for one past offence, nor merit any favour of God for a criminal

creature,

But, alas! man is so far from being able to fulfil perfect righteousness for time to come, that in this fallen state, he can do nothing that is truly good: He broke the law of God in days past, and he goes on to break it daily and hourly. His understanding is grown so dark, his will so perverse, and his affections and appetites so corrupt and vicious, by his departure from God, that he cannot answer the present demands of duty; much less can he bring an offering of righteousness to atone for past iniquities. "We are by nature dead in trespasses and sins.'

V. Neither can this guilty, wretched creature man, make any satisfaction to the broken law of God by his sufferings, any more than by his doings. For the penalty of the law is tribulation and anguish of soul and body, the wrath of God and death and how far this dreadful sentence reaches, what miseries are implied in it, and how long the execution of it must continue, who can tell? This we know, that God himself, who sees the full evil, and complete desert or demerit of sin, hath, in some places of scripture, threatened eternal punishment of sinners.

And if we may venture to judge concerning the greatness of the guilt, and demerit of our offences against God, by the same rules, by which reason teaches us to judge of the guilt and demerit of an offence against our fellow-creatures, we must say the guilt of sin is infinite; and therefore the punishment due to a sinning creature is everlasting, because he cannot any other way sustain punishment equal to his infinite demerit of sin. Among men the crime is always aggravated in proportion to the person, against whom it is committed: Therefore any offence against a father, or a king, has much more guilt in it, and is more severely punished, than the same offence committed against an inferior, or an equal. An attempt upon the life of a neighbour, is punished with imprisonment or a fine: But an attempt made on the life of a king deserves death.

Now the great God our Creator, being a king of infinite glory and majesty, infinitely superior to his creature man, every offence against this God, has a sort of infinity in it*: And God may demand satisfaction equal to the offence, that is infinite, which poor sinful man can never pay, so as to out-live the payment.

Every circumstance that aggravates any crime, must aggravate it in a degree proportionable to that circumstance; otherwise we could never determine what is the degree of this aggravation, nor adjust the punishmeut in proportion to it. On this account, if the crime he committed against God, an infinite being, the guilt must be infinitely aggravated.

On this account, he is exposed to the execution of the sentence of God for ever: His punishment has no end. Perhaps this will be counted an old-fashioned argument, and not so generally received in our day, as it was in the days of our fathers: Therefore I have examined it afresh with all the skill I have, and having surveyed the objections which are raised against it, I think they are not hard to be answered: And, after all, so far as I can judge in a may of reasoning upon what scripture has revealed, this argument seems to have weight and strength in it still.

Were it not for the supposition of the infinite guilt and demerit of sin, I do not so plainly see the justice or equity of God in preparing everlasting chains of darkness, and eternal fire, for the devil and his angels, as a proper punishment due to their first act of rebellion against him, and because they kept not their own first estatet; Jude 6. Nor indeed do I see such evident reason, why sinners among men should be threatened with eternal punishments, and punished with everlasting destruction, as a legal penalty due to past sins; Mat. xxv. 48. and 2 Thess. i. 9. which sins were done perhaps in a few days or hours, unless upon a supposition that all offences committed against the infinite majesty of God, have a sort of infinite demerit in them.

I beg leave to add this one thought more, and that is, if sin has not a sort of infinite demerit in it, I cannot see why man himself, by some years of penal sufferings, might not make full atonement for his own sins: But the language and current of scripture seems to represent sinful man as for ever lost to all hope in himself, and then the necessity of a Mediator appears with evidence and glory.

VI. Though man be incapable to satisfy for his own violation of the law, either by his obedience or his punishment, and so to restore himself to the favour of God, yet God would not suffer all mankind to perish. Therefore out of his abundant mercy, he appointed his own Son to undertake this work. His own, his only begotten Son, who is the brightness of his Father's glory, and who lay in the bosom of the Father before all worlds, his Son who was one with the Father, by a communion of the godhead, and who is himself, on this account, called God over all, blessed for ever; this well-beloved Son of God is ordained and appointed to be the great Reconciler between God and man.

† I grant, 1. That their continual persistence and obstinacy in sinful prae tices, may naturally render them continually miserable; and 2. This continued obstinacy may also, in a legal sense, merit continal new punishment. And perhaps, on these two reasons, the actual eternity of hell may be justly supported. But unless we suppose every wilful rebellion against the infinite Majesty of God, to have also a sort of infinite evil in it, I do not see that everlasting chains, and eternal fire, are a proper deserved punishment, legally due to their first rebellion, that is, to one act of sin.

VII. Because God intended to make a full display of the terrors of his justice, and his divine resentment for the violation of his law; therefore he appointed his own Son to satisfy for the breach of it, by becoming a proper sacrifice of expiation or atonement: Now, both among Jews and heathens, the original notion and design of an expiatory sacrifice, is, when some other creature or person is put in the room or place of the transgressor, and the punishment or pain due to the transgressor is transferred to that other person or creature. Therefore beasts were slain for the offences of men, who were supposed to deserve death. And when any person became a surety for a city or nation that was defiled with sin, among the heathens, that person was substituted in their room, and so devoted to death. So the Son of God became a surety for sinful men It pleased the Father to make him their sacrifice, and substituted him in their stead: God ordained that he should put himself into their circumstances, as far as was possible, with a due condescendency to his superior character, and that he should sustain, as near as possible, the very same pains and penalties which sinful man had incurred. Since tribulation and anguish of soul and body, a sense of the wrath of God, and death, were the appointed penalties of the sin of man; therefore he determined that his own Son should pass through all these: And since the law curses all that continue not in all the commands of it, therefore Christ was made a curse for us, that he might redeem us from the curse of the law; Gal. iii. 10-13. Hereby he gave a most awful and sensible demonstration to this visible world of mankind, and perhaps, much more to the invisible world of angels and devils, how dreadful a thing it is to break the law of a God, what infinite evil is contained in sin, and at what a terrible rate it must be expiated and atoned for.

