also this is the Voice of Truth And then as we shewed before that all the good Things that we do or can enjoy did proceed purely and meerly from God's Good-will so I do now add that our Sins do naturally turn that Good-will into Displeasure and then the Good-will ceasing all those Emanations that flowed from it must in course cease also And then because where they cease there the Sinner's Punishment does begin therefore we may now from the Whole begin to perceive that the Punishment of Sin is not so arbitrarious a thing as it is usually taken to be but that it does when traced to the beginning depend upon the same Necessity by which God loves himself For if we sum up all our Discourse upon this Head from the beginning we shall understand That God loves himself That he is in his own Nature Holy That therefore he hates whatsoever is contrary to such his Nature That all Sin therefore is so because it is contrary to his Holiness That the Effects of his Hatred must be contrary to those of his Love or at the very best That the Emanations of his Love must then be stopped when that Love is turned into Hatred and Displeasure That when his Creatures lose those Emanations then their Misery begins That all those Creatures must needs lose them that lose that Love from whence alone they do proceed and That they lose that Love by their Sins because as we said before Sin and Sin alone does turn it into Hatred and Displeasure So that if we may be allowd so to speak in Morality there is an essential Relation between Sin and Punishment and the Necessity of Punishment when narrowly scann'd is founded upon the eternal and immutable Laws of Truth Holiness and Justice But before we leave this Head I would if that be possible make all a little plainer by an Instance And that Instance shall be in that Punishment which the first Sin brought upon the whole Race of Mankind And I do the rather take my Instance there because the Law was given and broken and so the Penalty both threatned and incurred when there was no Saviour to remit the rigorous but just Execution of such Penalty Now we are assured by the Reason of the Thing it-self as we have already discoursed But if that will not do we are assured by God's Word by his Promise by his Oath that he neither wills nor delights in the death of a Sinner And when he swears so to us it would be both proper and modest in us to believe that there is something in Sin which does oblige God in Justice and that is the same thing with God as to be obliged by Necessity to punish it with Death And to this purpose we may take notice that it is derogatory to God's Honour for us to resolve any Punishment which we suffer into God's Will only and not into his Justice Because as we shall presently perceive when God wills the Death of a Sinner he therefore only wills it because Justice does require it and that in the Nature of the Thing antecedently to such his Will For if the Death of a Man should be therefore just only because God wills it tho' the Man do not deserve it then it may be all one as to the Event and that justly too whether a Man were perfectly innocent or the most profligate Miscreant upon the Face of the Earth For according to that Doctrine which we now oppose God might in such a Case justly will the Death of the Innocent and save the Criminal alive For if the ultimate Resolution of the Justice of our Death be only into the Will of God then nothing can hinder but that God may justly slay a perfect Innocent And so when God told Adam that in the day of his Transgression he should surely die the Meaning of his Threat must have been that he might have died whether he had transgressed or not But because we cannot without Blasphemy tax God's Law of such notorious Prevarication therefore we must determine that the ultimate Resolution of Adam's Punishment in such Case must be into the Desert of such Punishment by the Breach of the Law and that God's willing his Death was a just Consequent of such his Desert In short God wills such things only which he can will justly and he who will rationally and truly account for the Proceedings of God in that and such like Cases must have a care to do it so as to maintain the Harmony of all his Attributes He must not magnifie his Power no nor his Mercy so as to impeach his Truth Wisdom and Justice For he who confounds the Events of Innocence and Guilt will be found when his Opinion comes narrowly to be scanned to make God either a Favourer of Sin or an Enemy of Righteousness The Sum of all is That when God tells us that Death is the Wages of Sin he does not therefore pass it into a Law because it pleases him so to do but because it is just in it-self that he should do so And that if it had not been just in it-self he had not upon that single Account willed it at all So that upon the whole it does remain a fixed and setled Truth That Death is the Wages of Sin by the eternal and immutable Laws of Iustice and that it cannot be otherwise so long as God loves himself and so hates whatsoever is contrary to himself and to his Nature as all Sin most undoubtedly is And therefore when any Man sins against God as by so doing he does of necessity forfeit God's Favour so also by consequence he does by necessity forfeit his own Life which has nothing else to depend upon but that Favour alone And as a Temporal Death upon Sin is necessary because both threatned and incurred before the Promise of a Saviour so after the Saviour has laid down his Mediatorial Office an Eternal Death will be found to be so too I word it so lest my Caution before this Head should by this time be forgot Now if it be not an Eternal Law of Justice that Punishment is the necessary Reward of Sin then it may be all one as to the Event and that justly and finally too whether a Man depart this Life the best or the worst Man in the whole World For if there be not some Law of Justice that shall at the last Day distinguish the Event of their contrary Courses then nothing can And if that Justice be not necessary let the Means by which it is not so be what they will the Difference between their Condition can be but casual or at the very best but arbitrary and so we must leave them both to a grand Perhaps which will be in effect to destroy all Religion and Justice There is one thing against this Discourse of weight and moment which tho' I shall professedly answer in another Place yet shall not go unmentioned here And that is That
World is restored to that Holiness which was lost by the Transgression of the Law and because no Man shall be compleatly and actually justified till he be so restored 2. Because the Expiation of our Sin by our Saviour and by consequence the Pardon of Sin by God is not Absolute but Conditional and because some of those Conditions upon which such Pardon does depend are to be performed by us such are our Repentance Conversion and the like and because lastly our Condition in this World is such that there will of necessity be required Time for our Performance of such Conditions Therefore we do conclude that as our Saviour has purchased for us such Conditions in order to our Redemption so has he also purchased for us a longer Term in which we may perform such Conditions For it is evident that the Denunciation of the Law upon the Transgression of it is In the Day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die And in strict Justice and Reason the Punishment is then to be inflicted when it becomes due and it then becomes due so soon as the Law is broken For were it not due then it would never become due at all Now because we find and that too by Experience that notwithstanding not only Adam's Sin but our own Sins too we do not presently die but that God waits our Return that he may be gracious to us and because we know that such his Patience and Forbearance is therefore extended to us that we may by our Repentance qualifie our selves to be made Partakers of that Expiation which is made by our Saviour for there is not Salvation in any other therefore we do at last conclude that the Grant of a Space for Repentance is the Purchase of our Saviour For it would have been the same thing for our Saviour to have made no Purchase for us at all if such his Purchase had been clogged with such Conditions on our Part which it was utterly impossible for us to perform And it had been utterly impossible for us to make out our Repentance and Amendment if we had not been allowed a competent Time to make them out in And what we have said concerning God's allowing of a competent Time in which Sinners may perform the Conditions of the Covenant purchased by the Saviour that we say also concerning the Means which are necessary for such their Performance Such are his Word the Succours and Assistance of his Spirit his Sacraments and whatever else does usually come under the Title of Means of Grace For it is not conceivable that our Saviour should purchase for us the End and yet leave us without the Means which are necessary for the bringing about such End But yet because the Means to enable us to perform the Conditions required of us in order to our Salvation are not nor indeed can possibly be that very Salvation for which they are designed or employed as means and because while we live in this World we are required and it is necessary in it self that we always have and also employ such Means to the purpose of our Justification and lastly because it is so far from being necessary that it is neither proper no nor wise to employ any Means for any End already attained therefore what we observed under our last Head will still remain true and that is That no Man is actually justified in this Life 3. From what has been said we take notice That tho' Afflictions in this Life are undoubtedly the Executions of Justice yet which is owing to our Saviour's Purchase there are always couched in such Afflictions Designs of Mercy For tho' as they look backward they have an Eye to our Sins yet as they look forward they have an Eye to our Amendment or at least to our Restraint For had we died for our Sins according to the Law we had been both immediately punished for our Sins past and had by the same Means been prevented from ever sinning for the time to come For a Death without a Resurrection had proved a sure and everlasting Prevention But as we have seen our Life being continued in consideration of our Saviour's Purchase tho' Afflictions are laid upon us during the Reprieve and tho' such Afflictions do confessedly come from the Hand of Justice yet they are never laid on without a Design and Mixture of Mercy And therefore as they are the Punishments of Sins past so they are designed as Means of Grace for the time to come And by the wise Counsel of our merciful and gracious God are employed chiefly indeed for our future Reformation but at least for our future Restraint and so are one and a great Branch too of what we call Restraining Grace As therefore we took notice under our last Head that the Reprieve of Man from the immediate Execution of the Sentence of the Law was the Purchase of our Saviour and that so Man's Life came to be continued notwithstanding his Transgression so under this Head we may observe that tho' Sin during such Continuance of Life cannot be restrained by Death yet the Just Merciful and All-wise God has not even in such Circumstances left it without all Restraint but has by Afflictions fitted such a Curb for it which notwithstanding the Saviour's Purchase is an irrefragable Proof of his Justice But tho' it be so does in no wise encroach upon such Purchase but rather promotes the Design of it For a Life continued in order to the Performance of those Conditions by the Performance of which Man in and through his Saviour may obtain Salvation A Life I say continued to such a Purpose is more likely to answer to such Purpose if its Attempts after sinful Commissions be restrained than it could be were such Attempts left free and at large For which Reason such Restraint tho' it be caused by Afflictions does rather fall in with than controul the Design of our Saviour's Purchase And tho' it be confessed that such Restraint is not so efficacious for the Prevention of future Sins as Death without any Reprieve had been for in the last Case the Prevention had been necessary whereas in the first it is at the most but possible yet it must be confessed also that it is most wisely suited to the Circumstances of those about whom it is employed and that for this Reason Because all Restraint being designed either to keep or to make them Good it is necessary in order to either that it be left to their own Choice whether they will improve it to either or both Designs or no For there can be no Goodness at all without such Freedom By all which we may at last understand that tho' Afflictions as well as Death are the Wages of Sin and tho' God does not let the reprieved Life of a Sinner pass on without the Tokens of his Displeasure that is in the present Case without Afflictions yet that it is owing to our Saviour that all such Afflictions are employed
as Means of Preventing Grace Whereas otherwise the Prevention of Sin by a Death without a Reprieve that is a Death without a Saviour and so without a Resurrection had been no Means of Grace at all but only pure and mere Punishment 4. Lastly From what has been said I take notice that our Saviour by his Expiation of Sin did not purchase for us an Absolute Freedom from Death so that by vertue of such his Expiation we should not die at all but only a Release from Death so that after our Death we should be raised to Life again This I spake to before and the thing is as certain as it is certain that all Men do die and therefore I shall speak no farther to it at present Only one Quaere I would make upon it and that is this Whether because the Law required Death as the Punishment of Sin and because our Saviour for the Purchase of our Redemption and for the fulfilling of the Law was necessitated in his own Person to undergo Death I say Whether upon this Account God by a Mixture of Mercy and Severity might allow his Expiation to extend no farther than only to release us from Death after we had suffered it but not to prevent us from suffering it at all But as I said before I leave this as a Quaere because the Scripture speaks nothing to it and so the Resolution of it lies in the dark Only I thought it not amiss to mention it because it may help to instruct us in the very great Malignity of Sin As most undoubtedly that must be very pernicious to God's Creatures which is downright Enmity to him who made them and which is not wholly expiated by our Saviour himself However the Wisdom and Harmony of God's Truth Justice and Mercy do seem to me from what has been said to shine forth very conspicuously in his Counsel for the Redemption of Mankind For tho' God executes that Death upon Man fatally which upon his Transgression of the Law he threatned peremptorily and so notwithstanding the Death of our Saviour makes good the Truth of his Threat by the Execution of the Penalty Yet for all that he does not so execute such Penalty but that he first allows Man a Reprieve for a time to make himself a fit Subject for his Saviour's Purchase and secondly he grants him a Release from Death by a Resurrection to capacitate him to be put into the actual Possession of such Purchase Again tho' the Life of Man continued in Consideration of his Saviour's Merits be ever and anon overcast with Afflictions and tho' such Afflictions are a Punishment for his Sins and so a Proof of God's Justice Yet still those very Afflictions are in Consideration of his Saviour turned into Means of Grace and so are a merciful Discipline to secure him from those Mischiefs which otherwise might retard or defeat his Pursuit after the purchased Pardon and Inheritance These Remarks being left by the way we proceed to the next thing proposed and that is Whether our Saviour as he did in Fact so also might in Justice and Right die for the Sins of Mankind For because the Scriptures do lay down the Matter of Fact not only in express Terms but also in great variety of Expressions and because those who deny the Doctrine of the Expiation do in this Case as they do in most others oppose Reason to Revelation Therefore as by what has been said already we have made it out that our Saviour did die for our Sins so in what is to follow we shall endeavour to make it out also that he might so die For if the Matter of Fact be found to be the Declaration of God we may be sure that it will have the Approbation of Justice For Justice and Truth can never clash nor interfere But however before we begin I cannot but take notice in the 1. First place That the Redemption of Mankind by our Saviour is one of those Things of God which no Man knoweth but the Spirit of God and that upon that Account it is not so proper a Subject for the Deliberations of Humane that is of short-sighted Reason And my Warrant for so judging I therefore take to be good because it was a Thing as the Scriptures themselves tell us that was hid from Principalities and Powers from Ages and Generations till it was made known by God to his Church that is to those who were chiefly and as to their own Persons only concerned in it And therefore we are very sure that no Man by the Sagacity of his own Reason could ever have made any Discoveries of it 2. I cannot but be satisfied in the second place that any Man of an ordinary or of an extraordinary Understanding who is willing in honesty and sincerity of Heart to receive the Scriptures as the Revelations of God I say I cannot but persuade my self that such a Man and that too by the bare Conduct of his Common Sense would readily acknowledge and accept it for a Truth in those Scriptures revealed that our Saviour suffered and died to expiate the Sins of Mankind For the Texts that assert it are so often repeated and when compared do so mutually not only confirm each others Truth but also explain each others Meaning and the Management of the whole Thing is so exactly accounted for and that through all the Stages and Periods of it till our Saviour comes to offer his Sacrifice to God in the Heavens the Place of his more peculiar Residence and Abode as the High-Priest did typically in the like Case do in the Holy of Holies the more peculiar Discovery of God's Residence among the Jews under the Law I say all these Things are so categorically asserted and explained and so critically accounted for in the Revelations of God that I cannot as yet persuade my self that Common Sense and Common Sincerity will not oblige those to receive and believe them who are willing to receive those Books in which they are so laid down for the Word of God 3. Neither can I persuade my self that Reason if it be not spun too fine and what is so may easily break but I say I cannot persuade my self that Reason upon a sober Examination of the Matter as it is laid down in the Scriptures can in any wise call in question the Justice of it For as it is there laid down there are only three Persons more especially concerned in it and those are God our Saviour and Man Let us therefore take the Sum of the Business in these Three Propositions and then see if our honest and natural Reason can discover any Injustice in it And First God does forgive our Sins in Consideration of our Saviour's Sufferings Secondly Our Saviour did suffer in our stead in order to the obtaining of such Forgiveness Thirdly We do obtain such Forgiveness in Consideration of such his Suffering Now if we set our plain and honest Reason on work to examine
he did not deserve that Death which he suffered But then they tell us that God did therefore permit him to undergo such a cruel and hard Treatment that he might be an Example of Patience Submission and Resignation to all Men in any Circumstances under which they should be brought by God's Providence and that he was slain a Sacrifice to ratifie and establish the New-Covenant that God then made with Man in order to the Pardon of Sin By which it is notorious that they endeavour to vindicate God's Justice from those Ends and Designs of his Providence or Mercy for which God delivered up his Son to a cruel and bloody Death tho' he did not deserve such Death 1. Now we are very well assured in the first place that our Saviour was delivered up to be crucified and slain by the determinate Counsel and Foreknowledge of God For so St. Peter expresly tells us in the Second of the Acts and the Twenty third Verse And again we are told in the Fourth of the Acts the Twenty seventh and Twenty eighth Verses that Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the People of Israel were gathered together to do to him whatsoever God's Hand and Counsel determined before to be done We know also that his Crucifixion was prophesied in the Old Testament and that in sundry Places and that he himself does both foretell it in the New Testament and does there also tell us that it was plentifully foretold in the Old And we know lastly that what was foretold some thousand Years before it was brought to pass and then was so actually brought to pass as it was foretold must be foretold by God The Certainty of the Event in such a Case being a Demonstration that Omniscience gave forth the Prediction 2. We are assured in the second place that our Saviour being perfectly Innocent as having never transgressed the Law could not possibly deserve the Death of the most hainous Malefactors a Death attended with Agony and Torment tho' he did suffer such a Death 3. It is agreed in the third place between us and our Adversaries That because our Saviour did willingly submit to the Counsel and Determination of God in suffering such a Death that thereby God's Justice is sufficiently assoiled and vindicated to which we spake more largely just now and that by such his Submission he gave an Example to Mankind under any Affliction of an entire Resignation to the Counsel and Will of God in all Cases whatsoever 4. But then in the last place it may be reasonably demanded how it comes to pass that these self-same Sufferings this self-same Death of our Saviour do then become unjust when they are affirmed to have been undergone by him for the Expiation of Man's Sin They were just because he underwent them willingly and they were honourable because they were exemplary and we are sure they were merciful and charitable if they were expiatory And then shall what is just in it self and honourable because it is designed for an Example or for any other End I say shall such a Thing therefore become unjust because it is over and above designed for a Charity and a Mercy The same Thing we know may be directed to more Ends and Purposes than one and those several Ends and Purposes may all be good and warrantable and where they are so there if the Thing be good and just in it self we may in Reason rest satisfied that one of those good Endswill no more vitiate and corrupt it than any other End will If therefore the Death of our Saviour were just without being design'd for an Expiation it will remain just still tho' it be design'd for aâ— Expiation For Mercy and Compassioâ— which are undoubtedly included in such Expiation are most undoubtedly just and good Things when they are designed and brought to pass by just and lawful Means And therefore when the Adversaries of the Expiation do tell us that the Death of our Saviour was just and lawful they do with the same Mouth-full of Breath contradict their own Objection against the Justice of the Expiation and do as good as tell us that the Expiation is just and lawful too When therefore Secinus and his Followers do in very tragical Expressions and some of those Expresnons so indecent and irreverent to say no worse as not fit to be mentioned exclaim against the Injustice of the Expiation it is notorious that they quit their Reason and fly to Harangue that is they hope in this Case to prevail by their Rhetorick rather than by their Arguments For I can hardly persuade my self to believe them so short-sighted as not to perceive that any Argument against the Justice of the Expiation does not contradict such their own Positions which maintain the Justice of our Saviour's Death and Passion One Thing more I would remark and then I shall proceed and that is That because the Objection under this Head is only laid against the Justice but not at all against the Value Merit or extensive Influence of our Saviour's Death therefore I have precisely stuck to the Matter of the present Objection without mixing other Things with it relating to the Expiation that is I have here only asserted the Justice of our Saviour's Death in order to the Expiation of the Sins of Mankind 2. The second Objection against our Saviour's Expiation of our Sins by his Death stands thus and that is That tho' it should be granted that he had Power over his own Life that he was willing to lay down that Life and that God was willing to accept it yet all this will amount but to part of Payment For first the Death that we deserved by our Sins was Eternal but that which he suffered in our stead was but Transient and Temporal It is confessed that as the Socinians do deny the Expiation so do they also an Eternâ—ty of Punishment But yet that does not at all take off from the â—orce of the Objection because if they who maintain the Doctrine of the Expiation do also assert an Eternity of Punishment it is sufficient for their Confutation to shew that their several Doctrines do contradict and so overthrow each other The Objection then being so far laid right it goes on further thus The Sins of Mankind are the Sins of Many of Thousands of Millions of Myriads nay of Multitudes of Myriads but the Death of our Saviour was only the Death of One So that if either we consider the Extent of our Guilt or the Malignity of it it will by no means seem reasonable and therefore neither just that the single Death of our Saviour should be looked upon as a proportionats Expiation of it Nor indeed would it according to those who make the Objection who tho' the Apostle tells us in one Place that in him dwells all the Fulness of the Godhead bodily and in another Place that being in the Form of God he thought it no Robbery to be equal
