DECEMBER 17TH
ON THE BENEFITS WHICH THE SON OF GOD BRINGS TO US BY HIS INCARNATION
Consider, first, that man in his first creation was highly favoured by his maker, and elevated by him to a supernatural end; he was enriched with the treasures of original grace, justice, and sanctity; and destined to an eternal life with the living God. In the meantime he was placed in the earthly paradise, as in a shadow of that happy life, where if he had kept the law of his great creator, he might have fed upon the tree of life, and so have passed to a better paradise of a true and everlasting life, without going through the gate of death. But alas! by falling from his God by sin, he forfeited all these treasures, and all these advantages: he was stript at once of all the goods of grace; he was strangely wounded in all the powers and faculties of his soul; his understanding was overclouded with ignorance, and deluded with a variety of errors; his memory and imagination was distracted with empty toys and vanities, and hurried away from the remembrance of his God; his will was perverted with malice; his inferior appetite disordered with rebellious passions; and his whole soul became weak beyond expression to everything of good, and strongly bent upon all evil. Thus had unhappy man, by his apostasy from God, lost both his God, and all his good; and had incurred all kind of evils, both of soul and body, for time and for eternity: thus in losing his God he had fallen into the hands of four merciless enemies, sin and Satan, death and hell. Now the Son of God, by his incarnation, came down amongst us in order to deliver us from all these evils which we had incurred by sin; to reconcile us to our God, and to restore us, with infinite advantage, to all that good for which we were first created. What reasons then have we, my soul to rejoice in this incarnation of the Son of God, the sovereign means of all our good, and the source of all mercy, grace, and salvation to us! O what praise and thanksgiving, what perpetual love and service do we owe to this our great deliverer!Consider 2ndly, how the Son of God coming amongst us, by his incarnation, has brought us from heaven most sovereign and effectual remedies for all our evils. He brought light to us, who were sitting before in darkness, and in the shadow of death; coming in quality of our teacher, (both by word and example) of the great prophet sent to us from God; of our lawgiver, and our apostle; and declaring to us the whole will of God. He brought with him also our ransom, to redeem us from our slavery to Satan and sin, and to make us free indeed: 'He was sent to preach deliverance to the captives, and sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, and to preach the acceptable year of our Lord,' even the great jubilee, of a general remission of all our debts, and a general loosing of all our bands, Luke iv. 19. He came as our physician, to heal our maladies with medicines, made up with his own most sacred blood. 'We were wandering in a wilderness, in a place without water,' Ps.cvi. 'We could find no way to a city for our habitation (our true and everlasting home); we were hungry, and thirsty, (destitute of all proper food for our souls,) and were bound in want, and in irons: we were brought low with labours, and weakened; and there was none to help us.' And he came to deliver us in all these our distresses; to lead us to the right way, to conduct us to our true country; to feed our hungry souls with good things; to break our bonds asunder; to bring us refreshment, comfort, and rest from our labours; to satisfy all our wants; to redress all our miseries; to cure our weakness with his strength; and to raise us up form death to life. All this and much more has the Son of God effected in our favour, by coming down from heaven to be our Emmanuel, that is, to be 'God with us'. And shall we not then, my soul, join with the palmist, in frequently repeating, in admiration at all the wonders of the divine goodness, that sacred hymn: 'Let the mercies of the Lord give glory to him: and his wonderful work to the children of men. Let them exalt him in the church of the people, and praise him in the hair of the ancients: Let them sacrifice to him a sacrifice of praise, and declare his works with joy. O give glory to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever. Let them say so that have been redeemed by the Lord; whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy, and gathered out of all countries.' (Ps. cvi.) Yea, let them say so, and sing forth the mercies of the Lord for all eternity! Amen. Amen.
Consider 3rdly, that however great and inexpressible all these graces and benefits are which the Son of God has brought with him by his incarnation, in order to deliver us from all our evils, and to communicate to us all his goods; yet none of them all, nor all of them together, will effectually save us, without our consent and concurrence, and a due correspondence on our part with his mercy and grace, by our yielding ourselves up entirely to him by faith and obedience. For what will it avail us to have the light come down from heaven to shine upon us if we shut our eyes against it, and love the darkness more than light? Or what shall we be the better for the ransom which our redeemer brings with him, and lays down for us, if we prefer our slavery and our chains before the liberty of the children of God, and rather choose to stay with our old master, Satan and sin, amongst the husks of swine, than to go along with our deliverer, who desires to carry us home with him to his Father's house? Alas! so far from being the better for all these graces and benefits brought us by our redeemer, we should indeed be much the worse if we received them all in vain, and, by our ingratitude an obstinacy in sin, pervert them to our greater condemnation. For what greater perversity can there be than that we should know that the way, the truth, and the life is come down from heaven in our favour, and should still choose to go astray from the way, and to follow the father of lies into the regions of death.
