seed of Abraham, made the elder serve the younger ; even angels themselves minister to the meanest saint, as unto tlieir master's heir, Heb. i. 14. Secondly, As the union is nearer, so it is stronger; therefore stronger, because nearer: the closer stones stand together, the stronger the building. The union betwixt God and Adam in the first covenant, was not so near but Adam might fall, and yet God's glory stand entire and imshaken; but the imion now is so close and strong betwixt Christ and his saints, that Christ cannot be Christ without his members; ' Because I live,' saith Christ, ' ye shall live also,' John xiv. 19 ; implying that their life was bound up in his, and it was as easv for him to be turned out of heaven, as for them to be kept out, Eph. i. 23. The church is called there, Christ's body, 'the fulness of him that iilleth all in all.' A body is not full, if it hath not eveiy member and joint, though never so little, and them in their fulness too. The saint's grace is Christ's glory, 2 Cor. viii. 23 ; and though his essential glory as God receives no filling from his saints or their graces, yet consider him in his mediatorship, as head of his church; so Christ's glory is daily filling, as the elect are called in daily, and as those that are called in grow up to their appointed stature. Christ hath not his fulness, till the saints have their perfection and complement of grace in heaven's glory.
Secondly, In his comnumion with God; the nearer (we use to say) the dearer. Commimion results from union ; if the union be nearer and stronger between a reconciled soid and God than Adam's was, his communion must needs be sweeter and fidler. Whv else is the communion of husband and wife fuller than of friend and friend, but because the union is closer? God converseth with Adam as a friend with his friend and ally ; but with the reconciled soul as a husband with his wife. ' Thy Maker is thy husband,' Isa. xiv. 5.
There is a double sweetness peculiar to the reconciled sinner's communion with God. First, There is in Christ a foundation laid for greater familiarity with God, than Adam was at first capable of. He, indeed, was the son of God, yet he was kept at a farther distance, and treated with more state and majesty from God, than now the reconciled soul is ; for though he was the son of God by creation, yet the Son of God was not then the Son of man by incarnation ; and at this door comes in the believer's sweetest familiarity with God : the Christian cannot lift up now an eye of faith to God, but he sees liis own nature standing upon the throne by him, in the person of Christ. And if the sight of Joseph at Pharaoh's right hand, in court favour and honour, sent the patriarchs home with such joyful news to their aged father, what a ravishing message of joy must faith carry then to the soul of a reconciled sinner, when it comes in (after some vision of love in an ordinance) and saith, Cheer up, O my soul, I see Jesus Christ, thj- near kinsman, at God's right hand in glory, to whom all power is given, in heaven and earth; fear not, he is so nigh in blood to thee, that he cannot be unmindful of thee, except he should do what were unnatural in itself, that is, hide himself from his own flesh. The lower a prince stoops to the meanest of his subjects, the more familiar he makes himself to his subjects. It was a wonderful condescension in the great God, who can have no compeer, first to make man, and then enter intosofriendly a league and covenant with him. This God doth now with every reconciled soul, and that enriched with so many astonishing circumstances of condescending grace, as must needs speak the way of the believer's access to God more familiar. God doth, in this second and new alliance with his poor creature, descend his throne, exchange his majestic robes of glory for the rags of man's frail flesh ; he leaves his palace to live for a time in his creature's humble cottage, and there not only familiarly converses with him, but, which is stranger, ministers to him ; j-ea, which is more than all these, he surrenders himself up to endure all manner of indignities, from his sorry creature's hand. And when this his coarse entertainment is done, back he posts to heaven, not to complain to his Father, how he hath been abused here below, and raise heaven's power against those that had so ill-treated him, but to make ready heaven's palace for the reception of those who had thus abused him, and now will but accept of his grace. And lest these, yet left on earth, should fear his reassmncd royalty and majesty, in heaven's glorj-, would make some alteration with their affiurs in his heart ; to give them, there- fore, a constant demonstration, that he would be the same in the height of his honour, that he was in the depth of his abasement, he goes back in the same
3(30 THE GOSIEL Of PEACE.