Psalms 106:16

Now, if you will examine the words which precede the passage where mention is made of the outward and the inward man, will you not discover the whole truth, both of the dignity and the hope of the flesh? For, when he speaks of the “light which God hath commanded to shine in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord in the person of Jesus Christ,” and says that “we have this treasure in earthen vessels,” meaning of course the flesh, which is meant, that the flesh shall be destroyed, because it is “an earthen vessel,” deriving its origin from clay; or that it is to be glorified, as being the receptacle of a divine treasure? Now if that true light, which is in the person of Christ, contains in itself life, and that life with its light is committed to the flesh, is that destined to perish which has life entrusted to it? Then, of course, the treasure will perish …

5. “Them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death, fast bound in beggary and iron” ( ver. 10 ). Whence this, but that thou wast attributing things to thyself? that thou wast not owning the grace of God? that thou wast rejecting the counsel of God concerning thee? For see what He addeth: “Because they rebelled against the words of the Lord through pride” ( ver. 11 ), not knowing the righteousness of God, and wishing to establish their own, “and they were bitter against the counsel of the Most High.” “And their heart was brought low in labour” ( ver. 12 ). And now fight against lust; if God cease to aid thou mayest strive, thou canst not conquer. …

1. Yesterday, I discoursed unto your Charity in many words, and upon many subjects; and if out of this variety, it be not possible for you to retain all, I wish more particularly to recall to memory the observation, that God hath implanted the affection grief in our natures for no other reason but because of sin, and He hath made this evident from actual experience. For whilst we are grieved and distressed through the loss of wealth; or by reason of sickness, and death, and the other evils that befall us, we not only reap no consolation from our sorrow, but we also increase the force of these calamities. But if we are in pain and sorrow for our sins, we diminish the weight of sin; we make that little which is great; and very often we blot it all out entirely. …

How then were “the gates of brass burst, and the bars of iron broken in sunder”? By His body; for then first was a body shown, immortal, and destroying the tyranny of death. And besides, this indicates the destruction of the might of death, not the loosing of the sins of those who had died before His coming. And if this were not so, but He have delivered all that were before Him from hell,how saith He, “It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah?” For this saying supposes that those are also to be punished; more mildly indeed, yet still that they are to be punished. And yet they did also suffer here the most extreme punishment, nevertheless not even this will deliver them. And if it is so with them, much more with such as have suffered nothing.

Wherefore all the human qualities of the Lord Christ, hunger, I mean, and thirst and weariness, sleep, fear, sweat, prayer, and ignorance, and the like, we affirm to belong to our nature which God the Word assumed and united to Himself in effecting our salvation. But the restitution of motion to the maimed, the resurrection of the dead, the supply of loaves, and all the other miracles we believe to be works of the divine power. In this sense I say that the same Lord Christ both suffers and destroys suffering; suffers, that is, as touching the visible, and destroys suffering as touching the ineffably indwelling Godhead. This is proved beyond question by the narrative of the holy evangelists, from whom we learn that when lying in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes, He was announced by a star, worshipped by magi and hymned by angels. …