the Law had promised to such Obedience 1. Now in order to our making good our first Proposition we must examine what Qualifications are absolutely necessary in order to fit any one to make such Purchase and then enquire farther Whether such Qualifications either do or can belong to any other besides our Saviour alone 1. Now the first and leading Qualification in him who shall be fitted for the Purchase of a Release from the Penalty of the Law which they have incurred who transgress the Law is that he who makes such a Purchase must be one of the same Kind with them to whom the Law was given that is in the present Case must be a Man For the Law was given to Man was broke by Man and therefore also the Breach of it in the Congruity of Things and by the Laws of Common Sense and Justice is to be punished in Man Now tho' our Saviour was not the only Person in the World who had this Qualification for every Man besides is as real a Man as he was yet he was the only Man among all Mankind who by this Qualification was fitted for the effectual enterprising and bring to pass those other Things which are absolutely necessary for the Purchase of the Release spoken of 2. For secondly The next Qualification of him who is fitted for the Purchase of a Release from the Penalty of the Law is that he must be an Innocent Man He was to be a Lamb without Spot or Blemish and to answer to the Paschal Lamb which in this as in several other Things was a Type of that Lamb of God which should take away the Sins of the World For he who is qualified to suffer for others in order to release those others from the Penalty of Sin must not therefore be a Sinner himself because if he be so then he must by the Laws of Justice and even according to the Tenor of that Law which assigns such Penalty suffer the Penalty for his own Sin And he who suffers the Penalty of the Law for his own Sin cannot therefore suffer the Penalty of the Law for the Sin of others at least in the present Case he cannot because the Penalty of the Law upon the Transgression of it being the loss of Life his own Penalty exhausts the whole Stock or Possibility of his so suffering For he who has but one Life and no Man has more can pay that Life but once And therefore if he lays it down for his own Sin he must for that Reason have nothing remaining to lay down for the Sin of others 3. He who is duely qualified to purchase for Mankind a Release from the Penalty of their Sins must be a Man whose Life is of more value than the Lives of all the rest And the Reason for it is plain and obvious because we know that the Lives of all the rest can make no such Purchase And the Lives of all the rest cannot therefore make any such Purchase because the Death of no single Man can make such a Purchase for himself For what no single Man's Death can do for himself that the Death of all Men cannot do for all For there is just the same Proportion between all Men and the Death of all that there is between one Man and the Death of one Besides supposing a Man to be a Transgressor of the Law it looks very absurd to affirm that the Death of such a Man which is the Punishment of his Transgression can be the Purchase of his Release from such Punishment For then the self-same Thing and that is his Death will bear a quite contrary Character for it will be both the Wages of his Sin and the Purchase of his Ransom that is it will be the Vengeance of the Law and the meritorious Cause of his Freedom from the same Vengeance Every Sinner therefore against the Law must be a Sufferer under the Vengeance of the Law and that Law which adjudges those who transgress it to Death does not by so doing design to return them to Life For if it did then by inflicting its Sentence it must design to revoke that Sentence and by making the Punishment a Release from the Punishment must look like Trifling and not like Justice The Loss of no Sinner's Life then is of Value sufficient to put a Period to the Execution of that Sentence which the Law pronounces against those who do transgress it And every Man's Death in the Course of the Law had been eternal were there nothing else to remove it but his own Strength that is in the present Case but his own Death For if the Death of a dead Man can do nothing for him we are sure that no other of his Powers or Merits can For in the Case before us he can have no other Merits of his own to restore him to Life but the Merits of his Death and the Merits of his Death as we have seen are none at all And to expect any Relief from a dead Man's Powers is to expect Relief from no Powers at all for Death crushes all the Powers of all Men whom it seizes Now this being the Condition of all Men who die because they are Sinners we may from hence safely conclude That if any Man who is not a Sinner shall undertake by his own Death to make good the Ransom of all the rest from Death and after that shall make good his Undertaking I say if any Man shall do this we may be sure that his Death or his Life which you will is therefore of more Value than the Life or Death of all the rest because he does by it make that Purchase which all the rest could not do by theirs For in the present Case the Value of the Thing may be truly and justly estimated by the Possibility of the Purchase it can make because the Possibility of the Purchase depends upon the Allowance of the Great and Just God And then when God is willing to release Man from Death in Consideration of the Death of his Innocent Saviour and when he is not so in Consideration of sinful Man 's own Death and when he does professedly declare such his Will in many Places of his Word and by the repeated Attestations of Matter of Fact whereby several People have been raised from the Dead in the Name and by the professed Power of the Saviour I say when we find all these Things to be so as we do or at least easily may find them so to be we may from the Whole conclude That the Death of our Saviour is of more Value than the Death of all Mankind because it can do that which the Death of all the rest cannot do and that too by the Allowance of God himself Now from these Propositions so laid down we may therefore conclude That there is not Salvation in any other but only in our Saviour set forth in the Gospel 1. Because it was absolutely necessary in Justice that the
whereof we are capable does so too And we are moreover sure in Reason that God will more freely bestow his best Gift there where it is most heartily desired and therefore also most kindly received And we are the more sure that he will do so in the present Case because the Will of Man must in this Case concur with the Grace of God or else it is impossible that the Holiness to be bestowed should ever become his own For no Man can in Reason or Nature be holy against his own Will He then who by the Means of Grace has advanced so far as to hunger and thirst after Righteousness shall be sure to be filled We have his Promise for it who is able to make it good and we have his Promise for it whose Promise cannot fail And then we cannot but be sensible that he who is filled with Righteousness cannot want that Holiness which accompanies Salvation And truly when I consider how these lower good Things the Blessings of Nature which are confessedly the Bounties of the God of Nature do freely flow in upon all his Creatures where their natural Appetites or Wants do desire or require them and where their Powers and Faculties are such in pursuit of such their Desires they endeavour to obtain them it mightily inclines me to think that his Blessing of Holiness will also there flow in where the moral Appetites of his Rational Creatures do sincerely desire it and where they are so sensible of their Want of it as to endeavour after it 4. We proceed and add in the fourth place That we are instructed both by God's Word and by our own Experience that tho' a perfect Holiness may be heartily desired and sincerely endeavoured after yet that it is never attained by any Man in this Life and therefore so neither is a perfect Happiness The Evidence for the first is because all Men in this World are Sinners and the Evidence for the last is because all Men in this World are Mortal Now as Sin is an infallible Confutation of a perfect Holiness so Mortality is an infallible Confutation of a perfect Happiness We are therefore at last arrived thus far that no Man shall arrive at a perfect Holiness till he is translated to another World And because it is difficult if not impossible to conceive how any Man should arrive at a perfect Holiness in the Grave therefore we may go one Step farther and add that no Man shall attain to such an Holiness till the Resurrection And we may very fairly and rationally conjecture I may say infer That then the Faithful shall For we know that by the Resurrection we shall be released from the Curse of the Law on the one Hand and shall enter upon the Reward of Obedience and Holiness on the other 5. And then lastly Because that Happiness which our Saviour has purchased for Believers is an eternal Happiness and because as we have seen it is impossible that there should be any such Thing as an eternal Happiness without an eternal Holiness and because to pretend to bestow an everlasting Happiness upon Man and not an everlasting Holiness without which such an Happiness is impossible is to mock Man and not to save him and because lastly we cannot without Blasphemy and Absurdity tax the Counsels and Purposes of our Saviour in the Business of Man's Salvation of such gross Prevarication therefore we do at last conclude That God in our Saviour will endow Believers at or upon their Resurrection with an Inherent Immutable and Eternal Holiness Now we have observed before That the Punishment threatned by the Gospel against those who shall refuse their Salvation by the Neglect of the Conditions of the Gospel is greater than what was threatned against the Breach of the Law of Works the Law given to Adam And that the Reward proposed by the Gospel to those who shall admit the Conditions of it is greater than what was by the Law proposed to Adam upon his Obedience And we have observed in this Chapter That that Inherent and Indefectible Holiness which is a Part of such Reward is greater and nobler than Adam's Holiness before the Fall because it is more lasting than that of him or indeed of the faln Angels Now it is certain that the Degrees of the Punishments are by Justice proportioned to the Degrees of the several Sinners own Deserts And it is certain that the Rewards of eternal Life and of an Indefectible Holiness do in Justice exceed the Deserts of all that are saved for they have been all Sinners And then what Grounds these Considerations may afford for the magnifying of God's Grace and the Merits and Dignity of our Saviour's Purchase and Person may be a Matter worthy our Meditations But I shall not pursue it here because tho' there be an Occasion for me to enlarge what has been said already yet I am unwilling to repeat CHAP. XIII By what Means Men shall be put into the Actual Possession of Eternal Life HAving thus far discoursed First Concerning the Pardon of Sin and Secondly Concerning the Gift of an Happy and Eternal Life the Two Things in which a Gospel Salvation does consist And having made it good That Believers do obtain both the one and the other only in Consideration of our Saviour's Merits and that their so doing is agreeable to Reason and Justice Two Things do still remain to be examined 1. By what Way or Means they shall be put into the Possession of such Eternal Life And 2. Wherein the Happiness of such Life does consist 1. And in order to the Resolution of the first Thing we lay it down as a certain Truth in the first place That Man in order to his entring upon the Possession of Eternal Life must first rise from the Dead For all Men die because all Men are Sinners And because it is absurd so much as to imagine that Man can enter upon the Possession of Eternal Life while he remains under the Power of Death therefore without any more ado we shall take it for granted that Man must be freed from that Death which is brought upon him by his Sin before he can obtain that Eternal Life which is purchased for him by his Saviour 2. We lay it down in the second place as a certain Truth That because our Saviour underwent Death himself for the Expiation of Man's Sin and because our Saviour could not in Nature or Possibility be qualified to bestow upon Man the Purchase of such his Death till he himself should rise from the Dead That therefore in order to Man's entring upon the Possession of an Eternal Life it was necessary that our Saviour himself as well as Man should first rise from the Dead 3. We lay it down in the Third place That if the Merits of our Saviour's Death were of Value sufficient to make good the Expiation of Man's Sin that then in Reason and Justice he ought to rise again from the Dead For
because in the Case so put he could have no Concern with Justice but what was his own and because he himself had paid an exact Obedience to the Law and because Life is the Reward of such Obedience as Death is the Wages of Disobedience Therefore if we do allow him to have unloaded himself of the Sin of Man which he had taken upon himself by his Death we must and do by so doing reinstate him in his own Right that is we must allow that he had a Right to be and therefore in Justice ought to be restored to Life again And therefore it is not at all to be questioned but that our Saviour had never died at all if he had never taken upon himself the Sins of other Men. But of this more by and by In the mean while these Things being laid down we proceed and 1. Observe in the first place That our Saviour's Resurrection is almost constantly by the Scriptures of the New Testament ascribed to God the Father And Multitudes of Texts might be quoted for it as the Second of the Acts ver 24 30. The Fifth Chapter of the same ver 26 30. The Tenth ver 40. The Seventeenth ver 31. The Tenth to the Romans ver 9. The First to the Corinthians chap. 6. ver 14 c. We know well enough that they who make it their Business to degrade our Saviour below his most exalted Dignity and Station do make use of these Texts for such their Purpose But we know withal that there are other Texts tho' indeed not so many and some of them when compared with their Context not so Categorical which yet ascribe his Resurrection to himself Such is that in the Second Chapter of St. John v. 19. Destroy this Temple and in three Days I will raise it up And so again in the Tenth of St. John v. 18. No Man taketh it from me but I lay it down of my self I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again Now as we made it out just now that after the Expiation finished he had a Right to rise from the Dead so we do not at all question but that he had a Power to raise himself too But tho' it should be allowed as we do not at all question and that too from several Things already laid down and made good but that it may be proved But I say tho' it should be allowed that he had both a Right and a Power to raise himself from the Dead yet notwithstanding that it was not altogether so congruous or agreeable to the equitable Proceedings of Justice that he should exercise such his Power or put himself into the possession of such his Right in the present Case For because he had submitted to offer his Life an Expiatory Sacrifice to the Divine Justice for the Sin of Man he had by such his Submission so far resigned such his Right and Power into the Hand of God as that both by the Laws of Reason and Justice as well as by the Rules of Decency and Congruity God was now become the sole Judge of the Validity of such his Sacrifice for the Accomplishment of the designed Expiation And if God was the sole Judge of the Validity of his Sacrifice he had by the same Means the rightful and I may add the sole Power of declaring such Validity And because the Resurrection of our Saviour from the Dead was in effect such a Declaration therefore we may now be satisfied why the Holy Ghost does so very frequently and in a manner constantly ascribe the Resurrection of our Saviour in the Scriptures to God alone To which we may add That the High-Priest under the Law who in this very Case was a Type of our Saviour was obliged once a Year to enter into the Holy of Holies but as the Author to the Hebrews words it not without Blood which he offered for himself and for the Errors of the People In which Case it must be confessed that the offering of the Blood to God was in order to his acceptance and that God's acceptance of the Blood that is of the Life of the Sacrifice was the Ratification of that Expiation that was made by such Sacrifice And in deed and truth our Saviour in the Business now before us being both the Priest and the Sacrifice to God for the Sins of Man and his Resurrection being the first Testimony or Declaration of the Acceptance of such his Sacrifice We cannot in any Congruity suppose that such Testimony or Declaration should be ascribed to any other but to God alone And therefore as all those Texts which ascribe our Saviour's Resurrection to God do in this Case speak strictly and properly so we may now by what has been said perceive that they are no Prejudice to his Divinity because he having obliged himself to offer that Body to which his Deity was united a Sacrifice for Sin he had by the same Act obliged himself to expect from God the Approbation and Allowance of such his Sacrifice and therefore also to receive from him his Resurrection which was an effectual Declaration of such Allowance And therefore 2. I do offer it to Consideration That the Resurrection of our Saviour from the Dead was an undoubted Argument that he had finished and compleated that Expiation which he had undertaken to make by his Death for the Sins of Men. For as we are assured by the Scriptures that he was crucified dead and buried and so that he died the Death of a Criminal So we are assured by the same Scriptures that he did not die for his own Crimes For it is utterly impossible and that too in the Nature of the Thing that he should die for his own Sins who yet did no Sin neither was Guile found in his Mouth that is who had no Sins of his own to die for Now because we are taught by the Scriptures and as we have already made it out because our Reason guided by them does fall in with them and so both do tell us that the Wages of Sin is Death that is that there is a Natural Justice in the Case that Death should be inflicted as the Punishment of Sin And because we are assured by the same Natural Reason that it must needs be unjust to inflict the same Punishment upon an Innocent Person which is the just Punishment of a Criminal I say for this Reason we may be satisfied that our Saviour tho' he was in himself a Lamb without Spot yet did die for some Sins or others be those Sins whose they will at present And therefore because the Spirit of God has by his express Word told us that he died for our Sins we may upon his Testimony rest satisfied that so he did Thus far therefore we have advanced towards our present Purpose and Argument That Death was what the Law threatned for our Sins and that we being Sinners and so having incurred the Vengeance threatned
spite of Revelation That their Notion of it is just the same They tell us indeed moreover That tho' Death be natural yet had Man continued Innocent God would have over-ruled Nature and so have secured him from Death That is the Holy and Wise God had by the ordinary and regular Frame of Things exposed his Innocent Creature to the greatest Natural Mischief But then that such a Disposition of Things might not cast a Blemish upon his Justice he prevented the Effect of it by his Omnipotence In plain English he had ordered Things so that had not his Omnipotence interposed the Consequence of such Order had been Injustice A very honourable Account of God's Justice and Wisdom in his Creation which is so far from mending the Matter that it makes it worse But what better is to be expected when Man shall by his Natural Reason presume to controul the Revelations of God Their Reason then having faultred in giving an Account of the Punishment of Sin it may upon that score the more easily do so in giving us an Account of the Pardon of it For besides that a Resurrection which is a Release from Death the Punishment of Sin is only made known by Revelation and therefore they who say that Death is Natural must if they will agree with themselves disagree from the Scriptures and say That a Resurrection is a Release from a Mischief which is Natural but not that it is so from a Punishment which is Moral But I say besides this when they come by their Reason to tell us how a Release from Death comes to be granted they will not with the Scriptures allow such Release to be granted in Consideration of our Saviour's Merits but will by all Means ascribe it to God's more Mercy Now tho' it be allowed that the Pardon of Sin comes from God's Mercy and that such his Mercy as it relates to us is Free because we can in no wise deserve it yet for all that such Mercy is not in it self what they would have it to be the Effect of God's Free-will alone For God's Mercy as his Word which can best inform us in the Case and as true and sound Reason agreeing with such his Word will tell us is of Two sorts 1. His Mercy is in the Scriptures taken for his Bounty and from this it is that all his Creatures derive all they are and all they have And this his Mercy consists in giving But then 2. His Mercy is taken for the Pardon of sinful Man and this his Mercy consists in forgiving So much Difference then as there is between Giving and Forgiving so much Difference there is between the First Mercy and the Second Now by the First Mercy God may it is confessed give freely and in what Measure he pleases For he may do what he will with his own and that according to the unbounded Liberty of his own good Pleasure which is therefore evident because he may place a Creature in what Station and bestow upon it what Endowments and what Happiness he pleases so far as a Creature as such is capable of either And in this Sense all Creatures have been Partakers of his Mercy But that cannot be truly said of that his Mercy which consists in Forgiving For all those Creatures cannot be forgiven who have not sinned and all those shall not that have Tho' therefore the First sort of Mercy be not bounded or limited by God's Justice yet the Last is And therefore a Resurrection being a Forgiveness must be so limited and bounded too For Vindictive Justice is not as it is but too commonly taken to be and as will appear more fully in the Discourse it self only a Negative Justice that is it is not barely not unjust to punish a Criminal But it is and must be a Positive Justice that is it is unjust not to punish him Or otherwise he who has a just Power of punishing a Criminal may upon no other Motive but his own Will and Pleasure not do it To tell us therefore That God by a Resurrection grants a Release from Death the Punishment of Sin only upon the Account of his mere Mercy and that Jesus Christ came into the World only to bring the joyful Tydings and to ratifie the Truth of such his Message by his Death and Resurrection but that he had nothing to do in the Purchase of such Release as it does confound God's Bounty with his Pardoning Mercy and so is a Deviation from Right Reason so it goes counter to the express Declarations of the Scriptures and so is a Contradiction to Revelation Now the Design of what we have hitherto offered is to engage the Men to whom our present Address is directed to consider 1. Whether it be not more rational to acquiesce in the plain Discoveries which are made to us by Revelation concerning the Punishment and Pardon of Sin than to frame such as they call them rational Surmises of their own concerning either which do very much differ from and in some Cases contradict such plain Discoveries 2. I would desire them likewise seriously to consider Whether what they call Reason can possibly have such a large Prospect and comprehensive Knowledge as to be a competent Judge of the Congruity of all such Things which may possibly be discovered by Divine Revelation For if it have then it must be no longer called Reason but Omniscience And if it have not then it will be an intolerable Presumption to undertake to controul express and acknowledged Revelation by it 3. I would desire them to consider in the Third place Whether they have by their Reason examined the Justice of the Divine Proceedings in the Pardon of Sin as it is expresly laid down in the Divine Revelations as far as Reason will go For Reason is a Thing capable both of Information and Improvement And That may not seem rational to a less careful View which yet may do so to a more strict and critical Examination And therefore such Plausibilities shall sometimes pass for Truths with what at present is thought Reason which when throughly sifted shall be found to be gross Falsities 4. Lastly I would desire them to consider That God in his Revelations concerning Man's Salvation has not only acquainted us that he will save Mankind but has also told us upon what Considerations he will do so For if they be once satisfied that he has revealed the Last as well as the First and by believing the plain and express Revelation they may be so satisfied then they may as reasonably expect to be saved without their own Repentance as they may without their Saviour's Merits that is they may be satisfied that they cannot be saved without both And when they have well weighed and considered these Things it may be hoped that being already supposed sober and serious they will also be found so modest as to permit God to save them in his own Way The next sort of Readers who as is supposed
