sufferings, nor in any degree capable of them, but for us; and it is most comfortable in these light sufferings of this present moment, to consider that he hath freed us from the sufferings of eternity, by suffering himself in our stead in the fulness of time.

That Jesus Christ is, in doing and in suffering, our supreme and matchless example, and that he came to be so, is a truth; but that he is nothing further and came for no other end, is, you see, a high point of falsehood. For how should man be enabled to learn and follow that example of obedience, unless there were more than an example in Christ? and what would become of that great reckoning of disobedience that man stands guilty of? No; these are notions far too narrow. He came to bear our sins in his own body on the tree, and for this purpose had a body fitted for him and given him to bear this burden; to do this as the will of his Father, to stand for us instead of all offerings and sacrifices; and by that will, says the apostle, we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all, Heb. x, 9. This was his business, not only to rectify sinful man by his example, but to redeem him by his blood. He was a Teacher come from God. He is a Prophet, and more than a Prophet-a Priest satisfying justice for us, and a King conquering sin and death for us; an example indeed, but more than an example-our sacrifice and our life, our all in all. It is our duty to walk as he walked, to make him the pattern of our steps; but our comfort and salvation lie in this, that he is the propitiation for our sins. We are to walk in the light, as he is in the light; but for all our walking, we have need of that which follows, that bears the great weight, The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.

We have in the words these two great points, and in the same order as the words lie; I. the nature and quality of the sufferings of Jesus Christ; II. the end of them.

I. In this expression of the nature and quality of the sufferings of Christ, we are to consider, 1, the Commutation of the persons, He himself; for us; 2, the Work undertaken and performed, He bare our sins in his own body on the tree.

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1. The act or sentence of the law against the breach of

it standing in force, and divine justice expecting satisfaction, death was the necessary and inseparable consequent of sin. If you say, the supreme Majesty of God, being accountable to none, might have forgiven all without satisfaction, we are not to contest that, nor foolishly to offer to sound the bottomless depth of his absolute prerogative. Christ implies in his prayer, Matt. xxvi, 39, that it was impossible that he could escape that cup; but the impossibility is resolved into his Father's will, as the cause of it. But this we may clearly see, following the track of the holy scriptures, our only safe way, that this way wherein our salvation is contrived, is most excellent and suitable to the greatness and goodness of God; so full of wonders of wisdom and love, that the angels cannot forbear looking into it and admiring it. Notwithstanding all their knowledge, yet they still find it infinitely beyond their knowledge, being still in astonishment and admiration of what they see, and still in search, looking in to see more; those cherubim still having their eyes fixed on this mercy-seat.

Justice might indeed have seized on rebellious man, and laid the pronounced punishment on him. Mercy might have freely acquitted him, and pardoned all. But cau we name any place where mercy and justice, as relating to condemned man, could have met and shined jointly in full aspect, save only in Jesus Christ? in whom indeed Mercy and Truth are met together; Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other, Psal. lxxxv, 10; yea, in whose person the parties concerned, that were at so great a distance, met so near, as nearer cannot be imagined.

And not only was this the sole way for the consistency of these two, justice and mercy, but take each of them severally, and they could not have been manifested in so full lustre in any other way. God's just hatred of sin did, out of doubt, appear more in punishing his own only begotten Son for it, than if the whole race of mankind had suffered for it eternally. Again; it raises the notion of mercy to the highest, that sin is not only forgiven us, but for this end God's own co-eternal Son is given to us and for us. Consider what he is and what we are; he the

Son of his love, and we enemies. Therefore it is emphatìcally expressed in the words, He his ownself bare our sins. God so loved the world, that love amounts to this much, that is, was so great, as to give his Son; but how great that love is, cannot be uttered. In this God commendeth his love to us, sets it off to the highest, gives us the richest and strongest evidence of it.

The foundation of this plan, this appearing of Christ for us and undergoing and answering all in our stead, lies in the decree of God, where it was plotted and contrived, in the whole way of it, from eternity. And just according to that model, did all the work proceed and was accomplished in all points, perfectly answering to the pattern of it in the mind of God. As it was preconcluded there, that the Son should undertake the business, this matchless piece of service for his Father, and that by his interposing, men should be reconciled and saved, so that he might be altogether a fit person for the work, it was resolved, that as he was already fit for it by the almightiness of his Deity and Godhead and the acceptableness of his person to the Father, as the Son of God, so he should be further fitted by wonderfully uniting weakness to almightiness, the fraility of man to the power of God. Because suffering for man was a main point of the work, therefore, as his being the Son of God made him acceptable to God, so his being the Son of man made him suitable to mau, in whose business he had engaged himself, and suitable to the business itself to be performed.

2. As to the work itself; He bare our sins on the tree. In the outside of his sufferings, the visible kind of death inflicted on him, in that it was hanging on the tree of the cross, there was an analogy with the end and main work; and it was ordered by the Lord with regard to that end, being a death declared accursed by the law, as St. Paul observes, Gal. iii, 13, and so declaring him who was God blessed for ever, to have been made a curse (that is, accounted as accursed) for us, that we might be blessed in him, in whom, according to the promise, all the nations of the earth are blessed.

But that wherein lay the strength and main stress of his sufferings, was this invisible weight which none could.

see who gazed on him, but which he felt more than all the rest; He bare our sins. In this there are three things -the weight of sin-the transferring of it upon Christhis bearing of it.

First; he bare sin as a heavy burden; so the word bearing imports in general, and those two words used by the prophet, Isa. liii, 4, to which these allude, imply the bearing of some great mass or load. And such sin is; for it hath the wrath of an offended God indissolubly tied to it, of which who can bear the least? And therefore the least sin, being the procuring cause of it, will press a man down for ever, that he shall not be able to rise. But we go light under the burden of sin and feel it not, we complain not of it, and are therefore truly said to be dead in it; otherwise it could not but press us and press out complaints. O! wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me? Mine iniquities are gone over my head; as a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.

To consider it in connexion with the present subject, where we may best read what it is, sin was a heavy load to Jesus Christ. And surely that which pressed him so sore who upholds heaven and earth, no other in Heaven or on earth could have sustained and surmounted, but would have sunk and perished under it. Was it, think you, the pain of that common outside of his death, though very painful, that drew such a word from him, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Or was it the fear of that beforehand, that pressed a sweat of blood from him? No, it was this burden of sin, the first of which was committed in the garden of Eden, that then began to be laid upon him and fastened upon his shoulders in the garden of Gethsemane, ten thousand times heavier than the cross which he was caused to bear. That might be for a while turned over to another, but this could not. This was the cup he trembled at more than at the gall and vinegar to be afterwards offered to him by his crucifiers, or any other part of his external sufferings: it was the bitter cup of wrath due to sin, which his Father put into his hand and caused him to drink, the very same thing that is here called the bearing our sins in his body.

At his apprehension, besides the soldiers, the invisible

crowd of sins he was to suffer for came about him, for it was these that laid strongest hold on him:, He could easily have shaken off all the rest, but our sins laid the arrest on him, being accounted his. Now amongst these were even those sins we call small. They were of the number that took him, and they were amongst the instruments of his bloodshed. If the greater were as the spear that pierced his side, the less were as the nails that pierced his hands and his feet, and the very least as the thorns that were set on his precious head. And the multitude of them made up what was wanting in their magnitude: though they were small, they were many.

Secondly; they were transferred upon him by virtue of that covenant we spoke of. They became his debt, and he responsible for all they came to. The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all, says the prophet, took it off from us, and charged it on him, made it to meet on him or to fall in together, as the word in the original imports. The sins of all, in all ages before and after, who were to be saved, all their guiltiness met together on his back upon the Cross. Whoever of all that number had least sin, yet had no small burden to cast on him; and to give accession to the whole weight, every man hath had his own way of wandering, as the Prophet there expresseth it, and he paid for all; all fell on him.

And if our sins were thus accounted his, then, in the same way and for that very reason, his sufferings and satisfaction must be accounted ours. As he said for his disciples to the men who came to take him, If ye seek me, let these go their way; so he said for all believers to his Father, his wrath then seizing on him, If on me thou wilt lay hold, then let these go free. And thus the agreement was; He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

So then, there is a union betwixt believers aud Jesus. Christ, by which this interchange is made, he being charged with their sins, and they clothed with his satisfaction and righteousness. This union is founded in God's sovereign pleasure, that they should live in Christ, and so choosing the head and the whole mystical body as one, and reckoning their debt as his, in his purpose, that