with fatness." The same quarrel which God hath against particular men, and particular nations, for particular sins, God hath against all mankind for Adam's sin. And there is the war. But what is the peace, and how are we included in that? That is our second and next disquisition, That peace might be made.

A man must not presently think himself included in this peace, because he feels no effects of this war. If God draw none of his swords of war, or famine, or pestilence, upon thee, (no outward war,) if God raise not a rebellion in thyself, nor fight against thee with thine own affections, in colluctations between the flesh and the spirit; the war may last for all this. Induciarum tempore, bellum manet, licet pugna cesset; though there be no blow stricken, the war remains in the time of truce. But thy case is not so good; here is no truce, no cessation, but a continual preparation to a fiercer war. All this while that thou enjoyest this imaginary security, the enemy digs insensibly under ground, all this while he undermines thee, and will blow thee up at last more irrecoverably than if he had battered thee with outward calamities all that time. So any state may be abused with a false peace present, or with a fruitless expectation of a future peace. But in this text there is true peace, and peace already made; present peace, and safe peace. Pax non promissa, sed missa, (says St. Bernard, in his musical and harmonious cadences,) not promised, but already sent; non dilata, sed data, not treated, but concluded; non prophetata, sed præsentata, not prophesied, but actually established. There is the presentness thereof; and then made by him who lacked nothing for the making of a safe peace; for, after his names of counsellor, and of the mighty God, he is called, for the consummation of all, v princeps pacis; a counsellor, there is his wisdom; a mighty God, there is his power; and this counsellor, this mighty God, this wise and this powerful Prince, hath undertaken to make our peace; but how, that is next, per sanguinem, peace being made by blood.

Is effusion of blood the way of peace? effusion of blood may make them from whom blood is so abundantly drawn, glad of peace, because they are thereby reduced to a weakness. But in

23 Gellius.

our wars such a weakness puts us farther off from peace, and puts more fierceness in the enemy. But here mercy and truth have met together; God would be true to his own justice, (blood was forfeited, and he would have blood,) and God would be merciful to us, he would make us the stronger by drawing blood, and by drawing our best blood, the blood of Christ Jesus. Simeon and Levi ", when they meditated their revenge for the rape committed upon their sister, when they pretended peace, yet they required a little blood; they would have the Sichemites circumcised; but when they had opened a vein, they made them bleed to death; when they were under the soreness of circumcision, they slew them all. God's justice required blood, but W that blood is not spilt, but poured from that head to our hearts, into the veins and wounds of our own souls; there was blood shed, but no blood lost. Before the law was thoroughly established, when Moses came down from God, and deprehended the people in that idolatry to the calf, before he would present himself as a mediator between God and them for that sin, he prepares a sacrifice of blood", in the execution of three thousand of those idolaters, and after that he came to his vehement prayer in their behalf. And in the strength of the law all things were purged with blood, and without blood there is no remission 26. Whether we place the reason of this in God's justice, which required blood, or whether we place it in the conveniency that blood being ordinarily received to be sedes animæ, the seat and residence of the soul; the soul for which that expiation was to be, could not be better represented, nor purified, than in the state and seat of the soul, in blood; or whether we shut up ourselves in an humble sobriety to inquire into the reasons of God's actions, thus we see it was no peace, no remission, but in blood. Nor is that so strange, as that which follows in the next place, per sanguinem ejus, by his blood.

Before, under the law, it was in sanguine hircorum, and vitulorum; in the blood of goats and bullocks; here it is in sanguine ejus, in his blood. Not his, as he claims all the beasts of the forest, all the cattle upon a thousand hills 27, and all the fowls 26 Heb. ix. 22.

2+ Gen. xxxiv,

$5 Exod. xxxii. 28, and 32.
17 Psal. L. 10.

of the mountains, to be his; not his, as he says of gold and silver, the silver is mine, and the gold is mine; not his, as he is Lord and proprietary of all by Creation; so all blood is his; no, not his, as the blood of all the martyrs was his blood, (which is a near relation and consanguinity,) but his so as it was the precious blood of his body, the seat of his soul, the matter of his spirits, the knot of his life, this blood he shed for me; and I have blood to shed for him too, though he call me not to the trial, nor to the glory of martyrdom. Sanguis animæ meæ coluntas mea, the blood of my soul is my will; scindatur vena ferro compunctionis, open a vein with that knife, remorse, compunction, ut si non sensus, certe consensus peccati effluat, that though thou canst not bleed out all motions to sin, thou mayest all consent thereunto. Noli esse nimium justus; noli sapere plus quam oportet; St. Bernard makes this use of those counsels, Be not righteous overmuch, nor be not overwise"; cui putas venæ parcendum, si justitia et sapientia egent minutione, what vein mayest thou spare, if thou must open those two veins, righteousness and wisdom? If they may be superfluously abundant, if thou must bleed out some of thy righteousness, and some of thy wisdom, cui venæ parcendum, at what vein must thou not bleed? Now in all sacrifices, where blood was to be offered, the fat was to be offered too. If thou wilt sacrifice the blood of thy soul, (as St. Bernard calls the will,) sacrifice the fat too; if thou give over thy purpose of continuing in thy sin, give over the memory of it, and give over all that thou possessest unjustly and corruptly got by that sin; else thou keepest the fat from God, though thou give him the blood. If God had given over at his second day's work, we had had no sun, no seasons; if at his fifth, we had had no being; if at the sixth, no Sabbath; but by proceeding to the seventh, we are all, and we have all. Naaman, who was out of

