and you are persuaded in yourselves, that there is nothing in you, nothing done by you, that can ever turn to a good account in God's sight, unless this great High-priest put incense thereto, and obtain acceptance from God for you.

SERMON XIX.

HEBREWS X. 21.

Having an High Priest over the house of God. THE apostle pressing the great duty of drawing near to God, presses it from mighty arguments. The strength and multitude of the arguments are so many implied proofs of the backwardness of our hearts unto this great work, and of their great indisposition for it. His arguments, as you have heard, are all taken from Jesus Christ, concerning whom the apostle speaks and holds forth the mysteries of the gospel, under the vail of the expressions of the law; that, by the blood of our Lord, access with boldness is made unto the holiest; that through the vail of his flesh, that is, him as slain, we have a new and living way consecrated for us.

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The third encouragement is, That this Jesus is a great Priest over the house of God. There was no approaching to God's worship under the law but by the priests; the altar was not to be approached to, nor sacrifice to be offered by hand but that of the priests; the holiest of all was not to be approached but only by the high-priest. This the apostle here alludes to: We have, saith he, an High Priest over the house of God. All the Jewish priests, all of the order of Aaron are removed, and the use of the temple is removed also, and all the service and ceremonies that belonged to it, are removed also: but the substance that they all signified we have; we have Christ as an High Priest over the house of God. From this argument for our encouragement, that the apostle here gives us, I did take up three things to be spoke to in order.

1. The office of our Lord Jesus, that though he be not named, yet he is named immediately before and quickly after, and all the apostle's discourse was of him: therefore there was no hazard of any man's mistaking; when the apostle named the High Priest, every Christian would understand whom he meant.

2. We have the extent of his charge in his office; it is over the house of God.

3. We have the church's interest in him: Having an High Priest. It is true, that word in the original is wanting, which is to be drawn from the preceding verse; but it is necessarily implied; this is certain in the sense of it, we have an High Priest.

Of the first of these, Christ's office, I spake last day, That our Lord Jesus Christ, in the great work of saving of men, was and is a true and proper Priest. I spake both of his instalment in his office, of the types and shadows of his office, and the parts of his office in the oblation that he made, and in the intercession that he doth daily make, for our Lord is about part of his priestly office now. These things I did speak to, and entered a little upon the application thereof.

Now it remains to take a little further notice of a word I observed to you before, because it is singular, I would not pass it, but speak something to it apart. The note is this, That our Lord Jesus Christ is a great Priest. I told you that this word that we read here in our translation an High Priest, is not the ordinary Greek word by which the highpriest is expressed; but it is a singular word, very different what we find in other places of scripture, a great Priest. There is something singular to be observed in every iota, in the smallest particle of the word of God. This then is that that I would speak to, what is pointed forth to us about Christ's priesthood, when he is called a great Priest.

1. He is a great Priest, because he is a great person. He is God's own Son, God's own equal. Though he be man, and conversed among men, the person is more than man, he is God. If we therefore consider this, that this Priest, Christ Jesus, is God, he must be a great one. The greatest priests that ever were in the world were men. Melchisedec was

certainly a man, though we know nothing of his pedigree; the Holy Ghost conceals it, and makes good use of that concealment, he being the grand type of the priesthood of Jesus Christ.

2. Our Lord Jesus is a great Priest, for, by the virtue of his priesthood, he makes all whom he undertakes for priests: For he hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, Rev. i. 6. He hath made us kings and priests unto God, Rev. v. 10. Ye are an holy priesthood, 1 Pet. ii. 5, 9. These things I pass, as not conceiving them to be of so much importance at present.

3. Then and mainly Christ is a great Priest, because of his greatness in his office, or the greatness of the office he was clothed with. A proper priest as under the law, was a sort of mediator betwixt God and men; and this mediation was most eminently and solemnly acted and performed in the great day of atonement, when the high-priest entered into the holiest of all in the name of all Israel, and with their names upon his breast; never a one of them upon pain of death must follow him; he brought back the answer of peace from God to them. Our Lord is a greater High Priest; Israel's fate depended on his welcome in the holiest of all, upon the account of a far greater office than this. Let us consider, for the shewing of the greatness of the office of Christ as High Priest,

1st, The greatness of the parties he deals betwixt: he deals betwixt God and creatures; that is great, but there is a great deal more; he deals betwixt an angry God and provoking sinners. That is Christ's work, I say, that he is a mediator bewixt God and men, the man Christ Jesus; a work that never any was fit for, and never any called to, but he alone. They were but little inferior shadows that were acted by some of the saints of old. We find indeed in the Old Testament, (and there is no reason to question, but some may be again in the New, in our days), that some have stood, by faith and prayer, betwixt the dead and the living, and stayed the plague; that when God hath been angry, and his anger hath begun to burn, some of his servants have stood in the breach before him to turn his anger away, Psalm cvi. 23. VOL. III.

