pumice, and then trample upon them because they can get no more out of them; let any people, I say, as they shall like this, apply to some potent, overgrown prince, (whom the fools, his neighbours, shall have made so,) and I dare undertake, that upon a word speaking, they shall find him ready to be such a Messias to them at any time. And yet this was all that the Gentile world could gain by those magnificent promises of the Messiah, (as universal a blessing as the prophets had foretold he should be,) if the Jews' opinion concerning the nature of his kingdom over the rest of the world should take place. But since they judge such a kind of government so great a blessing to mankind, it is pity but they should have a large and lasting enjoyment of it themselves, and be made to feel what it is to be peeled and polled, fleeced and flayed, taxed and trod upon by the several governments they should happen to fall under; and so find the same usage from other princes which they had so liberally designed for them, under their supposed Messiah: as indeed, through the just judgment of God, they have in a great measure found ever since the crucifixion of Christ. ness, some of them have invented the gapor aquanov of two several Messiahs, Messiah Ben David, and Messiah Ben Joseph: one whereof was to be potent and victorious, the other low, afflicted, and at length killed. A bold unheard of fiction, and never known to the ancient Jewish church, till the modern rabbies began to dote and blaspheme at all adventures. But there is no shift so senseless and groundless which an obstinate adherence to a desperate cause will not drive the defenders of it to. It is clear, therefore, that all the pretences which the Jews have for the temporal reign and greatness of their Messiah, is sufficiently answered and cut off by these two considerations: for to argue with them farther from the spirituality of the Messiah's kingdom, as that the end of it was to abstract from all carnal, earthly, sensual enjoyments, as the certain hinderers of piety, and underminers of the Spirit, would be but a begging of the question, as to the Jews, who would contend as positively that this was not to be the intent of it. And besides, the truth is, their principles and temper are so hugely estranged from such considerations, that a man might as well read a lecture of music or astronomy to an ox or an ass, as go about to persuade them that their Messiah was only to plant his kingdom in men's, hearts, and by infusing into them the graces of humility, temperance, and heavenly-mindedness, to conquer their corruptions, and reign over their carnal affections, which they had a great deal rather should reign over them. And thus much for answer to their first exception. Second. The other supposition upon which I disprove the Messiah's being such a temporal prince, is the unquestionable truth of all the prophecies recorded of him in Scripture; many of which declare only his sufferings, his humility, his low despised estate; and so are utterly incompatible with such a princely condition. Those two, the first, Psalm xxii. the other in Isaiah, liii. are sufficient proofs of this. It is not to be denied, indeed, that several have attempted to make them have Secondly. I come now to shew the unreasonno respect at all to the Messiah; but still the ableness of the other, grounded upon a pretruth has been superior to all such attempts. tence, that Christ was a supplanter of the The Jewish rabbies for the most part under- authority of Moses, and an enemy to the law. stand them of the whole body of the people And here for answer to this, I grant that of Israel and * one we know amongst our Christ designed the abrogation of their cereChristian interpreters, (though it will be hard monial law, and yet for all this I affirm that to christen his interpretation,) who will needs Christ made good that word of his to the uthave this whole fifty-third chapter of Isaiah to most, "that he came not to destroy the law, relate only to the prophet Jeremy, in the first but to fulfil it." For we must know, that to and historical sense of it; little, certainly, to destroy a constitution, and to abrogate, or the service of Christianity, unless we can merely to put an end to it, are very different. think the properest way for confirming our To destroy a thing, is to cause it to cease from faith (especially against its mortal adversaries that use to which it is designed, and to which the Jews) be to strip it of the chief supports it ought to serve: but so did not Christ to the which the Old Testament affords it. But ceremonial law, the design of which was to every little fetch of wit and criticism must fore-signify and point at the Messiah who was not think to bear down the whole stream of to come. So that the Messiah being come, Christian, catholic interpreters, and much and having finished the work for which he less the apparent force and evidence of so came, the use of it continued no longer; for clear a prophecy. being only to relate to a thing future, when that thing was past, and so ceased to be future, the relation, surely, grounded upon that futurity, must needs cease also, In a word, if to fulfil a prophecy be to destroy it, then Christ, by abrogating the ceremonial law, may be said also to have destroyed it. A prophecy And therefore, to return to the rabbies themselves, the most learned of them, after all such fruitless attempts, understand those prophecies only of the Messiah: but then, being fond of his temporal