speaks of) wisely and graciously by his Father, with his own consent. As in those two faced pictures, look upon the crucifying of Christ one way, as complotted by a treacherous disciple, and malicious priests and rulers, and nothing more deformed and hateful than the authors of it; but view it again, as determined in God's counsel, for the restoring of lost mankind; and so it is full of unspeakable beauties and sweetness, infinite wisdom and love in every tract of it. This refers also to the persons for whom he engaged, as their coming unto him reflects upon that first donation, and is represented as flowing from that, all that the Father giveth me shall come un to mea. Now this being God's great design, that he would have men eye and consider more than all the rest of his works, (though it is least of all considered by the most) the other covenant made with the first Adam was but to make way, and if we may so speak, to make work for this: For he knew that it would not hold, therefore as this new covenant became needful by the breach of the other, so the failing of that other sets off and commends the firmness of this. The former was with a man in his best condition, and yet he kept it not, even then he proved vanity, as it is", Verily every man in his best estate is altogether vanity. So that the second, to be stronger, is made with a man indeed, to supply the former; but he is God-man, to be surer than the former, and therefore it holds. And this is the difference, as the Apostle expresses it, that the first Adam, in that first covenant, was laid as a foundation; and though we say not, that the church, in its true notion, was built on him, yet the estate of the whole race of mankind, the materials that the church is built of, lay on him for that time, and it failed. But upon this rock, the second Adam, is the church so firmly built, that the gates of hell cannot prevail against her. The last Adam was made a John vi. 37. VOL. I. Psal. xxxix. 5. Matth. xvi. 18. a quickening or life giving spirit. The first had life, but he transferred it not, yea, he kept it not for himself, but drew in and transferred death; but the second, by death, conveys life to all that are reckoned his seed: He bare their sins. He bare them on the tree. In that outside of his suffering, the visible kind of death inflicted on him, that it was hanging on the tree of the cross, there was an analogy with the end, and main work, which was ordered by the Lord with regard unto that, being a death declared accursed by the law, as the Apostle St. Paul observes, and so declaring him that 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 that none could see that gazed on him; but he felt more than all the rest. In this there are three things. The weight of sin. 2. The transferring of it upon Christ. 3. His bearing of it. 1. 1. He bare sin as a heavy burden; so the word of bearing in general, Y, and those two words particularly used by the prophet, to which these allude, ND are the bearing of some great mass or load, and that sin is: For it hath the wrath of an offended God hanging at it, 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. Who can stand before thee when once thou art angry, says the Psalmist; and the Prophets, Return backsliding Israel and I will not cause my wrath to fall upon thee; to fall as a great weight, or as a millstone, and crush the soul. But senseless, we go light under the burden of d Gal. iii. 13. e Isa. liii. 4. f Psal. lxxvi. 7. 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 me1? A prophane secure sinner thinks it nothing to break the holy law of God, to please his flesh, or the world, he counts sin a light matter; and makes a mock of it, as Solomon says', but a stirring conscience is of another mind, Mine iniquities are gone over my head, as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me. Sin is such a burden as makes the very frame of Heaven and earth that is not guilty of it, yea, the whole creation, to crack and groan; (it is the Apostle's doctrine,) and yet the impenitent heart whose guiltiness it is, continues unmoved, and groaneth not; for your accustomed groaning is no such matter. Yea, to consider in the present subject where we may best read what it is, it was a heavy load to Jesus Christ, where the Psalmist, speaking in the person of Christ, complains heavily, innumerable evils have compassed me about. Mine iniquities, not his, as done by him, but yet his, by his undertaking to pay for them, they have taken hold of me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth me. And sure that which pressed him so sore, who upholds Heaven and earth, no other in Heaven or in 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 it before hand, 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 begun to be laid upon him, and fastened upon his Rom. vii. 24. Prov. xiv. 9. k Psal. xxxviii. 4. m See Psal. xl. 12, shoulders in the garden of Gethsemane, ten thousand times heavier than the cross, which he was caused to bear: That might be a while turned over to another, but this could not. This was the cup he trembled more at, than that gall and vinegar after to be offered him by his crucifiers, or any other part of his external sufferings. It was the bitter cup of wrath due to sin that 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. And consider that the very smallest sins went in to make up this load, and made it so much the heavier; and therefore, though sins be comparatively lesser and greater, yet learn thence to account no sin in itself small that offends the great God, and lay heavy upon your great Redeemer in the day of his sufferings. At his apprehending, besides the soldiers, that invisible crowd of the sins he was to suffer for came about him, for it was they that laid strongest hold on him; he could easily have shaken off all the rest, as appears", but our sins laid the arrest on him, being accounted his, as it is in that forecited place°, Mine iniquities. Now, amongst these were even those sins we call small; they were of the number that took him, and they were amongst those 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. 2. 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. "Seeing you have accepted of this business according to my will, (may we conceive the Father saying to "his Son) you must go through with it; you are n Matth. xxvi. 33. • Psal. xl. 12. "engaged in it, but it is no other than what you "understood perfectly before; you knew what it "would cost you, and yet out of joint love with me to those I named to be saved by you, you "were as willing as I to the whole undertaking. "Now therefore the time is come that I must lay upon you the sins of all those persons, and you "must bear them; the sins of all those believers "that lived before, and all that are to come after to "the end of the world." 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 y is: The sins of all, in all ages before and after, that were to be saved, all their guiltiness re-encountered and met together on his back upon the cross; and whosoever 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 as in testimony of his meekness and patience, so in this regard likewise was he so silent in his sufferings, in regard that though his enemies dealt most unjustly with him, yet he stood as convicted before the justice-seat of his Father, under the imputed guilt of all our sins; and so eying him, and accounting his business to be chiefly with him, he did patiently bear the due punishment of all our sins at his Father's hand, and suited that of the Psalmist, I was as dumb, and opened not my mouth, because thou didst it. Therefore the Prophet immediately subjoins that of his silent carriage, to that which he had spoken of the confluence of our iniquities upon him. And if our sins were thus accounted his, then in the same way, and for that very reason, of necessity, his sufferings and satisfaction must be accounted ours; as he said for his disciples to the men that came to take him, If it be me ye seek, then let them P Isa. liii, 6. 4 Ps. xxxix. 9. Isa. liii. 7. |