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aforesaid Rabbi Saadias unanimously fixed, in the first sense of them, upon the sole person of the Messiah) might have been actually fulfilled, and consequently the veracity of God in the said prophecies strictly accounted for, though Jesus of Nazareth had never been born. Which being so, would any one have thought, that the author of the book "De Veritate Religionis Christianæ, et de Satisfactione Christi," could be also the author of such interpretations as these? No age certainly ever produced a mightier man in all sorts of learning than Grotius, nor more happily furnished with all sorts of arms, both offensive and defensive, for the vindication of the Christian faith, had he not in his annotations too frequently turned the edge of them the wrong way.

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Well, therefore, taking it for manifest, and that upon all the grounds of rational and unforced interpretation, that the person here spoken of was the Messias, and that this Messias could be no other than Jesus of Nazareth, the great mediator of the second covenant, very God, and very man," in whom every tittle of this prophecy is most exactly verified, and to whom it does most peculiarly and incommunicably agree; we shall proceed now to take an account of the several parts of the text, in which we have these three things considerable,

First, The suffering itself, "he was stricken." Secondly, The nature of the suffering, which was penal and expiatory, "he was stricken for transgression ;" and,

Thirdly, The ground and cause of this suffering, which was God's propriety in, and relation to, the persons for whom Christ was stricken, implied in this word, "my people: for the transgression of my people was he

stricken."

Of each of which in their order; and, First, For the suffering itself, "he was stricken." The very word imports violence and invasion from without. It was not a suffering upon the stock of the mere internal weaknesses of nature, which carries the seeds and causes of its dissolution in its own bowels, and so by degrees withers and decays, and at length dies, like a lamp that, for want of oil, can burn no longer; but, like a torch, in its full flame, beat and ruffled, and at length blown out by the breath of a north wind; so was Christ dealt with in the very prime for Grotius, as having been personally acquainted with him. But the truth is, the matter lay deeper than so; for there was a certain party of men whom Grotius had unhappily engaged himself with, who were extremely disgusted at the book De Satisfactione Christi, written by him against Socinus; and there

and vigour of his years, being by main force torn and stricken out of the world. Blows did the work of time, and stripes and spears were, instead of age, to put a period to his afflicted life. Now, the greatness of this suffering will be made out to us upon these three accounts,

First, Upon the account of the latitude and extent of it.

Secondly, Of the intenseness and sharpness of it; and,

Thirdly, Of the person inflicting it.

First, As for the latitude or extent of it. The blow reached every part of his humanity, carrying the grief all over, till, by an universal diffusion of itself, it entered, according to the Psalmist's expression, "like water into his bowels, or like oil into his bones." It spread itself into every part of his body, as if it had been another soul. Nothing was free from suffering that could suffer. Suffering seemed to be his portion, his inheritance, nay, his very property. Even the religion that he came to propagate and establish was a suffering religion, and by the severest method of establishment, he gave the first and the greatest instance of it in himself. He who would recount every part of Christ that suffered, must read a lecture of anatomy. "From the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, there was nothing" but the traces of pain and suffering: "they made long furrows upon his back," says the Psalmist; they did, as it were, tear and plough up his innocent body. In his person we might have seen grief in its height and supremacy-grief triumphant, crowned, and arrayed in purple-grief reigning, and doing the utmost that it was able. It is a subject too well known, and too frequently discoursed of, to make descriptions of the thorns, the spears, and the nails, that acted their several parts in this tragedy; and that so, that the very narrative of our Saviour's passion cannot but beget another in every pious hearer of it. But when we have said the utmost of his bodily sufferings, we still know that nature has provided a support able to make and stand up against all these for the strength and firmness of a resolved mind will bear a man above his infirmity, as the breath bears up the body from sinking; but when the supporter itself fails, when the primum vivens, and the ultimum moriens, has had a mortal blow, and the iron enters into the very soul, then baffled nature must surrender, and quit the combat, unless seconded and held up by something greater and mightier than itself. And this was our Saviour's condition. There was a sword which reached his very

fore, he was to pacify (or rather satisfy) these men, by turning spirit, and pierced his soul, till it bled through

his pen another way in his Annotations, which also was the true reason that he never answered Crellius; a shrewd argument, no doubt, to such as shall well consider these matters, that those in the Low Countries, who, at that time, went by the name of Remonstrants and Arminians, were indeed a great deal more.

