meet with none of them, heing all supernatural and of divine revelation, Eph. iv. 3. The apostle exhorts them to ' keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.' And how doth he persuade them? ver. 4 — 7. First, ' There is one body,' but such a one as natural philosophy treats not of, but a mystical one, the church, which consists of several saints, as the natural body of several members ; and as it were strange to see one member to fall out with another, which are all preserved in life by their union together, so much more in the mystical body. Again, 'one Spirit;' that is, the same Holy Spirit, which quickens them all that are true saints, and is to the whole number of saints as the soul is to the whole man, informing every part. Now, as it were a prodigious violence to the law of nature if the members, by an intestine war among themselves, should drive the soul out of the body which gives life to them in union together, so much more would it be for Christians to force the Holy Spirit from them by their contentions and strifes ; as indeed a wider door cannot easily be opened for him to go out at. Again, it presseth unity, from the 'one hope of our calling,' where hope is put pro re sperata, the bliss we all hope for in heaven. There is a day coming, and it cannot be far from us, in which we shall meet lovingly in heaven, and sit at one feast, without one grudg- ing to see what lies on another's trencher : full fi-uition of God shall be the feast, and peace and love the sweet music that shall sound to it ; and what folly is it for us to fight here who shall feast there ! draw blood of one another here, that shall so quickly lie in each other's bosoms ! Now the gospel invites to this feast, and calls us to this hope. I might run through the other parti- culars, which are all as purely evangelical as these, ' one Lord, one faith, one baptism,' but enough to have given you a taste.
Secondly, The gospel doth this, as it takes away the cause of that feud and enmity which is among the sons and davighters of men, and they chiefly two : the curse of God on them, and their own lusts in them. First, The feud and hostility that is among men and women is part of that curse which lies on mankind for his apostasy from God. We read, Gen. iii. 17, how the ground was cursed for man's sake: 'Thorns and thistles shall it bi'ing forth to thee,' saith God ; but a far greater curse it was that one man should become as a thorn and brier to fetch blood one of another. Some have a fancy, that the rose grew in paradise without prickles : to be sure, man, had he not sinned, should never have been such a pricking brier as now the best of them is. These thorns that come up so thick in man's dogged, quarrelsome nature, what do they speak but the efficacy of God's curse ? The first man that was born in the world proved a murderer ; and the first that died, went to his grave by that bloody murderer's hand. May we not wonder as much at the power of God's curse on man's nature, that appeared so soon in Cain's malicious heart, as they did at the sudden withering of the fig-tree blasted by Christ's curse ? And trul}^ it was but just with God, to mingle a jJerverse spirit among them who had expressed so false a one to him. They deserved to be confounded in their language, and suffered to bite and devour one another, who durst make an attempt upon God himself by their disobedience : very observable is that in Zech. xi. 10, compared with ver. 14. When once the ' staff" of beauty,' ver. 10, (which represented God's covenant with the Jews,) was asunder, then presently the ' staff of bands ' (which signified the brotherhood between Judah and Jerusalem) was cut asunder also. When a people break covenant with God, they must not expect peace among themselves : it is the wisdom of a prince, if he can, to find his enemy work at home. As soon as man fell out with God, behold there is a fire of war kindled at his own door, in his own nature, — no more bitter enemy now to mankind than itself. One man is a wolf, yea, a devil, to another. Now, before there can be any hope of true solid peace among men, this curse must be reversed ; and the gospel and only tlie gospel can do that, where an expedient is found how the quarrel between God and the sinner may be reconciled ; which done, the curse ceaseth. A curse is a judi- ciary doom, whereby God, in wrath, condemns his rebel creature to something that is evil. ' But there is no condemnation to him that is in Christ.' The curse is gone; no arrow now in the bow of threatening; that was shot into Christ's heart, and can never enter into the believer's. God may whip his people, by some unbrotherly vuikindness they receive one from another's hands,
THE GOSPEL OF PEACE. 391