An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

Thirdly, Another object of this sinful secret trusting, is in spiritual or ¹Church-privileges, or Ordinances, that we have more than others. This is also like the Psalmists plague, which destroyeth at Mid-day, thousands fall dead into hell, because of this religious trusting in privileges and Ordinances. They trust in them, not regarding what holiness and godliness God doth require of them. How palpably did the Prophet Jeremiah reprove this in the Jews, Jer. 7. 4. Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The Temple, the Temple of the Lord are these; but amend your ways, and your doings, as vers. 3. When the Prophet exhorts them to repentance and reformation, then they plead, The Temple of the Lord, and the Ordinances. This is so enticing a sin, that in the Christian Church many were persuaded by false Teachers, That unless they were circumcised, and kept up the Rites of the Ceremonial Law, they could not be justified. Therefore the Apostle speaketh excellently, Phil. 3. 3. We are the circumcision, which rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. When it cometh to this, that thou doest not trust in Duties, or in Ordinances, but in Christ, in them then art thou a true worshipper of God in the Spirit. In the same Chapter Paul layeth upon his own heart, what trust and confidence he once had in his being a Jew, in being circumcised, in his legal righteousness. But when it pleased God to reveal Christ to him, What, doth he trust in these privileges any longer? No by no means, for he accounts all things but dung and loss in comparison of that righteousness which is by faith in Christ. Is not this likewise an universal predominant sin amongst Christians? Do they not trust in their Christianity, in their prayers, in their Baptism, in receiving of the Lords Supper? They put confidence in these things, as if they were God and Christ. Neither have the Ministers of the Gospel less work to do with Christians in this respect, than the Prophets had of old with the Jews. Insomuch that then only we come to be a spiritual people, when we can discern between Ordinances and Christ in the Ordinances; when we look upon Duties as the field, and Christ as the pearl hid in that field. When we look upon the Ordinances as the hem of Christs garment we touch, but we look for virtue to come forth from Christ himself.