Zanchy Bodius, and many others, will have this quickening to comprize both our justification and regeneration, and to stand op- posed both to eternal and spiritual death, and it may well be al- lowed ; but it most properly imports our regeneration, wherein the Spirit, in an .ineffable and mysterious way, makes the soul to live to God, yea, to live the life of God, which soul was before dead in trespasses and sins. In which words we have,
Secondly, In the next place, the total iridisposedness of the sub- jects by nature : For, as it is well noted by a f learned man, " the " apostle doth not say of these Ephesians that they were half " dead, or sick, and infirm, but dead wholly ; altogether dead,
synobm et wroxvzn rr\i m^ioba, qua est species rx avavraT&ooca, cuius quidem ano- maluv causa est £fil'Js£o/.'/j mtery&vo sentenlice prolirioris. Piscator. Pool's Synop.
* Ex Christo conjuncto ?iobiscum, ut capite cum membris, pmjluunt in nos omnia bencfi- cia, in quorum numtro est Hvificatio. Rolloc. in Loc.
f Non vocat hie semimortnos aut eegrotos ac inJi?~mos> sed prorsus mortuos, omni facul- iatc bene cogitandi aut agendi destituti. Rolloc. in Loc.
SERM. V. THE METHOD OF GRACE. 8?
" destitute of any faculty or ability, so much as to think one good " thought, or perform one good act." You were dead in respect of condemnation, being under the damning sentence of the law, and you are dead in respect of the privation of spiritual life ; dead in opposition to justification, and dead in opposition to regeneration and sanctification : And the fatal instrument by which their souls died is here shewed them ; you were dead in, or by trespasses and sins, this was the sword that killed your souls, and cut them off from God. Some do curiously distinguish betwixt trespasses and sins, as if one pointed at original, the other at actual sins ; but I suppose they are promiscuously used here, and serve to express the cause of their ruin, or means of their spiritual death and destruc- tion : this was their case when Christ came to quicken them, dead in sin ; and being so, they could not move themselves towards union with Christ, but as they were moved by the quickening Spirit of God. Hence the observation will be this,
Doct. That those souls which have union with Christ, are quick- ened with a supernatural principle of life by the Spirit of God in order thereunto.
The Spirit of God is not only a living Spirit, formally considered ; but he is also the Spirit of life, effectively or casually considered ; And without his breathing, or infusing life into our souls, our union with Christ is impossible.
It is the observation of learned * Camero, '''that there must be " an unition before there can be an union with Christ. Unition is " to be conceived efficiently as the work of God's Spirit, joining u the believer to Christ, and union is to be conceived formally, the " joining itself of the persons together :" We close with Christ by faith, but that faith being a vital act, pre-supposes a principle of life communicated to us by the Spirit ; therefore it is said, John xi. 26. " Whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die :" The vital act and operation of faith springs from this quickening Spirit : So in Rom. viii. 1, % The apostle, having in the first verse opened the blessed estate of them that are in Christ, shews us in the second verse how we come to be in him : " The Spirit of " life (saith he) which is in Christ Jesus, hath made me free from " the law of sin and death.'"
There is indeed a quickening work of the Spirit, which is sub-
* Observandum est umonem et unitionem inter se differe : unio est rerum actus, quijlrma rationem habet, nempe actus rerum unitarum qua unite sunt ; vnitio autem actus significat causes efficientis, $c. Camero de Eccles. p. 222.
SS THE METHOD OF GRACE.
sequent to regeneration, consisting in his exciting, recovering, and actuating of his own graces in us ; and from hence is the liveliness of a Christian ; and there is a quickening act of the Spirit in our regeneration, and from hence is the spiritual life of a Christian ; of this I am here to speak, and that I may speak profitably to this point, I will in the doctrinal part labour to open these five particu- lars.
First, What this spiritual life is in its nature and properties.
Secondly, In what manner it is wrought or inspired into the soul.
Thirdly, For what end, or with what design, this life is so in- spired.
Fourthly, I shall shew this work to be wholly supernatural.
And then, Fifthly, Why this quickening must be antecedent to our actual closing with Christ by faith.
First, We shall enquire into the nature and properties of this life, and discover (as we are able) what it is. And we find it to consist in that wonderful change which the Spirit of God makes upon the frame and temper of the soid, by his infusing or implanting the principles of grace in all the powers and faculties thereof
A change it makes upon the soul, and that a marvellous one, no less than from death to life ; for though a man be physically a living man, i. e. his natural soul hath union with his body, yet his soul having no union with Christ, he is theologically a dead man, Luke xv. 24. and Col. ii. 18. Alas, it deserves not the name of life, to have a soul serving only to season and preserve the body a little while from corruption : to carry it up and down the world, and only enable it to eat, and drink, and talk, and laugh, and then die : Then do we begin to live, when we begin to have union with Christ the Fountain of life, by his Spirit communicated to us : From this time we are to reckon our life * as some have done : There be many changes made upon men besides this, many are changed from pro- faneness to civility, and from mere civility to formality, and a shadow of religion, who still remain in the state and power of spiritual death, notwithstanding : but when the Spirit of the Lord is poured out upon us, to quicken us with the new spiritual life, this is a wonderful change indeed : It gives us an esse supernaturale, a new supernatural being, which is therefore called a new creature, the new mam, the hidden man qf the heart: The natural essence and faculties of the soul remain still, but it is divested of the old qualities, and en- dowed with new ones, 2 Cor. v. 17. " Old things are passed away, " behold, all things are become new."
And this change is not made by altering and rectifying the dis- orders of the life only, leaving the temper and frame of the heart
* Hicjacet Similis, cvjus tetas midtoremannorumJv.it, ipse septan duntaxat annos vixit.
THE METHOD OF GRACE. 89