Things required 1. An Expiation of Sin 2. A Restitution to Holiness Negatively the several Ways how such Expiation cannot be made from whence an Inference of the Doctrine asserted with some Practical Inferences Page 36 CHAP. IV. That Person to whom the Expiation of Sin is by the Scriptures ascribed is by the same Scriptures set forth to us 1. As God 2. As Man 3. As God and Man united in one Person or God Incarnate No Man a competent Judge of all possible Unions The Incarnation agreeable to the Sentiments of Mankind and variously foretold prefigured and suggested in the Scriptures Some Practical Inferences somewhat enlarged Pag. 57 CHAP. V. The Son of God by his Incarnation accommodated his Condition for the making good the Expiation of Man's Sin Pag. 96 CHAP. VI. The Divinity of the Son of God necessary for the Expiation of Man's Sin as well as his Humanity Some Doctrinal Inferences A general Proof That as our Saviour did actually die so that he might justly die for the Expiation of Sin Pag. 113 CHAP. VII Answers to Three Objections 1. The Punishment was in Justice only due to us not to him This Objection retorted upon the Socinians 2. That his Death was but a Temporal Punishment but the Expiation pretended to be made was of an Eternal Punishment 3. The Absurdity that God should suffer for the Satisfaction of his own Justice Pag. 134 CHAP. VIII Bare Pardon of Sin not sufficient for a Gospel-Salvation Some Reasons offered for it They who are entitled to the Reward of the Law must be entitled to the Obedience paid to the Law Such Obedience must be perfect Some Practical Reflections Pag. 160 CHAP. IX Whos 's that Perfect Obedience is in Consideration of which Eternal Happiness is given to Man That it is our Saviour's Some Objections answered and the Doctrine of the Imputation asserted 1. Against those who acknowledge the Expiation 2. Against those who deny it This Doctrine agreeable to the Scriptures Pag. 179 CHAP. X. Some Objections answered and some Practical Inferences made Pag. 216 CHAP. XI The First and General Proposition asserted from all that has been said That the whole Doctrine of a Gospel-Salvation as laid down in the Scriptures is agreeable to the allowed Practices of Mankind in their Legal or Judicial Proceedings and is worded in the Scriptures accordingly Pag. 233 CHAP. XII That besides the Saviour's Righteousness imputed God will after their Resurrection endow Believers with a perfect inherent and eternal Holiness How the Saviour did fit and prepare Men for such an Holiness Pag. 254 CHAP. XIII By what Means Men shall be put into the Actual Possession of Eternal Life Pag. 277 CHAP. XIV Wherein the Happiness of Eternal Life does consist Several Reflections and Considerations on what has been said tending to promote an Holy Life Pag. 297 ERRATA Page Line For Read 50 2 their Sons them Son 118 10 naturally actually SALVATION BY JESUS CHRIST ALONE The INTRODUCTION I. SAlvation implies in the very Notion of it either the Prevention of some Mischief to which we are obnoxious or a Deliverance from some Mischief which we actually suffer Now because it is our professed Design and Business at present to discourse of the Salvation of Mankind by our Saviour therefore in order to our so doing it will be proper first to consider what Mischief it is from which they are saved For the true Knowledge of the Occasion and Nature of the Mischief will very much assist us in our Enquiries into the Nature and Justice of such Salvation We must know therefore That when God who made Man and all Things beside had placed Man in this lower World as he did provide for his Well-being by his Bounty so he did provide for his greater Happiness by his Law For by the first he only put all Creatures here in subjection to Man but by the last he acquainted Man with his own Subjection to Himself For it is an undoubted Truth That it is a greater Happiness to be a true Subject to God than it is to be Tenant of the whole Earth and a deputed Lord over all the Creatures in it Now in order to some few Remarks which we shall make upon God's first Law given to Man and which will open a Way to our main Design it will be convenient that we lay down the Law as it was given forth Thus therefore it stands Of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil thou shalt not eat of it For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die or as it is in the Original dying thou shalt die The Reduplication in that Language being equivalent to an Asseveration in ours It has been a Doubt among Learned Men whether this first Law be a Moral or only a Positive Law Now for the Resolution of such Doubt it may not be improper to consider apart First What is expresly contained in the Law and Secondly What is implied under such Expression And first If we only consider the express Words of the Law which forbid the eating of the Fruit of the Tree specified the Law in such Case is therefore Positive not Moral because before the Prohibition there was no more Immorality in eating of that Tree than of any other But then secondly If we farther consider that tho' the Law as to the particular Thing prohibited was purely Arbitrary and therefore so far forth only Positive yet that the Prohibition did imply in it a Moral Duty grounded upon very equitable Considerations we may conclude that under this express and Positive Law there is implied and couched a Moral Law For First God gave Man not only his Being but also all Things for the necessary and convenient Support of such Being and from thence we may by our Natural Reason inform our selves that his so doing was a very equitable Consideration why Man should be bound up in Gratitude and that is as much as being bound up in Morality to acknowledge the Kindness and Bounty of his Great Benefactor Secondly Man being bound in Gratitude to acknowledge the Kindness and Bounty we may truly add that he was farther bound to acknowledge such Kindness and Bounty in such Way as such his Benefactor should appoint Thirdly God having made the Earth and all Things in it he might grant as many or as few of the Things so made to Man as he himself pleased And therefore might except any one or more of them out of such Grant Fourthly God having an undoubted Power of Reserving to himself what he pleased out of those Things which he had made he might in Justice and Equity require that Man should give one Testimony of his Gratitude by abstaining from what he should please so to reserve Fifthly God by singling out the Forbidden Tree from all the rest and by so doing reserving it to himself had made that a standing Mark and Signal of his own rightful and supreme Dominion over the Whole as also for the same
Reason of Man's Tenure and Subjection Sixthly As we may suppose the Forbidden Tree to have stood in the midst of the Garden from the Ninth Verse of the Second Chapter of Genesis so a Tree so placed was by its very Situation a very fit and proper Thing to be made use of for such a purpose because being in some measure at least equidistant from the Boundaries of the general Grant it must for that Reason be most likely to present it self to Adam's View to whatever Part of the Garden he moved and by so doing must constantly or at least frequently put him in mind of the Nature of his Tenure viz. that he held it of him who had setled him in the Possession and Use of all the rest So that as the Law is Positive if we only look upon the express Words of it so it is Moral if we consider what is implied in it And therefore as the immediate and direct Transgression of the Law was the eating the forbidden Fruit so the couched Immorality of such Transgression was an Usurpation upon God's Prerogative in this lower World and an Encroachment upon the reserved Rights and Demeans of the Supreme Lord. The Transgression of the express Law then was a Sin against God's Command But the Transgression of the implied Law was a Sin against his Natural and Supreme Right The first was a Sin because it did what God had expresly forbid The last was implicitly forbid because it was a Sin and therefore was a Sin tho' God did not expresly forbid it The first was therefore only unlawful because forbidden The last was unlawful in it self To sum up all in a few Words Tho' the Designation of the particular Thing viz. the Tree in the midst of the Garden was Arbitrary and therefore Positive yet the Designation of Something was as Just and Wise so I may add Moral and Necessary too at least so far as it is so that God's Supreme Right ought to be asserted and owned For so far forth the Prohibition given to Man of eating of the Fruit of any Tree marked out or of medling with any Thing else is grounded upon the Antecedent and Eternal Rules of Reason and Justice that is of Morality And therefore tho' the express Prohibition of the Law be only Positive yet the Reason of the Prohibition is at least so far Moral as it is so That Man by some Means or other should acknowledge God to be his Supreme Lord and that he receives from him whatsoever he enjoys and that if God do expresly appoint the Way and Means of his so doing he ought to do it by the Way and Means so appointed And I therefore say expresly because so far as the Words of the Law under our present Consideration do go it is notorious that what is expresly prohibited by it is only Arbitrary and Positive But that the Morality of the Prohibition is not expressed but at the most but couched and implied By what has been spoken we may learn 1. That the Sin expresly prohibited by the Law may therefore truly be esteemed a lesser Sin because it is only a Sin against a Positive Law For such a Sin is a Sin only against God's Authority Whereas a Sin that contains a Natural Immorality in it if I may so speak is a Sin both against God's Authority and against his Purity and Holiness too 2. That the express Penalty of the Law is only a Punishment threatned against the Transgression of the express Prohibition of the Law For it does not look like Justice to assign an express Punishment in the Law for the Transgression of any Thing which is not expresly contained in the Law 3. Such Punishment so threatned against the Transgression of the express Law is express absolute and peremtory Adam then did therefore fatally suffer the Penalty of the Law because he sinned against an express Prohibition which was ratified by an absolute peremptory and express Threat For God may therefore be thought to be obliged by his Truth to punish Adam's Transgression according to the express Threat of the Law because he had passed his more solemn Word that he would do so And as he was obliged by his Truth to punish it as the Law had threatned so he was obliged to punish it because it was a Sin For so undoubtedly is the Transgression of any of God's Laws From hence it may be concluded that we all die a temporal Death for Adam's Sin For as we were in the Loins of him in the day of his Transgression so God has not by any other Law assigned an Universal Mortality as the Punishment of Sin And so speaks the Scripture In Adam all died 4. As the Moral Law couched in the Positive Law is not express so neither is there any express Punishment threatned to the Transgression of such couched Law For while Man was in a State of Innocence as there was no need that God should prescribe him any express Law to guide him in such Things which were in their own Nature good because the dictates of his own reason were of themselves sufficient for such his guidance for Moral Goodness is nothing else but the Dictates of right Reason employed about the Actions of Rational Creatures So for the same Reason there was no occasion to threaten him in that Case with any express Penalty because the threatning of an express Penalty antecedent to the Commission of the Crime can only be proper there where there is an express Law commanding a Duty Whereas Man had never by his Reason known that it had been a Sin to eat of any Fruit which kindly offer'd it self to his View and natural Inclinations if such Fruit had not been forbidden by some express Law And therefore for the same Reason that it was necessary that such Law should be express it was necessary that the Penalty of such Law should be express too 5. As the Sin against the Moral Duty which is only implied in the Law were that Duty supposed to be express Law is greater than the Sin against the express but Positive Law so were there a Punishment to be expresly assigned to such Sin it must in Justice be greater than the Punishment assigned to the less Sin that is to the Transgression of the Positive Law The Punishment therefore assigned by the express Law to the Transgression of it being only Death and that too as appears from the Nineteenth Verse of the Third Chapter of Genesis a temporal Death our Reason and that natural Sense we have of the Proportions of Justice will assure us that the Law which forbids a greater Sin than this Law does must in Reason and Equity assign an heavier Punishment to such greater Sin 6. Such heavier Punishment must suppose a Resurrection For a greater Punishment than Death cannot therefore be inflicted upon a dead Man without a Resurrection because no Punishment at all can be so inflicted upon him For where there is no Sensation
too in the Nature of the Thing it self that Creatures so different should be under different Laws and that therefore neither their Obedience to nor their Transgression of those several Laws under which they are should have any such Concern or Relation to one another as that one sort of Creature should in any Case undergo the Penalty of the Transgressions of the other sort of Creature And therefore for the same Reason that we should look upon it as absurd and unjust that a Man should suffer for the Sin of an Angel I say for the same Reason we should think it no less absurd and unjust that an Angel should suffer for the Sin of a Man The Thing might be made out in more Words But it needs not Now these few Remarks being left by the way to give Perspicuity and Strength to those Things which are to follow the Wisdom Justice Reasonableness and Congruity of the Redemption of Mankind by the Sufferings and Death of our Saviour as that Redemption is expresly laid down in the Scriptures will appear from these following Considerations 1. And first Our Saviour who by his Death and Sufferings undertook the Purchase of Man's Redemption was as really and verily a Man himself as were those whom he undertook to redeem This is evident because he is all along in the New Testament called Man the Son of Man and the like as we have made it out already And this so far accommodates the Scripture-Account of the Purchase of Man's Salvation to the Law that 1. As the Law threatned the Punishment to Man alone and to no other Creature so in the Purchase of the Redemption Man alone suffered such Punishment and no Creature besides 2. And secondly As it accommodates the Scripture-Account of the Purchase of Man's Redemption to the Law because our Saviour who suffered in order to such Purchase was a Man So it accommodates the Scripture-Account of the Purchase of Man's Redemption to the Rules of Justice because our Saviour who suffered in order to such Purchase was an Innocent Man It may perhaps at first sight look strange when I say that the Purchase of Redemption by the Death of an Innocent Man is accommodated to the Rules of Justice But the Wonder will then vanish when I shall come to make it out that tho' an Innocent Man cannot without his own Consent be justly punished yet that with such his Consent he may be so punished But because That belongs to another Place therefore in this I pass it by For that that I design at present is only to shew that it is not agreeable to the Laws of Justice that a Criminal against the Law should expiate another Man's Sin by suffering the Penalty of the Law Because the Penalty which he suffers being the just Demerit and Wages of his own Sin he cannot by undergoing the Punishment of his own Sin add any such Desert to such his Punishment as to make it meritorious of Impunity to any other Sinner As therefore under the last Head we learnt that he who by his Punishment expiates the Sin of another Man must in Reason and Congruity be a Man himself so under this Head we may learn that he must be an Innocent Man likewise And so the Sufferings and Death of our Saviour for the Redemption of Mankind will afford us a further Congruity to the Rules of Reason and Justice in that that Saviour is exhibited to us in the Gospel not only to be a Man but also to be an Innocent Man 3. The Wisdom Justice and Reasonableness of the Redemption of Mankind by the Sufferings and Death of our Saviour as that Saviour was a Man will yet farther and more notoriously appear if we consider the first Rise and Formation of Mankind according to that Account which the Scriptures give us of it For there we are told in general that God did of one Blood make all Nations of Men for to dwell on the Face of the whole Earth in the Seventeenth Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles And then if we look back to the original Creation of Mankind and there enquire more particularly how this was done we shall from thence be informed that God first made Adam out of the Earth and that after that he made Eve out of Adam both of them extraordinary and miraculous Productions and that then through all succeeding Generations he formed all the rest of Mankind out of both or such succeeding Pairs which proceeded from both to an understanding Man as miraculous tho' a more ordinary Production than that of the first Man and Woman So that all Mankind are by the Scripture-Account of the Thing a continued Propagation of the Blood of Adam branched out through the several Disseminations of all succeeding Men and Women from his Days to this present Time Now our Saviour as he was Man took part of this Flesh and Blood so the Scripture and by doing so became a Part of that Common Blood out of which all the particular Men in the World are and always have been made as well as he he stands therefore in as near a Relation to all Mankind as can possibly be made by the same Flesh and Blood and that Relation may well be granted to be very near because it is that very Relation which the several Parts of a Thing by continued derivation the same have to one another And so far the Relation of our Saviour to the rest of Mankind is in all Circumstances exactly the same with that Relation which every other Man has to every other But yet there is something peculiar to our Saviour in his becoming Man which does not belong to any other Man whomsoever And that is that as the first Woman was formed only out of the Man so our Saviour was formed only out of the Woman And accordingly the first Promise of Redemption that God gave to Adam after he had sinned was Prophetically worded when he told him that the Seed of the Woman should break the Serpent's Head And therefore as Adam is in the Scriptures called the first Man because he was formed out of the Earth so our Saviour is called the second Man in the same Scriptures because he was formed out of the Woman that is he was the first Man after his Kind as Adam was in his To our present Purpose and Design then As we cannot but take notice that God's Counsel and merciful Purpose for the Redemption of Mankind was very early for that Counsel must needs be so that was in a manner Cotemporary to Man's first Sin as the immediate Discovery of that Counsel to Man upon the Commission of that Sin does make it appear so some Glimpses of that Counsel do to me seem to shew forth themselves in the Scripture-Account of Man's Creation For when God tells us in his Word that he has so ordered the Creation Propagation and Dissemination of Mankind that tho' their Numbers are to us Innumerable yet we do for all
that know that they all came from one single Fountain that is from one single Man and so that they are all but so many Rivulets from that Fountain And when moreover we are assured that our Saviour is One of those Rivulets For tho' our Saviour was only to be made of the Woman yet because the Woman was made out of the Man therefore our Saviour did by the Woman derive from the same one single Person with the rest of Mankind I say when we consider all this methinks it is no hard matter to conceive that God himself does in his Word lay the Ground-work of Man's Redemption by a Saviour if I may be allowed so to word my self in that near and intimate Relation which our Saviour by becoming Man has to all Mankind besides and that the Intimacy of such Relation consists in this that the Saviour and all Mankind do derive from one single and common Fountain And hence we are told in one Place that as by Man came Death there is the Sin of Adam and the Wages of such Sin by Man came also the Resurrection of the Dead there is the Redemption of our Saviour and his Purchase And more expresly still to our present Purpose speaks the same Apostle in the same Chapter the Fifteenth of the First to the Corinthians For as in Adam all died so in Christ shall all be made alive And to the same purpose again in the Fifth to the Romans and the Eighteenth Verse Therefore as by the Offence of one Judgment came upon all Men to Condemnation even so by the Righteousness of one the Free-gift came upon all Men unto Justification of Life In all which Texts and several others that might be named it is notorious that the Redemption of Mankind is so ascribed to the second Adam the Man Christ Jesus as the Sin and Death of Mankind is ascribed to the first Man Adam And I do not at all question but that those Hints which the Scriptures do frequently offer to us of our Saviour's taking the Humane Nature in order to our Redemption of his taking Part of the same Flesh and Blood with us of his being our Brother and the like I say I do not at all question but that when seriously considered they may mightily assist and facilitate both our Conceptions and Belief of the Wisdom Justice Reasonableness and Congruity of our Saviour's Incarnation Death Resurrection in one Word of that Redemption which he by being made one with Mankind by taking their Nature upon himself has purchased form them And may mightily conduce to the Removing of those Difficulties which the Enemies of the Cross of Christ have thrown as so many Stumbling-blocks in the Way of plain and honest Christians 4. The Wisdom Justice Reasonableness and Congruity of our Saviour's Incarnation in order to his Purchase of Man's Redemption does yet farther appear in that by becoming Man he put himself into a Capacity of suffering Death that is of suffering that Punishment which the Law had denounced against those that should transgress it For it is a gross Mistake and does indeed bring a Scandal upon God's Veracity to affirm That he threatens greater Vengeance in any Law before the Transgression of it than he will execute after the Transgression that so he may the more effectually prevent such Transgression For God never yet threatned any peremptory and unconditional Punishment in any Law which he has not or when the Time comes he will not as certainly execute In the Day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die says God The Threatning we see is peremptory and the Execution we find is so too and therefore all Sinners die And I cannot in the least doubt but that for the same Reason an eternal Punishment will be the certain Vengeance upon a final Impenitence But that is not so direct to my present purpose and therefore here I pass it by But to confirm what I am now upon I say that God does not pardon the Death threatned in his Law against Sin no not in Consideration of the Death of our Saviour and therefore notwithstanding his Death and that too in our stead we see that all Men and even those who hope for Salvation by such his Death do yet die What therefore our Saviour in this Case has puchased for us is not a Freedom but a Release from Death And therefore that Redemption from Death which is the Purchase of his Blood is to be accomplished after we have been dead by a Resurrection A Resurrection then is to make good the Purchase of his Death and therefore his Death purchased for us not a Freedom but a Release from our Death by such Resurrection Now as his Death was necessary for such a Purchase so his Incarnation was necessary in order to such his Death And he was therefore made of the same Blood with all Mankind that by shedding that Blood for Mankind he might after his own Resurrection restore the Lives of all Men which had been forfeited by Adam's Transgression So that as his Death was the meritorious Expiation of Sin and as a Resurrection is the Fruit and Effect of such his Expiation So his Incarnation was a necessary Forerunner of such his Death and therefore before he could possibly die for Man and so purchase a Redemption of Man from Death it was agreeable to the Laws of Wisdom Justice and Reason that he should become Man himself But then how his Death came to be of so valuable a Price as to make so glorious a Purchase we must leave to farther Enquiry For by that it will appear that as it was necessary that he should die the Death of a Man so it was necessary that such his Humanity should be united to the Divinity And by both it will appear that God was manifested in the Flesh to destroy the Works of the Devil and that therefore when the Scriptures tell us so much they tell us no more than what is agreeable to Wisdom Justice and Reason CHAP. VI. The Divinity of the Son of God necessary for the Expitation of Man's Sin as well as his Humanity Some Doctrinal Inferences A general Proof That as our Saviour did actually die so that he might justly die for the Expiation of Sin HAving therefore seen that our Lord Jesus Christ was qualified by his Incarnation to make an Expiation for Sin by the Sacrifice of himself and that such his Qualification is agreeable to the Laws of Justice and to the Rules of Reason and Wisdom Our next Enquiry must be How such his Sacrifice came to be of such a Value as to be justly sufficient to make good such an Expiation For because the Death of an Innocent Man if he be no more than a mere Man is but the Death of a Creature and because no Creature can by its Punishment in another Creature 's stead expiate the Sin of that other Creature for if it could then a Creature might by its own Punishment
