he had not been the Son of God, God would never have raised him up; therefore it was a manifest argument that he was the Son of God, by his being raised up again; and being the Son of God, raised up himself by that power that is in God himself. Therefore, in John ii. 19, saith he, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up;' and John x. 18, 'I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again.' Had he lied, had he not been the Son of God, certainly God would never have raised him up; therefore seeing he was raised up by God, certainly he was the Son of God.

But yet still the objection remaineth; for you will say, though he was declared to be the Son of God by being raised up again, he having given it out, which is all that interpreters put upon that place; but yet what special power was there put forth in his resurrection, more than in any man's else, that he should be said to be declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection, and that God should shew forth the exceeding greatness of his power in raising of him up? That is the thing I am to speak to.

To that I will but suggest two things unto you, wherein the power lay of raising up Christ from death unto life; and a special power, more than in raising up all men else besides, that were before him, or shall come after him.

My brethren, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ undertook never to rise or enter into his glory till such time as he had satisfied for the sins of all his elect; they lay all upon him; therefore to raise him up from death to glory must needs be a work of a greater power than ever yet was to raise up any man, whatsoever he were; for he had all the sins of all the elect, that he was to satisfy for, meeting in him.

My brethren, let me speak unto you. but let me tell you this, he was to die phrase the Apostle useth, Rom. vi. 10. 'He died for sin,' the word will bear it. sin, or he must never rise again.

We are dead in sins and trespasses;
for sins and trespasses, that is the
We read it, 'He died unto sin,' or,
He was by his death to satisfy for

Now then, take Jesus Christ not only as an ordinary man, but take him as he is made sin, as he is made a curse, there must a mighty power go to bring him to glory; for he must suffer for that first, he must have a power to endure that first before he be capable of being raised up again; which all angels and men could never have borne; therefore there is so great a power declared in his rising again.

In Rom. iv. 24, 25, We believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.' Mark that; the resurrection of Christ was not an ordinary resurrection, for it was not an ordinary death: for, saith he, when he died he was delivered for our offences, and he must satisfy for them by his death; and when he was raised again, he was not raised as a particular person, it is not like the raising up of an ordinary man; but, saith he, he was raised for our justification, for the justification of all that he died for, and therefore he must satisfy for sin, and pay the uttermost farthing before he rise again. Hence now cometh there to be so great a difficulty in raising up our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to that glory he was raised up unto.

I will omit some confirmations of this truth, and give you but one scripture, which will present it unto you. It is Acts ii. 24, 'Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death; because it was not possible he should be holden of it.' It is Peter's speech concerning Christ and his resurrection. And, ver. 27, 'Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.'

To open these words, and to prove the thing out of them which I intend

—viz., That in raising up Jesus Christ from the dead there was an infinite power put forth, more than in raising up any one that ever yet was raised up. The Apostle's scope here is to prove that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and he proveth it by his resurrection, and by the difficulty that was in it, which is implied in these words, 'Because it was not possible he should be holden of death,' or of 'the sorrows of death.' If it had been possible, they would have held him, but it was not possible; there was so mighty a power came to have his mittimus, that though they put forth all the power they could, yet it was not possible they should hold him.

Now, to open the words a little unto you, I will give you what I think to be the sense of the place. The difficulty of raising up of Christ lieth in these words, that first the pains of death were to be loosed.

They are

oval, as Beza and others, and I find that Zanchy ran the same way. The meaning of them is this: God raised him up, say they, being loosed; it is not the pains of death being loosed, but him being loosed; solutus doloribus mortis, for solutis doloribus mortis. He ascribeth that to the pains of death which properly belongeth to Christ; he was freed from the pains of death, and then God raised him up. As in the gospel it is said, 'his leprosy was cleansed;' that is not a proper speech, but he was cleansed of his leprosy :' so here, having 'loosed the pains of death'-that is, he was loosed from the pains of death, he had scattered, he had dissipated all the pains of death, and then he was loosed, and he was raised.