VIII. The Son of God being immortal, could not sustain all these penalties of the law which man had broken, without taking the mortal nature of man upon him, without assuming flesh and blood: Thus his incarnation was necessary, that he might be a more proper surety, substitute, and representative of man who had sinned; and that he might be capable of suffering pain, and anguish, and death itself, in the room and stead of sinful men. It was because the children who were given to Christ Heb. ii. 13, 14. because these children were partakers of flesh and blood, therefore he himself also took part of the same, that through death he might redeem them, that by his own dying he might make atonement for their sins; Heb. x. 5. Sacrifice and offering of beasts, thou wouldst not accept as equivalent for the sins of men: But a body hast thou prepared me, saith our Lord,

that men might be redeemed by the offering the body of Christ, once for all; ver. 10.

It was in the prospect of the Son of God becoming man, by taking flesh and blood upon him, that God spake thus to David; Ps. lxxxix. 19. "I have exalted one chosen out of the people; that is, out of mankind: I have laid help upon one that is mighty: And when he was found in fashion as a man;" Phil. ii. 10. God laid on him the iniquities of us all by imputation; Is. liii. 5, 6. even as the sins, and iniquities, and trespasses of the children of Israel were laid on the head of the goat of old, by the confession and hand of Aaron; Lev. xvi. 21.

When the guilt was thus transferred to him, as far as it was possible for the Son of God to sustain it, he then became liable to punishment; and indeed that seems to me to be the truest and and justest idea of transferred or imputed guilt, viz. when a surety is accepted to suffer in the room of the offender, then the pain or penalty is due to him by consent: And as this is the true original and foundation of expiatory sacrifices, as I have shewn before, so this seems to be the foundation of that particular manner, wherein scripture teaches us this doctrine: "He that knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him;" 2 Cor. v. 21. "His own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree;" 1 Pet. ii. 24. "The chastisement or punishment of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed;" Is. iii. 5. And in many other places of scripture we read the same sort of language. This doctrine is supported with great strength, by the most learned and pious Dr. Owen, in his short treatise of the satisfaction of Christ.

Upon this account, though God the Father was never truly angry with his beloved Son, yet it pleased the Father to bruise him, when he stood in the room of guilty creatures. The Father himself put him to grief, and made his soul an offering for sin; Is. liii. 10. Then the Son of God began to be sore amazed, and very heavy at the approaching deluge of this sorrow'; Mark xiv. 33. The Father forsook him for a season, withdrew his comfortable influences, and gave him some such exquisite sight and sense of that indignation and wrath that was due to sin, as filled his holy soul with anguish, "his soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death;" Mat. xxvi. 38. While his body sweat drops of blood in the garden: And at last he poured out his soul to death, and “ gave his life a ransom for many: he reconciled us to God by the blood of his cross;" Col. i. 20.

Though we allow the human nature of Christ to be the highest, the noblest, and best of creatures, and in that sense might be worth ten thousand of us: yet if sin has an infinite evil VOL. 1.

I'i

in it, then no mere creature, by all his sufferings, could make complete and equal satisfaction for sin: But when the Son of God, who is one with the Father, takes flesh and blood upon him, and becomes God manifest in the flesh, here God and man are united in one complex person, and hereby we enjoy an allsufficient Saviour, a Reconciler beyond all exception, a Sacrifice of atonement, equal to the guilt of our transgressions. And so far as I can judge, it is on this account one apostle says; Acts xx. 28. "God redeemed the church with his own blood; and another asserts, Hereby perceive we the love of God, that he laid down his life for us;" 1 John iii. 18.

And I do not yet see sufficient reason why that expression of St. Paul; Heb. ix. 14. may not be referred to the same sense. "How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience, &c." If the eternal Spirit signify the divine nature or godhead, which dwelt bodily in the man Jesus, then the dignity of his complete person is made the foundation of the value of his blood. This dignity of the godhead which was personally united to the man who suffered, spreads an infinite value over his sufferings and merit: And this renders them equal to that infinite guilt and demerit of sin, which would have extended the punishment of man to everlasting ages. The infinite dignity of the person suffering, answers to the infinite dignity of the person offended, and so takes away the necessity of the everlasting duration of it.

Thus our blessed Mediator, the man Jesus Christ, in whom dwells all the fulness of the godhead bodily, fulfilled the righteous demands of the law, and suffered the penalties due to our sins. He magnified his Father's law in this manner, and made it honourable, beyond what all the sons of Adam could do by their utmost sufferings. Thus the justice of God shines most gloriously in the sufferings of his Son Jesus Christ: Thus the great God vindicated his own character, as a wise and righteous law-giver, before the face of men and angels, in the anguish and death of his own Son: He gave a most awful and formidable assurance, that he was not a God to be trifled with, and that the sin of his creatures should not go unpunished. He that spared not his own Son, when he stood in the room of sinners, will never spare guilty rebels that persist in their rebellions. Thus far we see how Christ became a sacrifice of atonement.

IX. God, the great Ruler of the world, having received such ample satisfaction for sin, by the sufferings of his own Son, can honourably forgive his creature man, who was the transgressor. There is so glorious a reparation made to the honour of his righteous and broken law, that he can pardon sinners without