Consideration of his Death do not so refuse it And it is at least another Doubt whether those who refuse it upon such Considerations do not refuse it altogether The Scriptures do at least seem to tell us so And they will give but an ill Account of their Prudence who will so far hazard their Salvation as to gratifie their Obstinacy in an Opinion that does so palpably controul God's express Declarations CHAP. VII Answers to Three Objections 1. The Punishment was in Justice only due to us not to him This Objection retorted upon the Socinians 2. That his Death was but a Temporal Punishment but the Expiation pretended to be made was of an Eternal Punishment 3. The Absurdity that God should suffer for the Satisfaction of his own Justice BUT notwithstanding the Multitudes of such Declarations in his Word which do avowedly and professedly acquaint us with this great Truth yet for all that it has met with many Adversaries Who as they have endeavoured by odd and very uncouth Interpretations to expound away the plain and categorical Assertions of such Declarations so have they also to back such their Expositions with Arguments taken from Natural Reason Now it may be reasonably expected that those Reasons should be very good and well-grounded which pretend to make good such an Interpretation of God's Word which at first View is a downright Contradiction to such Word And because all those Interpretations which attempt to annul the Expiatory Sacrifice of our Saviour are such therefore before we proceed any farther we cannot but take notice that it looks presumptuous at least to pretend to measure and much more is it so to controul the Justice of the Divine Counsels and Actions laid down expresly and frequently in his acknowledged Word by so uncertain a Standard as Humane Reason because it is impossible that such Reason should comprehend all Possibilities especially such which are confessedly brought to pass by the more signal and extraordinary Power of an Omnipotent Arm. But however because such Attempts have been made we will consider some and the chief too of those Allegations which have been offered in opposition to those plain and express Discoveries that God in his Word has made to Man of the Method of his own Proceedings in the Forgiveness of their Sins 1. And first It is pleaded against the Justice of our Saviour's Suffering in order to the obtaining of our Pardon That such Sufferings cannot therefore be just because in Justice and Equity they are due to us and not to him For since the Justice of the Punishment must arise from the Demerit of the Delinquent the Punishment can in Justice be only laid on there where the Demerit is lodged And therefore if our Saviour was not the Sinner as most certainly he was not neither ought he in Justice to be the Sufferer And to confirm this Way of Arguing we have the Voice of God himself assuring us that the Father shall not suffer for the Iniquity of the Son nor the Son for the Iniquity of the Father that is one Soul shall not suffer for the Sins of another but the Soul that sinneth that shall die in the Eighteenth of Ezekiel And which is yet a great deal more God does there appeal to the Sense of Mankind for the Equity and Justice of such his Proceedings Now then if every Sinner ought in Justice to bear his own Burden how can it possibly be just that the Punishment of our Sins should be laid upon another who was in no wise guilty of those Sins And then lastly if the Vengeance due to our Sins could not in Justice be laid upon another then neither can it be true that God does therefore remit such Vengeance to us because our Saviour has suffered in our stead And by consequence the Forgiveness of our Sins cannot either in Reason or Justice depend upon our Saviour's Sufferings And if it does not then it must be a Mistake at least to affirm that God's Forgiveness of our Sins is just and equal and yet at the same time to maintain that he does forgive them in Consideration of our Saviour's Sufferings The Objection you see looks plausible at the first sight but yet when it comes to be strictly examined will as will appear by and by signifie just nothing For 1. There is no doubt made by any of Mankind that we know of but that in some Cases one may become a Surety for another and that if the Principal fails in the Performance of his just Obligations the Surety so far as he stands bound for him is obliged in Justice to answer and make good such Obligations This among Mankind is taken as a Thing granted in all those Pecuniary Obligations which do relate to Commerce or Traffick And therefore it is generally allowed that he who is bound for the Payment of another Man's Debt upon default of Payment in the original Debtor does become Debtor himself and as such is bound in Justice to make good the Debt to the Creditor Nay we may go farther yet and by doing so may advance one Step nearer to our main Design For as all Mankind are agreed that the Surety stands bound in Justice to pay the Debt upon the Non-payment of the Principal Debtor where such Debt is contracted by Commerce or Traffick so also they have the same Sense of the Surety's Obligations where the Debt is contracted by the Principal Debtor's Crime or Delinquency Now it is agreed on all Hands for Common Sense tells all Men so that a Debt contracted by a Crime is a Punishment tho' it be but a pecuniary Punishment And then if a Surety upon the Failure in the Principal be bound in Justice to pay such a Debt it will be so far from being a Doubt whether a Surety in such a Case may justly undergo the Punishment of the Criminal that in deed and truth he is bound and that too in Justice and Honesty to undergo it From whence we conclude in the first place that it is so far from being absolutely true that one Person cannot justly suffer the Punishment due to the Crimes of another that on the contrary it may so happen that he may be bound and that too in Conscience to take upon himself such Punishment 2. To which we add in the second place That in such a Case where one Person undergoes the Punishment due to the Crimes of another the Punishment so inflicted can so much the less be taxed of Injustice if the Person who undergoes it do undertake it freely and willingly And therefore tho' it be true in Thesi that is in the general that it is Injustice to punish an Innocent Man for the Fault of a Criminal yet in Hypothesi or in a particular Matter of Fact it may not be unjust so to do And the Reason is because any Punishment be it what it will can only be unjust with relation to that Person who undergoes such Punishment For if he does justly undergo
it then let the Punishment be what it will yet still it will be just Now where a Person does willingly freely and oâ— his own accord submit to a Punishment there the Punishment tho' he did not by his Crimes deserve it cannot therefore be thought unjust because it would be an odd and unheard-of kind of Injustice to any Person to injure him by sulfilling his own Desires and by gratifying his Choice If then we apply this to our Saviour's Sufferings which he underwent in our stead we may be informed by him himself that he laid down his Life and that no Man took it from him that is he laid it down willingly And because he did so therefore tho' God laid upon him and accepted from him the Vengeance due to our Sins in order to our Acquittance yet he did him no Injury by so doing because he was willing as our Surety and Proxy to undergo and suffer such Vengeance Indeed it is not to dissembled that because the Sin was Ours and not His that God therefore might and that justly too have refused the Punishment to be his and not ours But then withal we must take notice that tho' God might have done so yet that there was no Law of Justice that either did or could oblige him so to do And therefore to clear that or any other Doubt that may arise from what has been spoken upon this Head we add 3. In the third place That where that Person who willingly suffers for another's Crime has an undoubted Right and Title in all those Things and an uncontroulable Power to dispose of all those Things which are either damnified or lost by such his Sufferings In such a Case as there is no Injury done to his Person by reason of his willingness to suffer so neither is there any Violence offered to any Law of Justice by reason of such his undoubted Right and absolute Power Now at once to clear this Matter and to bring it up to the Point we aim at we must take notice that our Saviour tells us himself in the Tenth of St. John and the Eighteenth Verse I have power to lay down my Life and I have power to take it again And Reason tells us the same Thing For because he made the Worlds and because all things were created by him and for him and because for these Reasons alone he is the Almighty God therefore there can be no question but that he may justly challenge to himself that Power which the Supreme God claims as his most undoubted Prerogative I kill and I make alive To which we may likewise add that he is to be Judge both of Quick and Dead as even that Creed which goes by the Name of the Apostles and even our Adversaries too in the present Case do allow Now it cannot in the least seem reasonable that he should have the Power of Damning and Saving who has not the Power of Life and Death For it must needs sound harsh to our Reason to grant him the greater Power and in the mean time to deny him the less Taking it therefore for granted that he had an absolute and uncontroulable Power to dispose of his Life as it seemed best to his own Wisdom if he was pleased so to dispose of such his Life as to lay it down in our stead and for our sakes there could not possibly lie any Obligation of Justice upon God to bind him up from accepting the Offer of such his Sacrifice because such a Power does in it self suppose that there neither is nor can be any Injury that should forbid such an Offering And we know well enough that any thing may be lawfully done against the doing of which there is no just Law And therefore the Case of our Saviour in the present Instance does so far forth differ from all the Cases of all other imaginary Innocents in the World For tho' another Man be supposed to be Innocent yet he has no such Power over his own Life as to dispose of it as he himself shall please And if he should by any Means destroy it without his own Demerit it would be in him Self-murder and that too tho' he should offer it for a Criminal But if he should so order his Life as to deserve Death then that very Crime that forfeits his Life would spoil his Innocence too And therefore should a Magistrate who is invested with the lawful Power of the Sword accept the Life of an Innocent in lieu of the forfeited Life of a Criminal he would therefore become a Criminal himself because in such a Commutation he allows the Innocent Man to become a Criminal by usurping upon the Prerogative of God himself Which may serve to shew the Fraud and Deceit of that way of Arguing which will not therefore allow it to be just that our Saviour should offer his Life as a Sacrifice for Sinners because it cannot be justly allowed that other Innocent Persons should do so Whereas the Life which our Saviour offered in the present Case was entirely his own and absolutely at his own disposal which yet cannot be truly affirmed of the Life of any other Innocent Person in the World if yet we should suppose such a Person from the Days of the Creation to the Consummation of all Things As therefore we learned by the last Head that God might have refused to accept our Saviour's Death in our stead because the Life offered was not the same that was forfeited but another So by what has been spoken under that Head and this we may now perceive that there is no Reason in Law or Justice why he might not accept it For if our Saviour might have become Surety for the Discharge of that Debt which by the Tenor of the Law we owed to Justice by our Transgression of the Law and if upon our Inability to pay such Debt so as to obtain our Acquittance he was willing and fully impowered to lay down his Life in order to our Release and Discharge and if God might in Justice accept the Offering of such his Life for so gracious and merciful a Purpose Then the whole Objection against the Justice of his Suffering in our stead and for our sake vanishes and comes to nothing These Things I have pursued thus far to put the whole Matter in a true Light and to lay it down just as it is Tho' I do frankly confess that I do not think the Objection against our Saviour's Sufferings taken from the Injustice of such Sufferings to be of any force at all no not upon those very Principles upon which they go who make it For they themselves allow our Saviour to be Innocent and by consequence tho' they make Death a Natural Thing which by the way is but an Heathen-Notion of it for it does not in the least agree with what the Scriptures teach us about it But I say they themselves allow our Saviour to be innocent and therefore they must allow that
with God will yet in spite of these and a Multitude of other express Declarations to the contrary still allow our Saviour to be no more than a mere Man Now it is freely confessed that if the Case were so then his single Death would be no valuable Compensation for the Death of all the Sinners in the World and much less would it be so for the eternal Death of such Sinners But since the Scriptures have over and over told us that his Death was such a Compensation and since such a Compensation cannot not exceed the Dignity of that Character which the same Scriptures have given us of him tho' their Way of Reasoning says otherwise I dare leave it to any sober Christian to judge whether it does not more concern them to answer what the Scriptures do object to them than it does us in the present Case to answer what they do object to us For if the Fulness of the Godhead dwelt in our Saviour bodily and so was united to and with that Body then it will be no inconceivable Strain to imagine that the Infinite Dignity of the Person suffering must needs add an immense Value to such his Sufferings and by so doing must make them more than adequate to the Guilt of all Mankind And tho' this of it self may be sufficient to stop the Mouth of the present Objection yet if we do but recollect some few Things that have been spoken to and made good already we may still be farther satisfied that the Objection against the Value of his Sufferings in order to the Expiation of the Sins of Men will be of no force at all If we do consider therefore that because our Saviour took on him the Nature of Man and not of Angels that he did therefore die for Men and not for Angels If we consider that the faln Angels are left without any hope of Escape from the Vengeance of the final Judgment which Man is not If we consider that the Vengeance which the faln Angels shall then suffer will never work out their Redemption or Forgiveness and that for that very Reason because that Vengeance shall be eternal If we consider that neither would eternal Vengeance work out the Salvation of any Man for the same Reason And lastly If we consider that notwithstanding the utter Impossibility of Man's satisfying the Divine Justice by his own Punishment yet we are assured by the Voice of God that some Men shall obtain Redemption by their Saviour's Blood even Reminion of Sins I say if we conâ—â—der all these Things our Natural Reason will help us to conclude that the Death of our Saviour tho it were but the Death of One and tho' it were but a temporal Death neither yet will do that which all the Eternal Deaths in the World could not do that is it will reconcile Sinners to God and from him obtain their Pardon and that upon that single Account it is of more Value in his Signt than the Death of Angels and Men and that therefore he who suffered that Death was infinitely greater than both By which we may also understand that if there be any Absurdity in the thing that one Person by his single and temporal Death should satisfie the Divine Justice for the Sins and Demerits of so many they who make the Objection do make the Absurdity too because in their Opinion concerning the Person suffering they do degrade him below that Infinite Station and Dignity in which the Scriptures do assure us that he stands exalted 3. The last Objection against our Saviour's Expiation of Sin and that which does indeed rather attempt to prove the Impossibility than the Injustice of the Thing is this That if our Saviour be God himself and if this very Saviour did die to reconcile Sinners to God then it will follow That God suffered to reconcile Sinners to himself Which at at the very first sight looks absurd 1. And so it may indeed to Humane Reason which in many other Things but more especially in the Things of God is very often guided by dark and blind Measures But still the Apostle twice tells us in the Second to the Corinthians chap. 5. ver 18 19. That God was reconciling us and reconciling the World to himself and that he did this by Jesus Christ whom yet the same Apostle in another Place calls God over all blessed for ever Now in the Contrivance and Enterprise of this Reconciliation he was the first and principal Agent and so indeed the very Beginning of the Reconciliation came from the offended Person Nay it was he who contrived the whole Method of Reconciliation for it was hid from Ages and Generations from Principalities and Powers till God made it known to his Church And that we may not think that there is any Absurdity in this his doing he does in this very Case as far as our Circumstances will allow command us to follow his Example For in the Eighteenth of St. Matthew and the Fifteenth Verse he requires that if our Brother offend us we that is we the Offended should go and tell him his Fault So that tho' the Injury be done not by us but to us yet we must make the first Step towards a Reconciliation Now a Man of a worldly Reason would in this Case be apt to cry out What! must I begin to give my self Satisfaction Is this Sense or Justice Did not he do the Injury And is not the whole Reparation to come from him But God's Thoughts are not as Man's Thoughts nor his Ways as Man's Ways And therefore tho' your Enemy began the Injury yet if he commands you must begin the Reconciliation And if God do not only begin the Reconciliation in the Case before us but also suffer himself that he may compleat it all the Inconvenience that will follow from it will be that God can do more than Man For he can do any thing that is not unjust and any thing that is not impossible And as we have already made it out that it is not unjust so we shall go on farther to make it out that it is not impossible 2. For secondly our Saviour being as we have already made it out a Middle Person between God and Man a Mediator in his Person as well as in his Office as he was not so Man but that he was God so he was not so God but that he was Man And then if we add that as Man he suffered for the Sins of Man so much may be allowed now because so much has been proved already And indeed strictly and closely speaking it was Man not God who suffered in the Person of our Saviour For God we are sure is utterly and in his own Nature incapable of any such Thing as that is which we call Suffering So far forth therefore as the Objection furmises that we take God to have suffered so far the Objection is mistaken and laid wrong But yet 3. Because God and Man were personally
united in our Saviour and so made up but one Christ therefore our Reason will tell us that the Sufferings of such a Man must receive an immense Value from his Personal Union with God Take the Thing in an Instance and it will be much more plain and satisfactory A Man strikes a Prince No one will say that he strikes his Dignity for the thing is impossible but only his Body But yet to think that the Injury and Malignity of the Stroke shall not be rated as well by his Dignity as by his Body would be an Imagination that an ordinary Reason would condemn of Weakness And therefore tho' the Bodies of all Men are made of the same Flesh and Blood and so the wounding of a Prince is no greater a natural Hurt to him than the wounding of a Peasant is to him supposing their Wounds to be equal or alike yet we know that the Difference of their Conditions shall make such a vast Difference in the Value of the Mischiefs done by the several Wounds that in the first Case the Fault of such Mischief shall be esteem'd Capital when perhaps in the last it shall hardly be thought Penal The Sufferings therefore of the Man Christ Jesus might be sufficient for the Expiation of the Sins of Mankind not because his Deity suffer'd with his Humanity but because he being IMMANUEL his Deity gave an Infinite Value to the Sufferings of his Humanity by being Intimately because Personally united to it And therefore as my Reason suggests to me the Certainty of the Union of his Deity with his Humanity from the Expiation made by the Value of the Sufferings of his Humanity so from the Union of his Deity with his Humanity it rather suggests to me that he is One Person of the Deity than that his Deity suffer'd for the accomplishing of such his Expiation And I cannot but think that the Arguments already offered will in a good measure warrant such a Suggestion And therefore to what has been already said I add in the 4. Fourth place That tho' the Expiation of the Sin of Man was one Design both of our Saviour's Incarnation and Sufferings yet that it was not the whole Design of such his Sufferings and of such his Incarnation For he came to destroy the Works of the Devil the Kingdom which the Devil had set up in this lower World to recover sinful Man from that Revolt that he had made from God and so to restore him to his Duty and Allegiance to his Sovereign Lord and King as will appear more fully hereafter And to this purpose as it was necessary that he should purchase to himself a peculiar People zealous of good Works so it was necessary that he should free such People from that State of Sin in which they were in Bondage and by doing both establish a Kingdom of Holiness and Righteousness in lieu of a Kingdom of Sin and Darkness His grand Design then was the enlarging of his Father's Kingdom by restoring to it what the Devil had torn off from him And then if for the accomplishing of such his Design the Expiation of Man's Sin and if for the Expiation of Man's Sin his own Death was necessary it will be no great strain to conceive that the Man Christ Jesus united to the second Person in the Trinity should do and suffer what he did for the fulfilling the Will of God by restoring and so enlarging his Kingdom by subduâ—ng his Arch-enemy and by taking his usurped Dominion out of his Hand and asserting it to himself For all this our Saviour did when by those Methods with which the eternal Wisdom has acquainted us in his Word he builds up a Kingdom of Righteousness out of one of Rebellion and Wickedness Which Kingdom when his Work is fully accomplished he will which was his main and grand Design resign up to God the natural and rightful Lord of all Kingdom and Dominion See 1 Cor. chap. 15. ver 24. Tho' therefore our Apprehensions may be startled when we undertake to conceive that the Son of God the Alpha and Omega the Word of God by whom he made the Worlds should suffer to reconcile Man who had made himself his Enemy by Sin to himself in order to Man's Pardon Yet when we consider that by the same Undertaking he re-settled his Father's Kingdom asserted his Honour and Dignity displayed his Mercy and in Conjunction with that maintained his Justice and that by doing all this he exhibited God to the World not only a faithful Creator but also a gracious and loving Redeemer I say when all these Things are considered our Wonder and our Incredulity may not only abate but cease and we may be rationally satisfied that it was as well worth our Saviour's Sufferings to bring all these Things to pass tho his Enemy Man had his Interest in it as it was for him to make Man at first Now what we have said is a sufficient Answer to the Objection upon supposition that any or every Sin is of so malignant a Nature that the just Punishment of it shall be Eternal But tho' there be such a Thing as Eternal Punishment most expresly asserted by the Scriptures and therefore we do by no means question the Truth of it whatever the Socinians may pretend to the contrary yet perhaps it is not so certain that the Scriptures do allot any such Punishment to any other Sin besides Unbelief or which amounts to much the same Thing tho' in other Words a final Impenitence For it is most certain that all other Sins if they be truly and heartily repented for shall in Consideration of our Saviour's Merits be forgiven and it is as certain that no Man shall undergo an eternal Punishment for those Sins which shall be forgiven If therefore we do assert what is most true that our Saviour did not die to save Unbelievers or Impenitent Sinners and that they are the only Sinners to whom eternal Punishments are assigned in such a Case the Objection that his temporal Punishment could not take away an eternal Punishment would be of no force because in such Case eternal Punishment was not designed to be taken away For every Unbeliever and Impenitent Person shall suffer it notwithstanding our Saviour's Death And there do not want very good Probabilities and those too in no wise disagreeing to Scripture-Revelations that the Sins of those whose Sins shall not be pardoned after the Resurrection shall have just so much Punishment as they do in Justice deserve be that more or less but that such their Punishment shall not therefore be eternal because such their Sins did deserve such eternal Punishment but because they refused and rejected those easie Means which God had provided in a Saviour by a due Use of which they might have escaped all Punishment whatsoever Now because it is absurd to imagine that our Saviour underâ—ent Death to save those who should slight or reject that Salvation which he purchased by his Death