the covenant, yet, by washing in Jordan seven times 30, was cured of his leprosy; seven times did it even in him, but less did not. The priest in the law used a sevenfold sprinkling of blood upon the altar; and we observe a seven-fold shedding of blood in Christ; in his circumcision, and in his agony, in his fulfilling of that prophecy,-I gave my cheeks to them that plucked off the

28

Hag. ii. 8.

29 Eccles. vii. 16.

30 2 Kings v. 14.

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hair3,—and in his scourging, in his crowning, and in his nailing, and lastly, in the piercing of his side. These seven channels hath the blood of thy Saviour found. Pour out the blood of thy soul, sacrifice thy stubborn and rebellious will seven times too; seven times, that is, every day; and seven times every day; for so often a just man falleth 32; and then, how low must that man be at last if he fall so often, and never rise upon any fall? and therefore raise thyself as often and as soon as thou fallest. Jericho would not fall 33 but by being compassed seven days, and seven times in one day. Compass thyself, comprehend thyself, seven times, many times, and thou shalt have thy loss of blood supplied with better blood, with a true sense of that peace which he hath already made, and made by blood, and by his own blood, and by the blood of his cross, which is the last branch of this second part.

Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friend, yet he that said so did more than so, more than lay down his life, (for he exposed it to violences and torments,) and all that for his enemies. But doth not the necessity diminish the love? where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator 35; was there then a necesssity in Christ's dying? simply a necessity of coaction there was not; such as is in the death of other men, natural or violent by the hand of justice. There was nothing more arbitrary, more voluntary, more spontaneous than all that Christ did for man. And if you could consider a time, before the contract between the Father and him had passed, for the redemption of man by his death, we might say that then there was no necessity upon Christ that he must die; but because that contract was from all eternity, supposing that contract, that this peace was to be made by his death, there entered the oportuit pati, that Christ ought to suffer all these things, and to enter into his glory. And so as for his death, so for the manner of his death, (by the cross,) it was not of absolute necessity, and yet it was not by casualty neither, not because he was to suffer in that nation which did ordinarily punish such malefactors, (such as he was accused to

31 Isaiah L. 6.
34 John xv. 13.

32 Prov. xxiv. 16.

35 Heb. ix. 16.

33 Joshua vi. 36 Luke xxiv. 26.

be,) seditious persons, with that manner of death, but all this proceeded ex pacto, thus the contract led it, to this he was obedient, obedient unto death, and unto the death of the cross. By blood, and not only by coming into this world, and assuming our nature, (which humiliation was an act of infinite value,) and not by the blood of his circumcision or agony, but blood to death, and by no gentler nor nobler death than the death of the cross, was this peace to be made by him. Though then one drop of his blood had been enough to have redeemed infinite worlds, if it had been so contracted and so applied, yet he gave us a morning shower of his blood in his circumcision, and an evening shower at his passion, and a shower after sunset, in the piercing of his side. And though any death had been an incomprehensible ransom for the Lord of life to have given, for the children of death, yet he refused not the death of the cross; the cross, to which a bitter curse was nailed by Moses 38 from the beginning; he that is hanged is not only accursed of God, (as our translation hath it,) but he is the curse of God, (as it is in the original,) not accursed, but a curse; not a simple curse, but the curse of God. And by the cross, which besides the infamy, was so painful a death as that many men languished many days upon it before they died; and by his blood of this torture, and this shame, this painful and this ignominious death, was this peace made. In our great work of crucifying ourselves to the world too, it is not enough to bleed the drops of a circumcision, that is, to cut off some excessive and notorious practice of sin; nor to bleed the drops of an agony, to enter into a conflict and colluctation of the flesh and the spirit, whether we were not better trust in God's mercy for our continuance in that sin, than lose all that pleasure and profit which that sin brings us; nor enough to bleed the drops of scourging, to be lashed with viperous and venomous tongues, by contumelies and slanders; nor to bleed the drops of thorns, to have thorns and scruples enter into our consciences with spiritual afflictions; but we must be content to bleed the streams of nailings to those crosses, to continue in them all our lives, if God see that necessary for our confirmation; and if men will pierce and wound us after our deaths in our good name,