his body; for they were the struggles and agonies of the inward man, the labours and strivings of his restless thoughts, which cast his body into that prodigious sweat. For

though it was the flesh that sweated, it was the spirit that took the pains. It was that which was then treading the wine-press of God's wrath alone, till it made him red in his apparel, and dyed all his garments with blood. What thought can reach, or tongue express, what our Saviour then felt within his own breast! The image of all the sins of the world, for which he was to suffer, then appeared clear and lively, and express to his mind. All the vile and horrid circumstances of them stood, as it were, particularly ranged before his eyes in all their dismal colours. He saw how much the honour of the great God was abused by them, and how many millions of poor souls they must inevitably have cast under the pressures of a wrath infinite and intolerable, should he not have turned the blow upon himself. The horror of which then filled and amazed his vast apprehensive soul, and those apprehensions could not but affect his tender heart, then brimful of the highest zeal for God's glory, and the most relenting compassion for the souls of men, till it fermented and boiled over with transport and agony, and even forced its way through all his body in those strange ebullitions of blood, not to be paralleled by the sufferings of any person recorded in any history whatsoever. It was this which drew those doleful words from him, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful," &c. ПsgiAUTÓS ÉCTIV ʼn Yux mov. It was surrounded, and, as it were, besieged with an army of sorrows. And, believe it, his soul was too big and of too strong a make to bend under an ordinary sorrow. It was not any of those little things which make us put the finger in the eye, as loss of estate, friends, preferment, interest, and the like, things too mean to raise a tumult in the breast of a resolved stoic, and much less in his, who both placed and preached happiness, not only in the want, but in the very defiance of them.

And now, after this his agony in the garden, I need not much insist upon the wounds given his reputation by the sword of a blaspheming tongue, the sharpest of all others, and which, like a poisoned dagger, hurting both with edge and venom too, at the same time both makes a wound and prevents its cure. Even a guilty person feels the sting of a malicious report; and if so, much more must one who is innocent, and yet infinitely more must he, who was not only innocent, but innocence itself. Reputation is tender, and for it to be blown upon is to be tainted; like a glass, the clearer and finer it is, the more it suffers by the least breath. And therefore, for him, who came to destroy the kingdom of Satan, to be traduced as a partner with, and an agent for, Beelzebub -for him, whose greatest repasts were prayer and abstinence, and the most rigid severities upon himself, to be taxed as a wine-bibber and a good fellow - for him, who came into

the world both in life and death to bear witness to the truth, to suffer as an impostor and a deceiver, what could be more grievous and afflicting to a great innocence, joined with as great an apprehension !

However, his church gains this great advantage of comfort by it, that the worst of sufferings comes sanctified to our hands by the person of our grand example, who was reviled and slandered, and tossed upon the tongues of men before us. A greater martyrdom, questionless, than to be cast, as the primitive Christians were, to the mouths of lions, which are tender and merciful compared to the mouths of men; whether we look upon that bitter spirit which acted in those Jews, or in some Christians now-a-days worse than Jews; men, who seem to have outdone all before them in the arts of a more refined malice and improved calumny. Qualities lately sprung up out of the stock of a spreading atheism, and a domineering, reigning, sensuality; sins now made national and authentic, and so much both judgment and mercy-proof, that it is well if we can be cured without being cut off. But to return to the business before us. We have now seen the first thing setting forth the greatness of this suffering; to wit, the latitude and extent of it, as that it seized both body and soul, and every part and faculty of both.

Secondly. The next thing declaring its greatness was the intenseness and sharpness of it. We have seen already how far it went, we are now to consider how deep. It fell not on him like a dew or mist, which only wets the surface of the ground, but like a pouring, soaking rain, which descends into the very bowels of it. There was pain enough in every single part to have been spread in lesser proportions over the whole man. Christ suffered only the exquisiteness and heights of pain, without any of those mitigations which God is pleased to temper and allay it with as it befalls other men; like a man who drinks only the spirits of a liquor separated and extracted from the dull, inactive body of the liquor itself. All the force and activity, the stings and fierceness of that troublesome thing were, as it were, drained and distilled, and abridged into that cup which Christ drank of. There was something sharper than vinegar, and bitterer than gall, which that draught was prepared and made up with. We cannot indeed say, that the sufferings of Christ were long in duration; for to be violent and lasting too is above the methods or measures of nature. But he who lived at that rate, that he might be said to live an age every hour, was able to suffer so too; and to comprise the greatest torments in the shortest space, which yet, by their shortness, lost nothing of their force and keenness; as a penknife is as sharp as a spear, though not so long. That which promotes and adds to the impressions of pain, is the

delicate and exact crasis and constitution of the part or faculty aggrieved. And there is no doubt but the very fabric and complexion of our Saviour's body was a master-piece of nature, a thing absolutely and exactly framed, and of that fineness as to have the quickest and most sensible touches of every object; and withal, to have these advanced by the communion of his admirable made body, with his high and vigorous intellectuals. All which made him drink in pain more deeply, feel every lash, every wound, with so much a closer and a more affecting sense. For it is not to be doubted but a dull fellow can endure the paroxysms of a fever, or the torments of the gout or stone, much better than a man of a quick mind and an exalted fancy; because in one pain beats upon a rock or an anvil, in the other, it prints itself upon wax. One is even born with a kind of lethargy and stupefaction into the world, armed with an iron body and a leaden soul against all the apprehensions of ordinary sorrow, so that there is need of some pain to awaken such an one, and to convince him that he is alive; but our Saviour, who had an understanding too quick to let any thing that was intelligible escape it, took in the dolorous afflicting object in its full dimensions. He saw the utmost evil of every one of those strokes, which the guilt of our sins inflicted on him; and what his eye saw, his heart proportionably felt for surely they must needs have been inconceivably afflicting, in the actual endurance, which were so dreadful in their very approach, that the horror of them put the man of God's right hand, the man made strong for that very purpose, to start back, and decline the blow, could the avoidance of it have stood with the decrees of Heaven. 66 Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;" which yet was not the voice of cowardice, but of human naturenature which, by its first and most essential principle, would have saved itself, might it have consisted with the saving of the world.

Thirdly. The third thing setting forth the greatness of this suffering, is the cause and author of it, which was God himself. The measure of every passion is the operation of the agent. And then we know what omnipotence can do; omnipotence employed, or rather inflamed by justice, in whose quarrel it was then engaged. We must not measure the divine strokes by the proportion of those blows which are inflicted by the greatest and most exasperated mortal; the condition of whose nature sets bounds to his power, when it cannot to his rage: so that, in the utmost executions of it, he acts but like a wasp, very angrily indeed, but very weakly. Every blow inflicted by the fiercest tyrant can reach no farther than the body; and the body is but the dwelling-place, not any part of the soul; and consequently can no more communicate

its ruins to that, than a man can be said to be wounded in his person because a wall of his house was broken down. Upon which account there have been some, whose souls have been so fortified with philosophy and great principles, as to enable them to laugh in Phalaris's bull, to sing upon the rack, and to despise the flames. For still, when God torments us by the instrumental mediation of the creature, his anger can fall upon us in no greater proportions than what can pass through the narrow capacities of a created being. For be the fountain never so full, yet if it communicates itself by a little pipe, the stream can be but small and inconsiderable, and equal to the measures of the conveyance. God can no more give his "power," than his "glory to another;" there is no mortal arm can draw his bow: God cannot thunder or lighten by proxy. He alone is the "Father of spirits ;" and none can reach the conscience but he who made it; and therefore, being to discharge the utmost of his vindictive justice upon the sins of mankind. then charged upon our Saviour, he took the sword into his own hand, entered the lists, and dealt with him immediately by himself. And then we find the difference of our Saviour's suffering by the difference of his behaviour. While he was buffeted, scourged, and nailed to the cross, we hear nothing from him; but, "like a lamb before the shearers, he was dumb:" not because he could not, but because he scorned to roar under the impressions of a finite anger. But when God reached forth his hand, and darted his immediate rebukes into his very soul and spirit, (as he did while he was hanging upon the cross,) then he cries out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Silence upon such a loss would have been but stupidity, and patience an absurdity; for when God withdrew his presence from him, that darkness which then covered the face of the whole earth was but a faint emblem of that blacker cloud of despair which had overcast his soul. It is not possible for us to conceive the utmost weight of those heavy strokes inflicted by the Almighty himself upon our Saviour. All the representations and little draughts of them made by words and fancy, are vastly short of the keen impressions of sense. But yet that which gives us the nearest resemblance of them, surely, is the torment of a guilty mind under a state of desertion; when God shall turn the worm of conscience into a scorpion, and smite it with the secret invisible stíngs of his wrath, such as shall fester and rage inwardly, gnaw and rake the very entrails of the soul. The burden and anguish of this has been sometimes so insupportable, that some have professed themselves to envy the condition of Judas and the damned spirits, as thinking the endurance of those flames more tolerable than the expecta