that the Merits of our Saviour's Sufferings should be imputed to Man in order to Man's Release from Death That is Imputation is as reasonable and as justifiable in one Case as in the other for they both stand upon one and the same Foot and for that Reason he who throws down one throws down both And therefore whoever rejects the Doctrine of the Imputation of our Saviour's Righteousness to Man does by so doing reject the Imputation of Man's Sin to our Saviour and all the Consequences of it Or in other Words he who rejects the Doctrine of the Imputation does by so doing reject the Doctrine of the Expiation likewise 2. Those Men who do so far maintain Man's Salvation to depend upon the Merits of our Saviour's Death alone as to deny Imputed Righteousness to have any thing to do in the Purchase of Salvation do not seem to me sufficiently to consider that there are Two Things contained in the Death of our Saviour 1. The Death it self and 2. His Obedience to the Will of his Father in submitting himself to such a Death Now because Death is properly speaking what he underwent for the Expiation of Man's Sin for the Vindictive Part of the Law does expresly assign Death as the Punishment of Sin hence it is as I conceive that most of those who have discoursed of Man's Redemption for the Sake and Merit of our Saviour's Death have placed the Merit of the Purchase only in such Death and in the mean time have wholly laid aside all Consideration of the Merit of that Obedience which attended it But because the Scriptures in the Case speak otherwise and because we must needs be best instructed out of them in any thing which concerns our Saviour therefore laying aside at present all Schemes of Humane Reasoning or Contrivance we shall entirely apply our selves to them for such Instruction Take we notice therefore that they inform us that our Saviour was delivered to death by the determinate Counsel and Foreknowledge of God So St. Peter tells us in the Second of Acts and Twenty third Verse and so we are told in other Places From which we infer that the Sufferings and Death of our Saviour was an Act of Obedience to the Will and Counsel of God All which St. Paul gives us in a few Words but those very full to our present Purpose when he tells us in the Second to the Philippians the Eighth Verse that Jesus Christ being found in fashion as a Man humbled himself and became obedient unto Death even the Death of the Cross Since therefore our Saviour's Death was at least one Branch of his Obedience to the Will of his Father that is since his Obedience in the Scripture-Account was shewed in his Death as well as in his Life and therefore Both when in Conjunction were one and the self-same thing I would desire to know upon what Ground or by what Warrant it can be imagined and much less defended that Man is saved for the sake of his Death but that he is not saved for the sake of his Obedience And I would so much the rather insist upon this Inquiry because tho' it should be granted that our Saviour's Death was meritorious of Man's Everlasting Happiness and that is the present Case then if we must make an Opposition between his Death and his Obedience and to ascribe Man's Happiness to his Death but not to his Obedience does make such an Opposition but I say if there must be an Opposition made between them it seems much more agreeable to Reason nay indeed to common Sense to ascribe such Merit to the Obedience of his Death than to his Death For it is the Voice of Natural Justice that Duty and Obedience may deserve a Reward but it is a Strain beyond Conceit that Punishment should do so too For if that were allowed then the suffering of Punishment for the Breach of the Law might be justly meritorious of a Reward as well as Obedience to the Command of the Law and so at long run it would come to the same Event to break the Law as to keep it But because that cannot be allowed therefore if People will have an Opposition in the Case where the Scripture has made none we should rather ascribe Man's Eternal Happiness to the Obedience of our Saviour's Death than to the Death it self And then if our Eternal Happiness may be ascribed to the Merit of our Saviour's Obedience in one Case why may it not be so in more For for the same Reason that a Believer may be interessed in the Obedience of his Death he may be interessed in the Obedience of his Life too Since then in the present Case it is allowed that a Believer has his Interest by Imputation in the first Case it will follow that he may and considering what has already been said that he must have it so in the last That is in a few Words That the Obedience of our Saviour both in his Life and in his Death must purchase for Man that Happiness which by the Tenor of Justice is the proper and appropriated Reward of Obedience It being evident then that for the same Reason for which the Merits of our Saviour's Death may belong to Believers the Merits of his Obedience may do so too and that both the one and the other do therefore belong to them because they are imputed to them Our next Business must be with those Men who deny all Imputation whatsoever and therefore neither allow the Merits of his Life or Death to have any thing to do in the Purchase of Man's Salvation And because we have already and largely discoursed of the Purchase made by his Death Our only Business at present will be to enquire concerning the Purchase made by his Obedience And because the Men we have now to do with do deny all Imputation of what our Saviour did or suffered whatsoever therefore we shall lay down and attempt the Proof of this following Proposition That that Righteousness by which Believers shall be judged and in consideration of which they shall obtain Salvation at the Resurrection and the Great Day shall be the Obedience of their Saviour while he lived in the Flesh imputed to such Believers 1. In order to this we take notice in the first place That the Scriptures do tell us That all Men shall be judged according to their Works that is according to their Obedience or Disobedience in this Life 2. We lay it down in the second place That all those who shall be adjudged to enjoy an Eternal Happiness must in order to that blessed Sentence be first entitled to a perfect Righteousness This we reckon is proved before 3. We take notice in the third place That no Man tho' never so righteous yet ever did does or shall arrive at a perfect Righteousness in this Life The Question then that remains to be resolved is How any Man shall come to be entitled to a perfect Righteousness
other sort of Natural Philosophy they had been very well satisfied and contented without that new and uncouth Article of their Christian Faith Other Instances might be produced to shew that gross Fooleries and Corruptions have crept into Religion at this Door Whereas a due Consideration that the Christian Religion is a Covenant and the treating of it as such would acquaint us much better with the Nature and engage us more effectually to the Duties of it But this useful Remark being left in this place we proceed 2. The second Objection therefore against the Imputation of our Saviour's Obedience to Believers in order to their obtaining the promised Reward of the Covenant stands thus That supposing that our Saviour did provide for the Directive Part of the Law by his Obedience and that he did also fulfil the Vindictive Part by his Death In such Case there does therefore seem to be a Superfluity in his Provision because should his Obedience alone be imputed to us we should by that Means be entitled to a perfect Righteousness and then there had been no need of his Death to expiate our Sins because then we should have had no Sins to be expiated And that which may add some Strength to what is thus alledged is this That our Saviour paying that Obedience to the Law while he was in the Flesh the Obedience so paid was paid before his Death and therefore in the Course of Things it should seem that it might be imputed before his Death and in the Course of Justice without it For when by such Imputation we were once entitled to his Righteousness the Plea of his Death in order to qualifie us for Happiness must needs be useless and superfluous Now tho' it may seem indeed that Things might have gone so if we only have a Regard to the Order of Time yet if we look to the Order of Reason and Justice we shall easily perceive that they could not For we cannot by any Estimation of Justice whatsoever be reckoned Righteous so long as our Guilt lies upon us and when once by our Sins we have made our selves guilty such Guilt must needs lie upon us till it be one way or other expiated Now because we have already and fully made it out that it neither is nor can be expiated any other way than by the Death of our Saviour therefore the Death of such Saviour must in the Order of Justice first expiate such our Guilt before we can possibly be entitled to a perfect Righteousness For who can put a clean thing into an unclean It is neither agreeable to the Methods of Wisdom or Justice so to do And therefore we may be sure that it cannot be the Practice of the most Wise and Just God No! we know well enough because we are told so by the Spirit of God that our Saviour first died for our Sins and after that rose again for our Justification And we know moreover that when God had once given forth his Law tho' had an exact Obedience been paid to it the Vengeance of it which was only Conditionally threatned had never been executed for the Justice and Execution of such Vengeance does entirely depend upon our Transgression yet after we had transgressed the Law the Execution of such Vengeance was as necessary as was the Happiness promised if we had not transgressed it For Vengeance does by the Tenor of the Law stand in the same Relation to Sin as Happiness does to Obedience The first becomes our Due in case we neglect our Duty the last in case we perform it And the Distribution both of the one and the other must as necessarily follow upon our Performance or Non-performance of those Conditions to which each of them do stand respectively engaged as it is necessary for God to love Holiness and hate Wickedness One Part of the Law therefore is in Justice to be provided for as well as the other And then if neither the Punishment of Man could fulfil the Law on the one Hand nor the imperfect Obedience of Man on the other and if our Saviour undertook for Man's sake to supply Man's Defects then there was the same Necessity in Justice that he should fulfil the Vindictive Part of it by his Death that there was that he should fulfil the Directive Part of it by his Obedience And therefore as neither his Obedience not his Death had been necessary no nor his Incarnation neither upon which such his Death and such his Obedience do depend But I say as neither his Obedience nor his Death had been necessary if Man had obeyed the Law himself so upon Man's Transgression of the Law they both became necessary Because as we have already seen Man's Punishment is in Justice as necessary upon his Breach of the Law as his Obedience was upon God's Promulgation of the Law And therefore when our Saviour undertook to save sinful Man that is Man who had transgressed the Directions of the Law and Man who lay exposed to the Vengeance of the Law it was necessary in order to his doing so justly that he should have a Regard to one Part of the Law as well as to the other that is that he should fulfil the Vindictive by his Death and the Directive by his Obedience And had he not done both one Part of the Law at least had been neglected and so the Redemption had not been just By which we may by this time understand that there is no Superfluity in his providing for Man's Salvation both by the Obedience of his Life and by the Sufferings of his Death For that cannot in Reason be accounted Superfluous in the doing of any Thing whatsoever without which such Thing cannot be done justly Now as in our Answer to the former Objection we made good not only the Possibility but the Legality too of the Imputation of our Saviour's Righteousness so in our Answer to this we have shewed the conjunct Necessity both of the Imputation and of his Death in order to Man's Salvation By all which we may at last come to understand that God in his Counsel for Man's Salvation as he consulted his Mercy so did not lay aside the Care of his Justice For the whole Transaction as we have largely seen was in him Justice as it was to us Mercy Justice as it fulfilled the whole Law Mercy as it redeemed us from the Curse and invested us in the Promise of the Law A strange Mixture and had it not been discovered to us by Revelation by our Natural Reason not to be fathomed But as it is revealed agreeable as we have seen to such Reason so assisted 1. By which we may in the first place understand That tho' Christ crucified be to the Jews a Stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness yet to us he is and that notoriously the Wisdom of God and the Power of God For his Wisdom and his Power can we see bring Things to pass beyond the reach of Angels and
Life he laid it down in our stead so also that when he took it up again he took up with it the Lives of all those who by the Conditions of the New Covenant shall have an Interest in such his Death And therefore as our Christianity does acquaint us that they who live to Christ do live by the Spirit so St. Paul to our present purpose does tell us in the Eighth to the Romans ver 11. that if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead do dwell in you he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal Bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you In a Word Christ is our Head and we are his Members and because he and we do make up one Body and because as Members of such his Body we are quickned by his Spirit therefore we may confirm our own Resurrection by his And therefore as he is called the First-born from the Dead in the First to the Colossians ver 18. so we are called the Children of the Resurrection in the Twentieth of St. Luke ver 36. So that a good Man from the Certainty of his Saviour's Resurrection from Death to Glory and Immortality may safely conclude his own may lie down in his Grave as securely as in his Bed and when the Morning of the Great Day shall down forth may be more secure of rising again and putting on his Body than he can be that he shall rise on the Morrow-morning and put on his Clothes For for the first he has the Security of Truth and Omnipotence but for the last he has only the Promises of his own Presumption or at the very best but of his Hope 4. As the Faithful shall in Consideration of our Saviour's Death and Resurrection obtain their own Resurrection from Death to Life so the Life which by such their Resurrection they shall obtain shall be Life Eternal This is express Scripture and a Christian may therefore be satisfied in and assured of its Truth For our Saviour himself tells us as much when giving an Account of the Last Judgment he closes such Account in the Last Verse of the Twenty fifth Chapter of St. Matthew with these Words And these shall go into everlasting Punishment and then follows that which is directly to our present Purpose But the Righteous into Life Eternal And Reason tells us that so it must needs be because where the Cause of all Death whatsoever is taken away there the Possibility of Death must be taken away too unless we should imagine that Death should be brought upon a Rational Creature subject to Law without any meritorious Cause of Death at all But as we have often laid it down and proved it already that cannot be supposed in the present Case because the Death we now speak of is supposed to come from God's Justice and the Justice of God cannot either truly or rationally be supposed to inflict Death there where there is no Desert of it Now we therefore know that the meritorious Cause of Death is Sin because we know that the Wages of Sin is Death If therefore as we have already seen the Sin of the Faithful be taken away by the Expiation and if upon their Resurrection they obtain an indefectible Holiness the Inference will be That the Cause of Death Sin will upon the first Account be cancelled and blotted out and that upon the last Account it cannot be renewed or restored and that therefore upon both Accounts in conjunction Death the Wages of Sin can never more return And then when a Life restored is secured from all possible return of Death we may be sure that such Life so restored must be Eternal And agreeable to what we now say St. Paul tells us in the Third to the Philippians the last Verse that our Saviour whom we look for from Heaven shall change our vile Body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious Body according to the mighty working whereby he is able even to subdue all Things unto himself Now we know that when our Saviour appeared to St. Paul that is to that very Apostle who tells us these Things he does expresly affirm to King Agrippa in the Twenty sixth of the Acts that the Light of the Appearance was above the Brightness of the Sun and yet the Context will tell us that the Appearance was made about Mid-day And perhaps our Saviour's Transfiguration on the Mount was a Proleptick Discovery of that Glory with which his Body was to be cloathed upon his Ascent into Heaven the Mount of God But be that as it will yet to our Purpose If the Bodies of the Saints shall be fashioned like unto his glorious Body then it will be no improbable Conclusion That they shall with that Glory put on an Immortal Frame and Constitution And this Conclusion will then advance from Probable to Certain when we know that the same Apostle does acquaint us not only that our Body which is sown in dishonour shall be raised in glory but over and above that this Corruptible must put on Incorruption and that this Mortal must put on Immortality Much more might be offered on this Subject but from what has been glanced at we may now perceive that our Body in imitation of our Saviour's Body shall after its Resurrection be indued with a glorious Frame and an immortal Constitution that it shall be done by his Power as it shall in Consideration of his Merit that the Power that shall do it is able to subdue all Things to it self that is is Omnipotent And then where we have the Promise of Truth and the Power of Omnipotence to secure to us an Eternal Life there we can have no Reason to doubt the Eternity of such Life The Second Thing should now in Order follow which is to shew wherein the Happiness of such Eternal Life does consist But before we speak to that I shall lay down two or three Practical Considerations which as they look back to what has been spoken already so will be no improper Introduction to those Things which are to follow 1. And first We should be sensible of and grateful for that blessed Provision that our Lord and Saviour has made for our Everlasting Happiness and Security And this we should so much the rather be because by what has been said we may now understand that such Provision does fully answer to our highest natural Desires and Inclinations For our Anxiety for our own Welfare will tell us that among all the several Appetites by which we pursue after our own Happiness our Desire of Life does hold the first and chief Place with us And the Reason is plain because the Loss of Life must needs be followed by the Loss of all other Enjoyments whatsoever that can in any wise conduce to our Happiness And as we are told by our Common Sense that our grand and topping Appetite is that of Life so we are told by the same
there can be no Punishment and a dead Man can have no Sensation unless we could suppose him to be alive and dead at the same time This Head may meet with Objections but I shall wave them and any Answer to them at present and that too so much the rather because it is notorious that the Scriptures do lay the greater Punishment that is the Punishment greater than Death not only beyond the Resurrection but also beyond the last Judgment it-self 7. Lastly In such Places of Scripture where the greater Punishment is threatned it is not as the Punishment of the Transgression of the Positive Law was absolute and peremptory but only conditional And therefore if we except first the Sin against the Holy Ghost whatever that be for it does not concern us to enquire at present and secondly The Refusing the Conditions of Salvation offered in a Saviour that grand and comprehensive Sin which either neglects or renounces the only Means appointed for Man's Salvation from all his other Sins I say if we except these Two Cases if yet they be Two not only the future Punishment threatned against the Breach of this or that Law but of any or all may as far as the Gospel-discoveries go be remitted Which may teach us to think that the Punishment threatned in the Law given to Adam was not a Punishment after a Resurrection but a Punishment without a Resurrection And that not only because at that Time when the Law was given to him there was not only no Resurrection promised but no Saviour neither by whom alone a Resurrection was to be brought to pass To which we may add That the Death threatned to Adam by the Law given to him was as we have seen upon his Transgression of such Law absolute and peremptory and that the Execution of such Threat is as the Scripture and our Experience tells us absolute and universal Whereas the Threat of an eternal Death as we are well assured is upon the Breach of God's Laws only conditional Now it looks hard to our Reason that when only Death is threatned in the Law and that Death at the very most but indefinite to say that the Death so threatned does imply a double Death that is both a Temporal and Eternal Death And it looks harder yet to say that the Threat and Execution of one of the Deaths is absolute and universal but that the Threat and Execution of the other is only partial and conditional For our Reason tells us that neither any Threat nor Execution of Death can be both Absolute and Conditional both Universal and Particular too From the Whole we take notice That tho God was obliged both by his Truth and Justice to execute the Threatning against the Transgression of the first Law because that Law being given to Man in his Innocence that is before he stood in need of a Saviour and therefore before God had promised one the Threat of Punishment upon the Breach of the Law was as we have seen absolute and peremptory Yet because the Revelation of a future and everlasting Punishment in the New Covenant is rather made by way of Information than by way of peremptory Threat and absolute Denunciation therefore God is obliged to the Execution of such Penalty only by his Justice but not at all by his Veracity If then there be a Means provided to satisfie such his Justice without the rigorous Execution of such declared and without such Means certain Penalty it will well enough follow That such Penalty may be remitted without any Prejudice either to his Justice or to his Truth And therefore in what is to follow we trust to make it good That our Lord and Saviour JESUS CHRIST may and will justly save us from the Punishment peremptorily threatned to Adam viz. the Loss of Life executed upon him and all Mankind by releasing us from it after we have suffer'd it and from a future and eternal Punishment expresly revealed in the New Testament to Christians and probably also after the Fall of Adam and the Promise of the Seed of the Woman believed by the Patriarchs and by God's Church among the Jews by preventing it CHAP. I. The Scriptures do most expresly assert That Mankind are redeemed by the Blood of JESUS CHRIST It is not agreeable to the Divine Wisdom or to the Method of his Proceedings in the like Cases to employ greater Means to bring his Purposes to pass where less may be sufficient Punishment is the necessary Wages of Sin An Objection to this Position answered AND as we have grounded what we have said in the Introduction upon the Revelations of God which have acquainted us how Sin and the Punishment of it Death entred into the World So in what is to follow concerning the Redemption of Mankind both from Sin and Punishment we shall take our Rise from Revelation likewise Not only because we had known nothing of the Matter but by Revelation but also because in the present Case Revelation is undoubtedly the best Guide of our Reason For Reason must of necessity be guided best by that without the Guidance of which Reason it self is confessedly blind And we are very sure that it becomes all those who acknowledge the Scriptures to be the Revelations of God I say it becomes them in modesty and deference to the Author and in prudence for their own more certain Conduct rather to endeavour to bring their Reason to comply with the Revelation than to bring the Revelation to comply with their Reason And therefore that we our selves may practise what we cannot but judge to be best in the Practice of others we shall lay the Ground-work of all that is to follow upon the Words of St. Peter in the Fourth of the Acts and the Twelfth Verse Neither is there Salvation in any other For there is no other Name under Heaven given among Men whereby we must be saved In which Words the Apostle and he too at that time filled with the Holy-Ghost as appears by the Eighth Verse does expresly tell us for the Words do import so much That Men must be saved by JESUS CHRIST of Nazareth consult the Tenth Verse and by no other For it is evident that by Name in the Text is meant Jesus Christ himself because what he calls Name in one Part of the Verse is opposed to any other in the other Part of the Verse As in the Tenth Verse he tells us that the impotent Man was made whole by the Name of Jesus Christ in the beginning and that he was made whole by Him that is by Jesus Christ in the latter end of the Verse Those who professedly and avowedly make it their Business to evacuate the Purchase of Our Saviour's Merits and Blood do to that purpose start if not an impertinent yet a very sawcie Question which is Whether or no God could not have saved sinful Man by some other Means than by the Death of his Son And by that means would alter
