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ing and lighting upon the face of my soul, and how can I take pleasure in these things you speak of? And though I should be senseless, and feel nothing of this all my life, yet how soon shall I have done with it, and the delights that reach no further? and then to have everlasting burnings, eternity of wrath to enter to; how can I be satisfied with that estate?" All you offer a man in this posture is, as you should set dainty fare, and bring music with it, to a man lying almost pressed to death under great weights, and you bid him eat and be merry, but lift not off his pressure: you do but mock the. man and add to his misery; on the other side, he that hath got but a view of his Christ, and reads his own pardon in Christ's sufferings, can rejoice in this, in the midst of all other sufferings, and look on death without apprehension, yea, with gladness, for the sting is out: Christ hath made all pleasant to him by this one thing, that he suffered once for sins. Christ hath perfumed the cross, and the grave, and made all sweet. The pardoned man finds. himself light, skips and leaps, and, through Christ strengthening him, he can encounter with any trouble. If you think to shut up his spirit within outward sufferings, he is now, as Sampson in his strength, able to carry away on his back the gates with which you would inclose him; yea, can submit patiently to the Lord's hand in any correction. "Thou hast forgiven my sin, therefore, deal with me as thou wilt, all is well." For the improvement of what has been said,

1. Learn to consider more deeply, and esteem more highly, of Christ, and his suffering, to silence our grumbling at our petty light crosses; for so they are in comparison of his. Will not the great odds of his perfect innocency, and of the nature and measure of his sufferings; will not the sense of the redemption of our souls from death by his death; will none of these, nor all of them, argue us into more thankfulness and love to him, and patience in our trials? Why will we then be called

christians? It is impossible to be fretful and malecontent with the Lord's dealing with us in any kind, till first we have forgot how he dealt with his dearest Son for our sakes. But these things are not weighed by the most: we hear and speak of them, but our hearts receive not the impressions of them; therefore we repine against our Lord and Father, and drown a hundred great blessings in any little trouble that befals us.

2. Seek surer interest in Christ and his suffering than the most either have attained, or are aspiring to, otherwise all that is suffered here will afford thee no ease nor comfort in any kind of suffering. No, though thou suffer, for a good cause, even for his cause, still this will be an extraneous foreign thing to thee? and to tell thee of his sufferings, will work no otherwise with thee than some other common story. And as in the day of peace thou regardest it no more, so in the day of thy trouble thou shalt receive no more comfort from it. Other things which you esteemed shall have no comfort to speak to you; though you pursue them with words (as Solomon says of the poor man's friends) yet they shall be wanting to you. And then you will surely find how happy it were to have this to turn you to, that the Lord Jesus suffered for sins, and for yours, and therefore hath made it a light and comfortable business to you to undergo momentary passing sufferings.

Days of trial will come; do you not see they are on us already? Be persuaded, therefore, to turn your eyes and desires more towards Christ. This is the thing we would still press; the support and happiness of your souls lie on it. But you will not believe it. Oh, that you knew the comforts and sweetness of Christ! Oh, that one would speak that knew more of them! Were you once but entered into this knowledge of him, and the virtue of his suf

• Enimvero non sentient sua, qui illius vulnera intuentur. Bern. Cant. Serm. 61.

• Prov. xix. 7.

ferings, you would account all your days but lost wherein yon have not known him; and in all times your hearts would find no refreshment like to the remembrance of his love.

Having somewhat considered these sufferings, as the apostle's argument for his present purpose, we

come now,

2dly, To take a nearer view of the particulars, by which he illustrates them, as the main point of our faith and comfort: of them here are two things, their cause and their kind.

1. Their cause; both their meriting cause and their final cause. What in us procured these sufferings unto Christ; and what those his sufferings procured unto us. Our guiltiness brought suffering upon him; and his suffering brings us unto God.

1st, For the meritorious cause, our guilt brought sufferings on Christ. The evil of sin hath the evil of punishment inseparably connected with it: We have a natural obligation of obedience unto God, and he justly urges it; so that where the command of his law is broke, the curse of it presently followeth. And though it was simply in the power of the Supreme Lawgiver to have dispensed with the infliction, yet having, in his wisdom, purposed to be known a just God in that way, following forth the tenor of his law, of necessity there must be a suffering for sin.

