10. This life is eminently and transcendently in him, and exclusively of all others. It is in him, and in him alone; and it is in him in a most excellent manner: So that he is the life, in the abstract; not only a living head, and an enlivening head; but life itself, the life, the "resurrection and the life."
CHAPTER XX.
SOME GENERAL USES.
Before we come to speak of some particular cases of deadness, wherein believers are to make use of Christ as the Life, we shall first propose some useful consequences and deductions from what hath been spoken of this life; and,
I. The faith of those things, which have been mentioned, would be of great use and advantage to believers; and therefore they should study to have the faith of this truth fixed on their hearts, and a deep impression thereof on their spirits, to the end, that,
1. Be their case and condition what it will, they might be kept from despair, and despondency of spirit, from giving over their case as hopeless; and from looking upon themselves as irremediably gone. The faith of Christ being life, and the life, would keep up the soul in hope, and cause it say,—how dead soever my case be, yet life can help me, and he who is the resurrection and the life, can recover me.
2. Yea, be their case and condition what it will, they would have here some ground of encouragement, to go to him with their dead soul, and to look to him for help, seeing he is the Life, as Mediator, to the end he might enliven and quicken his dead, fainting, swooning members, and to recover them from their deadness.
3. They might be freed from many scruples and objections that scar and discourage them. This one truth believed would clear up the way so, as that such things, as would have been impediments and objections before, shall evanish, and be rolled out of the way now: Such as, the objections taken from their own worthlessness, their long continuance in that dead condition, and the like.