that very Question which they alone have made a Question viz. Whether Jesus Christ died for the Sins of Men I say they would alter it into another Question neither fit to be disputed nor possible to be determined by short-sighted Men viz. What God can do and what God cannot do Whereas it is sufficient for us to take Things as we find them and if we find that Things in the present Case are so ordered by God and that he tells us that they are so as that sinful Man shall not obtain Redemption but only by the Merits and Death of Jesus Christ their Saviour I say if God tells us and that too by repeated Declarations that Things in the present Case are so ordered we ought to acquiesce in such his Declarations and not employ our Vanity or Curiosity for it can in no sober Sense be call'd our Reason in enquiring Whether much less in determining that they might or might not have been better ordered But of this more hereafter At present therefore and in the first place we shall take the Matter of Fact to be just as the Scriptures have in most plain and express Words told us it is That Jesus Christ died for our Sins that he died to save Sinners c. And then by comparing this Matter of Fact with other the Methods of the Divine Proceedings in the like Cases see if it will not afford us a very plausible Argument of the Truth laid down That there is not Salvation in any other Now if we carry our Observation through any other the Transactions of the Divine Love and Mercy that do design to entitle Men to the same Salvation we shall find that God does never make use of extraordinary Means where the ordinary are sufficient And therefore when the Lord himself appeared to Saul in his Journey to Damascus we find that the Design and Effect of that Vision was to refer him to Ananias for Instructions in his Duty And so when the Angel appeared to Cornelius the Business of his Message was only to direct him to Peter that so Peter might by the ordinary Means of Grace direct him into the Way of Salvation And when Men have Moses and the Prophets it will therefore concern them in Duty and Interest to hear them because in such Case God will not convince them by raising one from the Dead In short as it is not the Method of the Divine Proceedings so neither is it of Wisdom it self to let the Measure of the Means exceed in their Proportion to the designed End And in any Case whatsoever where less Cost or Labour is sufficient there common Prudence will by no means allow and much less approve our Drudgery or Profuseness Now to bring what we have said to our present purpose Since our Saviour for the Establishment of the Gospel-Covenant did actually take upon him Our Flesh and in that Flesh suffer it will afford us no slight Argument that That Covenant could not have been established upon more easie Conditions because our common Reason does assure us that all Excess of Performance in the Case would have been Superfluity And our Religion and Modesty does forbid us to fasten any such Imputation upon the Divine Counsels and Actions And here we may well put Abraham's Question Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right And when by the purpose of his Mercy he determined to rescue faln Man from Sin and Misery shall he reject the Son of his Bosom and expose him to all sorts of Misery in this World and to Violence and Barbarity in his Departure out of it when the Ransom might have been made at a cheaper Rate Certainly the Love of God is not so narrow and stinted but that he both could and would have extended it to his lost Creatures and yet at the same time not have removed it from his only and beloved Son if Justice and Wisdom had allowed him so to do But then because he himself tells us that he did otherwise and because we know that what he tells us must be true as well as that what he does is just and holy therefore the Conclusion that fairly offers it self is That nothing less than the Incarnation and Death of the Son of God could in Wisdom and Justice have brought about the designed Redemption To which we shall in short add That it is one of the certain Characters of the True God that he brings his Purposes to pass by the best wisest and most proper Means And now having thus opened our Way to our main Design by these few Reflexions on the Matter of Fact as it is laid down most expresly in the Scriptures We shall in what follows go on to consider the Merits of the Cause and that we shall do by examining Whether or no Mankind had not brought themselves into so forlorn a Condition by their Sin that there does not appear in Justice any probable or indeed any possible Way for their Salvation but only by the Incarnation and Death of the Son of God And that there did not will I presume appear when we have considered and confirmed the following Propositions whereof the First is That Misery and Death or in one word that Vengeance is as the Just so also the Necessary Wages of Sin And here before we begin to prevent as much as possible all Objections that may be started against what we shall deliver we must desire the Reader to take notice that we do at present only make it our Business to measure the Equity of the Punishment of Sin by the exact and rigorous Laws of Justice That is we do as we must if we will do right conceive Things in that State in which they had stood had the Son of God never been designed for the Saviour of the World For because our Business at present is to enquire what would have become of sinful Man if the Son of God had not interposed for his Rescue therefore we stand obliged at present to take other Measures in accounting for the Proceedings of the Divine Justice than what our Experience acquaints us with in this World For while we live here we come within the Compass and so enjoy the Benefit of that Relaxation of the Law which was the Purchase of our Saviour's Merits and therefore we cannot truly pass a Judgment upon the exact Proceedings of the Divine Justice from the Contemplations of those Proceedings of Justice which we see in this World and which upon that account come within the compass of that Relaxation To know therefore whether the Incarnation Life and Death of our Saviour were necessary for Man's Redemption we must enquire what had become of sinful Man if the Son of God had not become his Saviour And if upon that Enquiry it shall appear that Vengeance without any Remedy had been his Portion then it will also appear at least a probable Conclusion for we shall adventure no farther because we are utter Strangers to the
unsearchable Depths of the Divine Wisdom That Mankind had brought themselves into so forlorn a Condition by their Sin that there does not appear to us any possible or just Way for their Redemption but only by the Incarnation Life and Death of their Revealed Saviour the Son of God This Caution then being laid down and well observed the First Proposition viz. That Punishment or Vengeance is the Just and Necessary Wages of Sin will appear more easie and rational And for asserting the Truth of it we lay it down in the 1. First place That God is in his own Nature Holy This does necessarily fall in with our very Notion of a God because it is a Contradiction to our very Conceptions of a Deity to suppose any Wickedness or Turpitude in him 2. We lay it down secondly That God loves himself This will easily be allowed for more Reasons than one both because the Notion is Natural and Universal that all Living Things do so as also because God cannot but be supposed to be the most Noble and Adequate as well as Natural Object if I may so speak of his own Love Nay some Men have streined this Point so far as to tell us that the great and infinite Complacency that God takes in himself and in his own Perfections would never have allowed him to condescend to his Work of Creation and by that Means to have allowed any of his Love and Good-will to low mean and inferiour Creatures as the best of Creatures are if compared to him if the Son who is the Word of God had not interposed upon that Occasion and so they make him a Mediator of Creation as well as of Redemption But laying that aside at present as being nothing to our purpose it may suffice for our Design that whatever Love God bears to his Creatures it cannot be supposed but that he not only loves but that he does also chiefly and in the first place love himself These Two Things then being laid down That God loves himself and That he is in his Nature Holy the Inference that we shall make before we proceed any farther must be That he cannot otherwise chuse but hate and abhor whatsoever is contrary to such his Nature And because all Sin and Wickedness is so that therefore he cannot chuse but hate and abhor all Sin and Wickedness And hence it is that the Scripture acquaints us that the carnal mind is enmity with God that is all Sin and Wickedness is so For we may as rationally conceive that a Man who entertains and makes much of Sin does love God as we may that God who in his Nature is Holy can love Sin which is directly contrary to such his Holiness This Inference then from the Two former Propositions being thus in short laid down and made good we go on and add in the 3. Third place That the Life and Happiness of all God's Creatures is only the Effect of the Divine Good-will and Pleasure For undoubtedly it was he that made us and not we our-selves And taking it for granted at present that he did so I would in the next place enquire Whether we did deserve such our Beings or not If it be answered That we did not then we have what we desire and that is that the great and first Blessing that ever God bestowed upon us was by him freely bestowed without any possible Merit in us and therefore that it was the free Effect of his Good-will and Pleasure But if any Man shall be so silly as to think that he could deserve his Being of God then to make good such his Conceit it will be expected and that too for ever for the Expectation will never be answered that he should make it out that Nothing may have Something of Merit in it and that what as yet is not may have wherewithal to lay an Obligation upon Omnipotence And as our Being was the free Effect of the Divine Good-will and Pleasure so also are all those Blessings which do attend it For with our Beings he did also bestow upon us all those Faculties which should entertain any other Thing whatsoever And as he made our Faculties so did he all Things else which can possibly gratifie those Faculties And that there is any Harmony or Agreement between those Faculties and their Objects is undoubtedly owing to him who was the original Contriver and Author of both And therefore in the 4. Fourth place I would offer it to Consideration That it is only the Exercise of God's Good-will towards us that does indeed and truth make way for the Exercise of his Justice upon us Because we could never have undergone the Severity of the last if we had never been made Partakers of the Bounty of the first And therefore when God does punish us for our Sins by his Justice that Punishment does nothing else but only strip us of something which we had before received from his Mercy And this upon a serious Consideration will appear to be true whether the Punishment inflicted do deprive us of our Ease Peace Safety or even of Life itself For what have we that we did not receive since in him we live and move and have our Being 5. Fifthly I would offer it to Consideration Whether when God takes any Thing from us which upon the account of his Good-will and Pleasure he had bestowed upon us I say Whether in such a Case the true and just Reason why he does so is not because we by our Sins have turned such his Good-will towards us into his Displeasure against us For if what he bestowed was the Effect of his Good-will and if as God made us holy and upright at first he cannot but continue the same Good-will towards us so long as we continue as he made us Then we may be assured that so long as he continues such his Good-will towards us so long he will continue the Effects of such his Good-will too And if we were not assured of this then it might be all one as to us whether God were well-pleased with us and loved us or not For if the Loss of such good Things which are the Essects of God's Good-will to us may while we continue holy and innocent be once made consistent with such his Good-will then farewel to all Distinction as to the Justice of Rewards and Punishments For in such a Case it may be the same thing whether we please God or displease him because we may lose the Effects of his Favour that is according to the Tenor of the last Head we may be punished as well for our Innocence as for our Wickedness or at the very best we may be punished for Nothing No! no! As God's Displeasure is contrary to his Good-will and Favour so the Essects and Consequences of that Displeasure must be contrary to the Effects and Consequences of such his Good-will and Favour too This is the Voice of Nature and this the Voice of Justice and therefore
if the Punishment of Sin be absolutely just and necessary then how came it to pass that God did in his Counsel design and in his Wisdom appoint a Saviour in order to the Paâ—don of Sin For in Order of Nature the Design of Pardon must be antecedent to thâ— Design of sending a Saviour And therefore if the Punishment of Sin be as it is laâ— down both just and necessary God's Design of Pardon going counter to this Law should seem to be unjust For how could he justâ— design to pardon That which in Justice anâ— Necessity he stood obliged to punish Now to this several Things may be answered As 1. First That God did never design 〈◊〉 pardon Sin but only in and through a Savâ—our And how far such his Design undeâ— such a Restriction and Limitation is juâ—â— is very much the Business of that part of thâ— Discourse which in its Place is to follow anâ— therefore must not be forestalled here 2. That notwithstanding a Saviour yeâ— God did never pardon any sinful Creature All the Sinners that we know are the falâ— Angels and Men. What the Scriptures acquaint us with concerning the first we know well enough And among such Things 〈◊〉 know also that it gives us an Account 〈◊〉 the Punishment of their Sin And as foâ— Men those of them that shall be saved aâ— last in consideration of their Saviour's Merits do yet in this World suffer Losses anâ— Crosses and Pains and Diseases and Death All which are undoubted Punishments of Sinâ— And for the rest who shall by a final Impenitence reject the Benefit of the Saviour's Purchase besides the Calamities which they suffer in common with the Good in this World the Scriptures do acquaint us sufficiently with their Doom in the next So that if it may be an Argument that Punishment is the necessary Reward of Sin because all Sinners have do and shall suffer Punishment then God's designing of a Saviour for Mankind in order to their Pardon does not take off the Force of such Argument because notwithstanding such his Design and such Saviour no Sinner whatsoever did or ever will go unpunished 3. But then thirdly It is a Mistake that the Salvation of Man from Punishment was the immediate and direct Design in God's Counsel of sending a Saviour For as we shall see hereafter See Chap. 12. the Business of our Saviour's Coming was to bring back Mankind to his Father's Kingdom who had been drawn into a Revolt from his Dominion and Jurisdiction by the Sollicitations of the Devil and had thereby put a Slight upon the Authority of the King of all the World and so in some sense lesned the Extent of his Kingdom Now those whom our Saviour shall so bring back to their Allegiance by restoring them to their lost Holiness shall indeed be saved But then their Salvation is a Consequence of their Return to Holiness and so was not properly the Design of God's sending a Saviour but the Consequence of the Success of such Design CHAP. II. The Gospel holds forth no such thing as an Absolute or Unconditional Pardon no nor yet an Arbitrary Pardon THe next and Second Proposition offered to be made good in order to our main Design is this That the Gospel holds out no such thing to us as an absolute Forgiveness of Sin Which Proposition I therefore lay down here not only because it is introductive to some Things which are to follow but also to obviate the Conceit of those Men who think they do sufficiently wipe away the Merits of our Saviour in reference to the Pardon of our Sins by telling us that God may without any more ado pardon such our Sins by his Free Grace 1. But in the first place we cannot but take notice that what God may do and what he has declared he will do are Two very different and distinct Things Though therefore it be supposed that God may grant us an absolute Pardon yet if in those very Revelations in which he has discovered to us his Intention of pardoning us he does expresly tell us that he will not do so it will be proper and modest in us to acquiesce in what he so tells us rather than to raise in our Imaginations conceited Possibilities which do directly contradict such his Declarations 2. But secondly He who brought us the Gospel-Dispensation in order to the Pardon of our Sins does in that Dispensation require our Repentance in order to such our Pardon Now if Repentance be a Condition of the Pardon then for that Reason alone the Pardon cannot be Absolute because an Absolute Pardon is an Inconditional Pardon and it is impossible that the same Pardon should be a Conditional and an Inconditional Pardon too 3. An Absolute Pardon of Sin fights directly against all that we have said under our last Head concerning the Necessary Justice of Punishment And therefore till all that be wiped away we may upon those Grounds deny that there is any such sort of Pardon For it looks a little too harsh and that too to Natural Reason to tell us that God will be reconciled to the Enemy of his Nature and that upon the account of mere Mercy and Compassion and that in order to his being so he will throw away all Considerations of his Justice which in this Case we may adventure to call his Natural Displeasure 4. If we should suppose or allow such a thing as an Absolute Forgiveness then we must also allow that it may be the same thing whether a man has been the best or the worst Man in the whole World For an Absolute Forgiveness in the Reason and Nature of it may as well be extended to the one as to the other For let what Reason soever be assigned why it may not and that very Reason be it what it will will prove the Forgiveness not to be absolute For that Forgiveness cannot be so that is limited or restrained by any Reason whatsoever 5. An Absolute Pardon does throw a Slur upon God's Wisdom no less than it does so upon his Justice For the Law being his against which we have transgressed and he having in that very Law threatned Vengeance upon such as shall transgress it if after the Transgression he should grant an absolute Pardon to such Transgression he would by such a Pardon as much void and annul the Law as he had by his Threatning established and confirmed it And so it might come to the same pass as to the final Event whether he had made any Law or no. For what is the Difference not to make a Law and not to execute it And therefore St. Paul point-blank to our purpose tells us in the Third to the Romans the Fifth and Sixth Verses That if God should not execute Vengeance he would not only be unrighteous but that also he could not judge the World And we may add that he would not only be unrighteous but considering the Contrariety that would be between his Practice
and his Law he would be unwise also And therefore 6. Lastly The last Judgment and that Description that we meet with of it in Gods Word do fully assure us that he has no such Designs in his Counsels as to throw away his Laws to gratifie his Enemies with Impunity From all which Reasons and as we do believe from each of them in particular it seems satisfactorily evident that a Gospel-Pardon of Sin is no absolute Pardon And that therefore when God does in the Gospel promise Pardon of Sin there must be some previous Conditions that must be observed in order to such a Pardon And what Share our Saviour has in the Performance and Accomplishment of such Conditions we shall learn hereafter In the mean time before we dismiss this Chapter we must not dissemble that it may be surmised and therefore also that it may be objected That tho' there should be no alsolute Gospel-Pardon that yet there may be an arbitrary Gospel-Pardon and that there are some Expressions in the New Testament that lean that way and may at least incline us to believe that there is such a Thing But because we are sure that no Pardon can come from God but what is just and because we know that Arbitrary Justice is only one Branch of Arbitrary Power and therefore is in reality no Justice at all for it is only a resolute Determination of the Will without any Reason for such Determination therefore we are sure that it cannot belong to God For all his Actions are limited and bounded by his Holiness that is by the Eternal Rules of Reason and Justice And he only therefore wills what he pleases because he neither does not can please to will any thing but what is Just CHAP. III. A Gospel-Salvation contains in it 1. Pardon of Sin 2. The Gift of Eternal Happiness To these Two other Things required 1. An Expiation of Sin 2. A Restitution to Holiness Negatively the several Ways how such Expiation cannot be made from whence an Inference of the Doctrine asserted with some Practical Inferences HAving in the First Chapter made it good that Misery and Death that is in one Word that Vengeance is as the just so also the necessary Wages of Sin And in the Second That the Gospel it self holds out no such thing to us as either an Absolute or Arbitrary Forgiveness of Sin Our next Proposition must be That because the Gospel in this very Case is the Revelation of God's Will and because the Will and Counsel of God in that Gospel revealed is the Pardon and Salvation of Man that therefore Man's Sin is to be pardoned tho' not by an absolute or arbitrary Forgiveness And then because it must for that Reason be pardoned some way or other it will be our next Business to enquire what that Way is For by such Enquiry it may perhaps appear to be a Gospel-Truth and that too agreeable to Reason That there is not Salvation in any other but in Jesus Christ alone and that there is no other Name under Heaven given among Men whereby we must be saved And here because the Gospel promises no absolute Pardon of Sin as we do from thence in the first place conclude that the Pardon must be conditional so we must in the next place enquire what that Condition or what those Conditions are upon which this Pardon is to be obtained Now if in order to our more rational and satisfactory Resolution of this Enquiry we do first look into the Gospel there to inform our selves what a Gospel-Salvation means we may from thence learn that it does contain in it Two Things Whereof the first is Pardon of Sin and the second is the Gift of Eternal Happiness And in order to the obtaining of these Two Things as we shall see more fully in the farther Prosecution of this Matter Two other Things are in the Gospel required 1. An Expiation of Sin and 2. A Restitution to our lost Holiness For as we may conclude from our second Proposition That tho' the Gospel does allow a Pardon yet because it does not allow an absolute Pardon of Sin that therefore something will be required in order to such a Pardon So we may conclude from our first Proposition That because Punishment for Sin is necessary therefore some Punishment be that what it will at present must be suffered for our Sin And then if in the Progress of our Discourse it shall appear that in Consideration of any such Punishment so suffered the Gospel-Pardon of our Sins does afterwards ensue then such Pardon may be so far ascribed to such Punishment as that our Guilt and the Vengeance due to such our Guilt may be truly esteemed to be expiated by it Now in order to find out what Punishment it is that can make such an Expiation we shall first enquire what Punishment cannot do it And because Repentance does not so wholly consist in Action but that it must have something of Suffering mixed with it therefore in pursuit of our Design let our first Negative Proposition be this 1. That our Repentance for our Sins can never make out an Expiation of our Sins For tho' Repentance for our Sins be a Gospel-Condition required of us without which we shall never be made Partakers of the Benefit of the Gospel-Expiation yet notwithstanding that we neither do nor can by our Repentance make out that Expiation for Sin which is by the Gospel necessary for our Salvation For besides that there is no Man's Repentance so exact and compleat as to free him from all Sin while he lives and so after all he must remain a Sinner as long as he lives I say besides that His very manner of going out of the World and that is by Death is a demonstrative Proof that his Repentance has not made an Expiation for his Sins because we may most certainly conclude that his Sins are not then expiated and so neither pardoned when God himself lays on the Penalty threatned in his Law with his own Hand For when God gave his Law to Mankind in their universal Father and Representative Adam we know that he ratified such Law by the Penalty of Death and we know also that every Man let him be as pemtent as can be supposed does still suffer that Penalty And we may from thence also know that for that Reason no Man's Repentance can so far expiate his Sin as to free him from the Punishment threatned to it by the Law And then from the whole we may conclude That if any Man be saved because he is a true Penitent he must be saved by some other Expiation than by such his Repentance forasmuch as his Repentance can at the most but qualifie him to be made a Partaker of such Expiation 2. As Man's Repentance for his Sin which we may call his voluntary Punishment for Sin cannot so neither can his professed Punishment which we may call his legal Punishment for Sin expiate his Sin and so
