442 AN EXPOSITION OF THE [cuar. IL
with such means of conviction as they do enjoy, and they will quickly find what a judgment there is made in their own souls con- cerning death to. come, and what effects it will produce. They will conclude that it is “the judgment of God, that they which commit sin are worthy of death,’ Rom. i. 32; and then their own con- sciences do accuse and condemn them, Rom. ii. 14, 15; whence un- avoidably fear, dread, and terror will seize upon them. And then,—
III. Fear of death, as penal, renders the minds of men obnoxious unto bondage; which what it is we have in part before declared. It is a state of trouble, which men dislike, but cannot avoid. It is a penal disquietment, arising from a sense of future misery. Fain would men quit themselves of it, but they are not able. There is a chain of God in it not to be broken. Men may gall themselves with it, but cannot remove it; and if God take it from them without grant- ing them a lawful release and delivery, it is to their further misery. And this is, in some measure or other, the portion of every one that is convinced of sin before he is freed by the gospel. And some have disputed what degrees of it are necessary before believing. But what is necessary for any one to attain unto is his duty; but this bondage can be the duty of no man, because it is involuntary. It will follow conviction of sin, but it is no man’s duty; rather, it is such an effect of the law as every one is to free himself from, so soon as he may in a right way and manner. This estate, then, befalls men whether they will or no. And this is so if we take bondage passively, as it affects the soul of the sinner; which the apostle seems to intend by placing it as an effect of the fear of death. Take it actively, and it is no more than the sentence of the law, which works and causeth it in the soul; and so all sinners are inevitably obnoxious unto it. And this estate, as we observed, fills men with desires after, and puts them upon various attempts for deliverance. Some desire only present ease, and they commonly withdraw them- selves from it by giving up themselves wholly unto their hearts’ lusts, and therein to atheism; which God oftentimes, in his righteous judgment, gives them up unto, knowing that the day is coming wherein their present woful temporal relief will be recompensed with eternal misery. Some look forward unto what is to come, and ac- cording to their light and assistance variously apply themselves to seek relief; some do it by a righteousness of their own, and in the pursuit thereof also there are ways innumerable, not now to be in- sisted on; and some do it by Christ, which how it is by him effected the apostle in the next place declares.
Two things, as was showed, are affirmed of the Lord Christ, in consequence unto the premised supposition of the children’s being partakers of flesh and blood, and of their obnoxiousness unto death and to bondage:—1. That of their natwral condition he himself
VER. 14, 15.] EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 443
partook. 2. That from their moral condition he delivered them; which that he might do, it was necessary that he should partake of the other.
- 7. “He himself likewise did partake of the same.” The word taputarnoins, “likewise,” “‘in like manner,” doth denote such a similitude as is consistent with a specifical iden- ' tity. And therefore Chrysostom from hence urgeth the Marcionites and Valentinians, who denied the reality of the human nature of Christ, seeing that he partook of it in like manner with us; that is, truly and really, even as we do. But yet the word, by force of its composition, doth intimate some disparity and difference: ‘He took part of human nature really as we do, and almost in like manner with us. For there were two differences between his being partaker of human nature and ours:—F rst, In that we subsist singly in that nature; but he took his portion in this nature into subsistence with himself.in the person of the Son of God. Secondly, This nature in us is attended with many infirmities, that follow the individual persons that are partakers of it; in him it was free from them all. And this the apostle also intimates in the word jeréoyz, changing his expression from that whereby he declared the common interest of the children in the same nature, which is every way equal and alike. The whole is, that he took his own portion, in his own manner, unto himself.
And this observation removes what is hence objected against the deity of Christ. “Cum Christus,” saith Schlichtingius, “ hominum mortalium et fragilium dux et fautor sit, propterea is non angelus aliquis, multo verd minus ipse Deus summus qui solus immortalita- tem habet, sed homo suo tempore malis, et variis calamitatibus ob- noxius esse debuit.” It is true, it appears from hence that Christ ought to be a man, subject to sufferings and death, and not an angel, as the apostle’ further declares in the next verse; but that he ought not to be God doth not appear. As God, indeed, he could not die; but if he who was God had not taken part of flesh and blood, God could not have redeemed his church “ with his own blood.” But this is the perpetual paralogism of these men: “ Because Christ is asserted to have been truly a man, therefore he is not God;” which is to deny the gospel, and the whole mystery of it.