reign and great* See more of this in the following discourse on Isaiah, liii. 8. VOL. I. fulfilled is no longer a prophecy, the very subject-matter of it being hereby took away; so a type is no longer a type, when the thing typified comes to be actually exhibited. But the Jews, who stripped all these things from any relation to a spiritual design, thought that their temple was to stand for ever, their circumcision and sabbaths to be perpetual, their new moons never to change, and the difference of meats and of clean and unclean beasts to be unalterable. For alas, poor ignorant wretches! all their religion (as they had made it) was only to hate hogs, and to butcher sheep and oxen; a religion which they might very well have practised, had they sacrificed to no other god than their belly. Having thus shewn the unreasonableness of the Jews' exceptions against Christ, I come now to The third and last thing, which is to shew, that they had great reason for the contraryhigh arguments to induce them to receive and embrace him for their Messias. It is not the business of an hour, nor of a day, to draw forth all those reasons which make for this purpose, and to urge them according to their full latitude and dignity; and, therefore, being to speak to those, who need not be convinced of that which they believe already, I shall mention but two, and those very briefly. failing upon the great sins of the Jews, the time of his coming has been accordingly deferred. But this answer signifies nothing: for the very design of the Messiah's coming, was to take away sins and be a propitiation for them, even according to their own rabbies' words and confession: and therefore it is ridiculous to make the Jews' sins the hinderances of his coming, when he made the atonement of sins the chief reason why he should come. In a word, if the Messiah was to come within such a certain period of time, (which time is long since expired,) and while the city and temple were yet standing, which shortly after Christ's coming were demolished; then either that Jesus was the Messiah, or let them shew some other about that time, to whom that title might better belong. 2. A second reason shall be taken from the whole course and tenor of Christ's behaviour amongst the Jews. Every miracle that he did was an act of mercy and charity, and designed to cure as well as to convince. "He went about doing good;" he conversed amongst them like a walking balsam, breathing health and recovery wheresoever he came. Shew me so much as one miracle ever wrought by him to make a man lame or blind, to incommode an enemy, or to revenge himself; or shew me any one done by him to serve an earthly interest. As for gain and gold, he renounced it. Poverty was his fee, and the only recompense of all his cures and had he not been sold till he sold himself, the high priests might have kept their thirty pieces of silver for a better use. Nor was fame and honour the bait that allured him: for he despised a kingship, and regarded not their hosannahs. He embraced a 66 cross," and declined "not the shame." And as for pleasure and softness of life, he was so far from the least approach to it, that "he had not where to lay his head," while the foxes of the world had very warm places where to lay theirs. He lived as well as wrought miracles, 1. The first shall be taken from this; that all the signs and marks of the Messias did most eminently appear in Christ: of all which signs I shall fix upon one as the most notable, which is the time of his coming. It was exactly when the sceptre, or government, was departed from Judah, according to that prophecy of Jacob and at the end of Daniel's weeks, at which time he foretold that the Messiah should come. Upon a consideration of which, one of their own rabbies, but fifty years before Christ, said, that it was impossible for the coming of the Messiah to be deferred beyond fifty years: a proportion of time vastly different from that of above sixteen hundred, and yet after this also they can-miracles of austerity, fasting, and praying, hear no news of such a Messiah as they expect. The same Daniel also affirms, that after the coming and cutting off of the Messiah, the city and the temple should be destroyed; as clear therefore as it is, that the city and temple are destroyed, so clear is it that their Messiah came before that destruction. From all which we may well insist upon that charge made against them by our Saviour, "Ye fools, ye can discern the face of the sky, and of the heavens, but how is it that ye do not discern this time?" A time as evident as if it were pointed out by a sunbeam upon a dial. And therefore the modern Jews being pinched with the force of this argument, fly to their old stale evasion, that the promise of the time of the Messiah's coming was not absolute but conditional; which condition long journeys, and coarse receptions; so that if we compare his doctrine with his example, his very precepts were dispensations and indulgences, in comparison of the rigours he imposed upon himself. Let the Jews, therefore, who shall except against Christ as an impostor, (as they all do,) declare what carnal or secular interest he drove at; and if not, what there is in the nature of man, that can prompt him to an endurance of all these hardships, to serve no temporal end or advantage whatsoever. For did ever any sober person toil and labour, and at length expose himself to a cruel death, only to make men believe that which he neither did nor could believe himself? And so by dying in and for a lie, must procure himself damnation in the next world, as well as de struction in this? But if, for all this, they will still make Christ a deceiver, they must introduce upon mankind new principles of acting, cancel and overturn the old acknowledged methods of nature; and, in a word, either affirm that Christ was not a man, or that he was influenced by ends and inclinations contrary to all the rest of mankind: one of which must unavoidably follow; but neither of them ought to be admitted, where sense or reason is so much as pretended to. And thus I have at length finished what I first proposed to be discoursed of from these words, "He came to his own, and his own received him not." In which, that men may not run themselves into a dangerous mistake, by thinking the Jews the only persons concerned in these words, and consequently that the guilt here charged upon them could affect none else, we must know, that although, upon the score of the natural cognation between Christ and the Jews, the text calls them by that appropriating character "his own," and accordingly speaks of his coming to them as such, yet that all the nations of the world, who have had the gospel preached unto them, are as really his own, as any of the race of Abraham could be, (if those may be called his own whom he had so dearly bought,) and consequently that we are as capable of having Christ come to us, as the Jews themselves were. And accordingly he actually has, and every day does come to us: not in the same manner, indeed, but to the same purpose; not in the form of a servant, but with the majesty of a Saviour: that is to say, he comes to us in his word, in his sacraments, and in all the benefits of his incarnation; and those exhibited to us with as much reality and effect, as if with our very eyes we beheld the person of our benefactor. And then, on the other hand, as we are altogether as capable of his coming to us, as his kindred and contemporaries the Jews themselves were; so are we likewise as capable of not receiving him, as those wretches were or could be. And, therefore, let no man flatter himself with reference to Christ, as the Jews, in much the like case, did with reference to the old prophets; boasting, forsooth, "that had they lived in the days of their fathers, they would have had no hand in the blood of those holy messengers of God," (Matt. xxiii. 30.) Let no vicious person, I say, though never so noted and professed a Christian, conclude from hence, that had he lived when and where our Saviourdid, nothing could have induced him to use him as those miscreants had done. For though I know that such men (as bad as they are) do with great confidence aver all this, and think themselves in very good earnest while they do so; yet as, in general, he who thinks he cannot deceive himself does not sufficiently know mself; so in this particular case, every hypo crite or wicked liver professing Christianity, while he thinks and speaks in this manner, is really imposing upon himself by a false persuasion; and would (though he may not know so much) have borne the very same malignity towards our Saviour, which those Jews are recorded to have done; and under the same circumstances, would have infallibly treated him with the same barbarity. For why did the Jews themselves use him so? Why? because the doctrines he preached to them were directly contrary to their lusts and corrupt affections, and defeated their expectations of a worldly Messias, who should have answered their sensual desires with the plenties and glories of such an earthly kingdom, as they had wholly set their gross hearts and souls upon. Accordingly, let us now but shift the scene, and suppose Christ in person preaching the same doctrines amongst us, and withal as much hated and run down for an impostor by the whole national power, civil and ecclesiastical, as it then fared with him amongst the Jews; and then no doubt we should see all such vicious persons, finding themselves pricked and galled with his severe precepts, quickly fall in with the stream of public vogue and authority, and as eagerly set for the taking away his life, as against reforming their own. To which we may farther add this, that our Saviour himself passes the very same estimate upon every such wicked professor of his gospel, which he then did upon the Jews themselves, in that his irrefragable expostulation with them, "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I command you?" (Luke, vi. 46,) implying thereby, that this was the greatest hostility and affront that men could possibly pass upon him. And no doubt but the Jews themselves, who avowedly rejected Christ, and his doctrine, out of an almost invincible prejudice infused into them by their teachers and rulers, concerning the utter inconsistency of both with the Mosaic constitution, were much more excusable before God, than any Christians can be, who, acknowledging the divine authority both of his person and his gospel, do yet reverse and contradict that in their lives and actions, which they avow in their creeds and solemn declarations. For he who prefers a base pleasure or profit before Christ, 66 spits in his face," as much as the Jews did; and he who debauches his immortal soul, and prostitutes it to the vile and low services of lust and sensuality, "crucifies his Saviour afresh, and puts him to as open a shame" as ever Pontius Pilate, the high priest, or those mercenary tools, the very soldiers themselves did. They do not indeed "pierce his side," but (what is worse) they strike a dagger into his heart. And now, if the passing of all these indignities upon one who came into the world only to save it, (and to redeem those very persons who used him so,) is not able to work upon our ingenuity, should not the consequences of it at least work upon our fears, and make us consider, whether, as we affect to sin like the Jews, it may not be our doom to suffer like the Jews too? To which purpose, let us but represent to ourselves the woful estate of Jerusalem, bleeding under the rage and rapine of the Roman armies; together with that face of horror and confusion which then sat upon that wretched people, when the casting off their Messias had turned their advocate into their judge, their Saviour into their enemy; and, by a long refusal of his mercy, made them ripe for the utmost executions of his justice. After which proceeding of the divine vengeance against such sinners, should it not (one would think) be both the interest and wisdom of the stoutest and most daring sinners in the world, forthwith to make peace with their Redeemer upon his own terms? and (as hard a lesson as it seems) to take his yoke upon their necks, rather than with the Jews to draw his blood upon their heads; especially since one of the two must and will assuredly be their case? for the methods of grace are fixed, and the measures stated; and as little allowance of mercy will be made to such Christians as reject Christ in his laws, as to those very Jews who nailed him to the cross. In fine, Christ comes to us in his ordinances, with life in one hand, and death in the other. To such as "receive him not," he brings the "abiding wrath of God," a present curse, and a future damnation; but " to as many as shall receive him," (according to the expression immediately after the text,)" he gives power to become the sons of God." That is, in other words, to be as happy, both in this world and the next, as infinite goodness acting by infinite wisdom can make them. To him, therefore, who alone can do such great things for those who serve him, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen. SERMON XXXIII. THE MESSIAH'S SUFFERINGS FOR THE SINS OF THE PEOPLE. PREACHED ON GOOD FRIDAY, AT CHRIST-CHURCH, OXON, BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY, MARCH 20, 1668. "For the transgression of my people was he stricken." ISAIAH, liii. 8. THIS great and eloquent prophet, the evangelist of the Jewish church, (as without any impropriety he may be called,) from ver. 13 of the foregoing chapter to the end of this, seems wrapt up with the contemplation of a great person under strange and unusual afflictions, whose character, with all the heights of rhetoric which the genius of grief and prophecy together could raise him to, he here sets himself with full purpose to describe. In all which description there is no one passage which does not speak something extraordinary and supernatural of the person described, and withal represent the describer of it in the highest degree of ecstasy and rapture; so that nothing could transcend the height of the expression but the sublimity of its subject. For still it fastens upon him the marks and tokens of something more than a man, indeed more than a creature: ascribing actions to him which surmount any created power, and so visibly, upon all principles of reason, above the strength and reach of the strongest arm of flesh, that if the person here spoken of be but a man, I am sure it requires the wit of more than a man to make sense of the prophecy. Who that great person therefore was, here so magnificently set forth by the prophet, is the thing now to be inquired into. In which inquiry we shall find several opinions, and every one of them pretending to give the right interpretation of the place. I shall reduce them all to these two, First, the opinion of the ancient; Secondly, the opinion of some later interpreters. First, as for the ancient interpreters, I may boldly and truly say, that it was the general sense of all the old Jewish rabbies, that the person intended in this prophecy was the Messias. Take the affirmation of Rabbi Alschech, in his comment upon this prophecy, "Rabbini nostri beatæ memoriæ uno ore statuunt juxta receptam traditionem hic de rege Messia sermonem esse." And though their opinion of the temporal greatness of their Messias might (if any thing) tempt them to draw this prophecy another way, (since it declares the low, abject, and oppressed condition of the person here treated of,) yet, to shew that a suffering Messias was no such paradox in the divinity of the ancient Jewish rabbies, it was a constant received speech among them, that, dividing all the afflictions of the people of God into three parts, one third was to fall upon the Messias. And as for the doctors and fathers of the Christian church, they do all, with one unanimous breath, declare this to be a prophecy of the Messias, and this Messias to be Jesus Christ. And so full are they to this purpose, that Esaias, upon the account of this prophecy, is styled by some of them evangelista, and Paulus propheticus. Nor was ever the least intimation given of any other sense of it, till, a little before this last century, a new Chris tianity has endeavoured to get footing in the Christian world. Second. The other opinion is of the later interpreters, amongst which I account the Jewish, that is, such as have wrote after a thousand years since Christ's time; whose opinion in this matter will