Twenty sermons preached at Oxford before His Majesty, and elsewhere

But now, when man had broken this Covenant, and entered into a state of Rebellion against God, he's shut up in misery, but not in misery for ever, as the Angels that fell •ere, being reserved in chains till the judgement of the great day, Jud. v. 6. No, the Lord hath shut him up in prison, only for a while, that so he may the better make a way for their escape and deliverance, and for their entrance into the second Covenant of Grace: that so making him see his own misery, wherein by nature he is, and cutting him off from his own stock, he may be ingrafted in Christ, draw sap and sweetness from him, and bring forth fruits to everlasting life. And this is the method the Scripture useth: It concludes all under sin, that so the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe, Gal. 3.22. It's no new Doctrine devised by us, but it's the course and method of the Scripture: for it begins in this great Work with imprisoning and shutting up. The Law is as a Justice of Peace, by his Mittimus commands us to prison: It's a Serjeant that arrests a man, and carries to the Gaol: But why does the Scriptures do thus? It's not to destroy you with famine; the Law sends you not hither to starve you, or to kill you with the stench of the prison, but thereby to save and preserve you alive, and that you may hunger and thirst after deliverance. So that we find the reason added in the Text, The Scripture concludes all under sin, why? It's that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given •o them that believe. You are shut up as prisoners and rebels, that having found the smart of it, seen your misery, and learned what […] is to be at enmity with God, and the folly to make your selves wiser an• […] than God, you may submit your selves, casting down your plumes, a•d desire after Christ with an hungry and thirsty appetite, for not only a Prie•• to sacrifice himself for you, and a Prophet to teach and instruct you, […] King to be swayed by him, earnestly craving from your soul to be his […], and to be admitted into the privilege of his subjects in the Commonwealth of Israel and esteem it your greatest shame that ye have been a••ens so long, so long excluded. The Scripture then concluded you under sin, and shut up by it, not to bring you to despair, but to bring you to salvation: