these accessory, supplementary, additional fulnesses to be put to him? A fulness to be added to God? To make him a competent person to redeem man, something was to be added to Christ, though he were God; wherein we see to our inexpressible confusion of face, and consternation of spirit, the incomprehensibleness of man's sin, that even to God himself there was required something else than God, before we could be redeemed; there was a fulness to be added to God, for this work, to make it all fulness, for Christ was God before; there was that fulness; but God was not Christ before; there lacked that fulness. Not disputing, therefore, what other ways God might have taken for our redemption, but giving him all possible thanks for that way which his goodness hath chosen, by the way of satisfying his justice (for howsoever I would be glad to be discharged of my debts any way, yet certainly, I should think myself more beholden to that man who would be content to pay my debt for me, than to him that should intreat my creditor to forgive me my debt,) for this work, to make Christ able to pay this debt, there was something to be added to him. First he must pay it in such money as was lent; in the nature and flesh of man; for man had sinned, and man must pay. And then it was lent in such money as was coined even with the image of God; man was made according to his image: that image being defaced, in a new mint, in the womb of the blessed Virgin, there was new money coined; the image of the invisible God, the second person in the Trinity, was imprinted into the human nature. And then, that there might be all fulness, as God, for the payment of this debt, sent down the bullion, and the stamp, that is, God to be conceived in man, and as he provided the mint, the womb of the blessed Virgin, so hath he provided an exchequer, where this money is issued; that is his church, where his merits should be applied to the discharge of particular consciences. So that here is one fulness, that in this person dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily". Here is another fulness, that this person fulfilled all righteousness, and satisfied the justice of God by his suffering; there was no sorrow like unto his sorrow; it was so full that it exceeded all others. And then there is a third

14 Coloss. ii. 9.

fulness, the church 15, (which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all;) perfect God, there is the fulness of his dignity; perfect man, there is the fulness of his passibility; and a perfect church, there is the fulness of the distribution of his mercies and merits to us. And this is omnis plenitudo, all fulness; which yet is farther extended in the next word, Inhabitavit, It pleased the Father, that all fulness should dwell in him.

ness.

The Holy Ghost appeared in the dove, but he did not dwell in it. The Holy Ghost hath dwelt in holy men, but not thus ; so, as that ancient bishop expresses it, Habitavit in Salomone per sapientiam, He dwelt in Solomon, in the spirit of wisdom; in Joseph, in the spirit of chastity; in Moses, in the spirit of meekness; but in Christo, in plenitudine, in Christ, in all fulNow this fulness is not fully expressed in the hypostatical union of the two natures; God and man in the person of Christ. For (concerning the divine nature,) here was not a dram of glory in this union. This was a strange fulness, for it was a fulness of emptiness; it was all humiliation, all exinanition, all evacuation of himself by his obedience to the death of the cross. But when it was done, (as the apostle speaks in another case,) lest the cross of Christ should be evacuated, and made of none effect 17, he came to make this fulness perfect by instituting and establishing a church, The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, says the prophet of Christ. There is a fulness in general for his qualification the spirit of the Lord; but what kind of spirit? it follows the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and power, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; we see the spirit that must rest upon Christ is the spirit in those beams, in those functions, in those operations, as conduce to government, that is, wisdom, and counsel, and power. So that this is Christ's fulness, that he is in a continual administration of his church; in which he flows over upon us his ministers, (for of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace 1o : that is, power by his grace, to derive grace upon the congregation ;) and so of his fulness, all the congregation receives too, and receives in that full measure, That they are filled with all the

15 Eph. i. 23.

16 Remigius.
18 John i. 16.

17 1 Cor. i. 17.

18

fulness of God; that is, all the fulness that was in both his natures, united in one person, when the fulness of the Deity dwelt in him bodily, all the merits of that person, are derived upon us in his word, sacraments, in his church; which church being to continue to the end, it is most properly said, in him, (in him, as head of the church,) all fulness, all means of salvation, dwell, and are to be had permanently, constantly, infallibly.

