in oblivion for so many generations, but that some again endeavour to revive them, at least so far as they were advanced and directed against the faith and knowledge of the person of Christ.

2. Satan attempted the same work by them who denied his divine nature; that is, in effect denied him to be the Son of the living God, on the faith whereof the church is built. And these were of two sorts.

1. Such as plainly and openly denied him to have any preexistence unto his conception and birth of the holy virgin. Such were the Ebionites, Samosetanians, and Photinians for they all affirmed him to be a mere man, and no more, though miraculously conceived and born of the virgin, as some of them granted; though denied, as it is said, by the Ebionites; on which account he was called the Son of God. This attempt lay directly against the everlasting rock, and would have substituted sand in the room of it. For no better is the best of human nature to make a foundation for the church, if not united unto the divine. Many in those days followed those pernicious ways; yet the foundation of God stood sure, nor was the church moved from it. But yet, after a revolution of so many ages, is the same endeavour again engaged in. The old enemy. taking advantage of that prevalency of atheism and profaneness among those that are called Christians, doth again employ the same engine to overthrow the faith of the church, and that with more subtilty than formerly, in the Socinians. For their faith, or rather unbelief, concerning the person of Christ, is the same with those before mentioned.

And what a vain, wanton generation admire and applaud in their sophistical reasonings, is no more but what the primitive church triumphed over through faith, in the most subtile management of the Samosetanians, Photinians, and others. An evidence it is that Satan is not unknowing unto the workings of that vanity and darkness, of those corrupt affections in the minds of men, whereby they are disposed unto a contempt of the mystery of the gospel. Who would have thought that the old exploded pernicious errors of the Samosetanians, Photinians, and Pelagians, against the power and grace of Christ, should

enter on the world again, with so much ostentation and triumph as they do at this day? But many men, so far as I can observe, are fallen into such a dislike of the Christ of God, that every thing concerning his person, Spirit, and grace, is an abomination unto them. It is not want of understanding to comprehend doctrines, but hatred unto the things themselves, whereby such persons are seduced. And there is nothing of this nature, whereunto nature, as corrupted, doth not contribute its utmost assistance.

(2.) There were such as opposed his divine nature under pretence of declaring it another way than the faith of the church did rest in. So was it with the Arians, in whom the gates of hell seemed once to be near a prevalency. For the whole professing world almost was once surprised into that heresy. In words they acknowledge his divine person; but added, as a limitation of that acknowledgment, that the divine nature which he had was originally created of God, and produced out of nothing, with a double blasphemy, denying him to be the true God, and making a god of a mere creature. But in all these attempts the opposition of the gates of hell unto the church, respected faith in the person of Christ as the Son of the living God.

For

Secondly, By some his human nature was opposed. no stone did Satan leave unturned in the pursuit of his great design. And that which in all these things he aimed at, was the substitution of a false Christ in the room of him who in one person was both the Son of man and the Son of the living God. And herein he infected the minds of men with endless imaginations. Some denied him to have any real human nature, but to have been a phantasm, an appearance, a dispensation, a mere cloud acted by divine power; some that he was made of heavenly flesh, brought from above, and which, as some also affirmed, was a parcel of the divine nature. Some affirmed that his body was not animated as ours are, by a rational soul, but was immediately acted by the power of the Divine Being, which was unto it in the room of a living soul. Some that his body was of an etherial nature, and was at length turned into the sun; with many such diabolical delusions.

And there yet want not attempts in these days, of various sorts to destroy the verity of his human nature; and I know not what some late phantastical opinions about the nature of glorified bodies may tend unto. The design of Satan in all these pernicious imaginations, is to break the cognition and alliance between Christ in his human nature and the church, whereon the salvation of it doth absolutely depend.

even as we are.

