grace and mercy. And thus shall we be crucified with Christ his own Cross.

upon

2. Yet, lastly, we must go farther than this: from his Cross to his PERSON. So did St. Paul, and every believer, die with Christ, that he died in Christ: for, as in the First Adam we all lived, and sinned; so, in the Second, all believers died, that they might live.

The First Adam brought in death to all mankind; but, at last, actually died for none but himself: the Second Adam died for mankind, and brought life to all believers. Seest thou thy Saviour therefore hanging upon the Cross? all mankind hangs there with him as a Knight or Burgess of Parliament voices his whole borough or country.

What speak I of this? The arms and legs take the same lot with the head. Every believer is a limb of that body: how can he therefore but die with him, and in him? That real union then, which is betwixt Christ and us, makes the Cross and Passion of Christ ours; so as the thorns pierced our heads, the scourges blooded our backs, the nails wounded our hands and feet, and the spear gored our sides and hearts by virtue whereof, we receive justification from our sins, and true mortification of our corruptions.

Every believer therefore is dead already for his sins, in his Saviour: he needs not fear, that he shall die again. God is too just to punish twice for one fault; to recover the sum, both of the surety and principal. All the score of our arrearages is fully struck off, by the infinite satisfaction of our Blessed Redeemer.

Comfort thyself therefore, thou Penitent and Faithful Soul, in the confidence of thy safety: thou shalt not die, but live; since thou art already crucified with thy Saviour: he died for thee; thou diedst in him. Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies. Who shall condemn? It is Christ that died; yea rather that is risen again, and lives gloriously at the right hand of God, making intercession for us. To thee, O Blessed Jesu, together with thy Coeternal Father and Holy Spirit, Three Persons in One Infinite and Incomprehensible Deity, be all praise, honour, and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

SERMON XXVI.

CHRISTIAN LIBERTY LAID FORTH:

IN A SERMON PREACHED TO HIS LATE MAJESTY AT WHITEHALL, IN THE TIME OF THE PARLIAMENT HOLDEN ANNO 1628.

Stand fast therefore in the Liberty, wherewith Christ hath made you free.

As if my tongue and your ears could not easily be diswonted from our late parliamentary language, you have here, in this Text, Liberty, Prerogative, the Maintenance of both Liberty of subjects, that are freed; Prerogative of the King of Glory, that hath freed them; Maintenance of that liberty, which the power of that great prerogative hath achieved: Christian Liberty; Christ's Liberation; our Persistance: Stand fast in the Liberty, wherewith Christ hath made you free.

I. Liberty is a sweet word: the thing itself is much sweeter: and men's apprehensions make it yet sweeter than it is. Certainly, if liberty and life were competitors, it is a great question, whether would carry it: sure I am, if there be a life without it, yet it is not vital. Man restrained is like a wild bird shut up in a cage; that offers at every of the grates to get out, and grows sullen when it can find no evasion; and, till stark famine urge it, will not so much as feed, for anger to be confined.

Neither is the word more sweet, than large: there are as many liberties, as restraints; and as many restraints, as there are limitations of superior commands; and there are so many limits of commands, as there are either duties to be done, or sentences to be undergone. There is a liberty of the parts, and a liberty of the man.

There is a drunken liberty of the Tongue; which, being once glibbed with intoxicating liquor, runs wild through heaven and earth; and spares neither him that is God above, nor those which are called gods on earth. The slanderer answered Pyrrhus well: "I confess I said thus, O king; and had said more, if more wine had been given me." Treason is but a tavern dialect. Anything passes well under the Rose. It is not the man, but

the liquor; not the liquor, but the excess, that is guilty of this liberty.

There is an audacious and factious liberty of this loose film; which not only ill-tutored scholars take to themselves under the name of libertas prophetandi, pestering both presses and pulpits with their bold and brainsick fancies; but unlettered tradesmen, and tattling gossips too: with whom, deep questions of divinity, and censures of their teachers, are grown into common tabletalk; and peremptory decisions of theological problems is as ordinary almost, as backbiting their neighbours.

There is a profane liberty of atheous swaggerers, which say, Disrumpamus vincula; let us break their bonds. Not religion only, but even reason and humanity seem fetters to these spirits; who, like the demoniac in the Gospel, having broken all their chains, find no freedom but among the noisome of hateful corrupgraves tions.

There is a disloyal liberty of those rebellious spirits, which despise government; and hold it a servitude to live within the range of wholesome laws. There is no freedom with those unquiet dispositions, but in the bold censures of authority, in the seditious calumniations of superiors, and in their own Utopical prescriptions. Every thing is good to these men, save the present; and nothing, save their own. Though all these are not so much liberties, as licentiousness.

Besides these, there are civil liberties of persons, towns, incorporations, countries, kings, kingdoms. Good reason these should be mutually stood upon. Religion was never an enemy to the due orders and rights of policy. God's book is the true Magna Charta, that enacts both king and people their own. He, that hath set bounds to the wide ocean, hath stinted the freest liberty.

But these liberties are not for the pulpit. It is the CHRISTIAN LIBERTY, wherewith we have to do: that alone hath scope enough, both for our present speech and perpetual maintenance.

This Christian Liberty stands, either in Immunity from evil, or Enlargement to good.

The Immunity is from that, which is evil in itself; or that, which is evil to us. In itself: Sin; Satan. Sin, whether in the fault, or in the punishment; the punishment, whether inward, or outward: inward, the slavery of an accusing conscience; outward, the wrath of God, death, damnation, Evil to us, whether burdensome traditions, or the law; the law, whether moral, or ceremonial; moral, whether the obligations, or the curse.