Now how came Christ by all this fulness, this superlative fulness in himself, this derivative fulness upon us? That his merits should be able to build, and furnish such a house, to raise and rectify such a church, acceptable to God, in which all fulness should dwell to the world's end? It was only because it pleased God, (for this personal name of the Father (it pleased the Father) is but added suppletorily by our translators, and is not in the original,) it pleased God to give him wherewithal to enable him so far, for this complacuit is, (as we say in the school,) cox beneplaciti, it expresses only the good will and love of God, without contemplation or foresight of any goodness in man; first, we are to consider this fulness to have been in Christ, and then from this fulness arose his merits; we can consider no merit in Christ himself before, whereby he should merit this fulness; for this fulness was in him before he merited anything, and but for this fulness he had not so merited. Ille homo, ut in unitatem filii Dei assumeretur, unde meruit? How did that man (says St. Augustine, speaking of Christ as of the son of man,) how did that man merit to be united in one person with the eternal Son of God? Quid egit ante? Quid credidit? What had he done? nay, what had he believed? Had he either faith, or works, before that union of both natures? If then in Christ Jesus himself there were no præcisa merita, that God's foresight that he would use this fulness well, did not work in God, as a cause to give him this fulness, but because he had it of the free gift of God, therefore he did use it well and meritoriously, shall any of us be so frivolous, in so important a matter, as to think that God gave us our measure of grace, or our measure of sanctification, because he foresaw that we would heap up that measure, and employ that talent profitably? What canst thou imagine he

could foresee in thee? A propenseness, a disposition to good-
ness, when his grace should come? Either there is no such
pro-
penseness, no such disposition in thee, or if there be, even that
propenseness and disposition to the good use of grace is grace, it
is an effect of former grace, and his grace wrought before he saw
any such propenseness, any such disposition; grace was first,
and his grace is his, it is none of thine. To end this point and
this part, non est discipulus supra magistrum; the fulness of
Christ himself was rooted in the complacuit, it pleased the
Father; (nothing else wrought in the nature of a cause,) and
therefore that measure of that fulness which is derived upon us
from him (our vocation, our justification, our sanctification,) are o
much more so; we have them, quia complacuit, because it hath
pleased him freely to give them; God himself could see nothing
in us till he of his own goodness put it into us. And so we
have gone as far as our first part carries us, in those two branches,
and the fruits which we have gathered from thence.
those general doctrines, that reason is not to be excluded in
matters of religion; and then, that reason in all those cases is
to be limited with the quia complacuit, merely in the good plea-
sure of God. In which first part you have also had the qualifi-
cation of the person that came this day to establish redemption
for us, that in him there was fulness, (infinite capacity, and infi-
nite infusion,) and all fulness, defective in nothing, (impassible
and yet passible, perfect God and perfect man,) and this fulness
dwelling in him, in him as he is head of the church, that is,
visible, sensible means of salvation to every soul in his church.
And so we pass to our second part, from this qualification of the
person, (It pleased the Father that in him all fulness should dwell,)
to the pacification itself, for which it pleased the Father to do
all this, that peace might be made through the blood of his cross.

First,

In this part St. Chrysostom hath made our steps our branches. It is much, says he, that God would admit any peace; magis, per sanguinem, more that for peace he should require effusion of blood; magis, quod per ejus, more, that it must be his blood, his that was injured, his that was to triumph; et adhuc magis, quod per sanguinem, crucis ejus; that it must be by the blood of his cross, his heart's blood, his death; and yet this was the case;

There was then a

He made peace through the blood of his cross. war before, and a heavy war; for the Lord of Hosts was our enemy; and what can all our musters come to, if the Lord of Hosts, of all hosts, have raised his forces against us? There was a heavy war denounced in the Inimicitias ponam, when God raised a war between the devil and us. For if we could consider God to stand neutral in that war, and meddle with neither side, yet we were in a desperate case to be put to fight against powers and principalities, against the devil. How much more when God, the Lord of Hosts, is the Lord even of that host too? when God presses the devil, and makes the devil his soldier, to fight his battles, and directs his arrows, and his bullets, and makes his approaches and his attempts effectual upon us. That which is fallen upon the Jews now for their sin against Christ, that there is not in all the world a soldier of their race, not a Jew in the world that bears arms, is true of all mankind for their sin against God; there is not a soldier amongst them able to hurt his spiritual enemy or defend himself. It is a strange war where there are not two sides; and yet that is our case; for God uses the devil against us, and the devil uses us against one another; nay, he uses every one of us against ourselves; so that God, and the devil, and we, are all in one army, and all for our destruction; we have a war, and yet there is but one army, and we only are the country that is fed upon and wasted; from God to the devil we have not one friend, and yet, as though we lacked enemies, we fight with one another in inhuman duels; Ubi morimur homicida, (as St. Bernard expresses it powerfully and elegantly,) that in those duels and combats, he that is murdered dies a murderer, because he would have been one; occisor lethaliter peccat, occisus aternaliter perit; he that comes alive out of the field comes a dead man, because he comes a deadly sinner, and he that remains dead in the field is gone into an everlasting death. So that by this inhuman effusion of one another's blood, we maintain a war against God himself, and we provoke him to that which he expresses in Isaiah", "My sword shall be bathed in heaven; the sword of the Lord shall be made drunk with blood; their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat 22 Isaiah xxxiv. 5.

21 Ad milites Templa, ser. 1.