Conclude to embrace in such manner your great deliverer, who comes by his incarnation to be your Emmanuel, (God with us,) by a faithful and diligent correspondence with all his mercies and graces, as that he may be always with you, and you may be always with him, and that nothing in life or death may ever separate you from him any more.
DECEMBER 18TH
ON THE OTHER BENEFITS OF OUR SAVIOUR TO MANKIND BY HIS INCARNATION
Consider first, that the Son of God, by his incarnation, came amongst us to be the Father and the head of all mankind, according to the Spirit and according to grace, as Adam was according to the flesh and according to nature. He came as the second Adam to undo all that evil which the first Adam had done and brought upon us all, and to impart to us all that good which our first father had deprived us of. That as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death, and so both sin and death passed upon all men, justice and grace should in like manner enter into this world by one man, in order to our eternal life. Hence, in quality of our Father, he imparts to us a new generation, a second birth, by which we who, by our natural birth, (by which we descend from the first Adam,) are children of wrath, corrupted by sin, and condemned to hell, are born again by grace, cleansed from sin by his blood, incorporated in him, made children of God, and heirs of everlasting life. In quality of our head, he communicated to us all manner of graces, which in virtue of his merits, are derived from him upon all the members of his mystical body who, by faith and obedience, adhere to him, St. John xv. 4, 5.Consider 2ndly, the other near relations, marked down in the word of God, which our Lord has been pleased we should have with him by means of his incarnation; such as that of our being now his brethren, (as he has been pleased to call us, Ps. xxii., 'I will declare his name to my brethren,') by his taking our flesh and blood. A relation which gives us an honour not granted to the angels, of being near akin, even by consanguinity, to the Son of God himself; for he never took upon him the nature of the angels, but took our nature, that he might be like to us in all things excepting sin; for so it behoved him that was to be our high priest to make a reconciliation for our sins, Heb ii. 16, 17. He is our eldest brother in the order of God's election, 'the firstborn among many brethren,' Rom. viii. 29, in whom and for whose sake we also are elected, to be conformable to his image here by grace, and hereafter in glory, through him. In this quality of our eldest brother he is also our priest, (as under the law of nature, before the written law, the firstborn were priests) to officiate for us in all things that appertain to God, Heb v. 1; as also our prince, our leader and captain in our warfare, our tutor and governor, our truest friend to promote all our interests, to manage all our causes, to defend us from all our enemies, and to bring us on in our pilgrimage, till he presents us to his Father and our Father in his eternal kingdom. O how happy are we in such a brother.
Consider 3rdly, that by means of the incarnation of the Son of God, we are related to him, not only as children to our father, as members to our head, and as brothers to our eldest brother, but also as a holy building to our foundation, in which he is the cornerstone, in whom all the building framed together groweth up into a holy temple in the Lord - a habitation of God in the spirit, Eph. ii. 20, 21, 22; and as branches to the stock into which we are engrafted, and planted by baptism. Hence our Lord tells us, John xv. 4, 5, 'Abide in me, and I in you. as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can you, except you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing.' But of all the relations we have to the Son of God in consequence of his incarnation, there is none more endearing than that of our being made his spouse - the church being the bride, the wife of the Lamb, brought out of his side as eve was from the side of Adam, cast into the deep sleep of death upon the cross; and espoused to him by an everlasting and inviolable contract, of which Christian matrimony is the sacred and mysterious sign - and every particular soul that is in the state of grace, partaking in the dignity and happiness of this near and dear relation of spouses to the Lamb of God. Christians, are you sensible how great this dignity and happiness is, for your souls to be espoused to the Son of God? In consequence of which you should be one spirit with Christ, as Adam and Eve were one flesh. O take care to be ever faithful and true to this divine Spouse, who has loved you and delivered himself up for you, that he might sanctify and cleanse you for himself, with his own most precious blood.
Conclude to behave in your whole life and conversation agreeable in all respects to these sacred relations which you now have with the Son of God; and never to degenerate from such a Father, such a head, such a brother, and such spouse, by any actions unworthy of either the dignity or sanctity of a Christian.