obtain for him a Gospel-forgiveness and that for this Reason because there is such a Thing in the Gospel as an eternal Punishment allotted to Sin And as under the last Head we found that Reason did fall in with the Gospel and that they both spake the same thing so also we shall find it here For it is certain that the Punishment of sinful Man can therefore never expiate his Sin because it can never purchase a just Release from Punishment and it is certain that it cannot do that if it may be justly continued to Eternity And that it may be so we may learn from hence because the Law of Grace being God's Law as well as the Law of Works must for that Reason be just And we are assured by this Law as much as Words can assure us that the Punishment which it denounces against those who do not fulâ—â—l the Conditions of it is Eternal And that it shall so prove besides the express Words of the Law we have this farther Reason which is that the suffering the Punishment threatned by the Law to those who neglect to perform the Conditions of the Law can neither in Sense or Reason pass for the Performance of such Conditions so neglected and that the Neglect of this Law shall and that in Reason and Justice be repaid with an additional Vengeance for the refusal of the Mercy offered in it which designs to free us from the Punishment of all our other Sins as well as with that Punishment which is due to such Sins For it is Reason and Justice that a more heinous Sin should be punished with a more grievous Judgment and it is Truth and Reason that a Sinner does then become a more heinous Criminal when to his Desert of Punishment he adds a Neglect or Contempt of the easie Conditions of Pardon And since by the Tenor of the Covenant of Grace such Sinner is to suffer his Punishment after his Resurrection from the Dead that is not only after the Time limited for the Possibility of his Pardon is expired but also after Death it self shall be destroyed as we may from thence conclude the certainty so may we also the eternal Duration of his Punishment For as a Punishment due after the Day of Grace is past will not be remitted so such Punishment when Death is no more cannot be determined By which we may understand that as Death is without a Saviour the just and necessary Wages of Sin as we made it good in our first Chapter so also that when such Death is sure by a Resurrection purchased by a Saviour to be taken away in order to an happy and everlasting Life and that too upon the easie or at worst the very feasible Conditions of the Gospel yet if Men will neglect such Salvation so placed within their reach and so leave the eternal Life purchased for them in order to their Happiness exposed to the Vengeance which is the just and necessary Reward of all their other Sins and of such their Neglect they must impute it to their own Folly if such Vengeance in stead of Happiness be the continued Companion of their eternal Life For in the Case so put the Restoration from Death to Life comes from the Mercy of God the making that Life eternal comes from the Mercy of God the Designing to make that eternal Life happy comes from the Mercy of God The granting Means to Men and those no very hard ones neither of obtaining that Happiness comes from the Mercy of God But foolish Man defeats the Counsel of God by an obstinate and unrelenting Perseverance in Sin and does in this Case as he does in most others turn the Blessing of God into a Curse upon himself that is he makes that Life which was designed for his eternal Happiness an Occasion of the eternity of his Misery One thing more may be added to what has been said upon this Head and then we shall apply it to our present Design and that is That at that time when the Punishment we now speak of shall come to be inflicted our Saviour as the Scriptures tell us will have laid down his Mediatorial Office and so Men must stand the Award of their own Deserts and then if such their Deserts be Evil we may be instructed from what was said in the First Chapter that the Justice which will overtake them will be Justice without Mercy and that pure and unmix'd Vengeance will be their Portion even such Vengeance which will only revenge upon them the Breach of the Covenants of their God but will never so much as pretend to make up such Breach To our present purpose then If the Punishment of Men for their own Sins shall without the Interposition of a Saviour be eternal and if this appear to be so by the Testimony of that very Gospel in which however there is a Possibility of Salvation held forth and if Reason do vouch for the Truth of what the Gospel in this Case teaches and lastly if an Eternity of Punishment be absolutely inconsistent with an Expiation of Sin by such Punishment for the last supposes the Sin to be cancelled and the first supposes it to be continued Then we may conclude that the Punishment of Man for his Sin can no more expâ—ate his Sin under this Head than his Repentance as we there made it good could do so under the last Anâ— then because there is no other possible Way for Mankind to expiate their Sin but by their Repentance or by their Punishment wâ— do conclude that there is no possible Way for them to make any Expiation of it at all 3. As Man cannot expiate his Sin by any Punishment of his own neither by his Repentance nor by his Death whether Temporâ— or Eternal So neither can he expiate his Siâ— by the Death of any other Creature This 〈◊〉 therefore add because we may be apt to surmise that what has been done already may be done again And we can hardly be ignorant that the Lives of other Creatures have been offered to God and that too by his own Appointment for the Expiation of the Sinâ— of Men. And which is yet something more they have not only been offered by Man but they have been also accepted by God as aâ— effectual Expiation And that they have beeâ— so the History of the Jewish Religion recorded in the Bible it self may easily convince us But notwithstanding all this yet he who shall look nearer into the Matter and examine it more nicely will be satisfied 1. That all those Sacrifices tho' instituted by God himself were only Types and Shadows of that great Propitiatory Sacrifice that was to expiate the Sins of the whole World And therefore tho' they may serve to inform us that such a Sacrifice ought to be in order to the Expiation of Sins and because they did prefigure such a Sacrifice they might over and above foretell that such a Sacrifice should be yet because they themselves
that the Dignity of the faln Angels and among them one of them Son of the Morning whatever that signifies but we may be satisfied that it signifies something excellent but I say we know that the Dignity of the faln Angels did not so far avail them but that God provided and accepted an Expiation for faln Man whereas he left them in the Hands of Justice to attend the Events of their own Deserts So that for ought we can discover either by Revelation or Reason the Dignity of no Creature whatsoever does qualifie him to make an Expiation for those Sins which he shall commit against the Creator For in this Case the Distance between the Party offended and the Party offending being infinite there cannot possibly be any Mediation or Expiation that can extend it self to both the Extremes And therefore we shall at last from what has been said upon this Head conclude That no Creature tho' never so much above Man can ever make an Expiation to God for the Sins of Man 5. Fifthly and lastly As no sinful Creature can ever by its Punishment expiate its own Sins or the Sins of any other Creature so no innocent Creature can do the last that is no innocent Creature can ever expiate the Sins of any sinful Creature For in such a Case it must in order to its undergoing the Punishment justly first take upon it the Sin willingly and so by putting it self into the Place of the Sinner must first be supposed to be such a Sinner it self before it can undergo the Punishment due to its Sin But then when any Creature is supposed to lie under the Burden of such Sin it is at the same time supposed to be in the same Condition with the Original Sinner himself For when the Punishment comes to be transferr'd from the last to the first it is therefore so transferr'd because the Law allows the Act of the Surety by which he has owned and accepted the Sin to be his own And then the Law in such a Case makes no difference between the Surety and the Principal And if the Law makes no difference then as to the Business of Punishment we may be therefore sure that there is none because both are Creatures and both are Sinners If therefore as we shewed before the Principal could not by his Punishment had he undergone it himself have expiated his Guilt then for the self-same Reasons the Surety will also be unable to expiate the self-same Guilt So that the Conclusion of this Head will be that as no sinful Creature is able to unload its self of its Sin by its Punishment so no Creature be it never so innocent will be able to do it by being punished for its Fellow-Creature And therefore as we do not know that any of the Blessed Angels who retained their Innocence did ever interpose for the Redemption of those that fell so we do most assuredly know that tho' they did interpose the Event did not answer because we know that the Condition of those that fell does continue desperate Nay there do not want probable Reasons to persuade that the faln Angels themselves do not interpose for their own Redemption in any kind no not so much as by Prayer Which if it be true as it is a good Argument of their Despair so it is a probable Argument that they have no Mediator in whose Name they may put up such their Prayers and for whose sake they may with any probability hope that they will be accepted And yet all this while we have no Reason to doubt but that That noble Charity which must needs accompany a perfect and unspotted Innocence such as that of the Holy Angels is would be inclined to engage it self one way or other for the Redemption of their faln Brethren did not their Prudence check and controul such a possible Inclination And then if such their Prudence do not consist in One of these Two Things that is that they either think or know that such their Interposition would be either sawcie or vain we can hardly upon any other ground excuse their Neglect of such their Interposition In One Word The Scriptures have acquainted us that some of the Angels have sinned and that their Condition thereupon is become desperate But the Scriptures have not acquainted us that they have any Mediator to intercede with God in their behalf or to make Expiation for their Sin And as we may be satisfied that were an Expiation made their Sin must in Justice be remitted so may we that if any of the good Angels had taken upon himself to make such Expiation he must in order to his so doing have taken upon himself the Sin and so he must have brought himself into the very same Condition with those that fell and that therefore he would have been just as unable as they to free himself from such Condition No! no! We do or may know well enough that Sin has Weight enough in it to crush both Men and Angels Experience has acquainted us with the first and Revelation has assured us of both And then the Conclusion is easie That he who in such a Case could relieve either must for that Reason be more powerful than both And when we come to make it out that he who did so was so we shall then begin more plainly to perceive that there is not Salvation in any other tho' most of what we have hitherto offered has directly tended to the same Design But before we proceed any farther we shall make some few Remarks upon what has been already laid down that may have an Induence upon our Practice 1. And first From what has been offered we may take notice of the great Malignity of Sin For People would hardly sin so freely if they thought Sin so deadly And yet a little Reflection will tell us that Sin has slain all Mankind from the time of Adam to the time of the Expiration of the last Man that died We may think the Plague the Sword the Famine great Destroyers They are indeed the Beesoms of Destruction and where they come make great Devastations among Mankind but when we have taken a View of the Desolations caused by them and by all other Miseries and Mischiefs besides we must know that as Sin has been the Parent of them all so has it been also of all those Calamities and Destructions that all of them have produced And because it has so therefore we take notice in the 2. Second place That God's Justice is no such trifling Thing as is but too generally thought For there is no Sinner who ever escaped being a Sufferer For if all the Miseries which we suffer in this World and those are neither few nor light do come from our Sins as most certainly they do then we may be easily satisfied that even those Sinners whom yet God does treat with the greatest Kindness of all others do yet never go without the Marks of his Displeasure
of Sin Let us first hear what the Spirit saith who in the Fourth to the Ephesians the Fourth and Fifth Verses tells us That when the Fulness of Time was come God sent forth his Son made of a Woman made under the Law that is his Son was Incarnate and was under the Law and therefore made so as to be obliged to be obedient to it to redeem them that were under the Law that we might receive the Adoption of Sons And when we are told in one place That the Son of God was manifested for this very purpose that he might destroy the Works of the Devil and in another That he was manifest to take away Sin And when to answer to and explain the Meaning of these Places we are assured from other Places that at least one Way of his taking away Sins was by the Sacrifice of himself as in the Twenty sixth Verse of the Ninth to the Hebrews and that he appeared for that very purpose in the same Place And when we add to all this what we find in the Fifth Verse of the following Chapter that God had prepared him a Body and in the Tenth Verse that we are sanctified that is our Sins are put away through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all who as St. Peter speaks his own self bare our Sins in his own Body on a Tree I say when the Spirit of God does all along in the Scriptures expresly and categorically tell us That our Saviour suffered in his Body shed his Blood lost his Humane Life for our Sins for the Remission of Sin for the Redemption of Sinners when it does in several Places compare his Death to the Expiatory Sacrifices under the Law when it calls him the Lamb of God alluding to the Paschal Lamb that taketh away the Sins of the World when it tells us that he is the Propitiation for our Sins and the like It does by these and such like Expressions as much as Words can do it acquaint us at the same time that he suffered in his Body and died to atone for and to expiate our Sins And therefore all the uncouth and forced Interpretations of these and such like Texts which yet are a multitude that attempt to evacuate their plain Meaning may as soon persuade an honest and sincere Man that the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament are a Book full of Collusion and Prevarication as they may that Jesus Christ our Saviour did not die to expiate the Sins of Mankind And were I not assured of God's Providence I should be apt to fear that the Devil might in time so bring Things about that if he could upon Pretences of Reason wipe away that Part of the Bible that concerns our Saviour's Incarnation and the Relation which that has to Man's Redemption that he might at last raise his Hopes of blotting out the whole Christian Religion For to tell us that our Saviour is only such a Man as other Men are but only conceived in a different and therefore more wonderful manner to tell us that he died patiently tho' wrongfully only that he might give us an Example of an exact Patience and of an entire Submission to God's Providence to tell us that he was slain a Sacrifice only to confirm the Covenant of Grace but that there was no such Design in his Death as to suffer for or to expiate our Sins as it is a notorious Contradiction to and not an Exposition of the Scriptures so for that very Reason it will appear to have a direct Tendency towards the overthrowing the Grand Design of the whole Book of God All which to them who shall scan the Scriptures exactly is directed to and does center in the Saviour and that Redemption which he purchased for Mankind by his Death and Merits Having therefore thus in short taken notice of what the Scripture tells us concerning the Expiation of Sin by the Susserings of our Saviour and having already made it out 1. That no Creature can by any means expiate the Sin of Mankind and 2. That our Saviour is God Incarnate or God and Man united in One Person we do in pursuit of our main Design lay it down in the 3. Third place That the Way and Method of Man's Salvation as it is expresly and frequently laid down in the Scriptures which is by the Sufferings and Death of the Son of God manifested in the Flesh is agreeable to right Reason and exactly congruous to the Measures of Truth and to the Rules of Justice And in order to our making this plain and clear we take notice 1. That that Law about the Transgression of which and the Release from the Penalty of such Transgression the Gospel-Forgiveness is only concerned was given to Man For the Scriptures give us no Account of the Forgiveness of the Breach of any other Law but only of that Law which God had prescribed to Mankind And therefore tho' in the Scriptures we have several broad Hints of the Fall of the Angels and tho' our Reason tells us that that which put them under the Displeasure of God must needs be Sin in the general yet we are therefore ignorant what their Sin was because we are ignorant what that Law was against which they sinned 2. We take notice That as that Law about which alone the Gospel-Forgiveness is concerned was the Law given by God to Man so the Gospel takes no other or farther notice of the Transgression of that Law than as that Law is broke by Man From whence we infer in the 3. Third place That that Punishment which the Law threatens against those who transgress it can only in Justice belong to those to whom the Law was given and directed For they can never transgress a Law who have no Law assigned them and they can never be justly punished for the Transgression of the Law who can never transgress the Law The Law therefore about which alone a Gospel-Forgiveness is concerned being the Law given to Man and transgressed by Man Man alone can justly suffer the Penalty of such Transgression From whence we infer in the 4. Fourth place That if any Penalty can ever justly expiate that Guilt which is contracted by the Breach of the Law that Penalty that must make such Expiation must be a Penalty laid upon Man And therefore our Common Sense of Justice will not allow us to think that either Angels which are ranked above Mankind nor Beasts which are ranked below them can by any Sufferings whatsoever expiate or atone for the Breach of such Law which being given by God to Man does so far forth concern Man alone And tho' we have before made it out that neither Angels on the one Hand nor brute Beasts on the other can expiate the Sin of Mankind as both the one and the other are Creatures yet what we now say is that they cannot do it as they are different Creatures For it seems necessary and that
whether there be any Injustice in this whole Transaction that will readily tell us that if there be any such Thing as Injustice in it that Injustice must be attributed to some of the Persons concerned in it For in this Case it is not sufficient to say that the Transaction either in the Whole or in any Part of it is unjust unless we do particularly assign that Person engaged in it to whom that Injustice does belong For all Injustice in Matters of Fact must be ascribed to some Person or other And no Injustice in any Matter of Fact whatsoever can be truly ascribed to any Person whomsoever if that Person be supposed to have nothing to do in that Matter of Fact Now in the Case as it is put there are as we observed just now no other Persons concerned but God our Saviour and our selves If therefore the Thing prove to be as by the Revelations of God it will be found to prove that we Sinners are reconciled to God by the Sufferings Death and Merit of our Saviour and so are pardoned for our Sins then it will follow that if there be any Injustice in the Case that Injustice must be either ascribed to God to our Saviour or to our selves Now there cannot possibly be any Injustice in us because we are purely passive in the Case For so far forth as we are forgiven and that is as far as we are concerned most certainly we are so And we may be very sure that Reason will never tell any Man that he is therefore a Criminal because he receives a great Blessing from God and least of all will it tell him that it is a Sin in him to receive from God the Pardon of his Sins And I dare not so far question the Modesty of any Christian as to suppose that they will fix any Injustice in the present Case either upon God or upon our Saviour And therefore because no Injustice can be charged upon any of the Persons concerned in the whole Affair therefore if we be but once satisfied that God himself has told us in his Word that the Affair was so managed as most certainly so he has told us then the Conclusion at last must be that there was no Injustice in it at all I say I am satisfied that this would be the way of Reasoning to a sober and modest Christian and that this would be good and satisfactory if Men would with Modesty and Humility bring their Rational Sentiments to comply with the Scriptures and not industriously struggle to force the Scriptures to comply with their own prejudicate Opinions or Surmises For in a Thing of that Depth and Counsel as is the Redemption of Mankind I am sure it is much more safe as well as more modest to comply with the Declarations of God whose Counsel and Work it is and that too especially where as we have seen a sober and modest Reason falls in with and approves such his Declarations than by a more refined way of Reasoning and a more tedious and intricate Deduction of Consequences where any little Flaw or Mistake may spoil the whole Concatenation and at long run determine in Deceit and Fallacy downright to controul and contradict such Declarations For God is our best and most sure Guide in all things And then when he professedly undertakes to be so and that too in such Things that our Natural Reason knows nothing of without such his Guidance it would be the best Use that we can possibly make of such our Reason in all such Cases to follow his Conduct For in this very Case God has himself told us that he has confounded the Wisdom of the Wise For Christ crucified was to the Jews a Stumbling-block and to the Greeks Foolishness And it has before our Days been thought very good Reason that he therefore could not save others because he could not save himself Tho' I cannot persuade my self to doubt but that That and all other Methods of Reasoning that attempt to make out the Injustice of his Suffering in our stead or any other ways to evacuate the Merit and Purchase of his Blood will in the conclusion prove frivolous and empty and that they will be found light even in the Balance of Reason it self But to carry this Business a little farther As we have made it out that sober and sound Reason will warrant the Justice of Man's Redemption if it was so managed as we have laid it down so that it was so managed we may be as much assured by the Word of God as we may of any other Thing contained in that Word And hence we are told that God made our Saviour to become Sin for us who knew no Sin 2 Cor. 5. ult That he reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ in the Eighteenth Verse of the same Chapter He tells us also that he was reconciling the World to himself not imputing their Trespasses unto them in the Verse immediately following And that we may be assured that God does all this in Consideration of our Saviour's Death and Passion we are told in one Place that he died for our Sins in another that the Blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all Sin in a third that being justified by his Blood we shall be saved from Wrath through him All which with a great deal more to the same import that might be alledged amounts to thus much That our Saviour took upon himself our Sins and in our stead died for them and that thereupon God pardoned such our Sins and was reconciled to us Now because God himself tells us such a thing and that too in as plain and express Words as any thing can possibly be told in we may be very sure that what is so told is plain and open Truth And because at the same time he tells us that what was so done was done by himself we may moreover be sure that what was so done was just and right However thus far we are certain that if in the present Case we will be contented to be determined by the Word of God that then there neither are nor can be any Laws of Justice that can hinder our Saviour's Suffering in our stead in order to our obtaining the Pardon of our Sins by such his Suffering The Answer then to what shall be alledged against such Justice we shall defer to the next Chapter Only before we break off here we cannot but take notice that the Doctrine of our Saviour's Expiation as it has in part already and will more fully hereafter appear to have more Truth in it than what is alledged against it so also it will appear to have more Comfort For if there be no other Name whereby we must be saved it must needs be very imprudent at least to refuse to admit our own Salvation in and by him And it is a Doubt at least whether they who deny his Expiation the Purchase of his Blood and the Forgiveness of Sins in
