Page images
PDF
EPUB

than his righteousness is: but we shall have an inward apprehension of it, to our everlasting benefit. Why should not this be sufficient? Especially as God himself will never behold us, but in the Person of Christ, and in the representation he will make of us, no not in heaven, to the ages of eternity. Doubtless it was enough to satisfy the mind of those saints to whom the apostle is here writing: and to whom he says, But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. A most costly fragrant oil was commanded by the Lord, to be prepared and made, to anoint Aaron the high priest. It was to be poured on his head, and it ran down to the collar of his coat. Christ is called Anointed, or Messiah herefrom. He was anointed not with material oil, as Aaron was who prefigured him, but with the Holy Ghost who was typed forth by the oil with which he was anointed. The Psalmist speaking on the subject, and applying the same to our most precious Lord Jesus Christ, says, ، All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad." Psa. xlv. 8. As the high priest was anointed, so were his garments, the Tabernacle, Ark, Shew-Bread Table, the Altar, &c. So all the elect are anointed in Christ, by Christ, and from Christ. The holy Unction descends from him, down on all, on each, and every one of his members. ،، Of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace." So the apostle said in his gospel, and he says the same here. Ye have an unction from the Holy One. It was already bestowed upon them; and that by the Holy One. They had received it from Him, who was their Holy One. This leads me to my next particular, which is this.

2. To speak of the unction, which these saints had received from the Holy One. They had received the Unction, and it still abode with, and rested upon them.

The word Unction is the same with Anointing. The Holy Ghost is called here Unction, or Anointing. He it is, who agreeable to his office in the everlasting covenant, anointed Christ to his office. And he also anoints all the elect, and bestows on them his graces, comforts, and gifts; fitting and qualifying them for whatsoever work he calls them unto. Peter the apostle of Jesus Christ, speaking to Cornelius and his friends, "The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching says, peace by Jesus Christ: (he is Lord of all :) That word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him."

Acts x. 3638.

Our Lord received his Name Anointed, or, the Anointed One, or Christ, from the Holy Ghost who was his Anointer, and who anointed Him. And we receive our title christians, which signifies anointed ones, from Him also. The word Unction must also signify Teaching, or there would not have been a proper suitability for the use of it here. This I conceive must most clearly appear by reading the whole of it. But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. This was the fruit of divine teaching. This was agreeable to our Lord's promise. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak and he will shew you things to come. He shall

glorify me for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you." John xvi. 13, 14. This promise had been fully realized unto John and the rest of the apostles. The Holy Ghost had been sent down from heaven. The whole church had been partakers of the benefit: so that the apostle might well say, Ye have an unction from the Holy One.

According to the economy of the covenant established by the Three in Jehovah, agreeable to the good pleasure of their will, it is the office of the Holy Spirit, to quicken the souls of all the redeemed with spiritual life. He is their holy Teacher; who inspires their minds, and leads and guides them into all necessary and saving truth. He makes them wise unto salvation, by faith in Christ Jesus. These persons who are here addressed had been thus instructed and taught. The Holy Unction from Christ had been bestowed on them. They were possessed of it: whereby they knew the Truth which concerned the Person, love, work, salvation, and perfection of Christ, so as not to depart from the same. They had the true Unction. The true Anointer was in them. He was with them. He had taught them. He still continued with them. They were under his continual guidance, and teaching, that he might lead them into all Truth: into the whole Truth: and into nothing but the Truth. He being himself infallible, he was all-sufficient for this. The Lord Jesus Christ shed this Unction richly on his Church on the day of Pentecost, and it was still continued. It extended its most blessed and beneficial effects to all the saints; so that the apostle here speaks of it as an universal benefit. Ye have received an Unction, and an Anointer from the Holy One. The Holy Ghost was not again to be sent. He was sent once for all. He was not again to be given unto them; He was given, to live and abide in them, and with them for ever. He liveth and dwelleth in the saints, in that new and spiritual birth, or faculty which He produced in them in regeneration, and all their spiritual life of graces is from Him alone. He is the object of their faith, love, hope, as truly as the Father and the Son We are said to be "an habitation of God through the Spirit.” Eph. ii. 22. The Holy One, as the High Priest in heaven, had poured out of his Spirit on his Church on earth; who is styled here Unction: to express his work within them, and upon them. He was the Anointer; who having anointed Christ the head of the whole election of grace, is the Anointer of them also: and as he anointed Christ afresh when he had finished his work, and was entered into glory, so the Holy One, Christ Jesus shed Him richly and abundantly on his Church, in the days of the apostles: so that the saints then had larger measures of gifts and graces bestowed on them than ever have been bestowed since. This Holy Unction is still bestowed, and will be to the very end of time: for thus it is written, "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him. And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD. As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever." Isai. lix. 19-21. The words are pronounced by Jehovah the Father. He is addressing the glorious Mediator. The promise is to Him, and to his seed. The word and Spirit are here joined together. The promise is, these shall never depart from Christ, and his Church, but

