Here is also a gradation : ' All is ours.' Is there a full point there ? No. ' We are Christ's, and Christ is God's. The gradation is upwards and downwards. God descends to us. ' AH' is from the Father, and from Christ mediator, to man, and for man's sake to the creature. The grada- tion up again is, ' We are Christ's, and Christ is God's.' \Vhich makes a blessed concatenation, or chaining and linking of things from the wise and great God. All things hang on him, and are carried to him again ; and as they come from one, so they end in one. As a circle begins and ends in one point, so all comes from God and ends in God.
In the reason we have the ' Charter of a Christian,' the dowry that the church hath by her marriage with Christ. He is the greatest king that ever was, and she is the greatest queen ; for Christ, he is Lord of heaven and earth, and of all things ; and her estate is as large as his. ' All things are yours,' &c., even from God to the poorest thing in the world. God passeth over himself to his children ; he is theirs, Christ is theirs. There- fore angels are theks ; for angels ascend and descend upon Jacob's ladder, that is, Christ.
Having set down this general, ' all things are yours,' to discourage them from glorying in men, he parcels that general into particulars : ' Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or life, or death,' &c.
1. ^All persons are yours.
2. All things are yours.
3. All events are yours. Persons : ' Paul, Apollos, Cephas.' Things : ' The world, or life, or death.'
Events : Whatsoever can come, for the present, or for time to come, ' all is yours.'
For 2^ersons : ' Paul, Apollos, Cephas are yours.' Therefore Peter is not the head of the church. He is named here in the third place, among the rest, and after the rest : ' ^Vhether it be Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, he is yours.' You know who ground all their religion on this. Peter is the head of the church, and they are the successors of Peter. But Peter is the church's, and therefore cannot be the head and commander. The pope pretends that he is Peter's successor, and yet he will be head of the church. But you see Cephas is a servant of the church's, as well as Paul and Apollos. You see the hypocrisy of him, by the way. He will call him- self servus servorinn Dei, the servant of the servants of God, as if he would justify this blessed speech. Cephas and Paul are servants of the church, and I, that am Peter's successor, am so ; but yet he stamps in his coin, ' That nation and country that will not serve thee, shall be rooted OUT ' (c). And so, while he pretends to be servant of servants, he will be lord of lords ; he tyranniseth over the church, and overthrows this text that saith, ' All things are for the church, and we must glory in no man,' so as to let him be the author of our faith in anything. That man of sin_ and his adherents, the faction of Rome, wrong the church two ways especially.
1. First of all, in that they have of their own brain, without Christ, the
8 A christian's portion ; OR,
head of the church, nnlaiiied a tcorld of idle ceremunics, which they will have to have supernatural cflbcts, and to confer grace.
2. And then, sccoiidhj, in that they 'make laws to hind the conscience, with- out reference to Christ, and their traditions must have the same authority with the word of God ; so they sit in the temple of God ; and that is the reason why popery prevaileth so. Whereas, indeed, no man is lord of the faith of another man. The chicfest men in the world are but servants of the church : Paul, and Apollos, and Cq)has. ' The woman must not usurp authority over the man,' 1 Tim. ii. 12, nor must the church be above Christ.
To go on ; not only all persons, but the whole world, is the church's.
The world natural, the civil world, and the ecclesiastical world.
(1.) First, the ivorld natural is the church's; that is, the frame of heaven and earth. All things are made for man, and ho is made for God. As a wise philosopher could say, that man is the end of all things in a semi- circle (d)\; that is, all things in the world are made for him, and he is made for God. The world is ours, all things in the world are our servants ; for they mourn in black, as it were, for our miseries since the fall, and in our restor- ing again they shall be restored. They wait for the day, as it is Kom. viii. 21, ' For the glorious liberty of the Son of God.' They have their happiness and misery together with men. The world stands for the elect. If all the elect were gathered out of the world, there would be an end of all things ; all would be in confusion presently.