his sufferings; and which have had their exact accomplishment in him. Christ's whole life was a life of sufferings, from the cradle to the cross; he suffered very early from Herod, who sought to destroy him; and which obliged his parents to flee with him into Egypt; he suffered much from Satan's temptations; for his temptations were sufferings, He suffered, being tempted; and from the reproaches and persecutions of men; his life, throughout, was a life of meanness and poverty, which must be reckoned a branch of his sufferings: but what may more eminently and particuly be called his sufferings, are those which he endured as preparatory to his death, which led on to it, and issued in it; and death itself, and what attended it.

1. The things preparatory to his death, and which led on to it, and issued in it. 1. The conspiracy of the chief priests and elders to take away his life: this they had often meditated, and had made some fruitless attempts upon him: but a few days before his death it became a more serious affair; and they met together in a body, in the palace of the high-priest, to consult the most crafty methods to take him and kill him, Matt. xxvi. 3, 4. whereby was fulfilled what was foretold, The rulers take counsel together; the ecclesiastic rulers, as well as the civil ones, Psal. ii. 2.2. The offer of Judas Iscariot to them, to betray him into their hands. A little before the passover, Christ and his disciples supped at Bethany, when Satan put it into the heart of Judas to betray him; which Christ, being God omniscient, knew, and gave an hint of it at supper; and said to Judas, That thou doest, do quickly: upon which, he set out for Jerusalem that night, and went to the chief-priests, where they were assembled, and coveminted with them to betray his Master into their hands for thirty pieces of silver. This was one part of Christ's sufferings, to be betrayed by one of his own disciples; and which, in prophecy, is observed as such; and the sum of money is foretold for which he agreed with them; and which also is observed as an instance of great disesteem of him, Zech. xi. 12, 13.-3. After Christ had eat his last passover with his disciples, and had instituted and celebrated the ordinance of the per; he went into a garden, where he used sometimes to go: here more manifestly his sufferings began; he saw what was coming upon him; the sins of his people he stood charged with as their surety, and the wrath of God for them; this caused him to be exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: at this his human nature shrunk; and he prayed that, if possible, the cup might pass from him; and the agony he was in was so great, and the pressure on his mind so heavy, and so much affected his body, that his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground; this was a foretaste of what he was after more fully to endure, Matt. xxvi. 38. 39. Luke xxii. 44. — 4. Judas knowing the place Christ resorted to, and where he now was, came with a band of soldiers he had from the chiefpriests, and with a multitude of others, armed with swords and clubs, as if they came out against a thief, to take him, as our Lord observed to them; when with a kiss he betrayed him to them; and, after he had given them proof of

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his almighty power, and how easily he could have made his escape from them voluntarily surrendered himself unto them; who laid hold on him, and bound him as a malefactor, and had him to Caiaphas the high-priest.-5. In whose palace he endured much from men, rude, and inhumane; some spit in his face, and buffetted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands;' one particularly struck him with the palm of his hand, as with a rod, saying, Answerest thou the high-priest so? all which Christ took patiently, whereby the prophecies concerning him were fulfilled, Isai. 1. 6. 6. Still more he endured in the hall of Pilate the Roman governor, to whom the Jews delivered him bound. Here he was accused of sedition, and of stirring up the people against the Roman government; as he had been before in the high-priest's palace of an evil design to destroy the temple; which were all forged and false; as is said in prophetic language, Psal. xxxv. 11. and though he appeared to be innocent, and that to the judge himself, who would willingly have let him go; yet such were the enmity and malice of the chief-priests and elders, and of the multitude of the people, that they were the more vehement and incessant in their cries, to have Barabbas, a robber, released, and Jesus crucified: which verified what David, in the person of the Messiah, said, Psal. Ixix. 4. Upon which he was scourged by Pilate, or by his orders; to which he willingly submitted, and then was delivered to the Roman soldiers who used him extremely ill; who platted a crown of thorns, and put it upon his head, which gave him pain, as well as disgrace, which is now crowned with glory and honour; and put a reed in his right hand, for a sceptre, whose proper sceptre is a sceptre of righteousness; and, in a mock-way, bowed to him, to whom every knee shall bow in the most solemn manner; having before stripped him of his garments, and put on him a soldier's coat, as fit apparel for a King; and then having put on his clothes again, when they had sated themselves with sport, led him forth to be crucified according to the sentence of the governor had passed upon him, at the instance of the Jews; bearing his own cross they laid upon him, as was the custom with the Romans, only Christ meeting with Simon, a Cyrenean, by the way, they obliged him to bear the cross after him; that is, one end of it, and so crucified him: which leads on to consider,

