(3.) He prays for his disciples, John xvii. 21, " that they all may be one, as the Father is in him, and he in the Father, that they may be one in the Father and Son;" and verse 22, "Let them be one, even as we are one." And that 3'e may not think that it is only union with and among themselves that he presses for (though, indeed, that which gives them union with Christ gives them union one with an- other also, and that which constitutes them of the body unites them to the Head, and there is one body because there is one Spirit, Eph. iv, 4; which even Lombard himself had some notion of, in his asser- tion that charity, which is in us, is the person of the Holy Ghost, from that place of the apostle, " God is love"), I say he farther mani- fests tliat it is union with himself which he intends: John xvii. 23, " I in them," saith he, " and thou in me." This union, then, with him, our Saviour declares by, or at least illustrates by, resemblance unto his union with the Father. Whether this be understood of the union of the divine persons of Father and Son in the blessed Trinity (the union, I mean, that they have with themselves in their distinct personality, and not their unity of essence), or the union which was between Father and Son as incarnate, it comes all to one as to the declaration of that union we have with him. The Spirit is Vinculum Trinitatis, " The bond of the Trinity," as is commonly, and not inaptly spoken. Proceeding from both the other persons, being the love and power of them both, he gives that union to the tiinity of persons, whose substratum and ground is the inestimable unity of essence wherein they are one. Or if you take it for the union of the Father with the Son incarnate, it is evident and beyond inquiry or dispute, that as the personal union of the Divine Woixl and the human nature was by the assumption of that nature into one per- sonal substance with itself; so the person of the Father hath no
VIII.] THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT. 839
other union with the human nature of Christ, immediately and not by the union of his own nature thereunto in the person of his Son, but what consists in that indwelHng of his Spirit in all fulness in the man Christ Jesus. Now, saith our Saviour, "This union I desire they may have with me, by the dwelling of the same Spirit in me and them, whereby I am in them, and they in me, as I am one with thee, 0 Father."
Secondly, The Scripture sets forth this union by many illustra- tions, given unto it from the things of the nearest union that are subject to our apprehension, giving the very terms of the things so united unto Christ and his in their union. I shall name some few of them: —
(1.) That of head and members making up one body is often insisted on. Christ is the head of his saints, and they, being many, are members of that one body, and of one another; as the apostle at large, 1 Cor. xii. 1 2, " As the body is one, and hath many mem- bers, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ." The body is one, and the saints are one body, yea, one Christ, — that is, mystical. They, then, are the body. What part is Christ? He is the head : 1 Cor. xi. 3, " The head of every man" (that is, every believer) " is Christ;" he is " the head of the church, and the saviour of the body," Eph. v. 23 ; he is " the head of the body, the church," Col. i. 18. This relation of head and members, I say, between Christ and his, holds out the union that is between them, which consists in their being so. As the head and the members make one body, so Christ and his members make one mystical Christ. Whence, then, is it that the head and members have this their union, whereby they become one body? wherein doth it consist? Is it that from the head the members do receive their influences of life, sense, and guidance, as the saints do from Christ? Eph. iv. 15, 16, they "grow up into him in all things, which is the Head: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part," groweth up to a holy increase. So also Col. ii. 19, " Holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God." But evidently this is their communion, whereunto union is supposed. Our union with Christ cannot consist in the communication of any thing to us as members, from him the head; but it must be in that which consti- tutes him and us in the relation of head and members. He is our head antecedently in order of nature to any communication of grace from him as a head, and yet not antecedently to our union with him. Herein, then, consists the union of head and members, that though they are many, and have many offices, places, and dependencies,