How the gospel knits the hearts of men in peace, and why it alone can do so 1/2

           First.  The gospel knits the hearts of men togeth­er, as it propounds powerful arguments for peace and unity; and indeed such as are found nowhere else.  It hath cords of love to draw and bind souls together that were never weaved in nature’s loom: such as we may run through all the topics of morality, and meet with [in] none of them, being all supernatural and of divine revelation, Eph. 4:3.  The apostle exhorts them ‘to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.’  And how doth he persuade them ver. 4-7.  First, ‘there is one body.’  Such a one however, it is, as natural philosophy treats not of; but a mystical one, the church—which consists of several saints, as the nat­ural body of several members; and, as it were strange to see one member to fall out with another—which all are preserved in life by their union together—so much more in the mystical body.  Again there is ‘one spirit.’  That is the same holy Spirit which quickens them all that are true saints, and he is to the whole number of saints as the soul is to the whole man —informing every part. 

Now, as it were a prodigious violence to the law of nature, if the members, by an intestine war among themselves, should drive the soul out of the body, which gives life to them in union together; so much more would it be for Christians to force the Holy Spirit from them by their contentions and strifes; as indeed a wider door cannot easily be opened for them to go out at.  Again, it presseth ‘uni­ty,’ from the ‘one hope of our calling,’ where hope is put pro re speratâ—for the thing hoped for, the bliss we all hope for in heaven.  There is a day coming, and it cannot be far from us, in which we shall meet lov­ingly in heaven, and sit at one feast without grudging one to see what lies on another's trencher.  Full frui­tion of God shall be the feast, and peace and love the sweet music that shall sound to it.  What folly is it then for us to fight here, who shall feast there? draw blood of one another here, that shall so quickly lie in each other’s bosom’s?  Now the gospel invites to this feast, and calls us to this hope.  I might run through the other particulars, which are all as purely evan­gelical—as these, ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism;’ but enough to have given you a taste.

           Second.  The gospel doth this, as it takes away the cause of that feud and enmity which is among the sons and daughters of men.  They are chiefly two —the curse of God on them, and their own lusts in them.

1. The feud and hostility that is among men and women is part of that curse which lies upon mankind for his apostasy from God.  We read how the ground was cursed for man’s sake, ‘thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee,’ saith God, Gen. 3:18.  But a far greater curse it was, that one man should become as a thorn and briar, to fetch blood of another. Some have a fancy that the rose grew in paradise without prickles.  To be sure man, had he not sinned, should never have been such a pricking briar as now the best of them is.  These thorns that come up so thick in man’s dogged, quarrelsome nature, what do they speak but the efficacy of God’s curse?  The first man that was born in the world proved a murderer; and the first that died, went to his grave by that bloody murderer’s hand.  May we not wonder as much at the power of God’s curse on man’s nature, that appeared so soon in Cain’s malicious heart, as the disciples did at the sudden withering of the fig tree blasted by Christ’s curse?  And truly, it was but just with God to mingle a perverse spirit among them who had expressed so false a one to him.  They de­served to be confounded in their language, and suf­fered to bite and devour one another, who durst make an attempt upon God himself, by their disobedience. Very observable is that in Zech. 11:10, compared with ver. 14.  When once ‘the staff of beauty,’ ver. 10—which represented God’s covenant with the Jews —was asunder, then presently the ‘staff of bands’ —which signified the brotherhood between Judah and Jerusalem—was cut asunder, also.  When a people break covenant with God, they must not expect peace among themselves.  It is the wisdom of a prince, if he can, to find his enemy work at home.  As soon as man fell out with God, behold there is a fire of war kindled at his own door, in his own nature.  No more bitter enemy now to mankind than itself.  One man is a wolf, yea a devil, to another.  Now, before there can be any hope of true solid peace among men, this curse must be reversed; and the gospel, and only the gospel, can do that.  There an expedient is found how the quarrel betwixt God and the sinner may be rec­onciled; which done, the curse ceaseth.  A curse is a judiciary doom, whereby God in wrath condemns his rebel creature to something that is evil.  But there is ‘no condemnation’ to him that is in Christ.  The curse is gone.  No arrow now in the bow of threatening; that was shot into Christ’s heart, and can never enter into the believer’s.  God may whip his people, by some unbrotherly unkindness they receive from one another’s hands, by way of fatherly chastisement —and indeed it is as sharp a rod as he can use in his discipline—the more to make them sensible of their falling out with him.  But the curse is gone, and his people are under a promise of enjoying peace and unity; which they shall, when best for them, have performed to them.