Now, what is meant by the pains of death here? Let us examine that a little, for, if you mark it, the difficulty of his resurrection lies in the pains of death. After Christ was in the grave,-consider what I say, there were no pains of death that held him, he had no pains in the grave after he was dead. What pains are they, then, that are here called the pains of death, which he was freed from, and then God raised him up, upon which he putteth the difficulty of his resurrection?

The word in the Greek, wdiva, is the birth-throes of death. Isa. liii. 11 interpreteth it well; 'He shall see,' saith he, 'of the travail of his soul.' They were the birth-throes which his soul had, which he must be loosed from and overcome, before he is capable to be raised up by God. It is not an ordinary death he is to undergo, or ordinary sorrows of death that hinder his resurrection, but there are the birth-throes of death to be overcome. What are those birth-throes of death? The travail of his soul. All our sins met in him, and the chastisement of our peace was upon him, as you have it in the 5th and 6th verses of the same Isa. liii. All those pangs that were in his soul-they tended to death, they would have carried his soul to bell, kept him from ever rising again, he had never come to glory; therefore they are called the pains of death-held him: yea, they would have held his soul had he not been God; had not God upheld him, they would have carried his soul instantly away, and held him from ever being capable of rising up again. Therefore, before he be capable of being raised, he must be freed from these pains of death; therein lieth the difficulty of his resurrection.

They are called the sorrows of death' too; not only of the first death, but of the second. I do not say he died the second death, the Scripture doth not say so. But that the sorrows of the second death took hold upon him, and upon his soul, to me is a certain truth. 'My soul,' saith he, he points to what was it, 'is heavy unto death;' he doth not say, My soul dieth, but it is heavy unto the death; it was at the point of death, when our sins and the wrath of God came in upon him.

In Isa. liii. you have his deaths mentioned,-look into your margins,—not death only, but deaths; and in Heb. ii. 4, it is said, 'he tasted of death.' What death? It appeareth by the following verses, that death which the devil hath power of; he tasted of it, but he was not overcome by it, that is the second death. It is that death which men are afraid of all their life long, which the Jews were afraid of: read the 9th, 14th, and 15th verses of that second to the Hebrews; and that was the second death.

Now, my brethren, in this death, and the pains of it, lieth the danger that Christ should never be raised up again, should never come to heaven; for those pains of death would have fetched his soul away, and made all angels and men to have died the second death, never to have been raised, never to satisfy the wrath of God. They were sorrows of death; deadly sorrows, as some interpret it, as he himself is called a man of sorrows, which is attributed to none but to him, because none endured the sorrows he did, deadly sorrows: as it is called the 'abomination of desolation,' that is, abominable desolation; so the sorrows of death, that is, deadly sorrows, hellish sorrows, infernal sorrows, if you will so express it; for there was the cause of it, the wrath of God; there was the substance of it.

Now, in a word, to gather up this. Saith he, God hath raised him up, he being free, or having freed himself by the power of the Godhead from these pains of death, which, if it had been possible, he should have been held by them, but hold him they could not; therefore the words in the 27th verse interpret it without all straining. There is a great deal of do what should be meant by 'leaving his soul in hell,' and his 'Holy One not to see corruption,' that is, his body. Say I, the 24th verse interpreteth it, 'him hath God raised up,' being freed from the sorrows of death, of the second death, the birth-throes of it; God delivered his soul of it, left not his soul in hell; then he raised up his body that it should not see corruption. Herein now lieth the difficulty of raising up our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, more than all the men in the world; for if all the angels in heaven, and all the men in the world, had encountered with those sorrows of death he encountered with, they had never been raised up, for they could never have overcome them. Therefore saith the text here, the 'exceeding greatness of his power' was shewn in raising up Christ from death to glory.