Thirdly, he raised a vehement opposition against the hypostatical union, or the union of these two natures in one person. This he did in the Nestorian heresy, which greatly, and for a long time pestered the church. The authors and promoters of this opinion granted the Lord Christ to have a divine nature, to be the Son of the living God. They also acknowledged the truth of his human nature, that he was truly a man, But the personal union between these two natures they denied. An union they said there was between them, but such as consisted only in love, power, and care. God did, as they imagined, eminently and powerfully manifest himself in the man Christ Jesus, had him in an especial regard and love, and did more act in him than in any other. But that the Son of God assumed our nature into personal subsistence with himself, whereby whole Christ was one person, and all his mediatory acts were the acts of that one person, of him who was both God and man; this they would not acknowledge. And this pernicious imagination, though it seem to make great concessions of truth, doth no less effectually avert the foundation of the church than the former. For if the divine and human nature of Christ do not constitute one individual person, all that he did for us was only as a man, which would have been altogether insufficient for the salvation of the church, nor had God redeemed it with his own blood. This seems to be the opinion of some amongst us at this day about the person of Christ. They acknowledge the being of the eternal Word the Son of God: and they allow, in the like manner, the verity of his human nature, or own that man Christ Jesus. Only they say, that the eternal Word was in him, and with him in the same kind, as it is with other believers; but in a supreme degree of manifestation and power.

But though in these things there is a great endeavor to put a new colour and appearance on old imaginations, the design of Satan is one and the same in them all, namely, to oppose the building of the church upon its proper sole foundation. And these things shall be afterwards expressly spoken unto.

I intend no more in these instances but briefly to demonstrate that the principal opposition of the gates of hell unto the church, lay always unto the building of it by faith on the person of Christ.

is no

It were easy also to demonstrate that Mahometism, which hath been so sore a stroke unto the Christian profession, thing but a concurrence and combination of these two ways, of force and fraud, in opposition unto the person of Christ.

It is true that Satan, after all this, by another way attempted the doctrine of the offices and grace of Christ, with the worship. of God in him. And this he hath carried so far, as that it issued in a fatal anti-christian apostacy; which is not of my present consideration.

But we may proceed to what is of our own immediate concernment. And the same work with that before described is still carried on. The person of Christ, the faith of the church. concerning it, the relation of the church unto it, the building of the church on it, the life and preservation of the church thereby, are the things that the gates of hell are engaged in an opposition unto. For,

1. It is known with what subtilty and urgency his divine nature and person are opposed by the Socinians. What an accession is made daily unto their incredulity, what inclination of mind multitudes do manifest towards their pernicious ways, are also evident unto all who have any concernment in or for religion. But this argument I have laboured in on other occasions.

2. Many who expressly deny not his divine person, yet seem to grow weary of any concernment therein. A natural religion, or none at all, pleaseth them better than faith in God by Jesus Christ. That any thing more is necessary in religion, but what natural light will discover and conduct us in, with the moral duties of righteousness and honesty which it directs

unto, there are too many that will not acknowledge. What is beyond the line of nature and reason is rejected as unintelligible mysteries or follies. The person and grace of Christ are supposed to breed all the disturbance in religion. Without them the common notions of the divine being and goodness will guide men sufficiently unto eternal blessedness. They did so before the coming of Christ in the flesh, and may do so now he is gone to heaven.

3. There are some who have so ordered the frame of objective religion, as it is very uncertain whether they leave any place for the person of Christ in it or no. For, besides their denial of the hypostatical union of his nature, they ascribe all that unto a light within them, which God will effect only by Christ as a Mediator. What are the internal actings of their minds, as unto faith and trust towards him, I know not; but from their outward profession he seems to be almost excluded.

4. There are not a few who pretend high unto religion and devotion, who declare no erroneous conceptions about the doctrine of the person of Christ, who yet manifest themselves not to have that regard unto him which the gospel prescribes and requires. Hence have we so many discourses published about religion, the practical holiness and duties of obedience, written with great elegancy of style and seriousness in argument, wherein we can meet with little or nothing wherein Jesus Christ, his office or his grace are concerned. Yea, it is odds, but in them all we shall meet with some reflections on those who judge them to be the life and centre of our religion. The things of Christ beyond the example of his conversation on the earth, are of no use with such persons unto the promotion of piety and gospel obedience. Concerning many books of this. nature, we may say what a learned person did of one of old; there were in it many things laudable and delectable, sed omnem Jesu non erat ibi. 'But the name of Jesus was not there.'

5. Suited unto these manifest inclinations of the minds of men, unto a neglect of Christ in the religion they frame unto themselves, dangerous and noxious insinuations concerning what our thoughts ought to be of him, are made and tendered: