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peculiar works of God. We make no doubt that a creature cannot do them, and we are as certain that the Holy Ghost has done them.

Baptism saves us by the answer of a good conscience towards God. It is by the blood of Jesus that our consciences are purged from dead works to serve the living God; and what is it that applies the one to the other? Heb. ix. 14. We are chosen according to the fore knowledge of God the Father; but it is the sanctification of the spirit, that brings us to obedience through the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. 1 Pet. i. 2. He is a peculiar agent in this ordinance of baptism; we are born of water and of the Spirit. The disciples were baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire. It was he who fell apon them, and had the supreme control of the greatest miracles the world ever saw, or that the Church ever felt.

Indeed the main security that we have, either of heaven or holiness, is God's dwelling in us. Angels or ministers are the helpers of our joy, but they are never said to be in us, or we in them. 1 John iv. 16. Though these words signify more than we can now explain, yet it is easyto see, that whatever they mean,can be true of none but God; Now Christ is said to be in us as our hope of glory. There is no medium between his being in you, and your reprobation.

And thus much is affirmed of the third person, as well as the second. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his. He is to be in us, and to dwell with us for ev

er.

Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and yet you are no other than the temple of the living God, as God has said I will dwell in them and walk in them. 1 Cor. vi. 19. He makes intercession for us; and he who searches the heart knows what is the mind of the Spirit. Not that this is any contradiction to his throne in heaven, or exclusive of his eternal presence and glory there.

(4.) God himself will never bear, the joining of any other with him, in the solemnity of our worship. To whom will ye liken God, Isa. xli. 18. or what likeness will ye compare to him? As deity is peculiar to him, so we acknowledge it by making worship peculiar to him. As there is an infinite distance between him, and the most exalted creatures, so he will have his people show it.

Solomon's impiety was not, denying the su premacy of the father. He had always the chief place in the temple: but it was bringing other Deities thither, and giving them any place at all. It would have been as vile, to have reared up a statue for Gabriel or Moses, as to do it for Chemosh or Milchom, and put it into the house that God had called by his own name. His name alone is Jehovah, and the house was built for no other. He was not to make it (as Micah did his) an house of Gods. Therefore had he pleaded, that the other were entitled to no more than inferior worship, that he made them no more than subordinate Deities, it would not have justified him; because that very thing itself of inferior worship was idolatry, and the action of a subordinate dei

ty is nonsense. And shall a Christian ordinance come under the same rebuke?

Baptism is the consecration of a living temple, to no other than the God of Israel. Suppose we were left to contrive the form ourselves, and take the Son and Spirit to be creatures, should we here have dared to join them with our God? And can you imagine if Christ had been of that opinion, he would not have taken care to express the matter with more distinction? He would never lay such a snare for his people.

Did he think that baptism was no act of worship? Then we make more of it than he did. Or did he suppose that we might worship another besides the great God? Then he destroyed the law and the prophets. If he was a creature, he had no authority to change that law; for there must be as great a power in taking it away, as there was in giving it. Or, would he throw things together with a dangerous confusion, bidding us take the name of one who is God, and of two who are not, without explaining himself, the difference there must be in the threefold homage?

Really, that is saying as ill a thing of him as the Jews ever did, and making him a deceiver indeed. And yet I must think some of these particulars to be the case, if I am driven out from this chain of doctrines; first, that he designed baptism to be an act of the greatest homage and adoration-secondly, that he directed this by his own order, to no other than the most high God-and, thirdly, that he

speaks of this one God, in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

II. Another article of faith, contained in the form of baptism, is the unity of the Godhead. This you will collect from an observation that I made before, that we are baptized not into names, as if there were Gods many and Lords many, but into the name of God, to show that there is no more than one. Now that the Lord has extended his empire, and is king over all the earth, in this day there shall be one Lord, and his name one. Zech. xiv. 9.

This was ever the grand article of revealed religion, as you may see by comparing our Saviour's words with the preface to the ten commandments. In the original edition of them we read it thus: I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, and the house of bondage. I believe it is easily proved, that the person, in the divine nature, who suffered himself to be visible, on that occasion, was the Son. He appeared to Abraham in Mesopotamia, to Jacob at Luz, to Moses at Horeb. The similitude of the Lord did they behold, though no man had seen the Father at any time. John vi. 46. And yet when Christ has occasion to speak of this, he does it with a testimony, not to the concern of that one person, nor to the three who bear the record in heaven, but to the unity that was among them.

The scribes having asked him, which was the first commandment of all, he answers the

first of all the commandments is this, Hear, O: Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; from whence you may argue, that though he then made known himself as rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth, yet what he did was in the same nature with the Father and Holy Spirit. This is the sense of those words, the Son does nothing of himself. John v. 19. i. e. he acts in an eternal unity of nature. with the Father. The expression cannot import any inferiority, because it is said in universal terms that whatever things the Father does, these does the Son likewise. The scribe himself saith to him, well, master, thou hast said the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but he. Nor does our Lord contradict him, but owns that he answered discreetly.

This unity of the Godhead, is the foundation of the apostles and prophets. There is no variety of doctrines upon this head, between the Old and New Testament. In this, revelation is distinguished from the light of nature, since the fall, by which the light that was in us, became darkness. There were indeed some sketches of this truth among the Gentiles, since an eternal power and Godhead may be argued from the things that do appear. But we know how deficient they were in this matter; though it seems so easy to human reason, now that revelation has set it a thinking. Rom. i. 21.

1. It was in all ages and countries, the undeniable doctrine that God revealed. We

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