baptized Christian; yet a sorcerer still. And many a one still thinks he may drink, and swear, and debauch, and profane God's ordinances, and rob God's house, and resist lawful authority, and lie and plunder, or slander his neighbour; and yet hold good terms with a forward profession. Yea, there are those, that will be countenancing their sins with their Christianity; as if they were privileged to sin, because they are in Christ: than which, there cannot be a more injurious and blasphemous fancy. Certainly, their sins are so much more abominable to God and men, by how much more interest they challenge in a Christian profession: yea, if but a bare entertainment of a known sin, it is enough to bar them out from any plea in Christ. Vain fools! how grossly do these men delude their own souls, while they imagine they can please God with a leavened passover! This is the way to make them and their sacrifices abominable to the Almighty. It is to them, that God speaks, as in thunder and fire, What doest thou, taking my covenant into thy mouth? seeing thou hatest to be reformed, and hast cast my words behind thee? Psalm 1. 16, 17. To them it is, that he speaks by his prophet Isaiah, lxvi. 3: He, that killeth an ox, is as if he slew a man; he, that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's-neck. Shortly, then, my Brethren, since we are now addressing ourselves to this Evangelical Passover; if ever we think to partake of this heavenly feast with true comfort to our souls, let us see that we have clearly abandoned all the sour leaven of our sins: let us come with clear and untainted souls to this blessed feast; and say and do with holy David, I will wash my hands in innocency, Ŏ Lord, and so reill I go to thine altar ; Psalm xxri. 6. Thus long we have necessarily dwelt upon the Inference, and Contexture of this Scripture. II. We now come to scan this divine PROPOSITION, as it stands alone in itself. Wherein our meditation hath four heads to pass through: 1. That CHRIST IS A PASSOVER; 2. OUR Passover; 3. Our Passover SACRIFICED; 4. Sacrificed FOR US. 1. To begin with the FIRST. The word xarxa, which we find, is derived, not from the Greek Tárzew, which signifies "to suffer;" as some of the Latin Fathers, out of their ignorance of language, have conceived: but from the Hebrew DD, which signifies "a transition ;" well turned by our language into Pass-over. For here was a double passover to be celebrated: 1. The angel's passing over the houses of the Israelites, when he smote all the firstborn of Egypt; and 2. Israel's passing out of Egypt. The word admits of many senses. Sometimes, it is taken for the time of this solemnity; Acts xii. 4: sometimes, for the sacrifices offered in this solemnity; Deut. xvi. 4: sometimes, for the representation of the act of God's transition; Exod. xii. 11: sometimes, for the lamb, that was then to be offered and eaten ; 2 Chron. XXXV. 11; They killed the passover; and the priests sprinkled the blood from their hands. Thus is it taken in this place, when it is said Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us. So as here is a trope or figure twice told: (1.) the lamb is the passover: (2.) Christ is that paschal lamb. (1.) You would think this now far-fetched. Here was a double passing-over. The angel's passing-over the Israelites; the Israelites' passing-out of Egypt: both were acts; the one of God, the other of men. As for the Lamb, it is an animal substance: yet this Lamb represents this Passover. This is no news, in sacramental speeches. The thing signed is usually put for the sign itself: My covenant shall be in your flesh; Genesis xvii. 13. that is, Circumcision, the sign of my covenant: The rock, that followed them, was Christ; 1 Cor. x. 4. that is, Christ was represented by that rock: This cup is the New Testament. So here, Christ our Passover; that is, Christ represented by the Paschal-Lamb. What an infatuation is upon the Romish party, that, rather than they will admit of any other than a gross, literal, capernaitical sense in the words of our Saviour's sacramental supper, This is my body, will confound heaven and earth together: and, either by a too forceable consequence, endeavour to overthrow the truth of Christ's humanity; or turn him into a monster, a wafer, a crumb, a nothing whereas St. Austin hath told us plainly, Sacramentaliter intellectum vivificabit! Take it in a sacramental sense, there is infinite comfort, and spiritual life in it. As for his body, St. Peter hath told us the heavens must contain him, till the time of the restitution of all things; Acts iii. 21. Yea, when our Saviour himself hath told us, The words that I speak are spirit and life; John vi. 63. Now what a marvellous mercy was this, of God to Israel, thus to pass over them, when he slew the firstborn of Egypt! There was not a house in all Egypt, wherein there was not mourning and lamenta tion: no roof but covered a suddenly-made carcase. What an unlooked for consternation was here, in every Egyptian family! Only the Israelites, that dwelt amongst them, were free to applaud this judgment, that was inflicted upon their tyrannous persecutors; and, for their very cause, inflicted. For this mercy are they beholden, under God, to the blood of their Paschal-Lamb, sprinkled upon their door-posts. Surely, had they eaten the lamb, and not sprinkled the blood, they had not escaped the stroke of the destroying angel. This was in figure. In reality it is so. It is by and from the blood of our Redeemer sprinkled upon our souls, that we are freed from the vengeance of the Almighty. Had not he died for us, were not the benefit of his precious blood applied to us; we should lie open to all the fearful judgments of God, and, as to the upshot of all, eternal death of body and soul. As, then, the Israelites were never to eat the Paschal-Lamb, but they were recalled to the memory of that saving preterition of the angel, and God's merciful deliverance from the fiery furnaces of the Egyptians; so neither may we ever behold this sacramental representation of the death of our Blessed Saviour, but we should bethink ourselves of the infinite mercy of our good God, in saving us from everlasting death, and rescuing us from the power of hell. This is the first figure; That the Lamb is the Passover. (2.) The Second follows, That Christ is that Paschal-Lamb. Christ then, being the end of the Law, it is no marvel, if all the ceremonies of the Law served to prefigure and set him forth to God's people: but none did so clearly and fully resemble him, as this of the Paschal-Lamb: whether we regard, First, the choice; Secondly, the preparation; Thirdly, the eating of it. First: the Choice, whether in respect of the nature, or the qua lity of it. [1] The Nature. Ye know this creature is noted for innocent, meek, gentle, profitable: such was Christ, our Saviour. His forerunner pointed at him under this style; Behold the Lamb of God. What perfect innocence was here! No guile found in his mouth! Hell itself could find nothing to quarrel at, in so absolute inte grity. What admirable meekness! He is brought as a Lamb to the slaughter; and, as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so opened he not his mouth; Isaiah liii. 7. Doth his own treacherous servant betray him to the death? Friend, wherefore art thou come? Matthew xxvi. 50. Do the cruel tormentors tenter out his precious limbs, and nail his hands and feet to the tree of shame and curse? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Oh patience and meekness, incident into none, but an infinite sufferer! [2.] The Quality. Every lamb would not serve the turn it must be agnus immaculatus, a lamb without blemish, that must be paschal; Exodus xii, 5. Neither doth it hinder ought, that leave is there given to a promiscuous use, either of lamb or kid, for the sacramental supper of the passover for that was only allowed in a case of necessity; as Theodoret rightly; and as learned Junius well, in the confusion of that first institution: wherein, certainly, a lamb could not be gotten on the sudden, by every Israelitish housekeeper, to serve six hundred thousand men: and so many there were; Exod. xii. 37. This liberty, then, was only for the first turn, as divers other of those ceremonious circumstances of the passover were; namely, the four days' preparation, the sprinkling of the blood upon the door-cheeks, eating with girded loins, and staves in their hands; which were not afterward required or practised, The Lamb, then, must represent, a most holy and perfectly sinless Saviour. Could he have been capable of the least sin, even in thought, he had been so far from ransoming the world, that he could not have saved himself. Now his exquisite holiness is such, as that, by the perfection of his merits, he can and doth present his whole Church to himself glorious, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; as holy and without blemish; Eph. v, 27, Canst thou, therefore, accuse thyself for a sinful wretch, a soul blemished with many foul imperfections? Look up, man: lo, thou hast a Saviour, that hath holiness enough for himself, and thee, and all the world of believers: close with him, and thou art holy and happy; Behold the immaculate Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world; thine therefore, if thou canst lay hold on him by a lively faith, and make him thine. This for the choice. Secondly, the Preparation follows: so Christ is the Paschal Lamb, in a threefold respect: in resemblance of his killing, sprinkling his blood, and roasting. [1] This lamb, to make a true passover, must be Slain: so was there a necessity, that our Jesus should die for us. The two disciples, in their walk to Emmaus, hear this, not without a round reproof from the mouth of their risen Saviour; O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken, ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? Luke xxiv. 25, 26. Ought not? there is necessity: the doom was in Paradise, upon man's disobedience: morte morieris; thou shalt die the death. Man sinned; man must die. The First Adam sinned; and we, in him: the Second Adam must by death expiate the sin. Had not Christ died, mankind must: had not he died the first death, we had all died both the first and second: Without shedding of blood there is no remission; Heb. ix. 22. Hereby, therefore, are we freed from the sense of the second death, and the sting of the first, to the unfailing comfort of our souls. Hereupon it is, that our Saviour is so careful, to have his death and passion so fully represented to us in both his sacraments: the water is his blood, in the first sacrament; the wine is his blood, in the second. In this, he is sensibly crucified before our eyes: the bread, that is his body broken; the wine, his blood poured out. And, if these acts and objects do not carry our hearts to a lively apprehension of Christ our True Passover, we shall offer to him no other than the sacrifice of fools. Lo here then, a sovereign antidote against the first death, and a preservative against the second, The Lamb slain from the beginning of the world. Why should we be discomforted, with the expectation of that death, which Christ hath suffered? Why should we be dismayed, with the fear of that death, which our allsufficient Redeemer hath fully expiated? [2.] In the first institution of this passover, the blood of the lamb was to be Sprinkled upon the posts and lintels of the doors of every Israelite: so, if ever we look for any benefit from Christ our Passover, there must be a particular application of his blood to the believing soul. Even very Papists can say, that, unless our merits or holy actions be dyed or tinctured in the blood of Christ, they can avail us nothing: but this consideration will meet with us more seasonably upon the fourth head. [3.] This passover must be Roasted home; not stewed, not parboiled. So did the true Paschal-Lamb undergo the flames of his Father's wrath, for our sins. Here was not a scorching and blistering, but a vehement and full torrefaction. It was an ardent heat, that could fetch drops of blood from him in the garden; but it was the hottest of flames, that he felt upon the Cross, when he cried out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Oh, who can, without horror and amazement, hear so woeful a word fall from the mouth of the Son of God? Had he not said, My Father, this strain had sunk us into utter despair: but now, in this very torment is comfort. He knew he could not be forsaken of him, of whom he saith, I and my Father are one: he could not be forsaken, by a sublation of union; though he seemed so, by a subtraction of vision; as Leo well. The sense of comfort was clouded, for a while, from his Humanity: his Deity was ever glorious; his faith firm; and supplied that strong consolation, which his present sense failed of; and, therefore, you soon hear him, in a full concurrence of all heavenly and victorious powers of a condent Saviour say, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. In the mean while, even in the height of this suffering, there is our ease: for, certainly, the more the Son of God endured for us, the more sure we are of a happy acquittance from the Tribunal of Heaven: the justice of God never punished the same sin twice over. By his stripes, we are healed: by his payment, we are discharged by his torments, we are assured of peace and glory. Thus much of the preparation. Thirdly, the Eating of it follows in the appendances, the manner, the persons. : [1] The Appendances. It must be eaten with unleavened bread, and with sour or bitter herbs. Of the unleavened bread we have spoken enough before. For the herbs, that nothing might be wanting, the same God, that appointed meat, appointed the sauce too; and that was a salad of, not pleasing, but bitter herbs: herein providing, not so much for the palate of the body, as of the soul; to teach us, that we may not hope to partake of Christ without sensible disrelishes of nature, without outward afflictions, without a true contrition of spirit. It is the condition, that our Saviour makes with us, in admitting us to the profession of Christianity He shall receive a hundred fold, with persecutions; those, to boot; that, for His sake and the Gospel's, forsakes all; Mark x. 30. Sit down therefore, O man, and count what it will cost thee to be a true Christian: through many tribulations, &c. Neither can we receive this evangelical passover, without a true contrition of soul for our sins past. Think not, my Beloved, that there is nothing but jollity to be looked for at God's table. Ye may fro lic it, ye that feast with the world; but, if ye will sit with Christ and feed on him, ye must eat him with bitter herbs. Here must be a sound compunction of heart, after a due self-examination, for all our sins, wherewith we have offended our good God. Thou wouldest be eating the Paschal-Lamb; but with sugar-sops, or some pleasing sauce: it may not be so; here must be a bitterness of soul, or no passover. It is true, that there is a kind of holy mixture of affections in all our holy services; a yλunúng. Re joice in him, with trembling; saith the Psalmist. It is and should be our joy, that we have this Lamb of God to be ours; but it is our just sorrow, to find our own wretched unworthiness of so great a mercy. Godly sorrow must make way for solid joy and com |