II. The death itself he died. He was obedient to the death of the cross, the death he died on the cross; hence his hlood shed on it is called, the blood of the cross; and the cross is put for the whole of his sufferings and death, Col. i. 20. Eph. ii. 16. This was plainly foretold and pointed out in prophecy, particularly in the twenty-second Psalm, described by the dislocation and starting out of his bones; by the fever upon him, which usually attended crucifixion; and especially by the piercing of his hands and feet; and was typified by the lifting up of the brazen serpent by Moses in the wilderness; and the phrase of lifting up from the earth, is used by Christ himself, to signify what death he should. die, John xii. 32, 33. This kind of death was a shameful one; hence Christ is said to endure the cross, and despise the shame; that is, the shame that at

tended it, Heb, xii. 2, which lay not so much in his being crucified naked, and so exposed, was that truly the case, as in its being the punishment of strang CTS● of servants, and slaves, and such like mean persons; but not of freemen and citizens of Rome; hence it was called servile supplicium, a servile punishment: and it was also a painful and cruel one, as the thing itself speaks; to have the whole body stretched to the uttermost; the hands and feet, those sensible parts, of it, pierced; and to have the weight of the body depending on them! it was. so cruel, that the most humane among the Romans, wished to have it disused, even to servents; and the more mild and gentle of the emperors would order persons to be strangled before they were nailed to the cross: and it was also reckoned an accursed death. And though Christ was not accursed of God, but was his beloved Son, while he was suffering this death; yet it was a symbol of the curse; and he was hereby treated as if he was one accursed; and it became a clear case hereby, that he bore the curse of the law in the room and stead of sinners; yea, that he was made a curse for them; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree, Gal, iii. 13.

There were several circumstances which attended the death of Christ, which made it the more ignominious and distressing; as the place where he suffered, Golgotha, so called from the skulls of malefactors executed there; and was, as infamous as our Tyburn; and it was as scandalous to be crucified in the one place, as to be hanged in the other. Here he was crucified between two thieves as if he had been guilty of the same, or a like transgression, as theirs; and so fulfilled the prophecy in Isai. liii. 12. He was numbered among the transgressors; and, instead of giving him a cup of wine with frankincense, which they used to give in kindness to a person about to be executed, to intoxicate him, that he might not be sensible of his misery; they gave to Christ vinegar mixed with gall, or sour wine with myrrh, and such like bitter ingredients, the more to, distress him; of which he, in prophecy, complains, Psal. Ixix. 21. Then they parted his garments, and cast lots upon his vesture; by which it seems that he was crucified naked, the more to expose him to shame and contempt; and which was predicted in Psal. xxii. 18. and while he was suffering, he endured the trial of cruel, mockings, from all sorts of people; not only from travellers that passed by, and from the multitude of common people, assembled on the occasion; but from the chief-priests, scribes, and elders; and even from the thieves, with whom he was crucified: to all which respect is had in prophecy, Psal. xxii. 7-16. And for three hours together, whilst he was on the cross, there was darkness over all the land, the sun, as it were, blushing and hiding its face at the heinousness of the sin now committed by the Jews; or as refusing to yield any relief and comfort to Christ, now sustaining as a surety the wrath of God, for the sins of his people; and might be an emblem of that greater his soul, being now forsaken by his Father; And when this was

darkness upon

over, he quickly gave up the ghost.

Cicero in Orat pro Rabirio.

* Sueton. Vit. Jul. Cæsar. c. 74.

