

But it may be proper and useful to confider how they (as all other important events and performances belonging to our Saviour) were by the Holy Spirit in the ancient Prophets many ways prefignified and predicted : that they were fo, our Lord telleth us; Ought not Chrift, Luke xxiv. faid he, according to what the prophets had spoken, to fuf- 25, 26. fer, and fo to enter into his glory? and St. Peter affureth

us, that the Spirit of Chrift, which was in the prophets, did 1 Pet. i. 11. teftify beforehand the fufferings of Chrift, and the glories after the fame: fo indeed there were many fignal types representing them, and many notable paffages respecting them, interpreted according to analogy, with other myftical representations.

Gen. xxvi.

Ifaac, the heir of promise, after his being devoted for facrifice, and received from death in a parable, was fettled Heb. xi. 19. in a profperous ftate of life, God being with him, and bleff- 3, 12, &c. ing him in all things. Jofeph, being freed from that death to which by his envious brethren he was defigned, and raised from that burial in prison into which by the Egyptian Gentiles he was caft, was advanced thence unto flourishing dignity, and established in chief authority over the king's houfe, and over all the land. Which perfons, Gen. xli.40. as they were in other things, fo may they well be conceived in these refpects to have been types of our Lord's afcenfion and glorification. Jofhua, (who in name and performances was the most exact type of our Lord,) being preferved from the common fate of the people, and with miraculous victory over all the accurfed enemies of God's people, entering as captain of Ifrael into the poffeffion of the promised land, the fure type of heaven, doth fitly represent the glorious afcenfion of our Lord into heaven, and his everlasting poffeffion thereof, together with the good people which follow his conduct. The great af

SERM. flictions and depreffions of David, with his restoration XXXI. from them unto a mighty height of royal splendour and

profperity, (all enemies foreign and domeftic being subdued,) may be alfo fuppofed to typify the fame; his expreffions in acknowledgment and thanksgiving for them feeming to allude hither, and to be more congruously applicable to our Lord, than to himself: fuch for inftance as Pfal. xxi. those are in the 21ft Pfalm; He afked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever: his glory is great in thy falvation; honour and majesty haft thou laid upon him: for thou haft made him most blessed for ever; thou haft made him exceedingly glad with thy Gen. v. 24. countenance, &c. Enoch, having walked with God, (that Heb. xi. 5. is, in conftant devotion, and in faithful obedience to God's

4, 5, 6.

11.

will,) and having received teftimony that he pleafed God, was taken unto God; thereby prefiguring the ascension of the well-beloved, in whom God was most well pleased: so 2 Kings ii. was also the translation of Elijah into heaven, in presence of Elisha and other his difciples, after he moft zealously had ferved God, in declaration of his will and maintenance of his truth, a manifeft prelude of our Lord's like translation, after he had been employed in the like fervice, though far more high and important, and performed it in a more eminent manner,

34.

Exod. xxx.

10.

The high priest was a certain type of our Lord, and Heb. ix. 24. the Jewish temple a fhadow of heaven, and the holy of holies a figure of the highest place in heaven; wherefore the high priest's fole and folemn entry once only in the year into the most holy place, after having by a bloody Lev. xvi.16, facrifice made atonement for all the tranfgreffions of the children of Ifrael, and his there sprinkling the blood of the facrifice upon the mercy feat, and before the mercy feat, (the emblem of God's fpecial prefence,) doth certainly prefigure our Lord's afcending into heaven, and fitting there at God's right hand; there, by representation of his merits and paffion performing the office of a most holy Heb. ix. 14, priest and gracious mediator for us; By his own blood, 24. x. 12. faith the divine Apostle, he entered once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us: He is entered,

Heb. ix. 7.

« AnteriorContinuar »