VeR. 15.] SEKMONS UPON 2 CORINTHIANS V. 207
for your faith, it is not enough for your love ; the apostle mentions both, and we must look after both. As to have our old offences expiated, so to live a new life in Christ : Rom. vi. 5, ' For if we have been planted together into the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.' We are branches of that tree whereof Christ is the root. We must have communion with Christ living, as well as with Christ dying, and not only freed from the damning power of sin, but quickened to a new life.
Use 2. Is exhortation ; to press you to several duties.
1. To believe that there is such a life. It is matter of faith ; for when Christ had said, John xi. 26, ' Whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die,' he presently addeth, 'Believest thou this?' Few mind and regard it. The general faith concerning life by Christ must go before the special application. Besides, it is a hidden thing : 'your life is hidden with Christ in God,' Col. iii. 3. It is not visible to sense ; and invisible things are only seen by faith. It is hidden from sense, and therefore it must be believed. It is hidden from the carnal world, as colours are from a blind man, because they have no eyes to see it. The natural man cannot see things that must be spiritually discerned, 1 Cor, ii. 14. Besides, the spiritual life is hidden under the natural : Glal. ii. 20, * The life that I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.' They live in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. It is a life within a life. The spiritual life is nothing else but the natural life sublimated and overruled to higher and nobler ends. Spiritual men eat, and drink, and sleep, and trade, and marry, and give in marriage, as others do, for they have not divested themselves of the interests and concernments of flesh and blood ; but all these things are governed by grace, and are carried on to holy and eternal ends. Besides, it is hidden, because there is upon it the veil and covering of afflictions and outward meanness and abasement ; as it was said of some, ' of whom the world was not worthy, that they wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins,' Heb. xi. 37, 38. Who would think so much worth should lie under such a base outside ? Their glory is darkened and obscured by their condition. Besides, too, this life is often hidden by reproaches, and censures, and calumnies. The people of God are represented as strange sort of people unto the world : 2 Cor. vi. 8, ' As deceivers, and yet true.' They are reputed as a company of hypocrites and dissemblers ; all their experiences questioned and scoffed at. Profane and wanton wits will be spitting out their venom in every age, and God's people will be judged according to men in the flesh, though they live to God in the spirit, 1 Peter iv. 6. God permitteth it ; reproach is the soil and dung whereby he maketh his heritage fruitful. But yet this is a hiding and disguising the spiritual life. Lastly, it is hidden under manifold weaknesses and infirmities. The best have their blemishes, and the most of christians show forth too much of Adam and too little of Jesus ; and so the spiritual life is carried on darkly, and in a riddle. Though the old man of corruption doth not bear sway in their hearts, to command, direct, and order all their actions, as formerly it did, yet sin is not wholly gone ; they feel a law warring in their members, Rom. vii. 33. And it is not only warring, but sometimes prevailing,
208 SEKMONS UPON 2 CORINTHIANS V. [SeR. XXIX.
that they tliemselves can feel little of the holy life. There are some question the life of grace, others scorn and scoff at it. Yet believe it, for it is the great truth revealed in the scriptures, and it is in some measure felt by sense ; yea, the rays of this hidden and rejected life are often discovered to the world. For there are some who by their practices condemn the world, live in counter-motion to the corrupt sort of men, walk as those that have another spirit than the spirit of the world, 1 Cor. ii. 12, and as those that look for a happiness elsewhere. Therefore believe that there is such a life.
2. Value and esteem it according to its worth and excellency ; I mean, with a practical esteem, as Paul doth, counting all things but dung and dross in comparison of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. What would he know in him ? Phil. iii. 10, ' That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection ; ' or the virtue of raising liim out of sin to the life of grace. Oh! that is an excellent thing indeed. It is more to be advanced to this life than to the highest honour in the world. This is to live in God, to God ; to have miracles of grace wrought in us every day. It is the divine power that giveth ns ' all things that pertain to life and godliness,' 2 Peter i. 3 ; not begun nor carried on without a daily miracle, or a work exceeding the power of nature or the force of the creature. Life ennobleth all things : a living dog is l^etter than a dead lion ; to be alive to God, when others are dead in sin, what a great privilege is that ?