Therefore, if we labour not for the life of Jesus to be begun here, which is called the life of grace, the beginning and infant of glory, we miss of our end. This life is for that life ; we are not for this life. God ordained us not for this life. Therefore he will take this life away to advance it to a spiritual life. He takes liberty to take away our health and natural life, that he may advance our spiritual life, for he knoweth what is in this life is well lost, if it be gained in a better life, and it is for a better life. I beseech you, let us think seriously of these things.
What should I speak on the life of condition, that you may be moved to the excellent life of Jesus ? There is a better condition together with it than any condition. For a natural life* takes a condition with a king. A Christian is a king, and a king over that that is terrible, a king over death, and hell, and the world, and above all. Take our natural life with the con- dition of a rich man ; there is better riches in the life of Jesus. The riches of heaven are his. Take the natural life with any outward condi- tion, and there is better in grace, better in religion. The life of Jesus hath better endowments accompanying it. Is it not better to have the image of God stamped upon the soul ? AVliat better honour '? Name you what you will, is there not a better condition in the life of Jesus ? So as the life itself being a spiritual and divine thing, for the divine nature is most excellent ; so the endowments and appurtenances that accompany the life of grace, are incomparably above all the endowments and appurtenances that is of natural life. Take it in the life of kings, emperors, or what you will, they are nothing to the life of Jesus.
Now this life of Jesus is manifested most when we are dehvered to death. Both the frame of grace, and the quickening power of grace, they are both more manifest when we are delivered to death ; that is, in trouble, sickness, or any cross whatsoever, there is more discovery of the life of Jesus than at other times. I have touched some reasons of it heretofore : I shall give some now, because the apostle repeateth the thing, and we will not pass it over, because the apostle doubles a little upon it.
Reason 1. Beloved, if we speak of the inward frame of grace, is not that most manifested when our outward man decayeth, and is ajflictcd / It is. For everything is increased by the exercise of it. ' When we are delivered to death,' that is, prepared for sufferings, or do suffer, there is opportunity of exercising all the branches of spiritual life. We put forth the exercise of spiritual life. Then we pray more than at ordinary times. Then we exer-
* Qu. 'take'?— Ed.
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cise our failh and dependency upon God. Then wo exercise our hope of life everlasting. Then we exercise our love to God, his church and people. Then we arc advanced for exercising of all functions of spiritual life. There- fore the life of Jesus is most manifested in the dyings of Jesus.
Reason 2. Beloved, it is a clear point, if ice take it for the quickening poller of Christ, together u'ith the inward frame that is most in the dyings of Jesus. When wo suffer any thing for God, it is his honour to be most pre- sent with us, and graciously present with us, when we stand most in need of his presence. But we stand most in need of his gi'acious presence at these times ; therefore he, out of the bowels of pity and compassion, is nearest to us. ' I will be with thee in lire and water,' Isa. xliii. 2. The Spirit of God enters into all conditions, into prisons, into dungeons, into every condition whatsoever. The quickening power of Christ is as much manifested in the outward condition as in any kind of way. As now for Christ to make a weak man, a weak woman, or a weak child, an old man, one being weak, another by sex, a third by age, when these three shall be able to stand out for God, for Christ in times of persecution : when these shall in times of peace and prosperity hold out the profession of religion, there must needs be a manifestation of a power above nature. By nature children are tender, by nature women are fearful, by nature old men are timorous, and fearful too. I say, the disproportion of the condition to the grace and power that is shewed, discovers the manifestation, that there is a quick- ening power more than ordinary. For the martyrs, when they were to seal the truth with their blood, to have a fire of love kindled in them, above the flames of fire, and the spiritual comforts kindled in them, here was mani- festation of the life of Jesus, when they were delivered to death. Nay, a sick worn body ; take it in times of peace, a good Christian that hath given himself to the study of mortification, and hath supplied the wants of afflic- tion by mortification. . . .*