tion, and accordingly have done violence to their own lives, and so fled to hell as to a sanctuary, and chose damnation as a release. Far were such persons, God knows, from bettering their condition by completing that which they could not bear in the very beginnings and foretastes of it; yet, however, it demonstrates to us the unspeakable wretchedness of a guilty soul labouring under the hand of God. And by the way, let the boldest, the hardiest, and the securest sinner know, that God is able, without ever touching him either in his estate, his health, his reputation, or any other outward enjoyment dear to him, but merely by letting a few drops of his wrath fall upon his guilty conscience, so to scald and gall him with the lively sense of sin, that he shall live a continual terror to himself, carry about him a hell in his own breast, which shall echo to him such peals of vengeance every hour, that all the wine and music, all the honours and greatness of the world, shall not be able to minister the least ease to his heartsick and desponding soul. Now in these torments of a guilty conscience we have some little image of the pains then suffered by our Saviour, the greatness of both being founded upon the same reason, namely, that God is the sole and immediate inflicter of such strokes ; and then surely the suffering must needs be grievous, when infinite justice passes sentence, and infinite power does execution.

And thus I have finished the first general thing proposed from the text, which was the suffering itself, expressed in these words, "he was stricken," and that by considering the latitude, the intenseness, and also the cause of it: all of them so many arguments to demonstrate to us its unparalleled greatness.

2. The second general thing proposed was the nature and quality of this suffering; namely, that it was penal and expiatory; "he was stricken for transgression." And to prove that it was penal, there needs no other argument to any clear, unbiassed understanding, than the natural, genuine, and unconstrained use of the word: for what other sense can there be of a man's being stricken or suffering for sin, but his being punished for sin? And that I am sure is spoke so plain and loud by the universal voice of the whole book of God, that Scripture must be crucified, as well as Christ, to give any other tolerable sense of it. But since heresy has made such bold invasions upon those sacred writings, we will consider both those senses which these words are asserted to be capable of.

1. First of all, then, some assert, that to be "stricken for transgression" imports not here a punishment for sins past, but a prevention or taking away of sin for the future. So that Christ is said to be stricken, to suffer, and to die for sin, because by all this he confirmed to us an excellent and holy doctrine, the belief

of which has in it a natural aptness to draw men off from their sins. In a word, because Christianity tends to make men holy, and cease from sin, and because Christ by his blood sealed the truth of Christianity, therefore is he said to die for sin; a strange and remote deduction, and such an one as the common rules and use of speaking would never have suggested. But then, besides, because it is easy to come upon the authors of this perverse interpretation, by demanding of them, what fitness there could be in Christ's death to confirm his doctrine? And what reason the world could have to believe Christianity true, because the author of it, a pious, innocent, excellent person, was basely and cruelly put to death? Therefore they farther say, that this effect of its confirmation is really and indeed to be ascribed to his subsequent resurrection, though only his death be still mentioned; that being the most difficult and heroic passage of all, that he either did or suffered for our sakes, and consequently the greatest instance of his patience, and persuasion of the truth of that doctrine for which he suffered. But by their favour, if Christ is said no otherwise to die for sin, than because he delivered a doctrine, the design of which was to draw men off from sin, and which was confirmed to be true only by his resurrection : how comes it to pass that this effect is still joined with his death, but never with his resurrection? It being said over and over, that he died for sin, suffered and bled for sin, but never that he rose again for sin. It is indeed said once, that "he rose again for our justification;" but in the very foregoing words it is said, that "he was delivered to death for our offences:" which shews that those words, "for offences," and "for our justification," have there a very different sense, and bear a different relation to the words with which they are joined, in that as well as in the other scriptures. But this whole invention is so forced and far-fetched, and so much out of the road of common reason, that it is impossible it should gain but by the strengths and prepossessions of prejudice; and where prejudice stands for judgment, for ought I see, it is as vain to urge arguments as to quote scriptures.

