The rule of faith, or, An exposition of the Apostles Creed so handled as…

Quest. 2. But why doth our Saviour call heaven Paradise, at this time? why Paradise, and why at this time?

Quest. 2. But why doth our Sauiour call heauen Paradise, at this time? why Paradise, and why at this time?

Ans. He calls heaven Paradise, because it was that which was shadowed out by the earthly Paradise. In the earthly Paradise was a Tree of life in the middest thereof: & in the heavenly Paradise, is Jesus Christ the true Tree of life, by whose virtue and grace we shall live for ever. The great pleasures in that first Garden, the Trees of all sorts, did shadow out the unspeakable variety of heavenly delights in the kingdom of Christ: In the earthly Paradise was a River that divided it self into four heads, and so run even without the Garden: What is this River, but the abundance of holiness flowing from the Holy Ghost, for the qualification of the Elect gathered from all the four parts of the world, the streams of which Ocean run in the hearts of the godly in this life, even on the outside of Paradise? And at this time did our Saviour fitly use this Metaphor: for thereby he signified, that though this world were but a place of banishment, yet in death Gods banished should return: After all the labours, and travels, and sorrows they have felt in this cursed world, they should in death come to a place of pleasure and eternal rest: and that as by the first Adams means, all were cast ou• of the first Paradise; so Christ was the second Adam, that having at that time satisfied Gods wrath for the sin of the first Adam, would let all the godly into the celestial Paradise, and that he had now driven away the Angel with the flaming sword, and so the passage into Paradise was open: Yea fitly doth Christ talk of Paradise now, because now was the very time in which the second Creation was beginning to be wrought; & therefore he would signify that the new world had a Paradise prepared, as well as the old world had at first.