440 AN EXPOSITION OF THE [CHAP. Iz.
were overthrown in battle, if they granted them peace, how they would keep it, what peace they should have with them? he answered, “Si bonam dederitis, et fidam et perpetuam; si malam, haud diutur- nam.” Whereat some in the senate stormed, as if he had threatened them with war and rebellion; but the wiser sort commended him as one that spake like a man and a freeman, adding as their reason, “An credi posse, ullum populum, aut hominem denique in ea conditione, cujus eum peeniteat, diutius quam necesse sit mansurum, ” Liv., lib. viii. cap. xxi. So certain it is that bondage wearieth and stirreth up restless desires in all, and endeavours in some after liberty. 3dly. Bondage perplexeth the mind. It ariseth from fear, the greatest perturbation of the mind, and is attended with weariness and distrust; all which are perplexing. 4thly. Where bondage is complete, it lies in a tendency unto future and greater evils. Such is the bondage of condemned malefactors, reserved for the day of execution; such is the bondage of Satan, who is kept in chains of darkness for the judgment of the great day. And all these things concur in the bondage here in- tended; which is a dejected, troublesome state and condition of mind, arising from the apprehension and fear of death to be inflicted, and their disability in whom it is to avoid it, attended with fruitless desires and vain attempts to be delivered from it, and to escape the evil feared. And this is the condition of sinners out of Christ, whereof there are various degrees, answerable unto their convictions; for the apostle treats not here of men’s being servants unto sin, which is voluntary, but of their sense of the guilt of sin, which is wrought in them even whether they will or no, and by any means they would cast off the yoke of it, though by none are they able so to do: for,—
(8.) They are said to continue in this estate all their lives. Not that they were always perplexed with this bondage, but that they could never be utterly freed from it; for the apostle doth not say that they were thus in bondage all their days, but that they were obnoxious and “ subject” unto it. They had no ways to free or deliver themselves from it, but that at any time they might righteously be brought under its power; and the more they cast off the thoughts of it, the more they increased their danger. This was the estate of the children whose deliverance was undertaken by the Lord Christ, the captain of their salvation. And we may hence observe that,—
I. All sinners are subject unto death as it is penal. The first sentence reacheth them all, Gen. 1.17; and thence are they said to be “ by nature children of wrath,” Eph. ii. 3,—obnoxious unto death, to be inflicted in a way of wrath and revenge for sin. This passeth upon “all, inasmuch as all have sinned,’ Rom. v. 12. This all men see and know; but all do not sufficiently consider what is contained
VER. 14, 15. EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 441 ?
in the sentence of death, and very few how it may be avoided. Most men look on death as the common lot and condition of man- kind, upon the account of their frail natural condition; as though it belonged to the natural condition of the children, and not the moral, and were a consequent of their being, and not the demerit of their sin. They consider not that although the principles of our nature are in themselves subject unto a dissolution, yet if we had kept the law of our creation, it had been prevented by the power of God, en- gaged to continue life during our obedience. Life and obedience were to be commensurate, until temporal obedience ended in life eternal. Death is penal, and its being common unto all hinders not but that it is the punishment of every one. How it is changed unto believers by the death of Christ shall be afterward declared. In the ‘meantime, all mankind are condemned as soon as born. Life is a reprieve, a suspension of execution. If during that time a pardon be not effectually sued out, the sentence will be executed according to the severity of justice. Under this law are men now born; this yoke have they put on themselves by their apostasy from God. Neither is it to any purpose to repine against it or to conflict with it; there is but one way of delivery.
II. Fear of death, as it is penal, is inseparable from sin, before the sinner be delivered by the death of Christ. They were in “ fear of death.” ‘There is a fear of death that is natural, and inseparable from our present condition; that-is but nature’s aversation of its own dissolution. And this hath various degrees, occasioned by the differences of men’s natural constitution, and other accidental occur- rences and occasions: so that some seem to fear death too much, and others not at all; I mean of those who are freed from it as it is in the curse and under the power of Satan. But this difference is from occasions foreign and accidental; there is in all naturally the same aversation of it. And this is a guiltless infirmity, like our weariness and sickness, inseparably annexed unto the condition of mortality. But sinners in their natural state fear death as it is penal, as an issue of the curse, as under the power of Satan, as a dreadful entrance into eternal ruin. There are, indeed, a thousand ways’ whereby this fear is for a season stifled in the minds of men. Some live in brutish ignorance, never receiving any full conviction of sin, judgment, or eternity. Some put off the thoughts of their present and future estate, resolving to shut their eyes and rush into it, whenas they can no longer avoid it. Fear presents itself unto them as the forerunner of death, but they avoid the encounter, and leave themselves to the power of death itself. Some please them. selves with vain hopes of deliverance, though well they know not how nor why they should be partakers of it. But let men forego these helpless shifts, and suffer their own innate light to be excited