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That is recorded to the praise of Moses, Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them. If I may so speak, there was but temporal anger, and a temporal judgment threatened, and a temporal mediator, and a temporal mercy obtained; but the mercy is far otherwise here, Christ undertakes as Priest betwixt these two great parties, an offended God and a sinful people.

2dly, His greatness in his office appears in the great work he doth in it; and that is, to reconcile both, to make up the peace: We are reconciled to God by the death of his Son, Rom. v. 10. Therefore being justified by his blood, we are reconciled to God by the blood of his cross, Col. i. 20. What a marvellous way was this, the taking up this controversy, that this great High Priest's undertaking in this manner should bring about, which otherwise was utterly impossible!

3dly, His greatness in his office appears in the greatness of the sacrifice that he offered; he offered himself; but who knows the value and worth of that self? He gave himself a ransom for all, 1 Tim. ii. 6. Immediately after that he had said, that there is one God, and one mediator betwixt God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Sirs, the people that lived when Christ was in the world, and saw him, and heard him preach, that saw him eat and drink, the greatest part of them thought with themselves they saw no more but a man; they could not see through the vail of his flesh, to see who dwelt in that temple; yet there were a few that did see: The Word avas made flesh, and awe beheld his glory; the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, John i. 14. The sacrifice that Christ offered was himself; thereupon the apostle prefers him greatly unto all the priests of old; for it was but the blood of bulls, or calves, or goats, of creatures meaner and lower than themselves, that they offered in sacrifice to God; but our Lord Jesus Christ becomes a greater Priest by a greater offering. Nothing but the human nature of Christ could be the sacrifice; there was more than the man Christ that was the priest: He offered himself up to God through the eternal Spirit without spot, Heb. ix. 14. I would be loath to draw people's imaginations unto the knowing of Christ after the

flesh but whosoever he be that believeth not that Jesus is come in the flesh, is a man not born of God. We must know Christ's flesh, we must know the sacrifice, and what made it to be so great. If Christ had been only a man, his blood had been no more than the blood of another man, only because it was a sinless man, that made it better: as we may say of the sacrifices that were offered to the praise and service of God, by the blood and sufferings of many witnesses of Jesus, they are called sacrifices in the word; but there is nothing of priesthood here, they are not sacrifices of atonement nor propitiation, they are but sacrifices of praise and testimony. The great view that we have, and that our faith should feed on about the sacrifice of our Lord, is this, That there was a piece of man's nature, by the extraordinary operation of the Holy Ghost, framed in the womb of the virgin, and which was assumed by the Son of God, and made the temple wherein God dwelt; there dwelled the fulness of the Godhead bodily; it is this temple of his body that was the great sacrifice, to which all the worship, and trust, and adoration of his people was rightly directed. For it is certain, that if our Lord Jesus Christ were in his human nature on earth, he in that nature is to be immediately, and formally, and directly adored and worshipped; they are never reproved that did so. When he was in his low estate, the poor woman fell down and worshipped him, crying, Lord, help me, Matt. xv. 25. Christ never found fault with that; but when any poor believers, in the height of their zeal or respect, either to apostles or angels, did so, they were checked immediately: Stand up, said Peter to the centurion, I myself also am a man, Acts x. 26. See thou do it not, says the angel, I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren, Rev. xix. 10. and xxii. 9.

Lastly, Christ's greatness in his office appears in the great glory that accrues to him in it, and by it.

(1.) He in and by this office is made the head of the new creation; Christ is made the head of the new world. As God equal with the Father, and as the eternal Word of God, he made all things, and without him was nothing made that was made; by him were created all things, both angels, and rincipalities, and powers, all things were created by him and