Enlargement to good: whether in respect of the creature, which is our free use of it; or whether in respect to God, in our voluntary service of him, in our free access to him: access, whe ther to his throne of grace or our throne of glory.

I have laid before you a compendious tablet of our Christian Liberty less than which, is bondage; more than which is looseness.

Such abundant scope there is in this allowed freedom, that what heart soever would yet rove further, makes itself unworthy of pity in loosing itself. Do we think the angels are pent up in their heavens, or can wish to walk beyond those glorious bounds! Can they hold it a restraint, that they can but will good; like to our liquorous first parents, that longed to know evil?

Oh the sweet and happy liberty of the sons of God! All the world, besides them, are very slaves; and lie obnoxious to the bolts, fetters, scourges, of a spiritual cruelty.

It is hard to beat this into a carnal heart. No small part of our servitude lies in the captivation of our understanding; such, as that we cannot see ourselves captive. This is a strange difference of misprision: the Christian is free, and cannot think himself so; the Worldling thinks himself free, and is

not so.

What talk we to these jovialists? It is liberty, with them, for a man to speak what he thinks, to take what he likes, to do what he lists; without restriction, without controulment. "Call ye this freedom that a man must speak and live by rule; to have a guard upon his lips and his eyes; no passage for a vain word or look, much less for a lewd; to have his best pleasures stinted, his worse abandoned; to be tasked with an unpleasing good, and chid when he fails. Tush, tell not me. To let the heart loose to an unlimited jollity, to revel heartily, to feast without fear, to drink without measure, to swear without check, to admit of no bound of luxury but our own strength, to shut out all thoughts of scrupulous austerity, to entertain no guest of inward motion but what may sooth up our lawlessness: this is liberty, who does less is a slave to his own severe thoughts."

Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou savourest not the things of God. If this be freedom, to have our full scope of wickedness, O happy devils; O miserable saints of God! Those, though fettered up in chains of everlasting darkness, can do no other but sin these, in all the elbow-room of the empyreal heaven, cannot do one evil act; yea, the God of Saints and Angels, the Author of all Liberty, should be least free; who, out of the blessed necessity of his most pure nature, is not capable of the least possibility of evil. Learn, O Vain Men, that there is nothing but impotence, nothing but grieves and manacles in the freest sins. Some captive may have a longer chain than his fellows; yea, some offender may have the liberty of the Tower; yet, he is a prisoner still. Some gaol may be wider than some palace: what of that? If hell were more spacious than the seat of the blessed, this doth not make it no place of torment. Go whither thou wilt, thou Resolved Sinner, thou carriest thy chain with thee: it shall stick as close to thee as thy soul: neither can it ever be shaken off,

till thou have put off thyself by a spiritual regeneration: then only thou art free.

It is a divine word, that in our Liturgy, "Whose service is perfect freedom?" St. Paul saith as much; Rom. vi. 18, 20. Being freed from sin, ye are made, servi justitiae, the servants of righteousness. What is liberty, but freedom from bondage? and, behold, our freedom from the bondage of sin ties us to a sure liberty, that is our free obedience to God. Both the Orator and the Philosopher define liberty by Potestas vivendi ut velis ; but, withal, you know he adds, quis vivit ut vult, nisi qui recta sequitur ? See how free the good man is: he doth what he will: for he wills what God wills, and what God would have him will; in whatever he doth therefore, he is a free man. Neither hath any man free-will to good but he. Be ambitious of this happy condition, O all ye Noble and Generous Spirits; and do not think ye live, till ye have attained to this true liberty; The liberty, wherewith Christ hath made us free.

II. So from the Liberty we descend to the Prerogative: CHRIST'S LIBERATION.

Here is the glorious prerogative of the Son of God, to be the Deliverer or Redeemer of his people. They could not free themselves. The angels of heaven might pity, could not redeem them yea, alas, who could, or who did redeem those of their rank; which, of lightsome celestial spirits, are become foul devils? Only Christ could free us, whose ransom was infinite; only Christ did free us, whose love is infinite.

And how hath he wrought our liberty? By force, by purchase. By Force, in that he hath conquered him, whose captives we were; by Purchase, in that he hath paid the full price of our ransom, to that supreme hand whereto we were forfeited.

I have heard lawyers say, there are in civil corporations three ways of freedom: by birth, by service, by redemption: by Birth, as St. Paul was free of Rome; by Service, as apprentices upon expiration of their years; by Redemption, as the centurion, with a great sum purchased I this freedom. Two of these are barred from all utter possibility, in our spiritual freedom: for, by Birth, we are the sons of wrath; by Service, we are naturally the vassals of Satan: it is only the precious Redemption of the Son of God, that hath freed us.

Whereas freedom then hath respect to bondage, there are seven Egyptian Masters, from whose slavery Christ hath freed us. Sin, an accusing Conscience, danger of God's Wrath, tyranny of Satan, the curse of the Law, Mosaical Ceremonies, human Ordinances see our servitude to, and our freedom from, all these, by the powerful Liberation of Christ.

1. It was a true word of that Pythagorean, Quot vitia, tot domini: SIN is a hard master. A master? yea, a tyrant: let not sin reign in your mortal bodies; Rom. vi. 12. and so the sinner is not only servus corruptitiæ, a drudge of corruptions; 2 Pet. ii. 19: