Secondly, He is Lord of bodij and soul and conscience, punishing with terrors here and damnation hereafter.
Thirdly, He is Lord eternal. He endures for ever, and cannot die.
Fourthly, He is such a Lord as cannot abuse his authority. He cannot tyrannise. His grace and virtue are of equal extent with his power.
Fifthly, He is a holy Lord. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, that is. Lord of hosts, Eev. iv. 8.
In all these he is far above any earthly man, yea, above all creatures. And therefore it is a sweet estate to be under government and rule. They then that are lords here on earth must consider, thouyh they rule and are above others, yet they are under the Lord. Thus did Joseph. Therefore they must rule, ' but in the Lord.' It is his will that must rule their wills.
Secondly, This should comfort Christians, that they have such a Lord as is Lord of angels, at whom the devils tremble ; whom storms, winds, seas, sickness, death, and all creatures do obey. Yet we cannot challenge this comfort, but upon condition of our obedience. The apostle joins Lord and Saviour together, to shew that he is a Saviour only to those that take him for their Lord to govern and rule them. As he is our priest, he must also be our king. He comes by water to purge and wash us, as well as by blood to suffer for us. The wicked 'they will not have this man rule over them, but they shall not say nay. God will be a Lord over them, ruling by his power ; with a rod of iron he will bruise them in pieces, none shall deliver them. If we will avoid this miserable estate, let us make him Lord in us. Thus shall we crown him, and then he will crown us with himself.
VERSE 21. Who shall change our vile body.
The words are plain, and shall need no exposition ; therefore we will briefly come to the doctrines.
Doct. 1. And first, "We may observe hence that our bodies are base ; and
144 EXPOSITION OF
thus are the bodies not only of wicked profane men, but of the servants and dearest children of God ; all are vile. And that in these respects.
First, In Hfe our orhjinal is base. We are dust, and to dust we must return, Gen. iii. 19 ; and our continuance is full of change, subject to diversity of estates, sickness, health, pain, ease, hunger, fulness. And base we are, because we are upheld by inferior creatures. We enter into the world by one way, but go out by divers deaths ; some violent, some more natural, and by divers sicknesses loathsome to the eyes, to the nostrils, and especially when we are nearest our end, whenas our counte- nance is pale, our members tremble, all our beauty is gone. But after we are departed, so loathsome is this our carcase, it must be had out of sight ; yea, though it be the body of the patriarch Abraham,* Gen. xxiii. 4. For as the body of man is the best temper, so the corruption thereof is the most vile. The best countenances of the greatest personages are the most ugly, ghastly objects of all others, by so much the more, b}^ how much they were the more excellent ; so much the greater is their change. And yet are we not to conceive of this body so as though there were no glory belonging to it ; for, first, it is God's workmanship, therefore excellent, and so excellent as the heathen man Galen, being stricken into admiration at the admirable frame thereof, breaks out into a hymn in praise of the Maker (bb). And David could not express it, but says, ' I am wonderfully made,' Ps. cxxxix. 14. God made this his last work, as an epitome of all the rest.
Secondly, We are told that we oive glory to our bodies ; and therefore we are bidden that we should not wrong our bodies ; and the Scripture speaks infamously of self-murderers, as of Judas, Saul, Ahithophel. They are branded with a note of shame and reproach. And God, to shew the respect we owe to our bodies, hath provided to every sense pleasing recreations, as flowers for the smell, light for the eyes, music for the ear ; to be brief, he made all things for the bodily use of man.
Thirdly, These bodies of ours are members of Christ, redeemed and sanctified temples of the Holy Ghost, as well as of our souls. And there- fore we must take heed, when we read of the base terms that are given to the body, that we do not mistake. For it is true in regard it keeps the soul from heaven, it is the grave of the soul ; but indeed it is the house, the temple and instrument of the soul. But being misused, it proves an unto- ward dark house, an unwieldy instrument.
We are to take heed, therefore, of the error of those who afHict it by writing and declaiming against it, or by whipping'of it, when, alas ! it is the sin of the soul, the unruly lusts and afiections, that are the causes of all rebellions in us ; and if the bod}^ doth rebel, as often it doth come to pass since the fall, this proceeds from the corruption of the soul yielding to the body aid to serve the lusts ; and God hath appointed a religious abstinence as a means to tame such lusts and weaken them, which it were to be wished were used oftener than it is.