are.

churches at such seasons; when they could, to distil their pernicious influences, as they thought and hoped, it would gain converts to them. Then they went out from the apostles and churches of the saints, because they were not of us, says John; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us. For Christ is yesterday, to-day, and the same for ever: so are the truths and doctrines which have respect unto Him, and in and by which He is revealed unto, and set before his church and which his saints have such evidence of in themselves, that one for them all, says, "For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you." 1 Pet. i. 24, 25. These heretics left the churches, because they were not of them; only nominally. They were not the elect of God. They were reprobates. Their going out of the churches, and perverting the truth as it is in Jesus, was a most convincing evidence of this. They might, and undoubtedly did, boast of superior light to all others in the doctrines of grace. They were slaves to their own lusts. They were covetous. They were greedy of reward. They were full of gainsaying. Jude describes them as clouds without water, carried about of winds. As trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots. He likens them to raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame. To wandering stars. To whom, says he, is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. The account is enough to make us tremble. It is evident these could never belong to Christ. And yet if they had not been professors of Christ, and for a season in the visible churches of Christ, they could never have come out of them. And had they been one in mind and spirit with the real churches of Christ, they would not have left them : ́but they were not. For if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us. They would have accounted it their glory and honour so to have done. Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. The pernicious heresies of the present times, are Socinianism, Arianism, Arminianism, and Antinomianism: of the latter the most corrupt reviver of it, was one James Relly, who had been a preacher in Mr. George Whitfield's connexion. His doctrine from his writings is stated to be this-that Christ took the whole humanity into union; so that He is all mankind, and all mankind is Jesus Christ-that all are saved by virtue of union with Him— that they are all so saved in Him, and has so put away all their sin, that there is no sin in them, nor in any thing they do-that Christ's birth is our new birth, and all were born again in Christ, when he was born for us. According to him, some are elected to know the Truth; others are not: such are delivered thereby from all fears of sin and hell: others are not: they die fearing they shall be cast into hell; but there is no hell for them, for Christ is the head of every man, and every man is saved in Jesus Christ. This man lived according to his wretched notions, and died in the same. He never had any great number of followers; for as one once said to me, it is too gross for any to receive, except such pro

fessors, as never found any thing in all their profession, having never attained unto the true knowledge of Christ; for the saints of God cannot meddle with it and it is too profane for those we call the outward people yet the works of this man are by some very highly admired. I confess I look on them very dangerous; nor would I, for ten thousand worlds venture to look into, or meddle with them. I should be for crying out, shame on such as do. All heretics come out of the church: most of them have been preachers and teachers in it: they are raised up by Satan, first to disturb the peace of the church, and next to pollute and defile it with their abominable falsehood. The words of the apostle are very suitable here. "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." 1 Cor. iii. 16, 17. But I will go on, and proceed to my last particular, which is

3. To shew the reason, why these antichrists went out of the church. It was that they might be made manifest, that they did not belong to the church of Christ, let them make their boast of the same as they might. But they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. So says the apostle. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

This was their end for their going out, but it was the Lord's end in thrusting them out, and it might be, some of these might have been thrust out by apostolic, and also by church authority. "A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject: Knowing, that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself;" so speaks the apostle to Titus, ch. iii. 10, 11. The same apostle speaking of Hymeneus and Alexander, whose horrible errors and sins laid him under the necessity of exercising his apostolical authority to cast them out of the visible church, he says, "Whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme." 1 Tim. i. 20: so it might have been the case with some of these. However this might, or might not be, yet so it was they went out from the true churches. They quitted the fellowship of the saints. They could not bear their testimony for Christ; nor like any longer to be with, or amongst them. In the holy and secret mystery of the Lord's providence, it was evidenced they were not the Lord's beloved ones. It was hereby made manifest they were not of the church. They were at best but external members. They had no being, nor root in Christ. They were but external branches, even when they made the most flourishing appearance. The Lord Jesus Christ therefore, who searcheth the heart and trieth the reins, willed to make this full evidence, and give this convincing evidence of it to themselves and others, that they were never in any true sense one with his church and people: and the apostle says what he here does on this subject, that the churches of the saints, and the saints in those churches, might not be too much distressed, at what they saw, and heard, concerning the apostacy, horrible doctrines, blasphemies, and immoralities of these persons. Nothing but the worst of crimes were to be looked for from them. It is, it hath been, and God will have it, so-all that is in the heart of fallen man shall be discovered: not all in one individual;

that cannot be, nor can all sort of sinfulness existing in the mind be drawn forth, but as various seasons, cases, circumstances, temptations, make way for the same. No one can say what sin is; we can say what the act of sin is: it is the transgression of the law. But this is only expressive of the act; not of the exceeding sinfulness and demerit of it. Some sin against conscience. Others immediately against God's holiness and purity expressed in the law. Those persons before us, sinned most immediately against the light of the glorious gospel of the blessed God; so that their sin was immediately against the Holy Ghost: of which I intend to speak, when I get to verse 8th of the next chapter, as it will there come in very suitably. Here I conceive it would be altogether immature; I only mention this here, to the intent you may be looking for, and expecting it, in its proper place. At present I would observe, some of the greatest sins are committed under the most pure preaching of the gospel, and the most spiritual administration of the ordinances. It was so in the cases before us. These very persons were evidences of the truth of this. None can be supposed to have had clearer light externally into doctrine and worship, into order and discipline than these had; yet none ever sinned more willingly, perversely, and obstinately; and this, by turning the whole into an occasion of licentiousness. This they are charged with by Jude, who would not, we may be sure overcharge them so they are by the apostle Peter, who says, "For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them, than the beginning. had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." 2 Pet. ii. 20-22. Read the whole chapter, and the Epistle of Jude, and you will find them to be the very same persons of whom our apostle says, They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. And if they were the same, we may then most assuredly say, from the apostles, Peter and Jude, that they were the greatest sinners which ever existed out of Hell. It was by their departure from the true churches, and by their errors, heresies, and sins into which they fell, they were manifested to be what they were. In the day in which we live, we have had many preachers, who have shone forth in public view, as blazing stars and comets, who have professed superior light, zeal, and usefulness to all others; who have been puffed off; had their own cant phrases. Such as saying of some of their great admirers, They see the Spirit in such and such sentences, in which they have chosen to express themselves. They have very many of them, fallen foully; scandalously. Yea, most shamefully, and abominably: and all by lust; yet all this would not prevent such wretches from preaching, were it not that the law prevents them. Sirs, this is notorious matter of fact: it cannot be denied. What shall we

For it

say, or think of such? I know I think, and cannot but pronounce, they are of their father the devil: yet we have persons professing godliness who will stand up for them—that they are powerful preachers-that

« PreviousContinue »