Three treatises of the vanity of the creature. The sinfulness of sin. The life…Three treatises of the vanity of the creature. The sinfulnesse of sinne. The life…

THE LIFE OF CHRIST.

PHILIP. 3. 10. That I may know Him, and the Power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings.

The purpose of the Apostle in this place is to arm the church of the Philippians against those false Judaizing Teachers that Confounded Christ and Moses, Circumcision and the Gospel together. This he doth by Arguments Personal from men, and by arguments real from the matter it self. Arguments Personal are first from the disposition, quality, End of those false teachers, whom he describes ver. 3. They are evil trees, and therefore no great heed to be given to the fruits they bear, to the doctrines they obtrude. They are Dogs, unclean beasts, that bark only for their bellies, and do not only bark, but watch their times to bite too. They are Evil workers; though they come like fellow workers with Christ, pretending much strictness in the edification of the Church, yet indeed their business is only to pull down and to pervert. They are the Concision, where the Apostle by an Ironical paronomasia shows the end of their doctrines, They ⟨p. 474⟩preach indeed Circumcision, but their business is schism and Concision; In the Law it was Circumcision, Gods ordinance, but now being by Christ abolished it is nothing at all but a bare Concision or cutting of the flesh, and will in the Event prove a rent and schism in the Church. The Second personal Argument is taken from the Apostles own condition, who neither by nature nor Education was an enemy to legal Ceremonies, who in all points had as great reason to vindicate the Law, and to boast in fleshly privileges as any of those False Teachers. ver. 4. He was by nature an Israelite of the whole blood as well as they; by Education, of the strictest sect of all, a pharisee; by custom and practice a persecutor of the Church, under that very name because the law he had been bred under was endangered by that new way; and in his course of life altogether unblameable in regard of legal Obedience and observations: and lastly in his opinions touching them, he counted them gainful things, and rested upon them for his salvation, till the Lord opened his eyes, to see the light of the Glorious Gospel of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The arguments from the matter are first from the Substance of which Circumcision was the shadow. We are the Circumcision, who worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, &c. Vers. 3.