First, To whom we were captives ; to God, to Satan, to sin.
1. To God. We were the prisoners of his justice and wrath, and therefore called ' Prisoners in the pit in which there is no water,' Zech. ix. 11. It is a description of our natural bondage. In our original state we were God's creatures, but in our degenerate and fallen estate we are God's prisoners.
2. We were captives to Satan as God's executioner, given up to his power, that he might blind, harden, and lead us to all manner of sin by a just tradition : 2 Tim. ii. 26, ' That they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.' Natural men are at the will of another. As Christ told Peter, John xxi. 18, ' Another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldst not,' so Satan leads and carries us up and down, but it is there where we would ourselves be ; we consent to this bondage, and are acted by the spirit of the devil, and are at his beck. Nay, that is not all ; but we are also given up captives to Satan, that we might be tormented by him ; therefore he is said ' to have the power of death,' Heb. ii. 14. The devil, as God's executioner, hath a great power over carnal men, to stir up bondage, and fear, and horrors of wrath, and to take them away to torment, though not as he will, but as God willeth. Satan is our keeper, as God is our judge; and conscience, which was made to be God's deputy, is as it were Satan's underkeeper, stirs up fear, and holds us in chains of darkness.
3. We are captives to sin. Every natural man is a slave to his own lusts : Titus iii. 3, ' Serving divers lusts and pleasures.' Man in his natural state is a slave to his own affections. For the explaining of which let me tell you, while man was in his original state and condition, his actions were to be thus governed ; the understanding and conscience were to prescribe to the will, and the will according to right reason, and conscience was to stir up the affections, and the affections according to the counsel and command of the will were to move the spirits and the members of the body. This was the order settled in man's nature before the fall. But now by corruption there is a woful change and disorder, and the head is where the feet should be. The bodily spirits move the affections, the law in the members prescribes many times to the law of the mind, carnal pleasures move the affections, and the affec- tions carry away the will by violence, and the corrupt bent of the will blinds the understanding, and so man is led headlong to his own destruc-
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tion; and therefore the apostle saith that carnal men are sold under sin : Kom. vii. 14, ' I am carnal, sold under sin.' As captives in war were sold to be drudges to those that bought them, so man by nature is sold to be a drudge to his own lusts, and to be at the beck of every carnal and unclean suggestion. Here is the captivity of man by nature, there is the judge, and that is God, to whose wrath we are subject ; there is the prison, that is hell ; there is the keeper of the prison, that is Satan ; and there are the ropes and chains by which we are bound, and they are partly our sins : Prov. v. 22, ' His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.' And partly the terrors of conscience, for the devils are said ' to be reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day,' Jude 6, which signifies the horror that is upon the damned spirits, expecting more judgment from the wrath of the Lord, and at the judgment of the great day. The devils, that are most sensible of their estate, as being actually in torment, are said to be held in those chains of darkness ; and we as their fellow-prisoners are held in the same chains, though in the time of God's patience we do not feel it.
Secondly, Let us come to the way of redeeming these captives. Among the nations there is a fourfold way of redeeming captives — either gratuitamanmmsswne, by free deliverance, or q\?,q joerviidaiione, by way of exchange, or else violenta ablatione, by way of force and arms, or else soluto lutro, by paying the price or ransom. The two last are most proper to this case, taking away by force or paying a ransom, though to me the former also have their place.
1. By free dismission on God's part, that holdeth in the present case ; we are freely dismissed, namely, as there is nothing done on the captive's part to free himself It is said, Eom. iii. 24, ' Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.' Mark there is a redemption in Christ, a price paid, but no human satisfaction made. Free grace found out the remedy not excited by any works of ours,