And this is one sense in respect of which there is an exceeding greatness of power attributed to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But, secondly, if you will know wherein the exceeding greatness of power lieth, if you observe the coherence, it is not only in raising him up simply from death, there is but a little said of that here, but it is attributed to the glory he was raised up to. Therein lay the power; it lies not simply in the terminus à quo, the term, the state from which he was raised; but if you take in withal this, that God hath 'set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principalities and powers;' take but the compass of the distance between the state he was raised from, and the state he is raised unto, and then you will all acknowledge what the text saith here, there is an exceeding greatness of power indeed.

So that if you ask me now, What this power was that was shewn upon Christ?

I answer, first, merely in his raising him up; for he was to overcome that which no creature could overcome, before he was capable of being raised; he was to pay the last farthing, whereof the sorrows of death were part, and the greatest sum.

And then, secondly, if to raise him up merely had been no more than to

raise another man, yet to raise him up to glory, there lieth the exceeding greatness of his power. Take the terminus ad quem, the state wherein he is now. Eph. iv. 9, 'He that ascended, he descended first into the lower parts of the earth.'

Now then, go and make a pair of compasses, make a proportion between these two; put one foot of the compass in heaven, whither he is ascended, far above all principalities and powers, and put the other foot of the compass in the lower parts of the earth, in the grave in which he lay; and to raise him up from the one to the other is the exceeding greatness of power the Apostle here speaks of. Measure from the lowest part of the earth, to far above all principalities and powers, and therein lieth the power put forth in raising Christ here spoken of.

Now I have shewn you wherein the power of raising up Christ lieth; that is the first thing. The second thing I should shew you is this: That to bring a sinner from the death of sin to live again,-Christ lay under the guilt of sin imputed to him, we lie under the power and guilt too,-to raise up a sinner from this, 'we who were dead in sins and trespasses,' and place us in heaven with Christ, holdeth a proportion with the resurrection, and with the power put forth in raising up Christ from death to glory. This is the second thing I should shew to make up the parallel.

2 E

SERMON XXIX.

And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward, who believe, according to the working of the might of his power; the same which he wrought in Christ, (or, put forth in Christ,) when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, &c. -VER. 19, 20.

THAT which is said here of the resurrection and exaltation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is to be understood two ways. Either

First, comparatively; as he compareth the work in our hearts, or upon us, with the power that wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead. Or

Secondly, the words in the 20th verse, and so on, are to be considered simply as setting before us the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ.

I must first handle these words in their comparison. The meaning whereof is this: that the same power that wrought in Jesus Christ in raising him from the dead, and setting him at God's right hand, works in our faith, in our believing. Who believe,' saith he, according to the working of his mighty power, the same which wrought in Christ,' &c.

You shall find that the Apostle handles both parts of this comparison. He speaks of the resurrection and exaltation of Christ, what a great work that was, from the 20th verse to the end of this chapter. And then he speaks what a great work it is to raise up our hearts and to work upon them, that us, who were dead in sins and trespasses, God should quicken and raise up together with Christ, and make us sit in heavenly places; this he speaks of in the second chapter, from the 1st verse to the 11th.

That which is proper to the opening of this 19th verse is, to speak only of the power, both which raised up Christ from death to life and which works in us that believe. And to that I am to keep at this time.

There are therefore two things to be spoken to

First, That there was an exceeding greatness of power shewn forth in Christ's resurrection and setting him at God's right hand.

Secondly, That in a proportion, there is as exceeding greatness of power shewn to us-ward when God bringeth us to believe.

I must begin with the first, to shew you the exceeding greatness of power in raising up Christ. I quoted for that, Rom. i. 4, where it is said he was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. And a parallel place to this, which I then omitted, is that in 2 Cor. xiii. 4, where it is said that though Christ was crucified through weakness,'-he was left to all the weakness of man's nature, so as to take in sufferings, though the power of God was seen in upholding him under it, yet he liveth by the power of God.' Though he was crucified in weakness, yet his life, his raising up again, was by the power of God. So you see express scripture that in the resurrection of Jesus Christ there was shewn forth a great power; and such a power as he was declared by nothing more to be the Son of God.