Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/242

plete extinction of all sinful tendencies, at which we ought to aim, of the power of the faith which we ought to cherish. Yet this again is but a portion of the truth: it tells us of the end which we are to arrive at, but not of the means, whereby God gives us strength on our way thitherward: it speaks of the height of God's holy hill, but not of the power by which we are caught up thither. Not so St. Paul. He is persuading the Colossians to abide in the state in which they had been placed; to rest upon the foundation on which they had been laid; to root themselves in the soil in which they had been planted; to be content with the fulness which they had received from Him by whom they had been filled, and in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; to abide in Him whom they had received. For he feared lest they should be taught by the vain deceit of a false philosophy to take other stays than their Saviour, or to lean on the now abolished tradition of circumcision. To this end he reminds them that they needed nothing out of Christ; for they had been filled with Him, who filleth all in all, the Head of all rule and all power; therefore they needed no other power, but only His,—they had received the true circumcision, and so could require no other; they had been disencumbered of the sinful mass, with which they were naturally encumbered, "the body of the sins of the flesh" by the circumcision which Christ bestowed: their old man had been buried with Him in Baptism; they had been raised with Him, (as they ascended out of the water,) by a power as mighty as that which raised Him from the dead: all their old sins had been forgiven, and they themselves re-born from the dead, and been made partakers of the life of Christ, "quickened with Him;" the powers of darkness had been spoiled of their authority over them, and exhibited as captives and dethroned. All these things had been bestowed upon them by Baptism; the mercies of God had been there appropriated to them; sins blotted out; their sinful nature dead, buried in Christ's tomb: death changed into life; and therefore, as they had no need, so neither were they to make void these gifts by trusting in any other ordinances, or looking to any other Mediator. St Paul dreads that through false teach-