Thus, the angels that kept not their station, falling from it, fell into a dungeon, where they are, under chains of darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day; and man fell under the sentence of death. But in this is the difference betwixt man and them; they were not of one, as parent or common root of the rest, but each one fell or stood for himself alone, so a part of them only perished; but man fell altogether; so that not one of all the race could escape condemnation, unless some other way of satisfaction be found out. And here it is, Christ suffered for sins, the just for the unjust: Father, says he, I have glorified thee on earth. In this

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plot, indeed, do all the divine attributes shine in their full lustre; infinite mercy, and immense jus tice, and power, and wisdom. Looking on Christ as ordained for that purpose, I have found a ransom, says the Father; one fit to redeem man, a kinsman, one of that very same stock, the Son of man; one able to redeem man by satisfying me, and fulfilling all I lay upon him; my Son, my only begotten Son, in whom my soul delights: And he is willing, undertakes all, says, Lo I come, &c. We are agreed upon the way of this redemption; yea, upon the persons to be redeemed; it is not a roving blind bargain, a price paid for we know not whom. Hear his own words: Thou hast given the Son (says the Son to the Father) power over all flesh; that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him; and afterwards, all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them'.

For the sins of those he suffered, standing in their room; and what he did and suffered, according to the law of that covenant, was done and suffered by them. All the sins of all the elect were made up into an huge bundle, and bound upon his shoulders. So the Prophet speaks in their name; Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; and the Lord laid [or made to meet] on him the iniquity of us all, where he had spoken of many ways of sin, and said, we have turned every one to his own way; he binds up all in the word of iniquity as all one sin, as if it were that one transgression of the first Adam that brought on the curse of his seed, borne by the second Adam, to take it away from all that are his seed, that are in him as their root.

He is the great High Priest appearing before God with the names of the elect upon his shoulders; and in his heart bearing them and all their burdens, and offering for them, not any other sacrifice but himself; charging all their sin on himself, as the priest did the sins of the people on the head of the sacrifice. He,

Job xxxiii. 24.
f Verse 10.

d Psal. xl. 7.

e John xvii. 2.

g Isa. liii. 5.

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by the Eternal Spirit, says the Apostle, offered up himself without spot unto God, spotless and sinless"; and so he only is fit to take away our sin, being a satisfactory oblation for it. He suffered; in him was our ransom, and thus it was paid. In the man Christ was the Deity, and so his blood was, as the Apostle calls it, the blood of God; and, being pierced, it came forth, and was told down, as the rich price of our redemption; not silver nor gold, nor corruptible things, as our Apostle hath it before, but the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish.

You

Obs. 1. Shall any man offer to bear the name of a Christian, that pleases. himself in the way of sin? that can delight and sport himself with it, when he considers this, that Christ suffered for sin? Do not think it, you that still account sin sweet, which he found so bitter, and light, which was so heavy to him, and made his soul heavy to the death. are yet far off from him; if you were in him, and one with him, there would be some harmony of your hearts with his, and some sympathy with these sufferings, as endured by your Lord, your head, and for you. They that, with a right view, see him as pierced by their sins, that sight pierces them, and makes them mourn; brings forth tears, beholding the gushing forth of his blood. This makes the real Christian an avowed enemy to sin: shall I ever be friends with that, says he, which killed my Lord? No, but I will ever kill it, and do it by applying his death. The true penitent is sworn to be the death of sin: He may be surprised by it, but there is no possibility of reconcilement betwixt them.

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Thou that livest kindly and familiarly with sin, and either openly declarest thyself for it, or hast a secret love for it, where canst thou reap any comfort? None can flow from these sufferings to thee continuing in that posture. It is all one, as if Christ had not suffered for sins; yea, it is worse than if no such thing had been, that there is salvah Heb. ix. 14. i Acts xx. 28. VOL. II. F

k 1 Pet. i. 17.

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