A christian's chaetee. 33
as the apostle saith, 1 Tim. vi. 16. Therefore there must come a person between, invested in our nature. God in our nature comes between the Father and us, and all things come from God to us in him. As the salt waters of the sea, when they are strained through the earth, they are sweet in the rivers, so the waters of majesty and justice in God, though they be terrible, and there be a disproportion between them and us, yet being strained and derived* through Christ, they are sweet and delightful; but out of Christ there is no communion with God. He is a friend to both sides : to us as man, to him as God. All things come originally from the fountain of all, God. They are God's ; and you know the three persons meet, in one nature, in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Ay ; but, as I said, the holy God doth not convey immediately good things to us, but by the mediation of Christ. For God would have it thus since the fall, that having lost all, we should recover all again by the 'second Adam,' that should be a public person, a mediator between him and us ; and so through Christ we should have access and enti-ance to the Father, and that by him we should have boldness. And that God again downward might do all things with due satisfaction to his justice ; because, as I said, we are as stubble, and God ' a consuming fire.' Were not Christ in the middle, what intercourse could there be between the Lord and us ? No other than between the fire and the stubble : majesty on his side, and misery and sin on ours. There must be a mediator to bring these two contraries together. So all comes downward through Christ from God to us. God doth all in Christ to us. He chooseth us in Christ, and sancti- fies us in Christ ; he bestows all spiritual blessings on us in Christ, as members of Christ. To Christ first, and through him, he conveys it to us. He hath put fulness in him, and of his fulness ' we receive grace for grace,' John i. 10 ; for Christ is complete, and in him we are complete.
Reason 2. Then again, secondUj, God will have it thus, as it is fit it should be so, because Christ is fitted for it. He is the Son by nature ; and it is fit that we, that are sons by adoption, should have communion with the Father in the Son by nature. He is beloved of the Father first : ' In him I am well pleased,' Mat. iii. 17. We come to have communion with God in him in whom he is well pleased. Christ is jmmum amahile, the first beloved of all ; for God looks on Christ as the first begotten of him. He is the first Son by nature, and beloved of God. Hereupon God comes to delight in us that are sons by adoption, that are heirs, because we are ' fellow heirs with Christ.' He delights in us, because we are one with Christ, in whom he beholds us.
Reason 8. Again, thirdhj, God doth this, not only to keep his state in remoteness from us, and his greatness, hut he doth it in mercy. He hath appointed Christ to come between, that now we might not be afraid to go to God by the middle person, appointed by himself, ' who is bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh.' Now, we go to God, who is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh ; God not simply and barely considered, but God incarnate. There is no going to him in ourselves, but God being bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh ; as Bernard saith, I go willingly to a Mediator made bone of my bone, my brother (/«). It was a comfort to Joseph's brethren, that they had Joseph their brother the second man in the kingdom. And is it not a sweet comfort to Christians that they have one that is the second person in the Trinity, that is their brother, that is the high steward of heaven and earth ? Is it not a comfort to the * That is, ' communicated.' — G.
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84 A CnKISTIAN's PORTION ; OR,
spouso that her husband is advanced over all, and is nearest to the king? Is it not a comfort to every one that is in relation to another to have one that may stand for them, that is both able and willing ? Now, Christ is able as God, and willing as our brother ; and therefore is a fit person to come between God and us. He can do us good, because he is God ; and he will do us good, because he is ' bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh.' So wo sec that Christ is God's, and why there must be a third person come between God and us ; and Christ is fitted to be the middle person.
Now, to confirm it by a place of Scripture or two. The Scripture is everywhere full of this argument : ' It pleased God to reconcile all to him- self in Christ, in whom wo have obtained the inheritance, that in the ful- ness of time he might gather together in one all things in Christ,' Eph, i, 10, seq. It is a recapitulation, a bringing all to one again. God the Father, in Christ, brought all to a head again ; he brought all to himself again ; for without Christ we are scattered, and severed, and distracted* from God. But in Christ God brought in allf one head again, both that are in heaven and in earth. And so in Col. i. 19, ' It pleased God that in Christ all fulness should dwell, and in him to reconcile all things in heaven and earth.'