Let it be observed, that Christ was put to death in the flesh; as the apostle expresses it, I Pet. iii. 18. that is in the body; that only suffered death; not his soul, that died not; but was commended into the hands of his divine Father: nor his Deity, or divine nature, which was impassible, and not capable of suffering death; and yet the body of Christ suffered death, in union with his divine person; hence the Lord of glory is said to be crucified; and God said to purchase the church with his blood, 1 Cor. ii. 8. Acts xx. 28. And the death of Christ, as the death of other men, lay in the disunion of, or in a dissolution of the union between soul and body; these two were parted for awhile, the one was commended to God in heaven; the other was laid in the grave: but hereby he was not reduced to a state of non-existence, as say the Socinians; his soul was with God in paradise; and his body, when taken from the cross, was laid in a sepulchre, and where it saw no corruption. The death of Christ was real, not in appearance only, as some of the ancient heretics affirmed; nor was he taken down from the cross alive; but was really dead, as appears by the testimony of the centurion that guarded the cross, to Pilate; by the soldiers (not breaking his legs, with the others crucified with him, perceiving he was dead; and by one of them piercing his side, the pericardium, from whence flowed blood and water; after which, had he not been dead before, he must have died then. And lastly, his death was voluntary; for though his life was taken from the earth, seeming. ly in a violent manner, with respect to men, being cut off in a judicial way; yet not without his full will and consent; he laid it down of himself, and gave himself freely and voluntarily to be a sacrifice, through his death, for the sins of his people.

Now, besides this corporal death which Christ endured, there was a death in his soul, though not of it, which answered to a spiritual and an eternal death: for as the transgression of the first Adam, involved him and all his posterity in, and exposed them to, not only a corporal death, but to a moral or spiritual, and an eternal one; so the second Adam, as the Surety of his people, in order to make satisfaction for that transgression, and all others of theirs, must undergo death, in every sense of the threatening. And though a moral or spiritual death, as it lies in a loss of the image of God; in a privation of original righteousness; in impotence to that which is good, and in an inclination, biass, and servitude of the mind to that which is evil; could not fall upon the pure and holy soul of Christ, which must have made him unfit for his mediatorial work ; yet there was something similar to it, so as to be without sin and pollution; as darkness of soul, disquietude, distress, want of spiritual jov and comfort, amazement, agony, his soul being sorrowful even unto death, pressed with the weight of the sins of his people on him, and a sense of divine wrath on account of them; and what he endured both in the garden and on the cross, especially when he was made sin and a curse, and his soul was made an offering for sin, was tantamount to an eternal deaih, or the suffering of the wicked in hell; for though they differ as to circumstance of time and place; the persons being different,

the one finite, the other infinite; yet, as to the essence of them, the same; eternal death consists in these two things, punishment of loss, and punishment of sense; the former lies in an eternal separation from God, or a deprivation of his presence for ever: Depart from me, ye cursed: the latter is an everlasting sense of the wrath of God, expressed by everlasting fire. Now Christ endured what was answerable to these; for awhile he suffered the loss of his Farher's gracious presence, when he said, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me! And he endured the punishment of sense, when God was wroth with him, his anointed; when his wrath was poured out like fire upon him; and his heart melted like wax within him, under it; and the sorrows of hell compassed him about, Psal. xxii. 14 and xviii. 5. Eternity is not of the essence of punishment; and only takes place when the person punished cannot bear the whole at once; and being finite, as sinful man is, cannot make satisfaction to the infinite Majesty of God, injured by sin, the demerit of which is infinite punishment: and as that cannot be bore at once by a finite creature, it is continued ad infinitum; but Christ being an infinite Person, was able to bear the whole at once; and the infinity of his Person, abundantly compensates for the eternity of the punishment. II. Let us next enquire into the cause, reason, and occasion of the sufferings and death of Christ; and how he came to undergo them.

1. With respect to God, and his concern in them. To trace this, we must go back as far as the eternal decrees and purposes of God; which are the foundation, source, and spring of them; for it was by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, that Christ was delivered into the hands of the Jews and was taken, and by wicked hands was crucified and slain; Herod and Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, and the people of the Jews, did no other things against him that what the hand and counsel of God determined before should be done; and therefore it was necessary they should be done, Acts ii. 23. Hence all things were over-ruled by the providence of God in time, to bring about what he had decreed should be; and without it nothing could have been done: Pilate had no power over him but what was given him from above: so great an hand had God in the sufferings of his Son, that he is said to bruise and put him to grief; to awake the sword of justice against him; to spare him not, but deliver him up for us all, into the hands of men, to justice and to death: and the moving cause of all this was, the great love he bore to his chosen ones in Christ; God so loved the world, &c. In this was manifested the love of God towards us, &c. John iii. 16. 1 John iv. 9, 10.

II. With respect to Christ, and his will, as to his sufferings and death; we must have recourse to the council and covenant of grace and peace; in which the plan of salvation was formed upon the obedience, and sufferings, and death' of Christ; these were proposed to him, and he readily assented to him; and said, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God! which was, to become incarnate; to obey, suffer, and die, in the room and stead of his people; and what moved him there