2. The other sense of these words, and which alone the catholic church receives for true, is, that Christ's being "stricken for sin," signifies his being punished for sin; the word "for" in this case denoting the antecedent meritorious cause of his suffering, and not the final, as the school of Socinus does assert; and consequently must directly relate to the removal of the guilt of sin, and not the power, as is also affirmed by the same persons. Now that Christ's suffering and being "stricken for transgression," imports that suffering to have been penal and expiatory, as it might with the highest evidence be demonstrated from several

scriptures, so at this time I shall confine myself within the limits of the chapter from whence I took my text; and here I shall found the proof of it upon these two expressions,

there is no doubt but had Christ had any sin of his own to have satisfied for, he had been very unable to satisfy for other men's. He who is going to jail for his own debts, is very unfit to be a security for another's.

But now this perfect innocence, which I affirm necessary to render Christ a fit and proper sacrifice, is urged by our adversaries to be the very reason why Christ's sufferings could not be penal, since punishment, in the very nature and essence of it, imports a relation to sin. To this I answer, that punishment does indeed import an essential relation to sin, but not of necessity to the sin of the person upon whom it is inflicted; as might be evinced by innumerable instances, as well as undeniable reasons.

If it be replied, that God has declared "that the soul that sins shall die ;"

I answer, that this is only a positive law, according to which God declares he will proceed in the ordinary course of his providence ; but it is not of natural and eternal obligation, so as universally to bind God in all cases; but that he may, when he pleases, deal otherwise with his creature. But this will receive farther light from the discussion of the third and last general head, to which we now proceed. Namely,

First, That Christ is said to have "borne our sins," in the 12th verse. Now, " to bear sin" is a Hebrew phrase for that which in Latin is luere peccatum, and in English to " be punished for sin." And if to bear another man's sin or iniquity by suffering, does not imply the undergoing of the punishment due to that man's sin; we must invent a new way of expounding profane writers as well as sacred, and of interpreting the common speeches of men, as well as the word of God. Secondly, The other argument shall be taken from that expression which declares Christ to have been made a sacrifice or an "offering for sin," in the 10th verse, "When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin." The proof of what I here affirm is grounded upon the use and design of a sacrifice, as it has been used by all nations in the world, which was to appease the Deity by paying down a life for sin, and that by the substitution of a sacrifice, whether of man or beast, to die and pay down his life instead of the sinner. For there was a tacit acknowledgment universally fixed in the hearts of all mankind, 3. The ground and cause of this suffering, that "the wages of sin was death," and which was God's propriety in, and relation to that "without shedding of blood there could the persons for whom Christ suffered, specified be no remission;" upon which was built in these words, "my people for the transthe reason of all their sacrifices and vic-gression of my people was he stricken." tims. So surely, therefore, as Christ was a sacrifice, and as the design of a sacrifice is to pay down a life for sin, and as to pay down a life for sin is to be punished for sin; so sure it is that Christ's death and sufferings were penal. Now it being clear that the foundation of all punishment is compensation or exchange, that is to say, something paid down to divine justice for something done against it; and since all compensation implies a retribution equivalent to the injury done, therefore, that Christ might be qualified to be a sacrifice fit to undergo the full punishment due for the sins of mankind, two things were required.

1. An infinite dignity in his person; for since the evil and demerit of sin was infinite, and since Christ was so to suffer for it, as not to remain under those sufferings for an infinite duration, that infinity therefore was to be made up some other way; which could not be, but by the infinite worth and dignity of his person, grasping in all the perfections and glories of the Deity, and by consequence deriving an infinite value to his sufferings.

2. The other qualification required was a perfect innocence in the person to suffer; for so much was specified by the paschal lamb, of which we still read in Scripture, "that it was to be a lamb without blemish." And

If it be here asked, upon what account the persons here spoken of were denominated and made God's people? I answer, that they were so by an eternal covenant and transaction between the Father and the Son; by which the Father, upon certain conditions to be performed by the Son, consigned over some persons to him to be "his people." For our better understanding of which we are to observe, that the business of man's redemption proceeds upon a twofold covenant.

First, An eternal covenant made between the Father and the Son, by which the Father agreed to give both grace and glory to a certain number of sinners, upon condition that Christ would assume their nature, and pay down such a ransom to his justice, as should both satisfy for their sin, and withal merit such a measure of grace as should effectually work in them all things necessary to their salvation. And this covenant may be properly called a covenant of suretyship or redemption. Upon which alone, and not upon any covenant made between God and men in their own persons, is built the infallibility of the future believing, repenting, and finally persevering of such as Christ from all eternity undertook to make his people.

Secondly. The other is a covenant made in time, and actually entered into by God and

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