be found to have this eminent property of falsity, that it is very various. For having departed from the old received interpretation, they are no ways agreed what they shall substitute in the room of it. Some will have the subject of this prophecy to have been the people of Israel. Some indefinitely any just or righteous person. Some affirm it to have been Josiah; and one among the rest will needs have the person here spoken of to have been the prophet Jeremy. The authors of each of which opinions give us such insipid stories upon this chapter, as are fitter to be ushered in with the grave and solemn preface of " once upon a time," than to be accounted interpretations of the word of God. He who contends for the prophet Jeremy is one Rabbi Saadias Haggaon, and he stands alone, not being countenanced by any of his Jewish brethren, till one in the Christian church thought fit to be his second, and out of his zeal, forsooth, to the Christian faith, to wrest one of the strongest arguments out of the hands of the Christian church, which it has fought with against Judaism ever since it was a church. And thus much I shall with confidence (because with evidence) affirm, that if such prophecies may be proved to have had their first and literal completion in the person of any besides Jesus of Nazareth, all arguments proving them to belong to him at a second hand, and by accommodation, as the word is, are but vain and precarious to the Jews, who will, and indeed upon his hypothesis may reject them, as easily as we can allege them, and then convince him who can. But how can this prophecy be made to agree to Jeremy? With what truth or propriety could he be said to have been "exalted and extolled, and to have been very high; to have been stricken for our transgressions; and to have had the iniquity of us all laid upon him?" How could it be said of him, "Who shall declare his generation?" and that he "should see his seed, and prolong his days?" and also, that he "should divide the spoil with the mighty?" with the like expressions. Why, yes, says our expositor, "he was exalted, and very high," because the Chaldeans had him in admiration, which is yet more than we read of, and thanks to a good invention for it: though it must be confessed, that, upon his being drawn out of the dungeon, he was something "higher and more exalted" than he was before. In the next place," he was stricken for transgression, and our iniquities laid upon him," because by the sin and injurious dealing of the Jews he was cruelly and unworthily used, as indeed all or most of the prophets were, both before and after him. And then for that saying, "Who shall declare his generation ?" The meaning of that, we are told, is, who shall reckon his years; for he shall live to be very aged; though yet we know no more of his age, but that he prophesied about forty years; whereas some others have prophesied much longer, particularly Hosea, who prophesied about fourscore. As for the other expression of his "seeing his seed, and prolonging his days," that we are taught must signify, that he should see many of his converts in Egypt, where he should live for a long time. Though yet we read not of any one of those converts, nor of any such prolonging his days there, but that it is a constant tradition of antiquity that he died an untimely disastrous death, being knocked on the head in Egypt by his wicked countrymen with a fuller's club. And in the last place, for "his dividing the spoil with the mighty;" that, we are informed, was fulfilled in this, that Nebuzaradan, captain of the Chaldean host, as we find it in Jeremy, xl. 5, gave him a reward and some victuals, (that is to say, a small supply or modicum of meat and money for his present support,) and so sent him away. A worthy, glorious dividing of the spoil indeed, and much after the same rate that the poor may be said to divide the spoil, when they take their shares of what is given them at the rich men's doors. So then we have here an interpretation, but as for the sense of it, that, for aught I see, must shift for itself. But whether thus to drag and hale words both from sense and context, and then to squeeze whatsoever meaning we please out of them, be not (as I may speak with some change of the prophet's phrase) to draw lies with cords of blasphemy, and nonsense as it were with a cart rope, let any sober or impartial hearer or reader be judge. For whatsoever titles the itch of novelty and Socinianism has thought fit to dignify such immortal, incomparable, incomprehensible interpreters with, yet if these interpretations ought to take place, the said prophecies (which all before* Grotius and the *Having had the opportunity and happiness of a frequent converse with Dr Pocock, (the late Hebrew and Arabic professor to the University of Oxon, and the greatest master, certainly, of the Eastern languages and learning, which this or any other age or nation has bred,) I asked him (more than once, as I had occasion) what he thought of Grotius's exposition of Isaiah, liii. and his application of that prophecy, in the first sense and design of it to the person of the prophet Jeremy? To which, smiling, and shaking his head, he answered, Why, what else can be thought or said of it, but that in this the opiniator overruled the annotator, and the man had a mind to indulge his fancy? This account gave that great man of it, though he was as great in modesty as he was in learning, (greater than which none could be,) and withal, had a particular respect |