and because none but such who do so shall by the Tenor of the Gospel suffer eternal Punishment therefore it is no Objection against the Merit of our Saviour's Death to say that his temporal Death cannot expiate an eternal Punishment because he did not suffer Death for any such Purpose and he did not do so because he did not suffer Death for those who alone shall suffer eternal Punishment that is he did not suffer Death for those who shall refuse and reject the only Means of Salvation which he purchased for Mankind by his Death Much more might be offered upon this Occasion but this being sufficient in this Place I shall therefore here add no more In the mean while I do not question but that the Value of our Saviour's Sufferings sâ—fficient to expiate the Guilt of any Sins for whose Expiation such Sufferings were designed tho' such Guilt should be supposed or allowed to deserve eternal Punishment of it self And from the Whole that has been spoken on this Subject we do at last conclude That a Release from the Vengeance due to Sin by the Law and purchased for Man by his Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ who for Man's sake made his Soul a Sacrifice for Sin is a just and legal Pardon and agreeable to the Measures of Right Reason and to the Laws of Justice For because the Pardon of Sin does imply in it a Desert of Punishment in the Party forgiven and because the laying the Punishment which he deserves upon another is in effect a Remission of that Punishment to him and because lastly a Remission of Punishment to the Party which deserves such Punishment may be truly accounted a Pardon of his Sin For Pardon of Sin to any Party whomsoever is neither more nor less than the Releasing or Freeing him from the Punishment due to his Sin Therefore if by what has been spoken it has appeared that the Punishment due to our Sins was without any Injustice translated upon another and that upon such Translation it cannot justly be exaâ—â—ed of us then it will follow that so far forth as our Sin was pardoned so far forth the Pardon was just And therefore so far as we have hitherto gone we may truly and rationally conclude That that Method in which the Gospel discovers our Salvation to be brought to pass does exactly square to the Rules of Right Reason and Justice For so we have seen that it does in the first thing which a Gospel-Forgiveness does imply and contain in it and that is the Pardon of Sin CHAP. VIII Bare Pardon of Sin not sufficient for a Gospel-Salvation Some Reasons offered for it They who are entitled to the Reward of the Law must be entitled to the Obedience paid to the Law Such Obedience must be perfect Some Practical Reflections THo' we have hitherto asserted the Sufficiency of our Saviour's Sacrifice for the Expiation and Pardon of Sin yet it must be confessed that bare Pardon of Sin upon any Considerations whatsoever be those Considerations never so valuable yet can never in Reason or Justice make out a Gospel-Salvation And therefore we laid it down at the Beginning that as in order to a Gospel-Salvation there was first required an Expiation and in consideration of such Expiation a Pardon of Sin so there is also required a Restitution to Holiness and the Gift of Eternal Happiness For because God's Law as every good Law besides does consist of Two Parts First the Directive or what it requires to be obey'd and Secondly the Vindictive or what upon Disobedience it requires to be suffered And because Sin is the Disobedience to or Transgression of the Law Therefore so far as we have discoursed of the Justice of the Pardon of Sin so far we have only discoursed of that Justice which concerns the Vindictive Part of the Law But by doing that we have not at all discoursed of that Justice which concerns the Directive Part of the Law And if upon our neglect to follow such Directions God does for any Reasons whatsoever forgive us the Penalty which we incur by such our Neglect and nothing more it must be confessed that by such a way of Proceeding all Care of the Directive which is indeed the principal Part of the Law is thrown away For because all Men are Sinners that is because none do obey the Law tho' God upon valuable Considerations do remit the Punishment to some or all of those Sinners yet still it is certain that the Duty enjoined by the Law remains undone by all And I therefore say it is certain because it will notoriously appear by what follows that the Pardon of Sin that is the Pardon of the Transgressionof the Law tho' such Pardon be granted by God and obtained by us in Consideration of our Saviour's Suffering in our stead can never pass for the Performance of the Directions of the Law that is can never pass for that Righteousness which consists in an Obedience to such Directions and therefore as we shall see more fully hereafter can never be sufficient for our obtaining a Gospel-Salvation which includes in it an eternal Holiness and an eternal Happiness as well as the Pardon of Sin Now that the Pardon of our Transgression of the Law can neither in Reason nor Justice pass for our Performance of the Directions of the Law will appear notorious from these following Considerations 1. Because Forgiveness does imply in the very Notion of it a Desert of Punishment and a Desert of Punishment does imply in it the Transgression of the Directions of the Law For no Man can be truly forgiven who does not justly deserve to be punished and no Man can justly deserve to be punished who does not transgress the Directions of the Law Now for the same Reason and upon the same Account to esteem a Man Innocent and yet a Criminal must needs be absurd because it is a Contradiction And then because in Contradictions only one Part can be true therefore so sure as we are that he who is truly forgiven must be a Sinner so sure we are also that he neither is nor can be truly supposed to be Innocent And therefore when God forgives as it is supposed in Reason and Common Sense that he does forgive Sins and is so expressed in general in the Scriptures so it is supposed in the same Reason and the same Common Sense that he does forgive those Sins to Sinners And therefore we cannot be supposed to have obeyed the Directions of the Law upon the Account that God does forgive us the Punishment threatned in the Law 2. Nor can we be so secondly Because should we undergo the Punishment which the Law threatens yet we could not by so doing ever fulfil the Directions of the Law For it is notorious in it self that the suffering what the Law threatens is not the doing what the Law commands Now it is certain that the Forgiveness of that Punishment which we have deserved can give us no
better a Title to Obedience than our suffering such Punishment could have done had that Punishment not been forgiven And it looks absurd at first view that Guilt should consist in the neglect of Obedience and that Punishment should be the Desert and therefore in Justice the Effect of our Guilt and yet that Obedience should be the Effect of our Punishment That is that Guilt after one Remove should be the proper and in a manner natural because just Cause of Duty But we may be therefore sure that it is no such matter because we are told by God himself that there is a Punishment after this Life which shall be Eternal which yet would be impossible if the suffering of Punishment were equivalent to a perfect Obedience to the Directions of the Law Which because for the Reason alledged and for more that might be alledged it cannot be therefore neither can the Forgiveness of such Punishment be so For it is evident that the Forgiveness of our Punishment can do no more towards the making us obedient than the Punishment it self could do should we undergo it And therefore the Pardon of our Sins for the Sake of our Saviour's having suffered in our stead does not of it self suppose us to have fulfilled the Directions of the Law 3. The Forgiveness of our Sins does imply nothing more in it than our Freedom from that Vengeance which the Law has threatned and which we have deserved by our Transgression of the Directions of it and so does only free us from the vindictive Part of the Law But does not for that Reason entitle us to those Rewards which the Law promises to those who obey its Directions Now it is a very different Thing to be barely freed from the Vengeance of the Law and to be entitled to the Promises of the Law because the Case may really so be put as that a Man may obtain a Release in the First Case and yet never be entitled to or possess the Promise in the Last And in all Cases let them be what they will yet still we are certain that the First can only in Reason nay in Nature belong to those who have transgressed the Law and that the Last can only in strictness of Law belong to those who have obeyed the Law And therefore that the First can be only Matter of Favour whereas the Last may be Matter of Right Now if there be any Difference in the Two Cases then let that Difference be lodged where it will yet we are from thence assured that the Cases are not the same and therefore neither can the Forgiveness of our Sins upon the Account of our Saviour's suffering the Vengeance of the Law in our stead be any Argument that we have fulfilled the Directions of the Law And therefore tho' it be affirmed by several Learned Men that we are sufficiently entitled to Eternal Happiness by the bare Pardon of our Sins in Consideration of our Saviour's Sufferings and that for this Reason because when we are treated by God with Impunity we are at the same time treated as Innocents and that he who is treated as an Innocent by God himself who cannot be mistaken in the Case must therefore needs be so Yet these Men as they do not sufficiently distinguish between an Innocent and a Saint so neither do they between Impunity and a Reward For tho' our Saviour's Sufferings are meritorious of a Reward to himself and so the Scriptures tell us yet they are only expiatory to us and that too in the Nature of the Thing For the utmost Design the natural Tendency and the only Business of an Expiation is to obtain an Impunity for such who have deserved and therefore must in Justice without such an Expiation suffer Punishment But neither Scripture Reason or Justice will tell us that a Purchase of Impunity from the Vengeance due to the Transgressors of the Law can be a Purchase of that Reward that is only due to Obedience to the Law In one Word Reward and Punishment derive not only from different but from contrary Principles And Impunity has and that too in the Nature of the Thing a Respect or Relation only to Punishment but none at all to Reward And for that Reason the meritorious Cause of Impunity can have no Concern with Reward neither Since then the Death of our Saviour is the meritorious Cause of Pardon to those who have transgressed the Law it is absurd in Nature and Reason to make it also the meritorious Cause of that Reward which as it supposes no need of Pardon so does by the Law only belong to those who have obeyed the Law So that an Expiation does at the most but make a Man Innocent but does nothing to make him a Saint For it only cancels his Neglect of Duty but does not do that Duty for him which he has neglected By all which it appears 1. That Reward does in Propriety and Justice only belong to Obedience to the Law 2. That Punishment does in Propriety and Justice only belong to the Transgression of the Law 3. That Expiation has no Relation to the Reward of Obedience but that it only concerns that Punishment which without such Expiation is in Justice due to Disobedience Now because God has taught us not only that our Sins shall be forgiven in and through our Saviour but that also in and through the same Saviour we shall obtain a glorious Reward And because as has appeared in general Reward does in Reason and Justice as properly belong to Duty and Obedience as Forgiveness does to Expiation Therefore our next Enquiry must be upon what Obedience such Reward is grounded For we are very sure that because the Distribution of such Reward is lodged in God's Hand therefore the Reward will be bestowed justly and because we are sure of that therefore we are farther assured that it will be conferr'd upon Duty and Obedience And indeed having in what went before seen what Provision God has made for the fulfilling the Vindictive Part of the Law in order to the Possibility and Justice of Man's Salvation and being satisfied that that Provision which he has made for that purpose will not also fulfil the Directive Part of the Law it must be our next Business to enquire what Provision he has made for the fulfilling of such Directive Part. For 1. In the first place We may therefore be certain that it shall be fulfilled one way or other because the Law being God's is in it self Holy Just and Good And we know and that too by the Light of Nature that it cannot be an indifferent Thing to the Ever-wise and most Holy Law-giver whether a Law which is so be obeyed or not For that would be in effect to cast off all Regard to Duty Holiness and Righteousness Nay which is yet more because every just Law must for that Reason even because it is just design the Obedience of them for whom it is made I say because it
general that it is founded in our Saviour all the Debate at present is Whether the Promise of the Gospel-Reward be founded in that Saviour's Obedience or in his Death or in other Words Whether the Promise of the Reward be not so grounded upon our Saviour's Obedience as the Promise of Pardon is upon his Expiatory Sacrifice And if those Reasons which we have already or shall hereafter offer do prove that in Justice and Reason it is so then the Objection vanishes I may add That the Objection only speaks to the Matter of Fact that there is a Promise made in the Gospel to an Imperfect Obedience which no one so far as I know denies But it does not speak as to the Matter of Right and Justice how such a Promise can be justly and reasonably made without any Violence offered to the Law of Works which is God's Law as well as the Gospel is so And we may be sure that God's Laws do not either contradict each other or controul any the Laws or Rules of true Justice or Reason That then which is the only Thing which is at present maintained is That the Promise of the Reward in the Gospel to an Imperfect Obedience had never been made to Man at all because it could not have been made justly if the Law of Works given to Man had never been fulfilled by Man and that the Gospel-Promise was granted in Consideration that our Saviour fulfilled that Law And to this the Objection so called is really no Objection at all It is confessed indeed that the Eternal Life promised to Believers in the Gospel will be attended with an Happiness inconceivably greater than the Eternal Life promised in the Law to Adam and it may be thereupon surmised that the Reward promised in the Gospel has no Eye to the Obedience required in the Law and if it has not that then the Eternal Happiness of Believers cannot be the Purchase of our Saviour's Obedience to the Law To which I shall say no more at present than this viz. That it is agreed that our Saviour by his Death took away Death the Curse of the Law and made good such his Atchievement by a Resurrection Now the Life after the Resurrection is a Life in a Spiritual Body not in a Natural I speak the Apostle's Words And our Natural Reason tells us that a Life in a Spiritual Body is a more refined and exalted Life than a Life in a Natural Body and that in multitudes of Circumstances it must needs differ from it perhaps in so many that it may be as inconceivable to us now as the future Happiness of the Saints And yet this refined and exalted Life is no good Argument that it was not purchased by our Saviour's Death nor that such his Death had no Eye to the Law of Works in such Purchase And so say we Tho' the Happiness of the Blessed be greater vastly greater than what was by the Law of Works promised to Adam upon his Obedience yet that can never make it out that such Happiness is not the Purchase of our Saviour's Obedience or that such his Obedience was not an Obedience to the Law of Works It may indeed convince us of the super-eminent Dignity of his Person and of the inconceivable Value of that Reward which by being purchased by him derives such its Value from such his Dignity as we observed before and which is directly to our present purpose it may furthermore convince us that the Reward of Believers is the Reward of their Saviour's Obedience made over to them but not a Reward that does or can belong to their own at the very best Imperfect Righteousness I know very well that this Doctrine is denied by many Divines and other Learned Men and those too not only such who do utterly deny that God bestows Salvation upon Men in consideration of their Saviour's Merit and Purchase but even by the generality of those who yet do ascribe the Salvation of Man to such Purchase and Merits What Reasons they offer for such their Denial we shall speak to hereafter But in the mean time we shall go on to make good the Imputation against each Party that denies it and after that shall shew that the Reasons of such their Denial have not that weight which they seem to have 1. And first we shall speak to them who do not barely acknowledge but even contend that the Salvation of Man is obtained in Consideration of the Merits that is in Consideration of the Death of our Saviour And the Men of whom we now speak do maintain That in order to Man's Redemption our Saviour died for Man's Sin and that by such his Death he puchased for Man a Freedom from that Vengeance which is the just Wages of such Sin Now what they so maintain we believe to be true and are ready to join Hands with them to make it good against all the Adversaries of the Cross of Christ So far therefore we are agreed But then it may be demanded How our Saviour can possibly suffer for Man's Sin if the Sin of Man be not imputed to him For in order to his suffering for Man's Sin he must take upon him such Sin and the taking upon him Man's Sin is the having Man's Sin accounted as his own that is in effect and in other Words the having Man's Sin imputed to him And then on the other Side how can Man have any Pretence of Benefit from his Saviour's Sufferings if the Merit of such Sufferings be not imputed to Man For without such Imputation the Merit be it what it will can only belong to the Saviour himself It is evident therefore by what has been said in short but might be made out in more Words that they who assert the Expiation of Sin by our Saviour's suffering in Man's stead do therefore entitle Man to the Benefit of such Expiation because Man's Sin was imputed to his Saviour and the Merit of his Saviour's Sufferings at least imputed to Man Things therefore standing thus in the Case of the Expiation it may be reasonably and further demanded Why our Saviour's Righteousness or Obedience may not as warrantably be imputed to Man as Man's Sin may be imputed to his Saviour or Why the Eternal Happiness which is assigned as the Reward of Obedience by the Law may not be bestowed upon Man in Consideration that the Merit of his Saviour's Obedience is imputed to Man as well as a Release from Punishment may be granted to Man in Consideration that the Merits of his Saviour's Punishment are imputed to Man For there is the very self-same Reason why the Obedience of our Saviour should be imputed to Man in order to Man's Salvation that there is that the Sin of Man should be imputed to our Saviour in order to such Saviour's Condemnation And there is the self-same Reason why the Merit of our Saviour's Obedience should be imputed to Man in order to Man's obtaining Eternal Life as there is
that so he may be entitled to Eternal Happiness And because no Man can warrantably say how he shall not be unless he do assign some Way how he shall be so entitled therefore they who in this Case deny all Imputation whatsoever do tell us that a perfect Holiness shall be bestowed by God upon Believers by Infusion that is for so they must mean God shall by his Mercy and Free-Grace bestow such a Stock of Holiness upon Believers as shall cleanse and fill all their Capacities and so make them perfectly holy and by consequence capable of Eternal Happiness 1. Now tho' it be freely granted that God will in the next World bestow such an holy God-like and eternally-durable Frame of Spirit upon all those who shall be saved as we shall discourse more fully hereafter yet it is not in Consideration of such Holiness that Believers do obtain that Eternal Happiness which is the promised Reward of the Gospel For by what is to follow it will we presume appear that Salvation obtained in Consideration of our Saviour's Obedience imputed is First Better accommodated to the Rules of Reason and the Laws of Justice than Salvation obtained in Consideration of an Holiness infused after a Resurrection And Secondly That as it is better accommodated to the Rules of Reason and to the Laws of Justice so that it is so also to that Account which the Scripture gives us of this Matter 1. For the Obedience by which Believers are to be judged at the last Day is that Obedience which was required of them in this World And accordingly as Men have behaved themself here so they shall receive the Reward of such their Behaviour there So St. Paul in the Second to the Corinthians chap. 5. ver 10. We shall all appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ that every one may receive the Things done in his Body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad By which we may understand that the Distributions to be made by Justice upon a Resurrection have an Eye to the Lives of Men before their Death And from thence we may infer that they are not to be guided by an infused Holiness which does even by those who plead for it not take place till after the Resurrection For it is agreed on all Hands that no Man's Holiness is perfect in this Life Now it does not look altogether so rational nor so agreeable to the Measures of Justice or the Revelations of Scripture that a Man should be judged according to what he has done in the Body before his Death and yet that he shall by the last Judicial Sentence be everlastingly rewarded for an Holiness infused by God after his Resurrection And therefore if we will adhere to Reason Justice and Revelation we must conclude that Believers do not after this Life obtain an everlasting Happiness in consideration of such an infused Holiness 2. And secondly we may do well to take notice that the Obedience of our Saviour to the Law was the Obedience which was required of Man and which was also paid by Man in this Life and that because such his Obedience was perfect therefore the Reward assigned by the Law to Obedience was in strictness of Law and Justice due to such his Obedience If therefore his Obedience while he was in the Flesh may by any Means be so made over to Believers as to be justly accounted theirs then there can be no doubt but that their Right to the Reward appointed to such Obedience will be just and good too And that it may be justly accounted theirs we have as we believe made it good already But an Holiness infused by God after a Resurrection can in no Sense nor in any Congruity be accounted and much less can it be an Obedience paid by Man while in the Body to the Law and therefore it cannot in any Sense or in any Congruity be such an Holiness to which the Reward allotted only to Obedience can belong And therefore neither can Eternal Happiness be bestowed upon Believers in consideration of such an infused Holiness In one Word Infused Holiness in order to Man's Salvation does in no wise agree to that Account which the Scriptures give us of the Last Judgment and tho' it pretends to magnifie God's Mercy yet it takes no care in the mean while to assert and vindicate his Justice but makes the whole Process of that great Assize to be arbitrary and illegal whilst it opens a Way to Man's Happiness by an Holiness which has nothing to do with the Cause upon which alone his Trial depends For a Reward conferr'd in another World upon an Holiness infused in another World does in no wise look back to or pass a Judgment upon the Life that was led in this World But because we know assuredly and that by many express Testimonies of Scripture that that will be the Work of the Last Day therefore for that Reason alone if yet there were no other we cannot ascribe a future Happiness the happy just and final Sentence of that Day to such an infused Holiness No! the Holiness for which we are to be rewarded in a future Life must be an Obedience practised in this Life The Duty is laid upon Man by the Law here and the Reward stands engaged to the Performance of such Duty And if the Righteousness of Man at the Resurrection be not an Obedience paid to the Law then when the Law required such Obedience the Reward promised by the Law can in no wise belong to such Righteousness And therefore to fansie a Reward for an Holiness in which the Law is not at all concerned as it is not in an infused Holiness is to have no regard to the Law at all For Happiness bestowed in consideration of an infused Holiness may as well be granted without the Law as with it nay indeed much better Because had there been no Law at all then such a Management had not affronted the Law Whereas the Law having been once setled to bestow the Reward promised by the Law upon an Holiness which has no Eye to the Law as an infused Holiness has not is to slight and overlook the Law for it allows the Law to have nothing to do in the Allotment of such a Reward It may be plausibly objected in this Place That while I vindicate the Cause which I undertake against one Adversary I give it up to another Because while I assert That every Man shall at the last Day be judged according to his Behaviour in this World I do in effect refer the Reward that shall then be adjudged to Believers to such their Behaviour that is in the present Case to their Obedience in this World And that because I do so I therefore pull down with one Hand that which before I had set up with another viz. the Imputation of their Saviour's Righteousness in order to their Salvation 1. But this Objection is grounded upon a Mistake which Mistake is
that the Objection supposes an Opposition between the imperfect Obedience of Believers and the Imputation of their Saviour's Righteousness from which supposed Opposition it infers That if Salvation be bestowed upon them in consideration of the one that it cannot for that Reason be bestowed in consideration of the other And indeed such a Supposition being granted the Inference would be good 2. But then secondly we do assert and maintain That there is no such Opposition between the Imputation and the imperfect Obedience of Believers as that Salvation must be disjunctively bestowed in consideration of the one in opposition to and exclusive of the other For tho' we allow a Believer's imperfect Obedience to be a subordinate yet we do not allow it to be the meritorious Cause of Man's Salvation that is tho' he shall have the Benefit of the Imputation in consideration of his sincere but imperfect Obedience yet he shall only obtain his Salvation in consideration of such Imputation For Justice only bestows the Reward there where it is deserved and to bestow it elsewhere may be called Mercy or may be called Favour but cannot either in propriety of Speech or Truth be called Justice Since therefore it is our present Business to maintain that Method in which God bestows not only Pardon of Sin but over and above an eternal Happiness to be just and since in order to its being so it must conform to his Law which is so or else the Law cannot be fulfilled and since lastly the Law does not assign its Reward to an imperfect Obedience For it requires a perfect not an imperfect Obedience and its Reward can and does only belong to what it requires not to what it does not require Since I say the Case stands thus it is obvious to observe First That because the Reward is only bestowed upon the Saviour's that is upon a perfect Obedience to which alone by the Law it does belong that therefore the Execution of the Law in the Distribution of its Reward is just And Secondly That because as we have already proved such his perfect Obedience is justly imputed to Believers in consideration of their sincere tho' imperfect Obedience that therefore as by his Obedience alone they are entitled to the Reward so according to the Tenor of the Gospel by their own Obedience they are entitled to His. When therefore Believers come to be judged in another World according to what they have done in this the Enquiry shall not be Whether by their Life led in this World they have deserved an eternal Happiness in that for that needs no Enquiry because it is most certain in it self and confessed on all Sides that they have not But their Trial shall be Whether their Obedience in this Life tho' imperfect and therefore in it self undeserving of eternal Happiness be such as may so far entitle them to their Saviour's Purchase as that his Obedience may be imputed to them in order to their obtaining such Purchase I have therefore pursued this Thing the farther because the Socinians do as much as in them lies vilifie the Imputation of our Saviour's Righteousness for by that Means they gain great Advantages to run down the Doctrine of the Expiation And yet too many of our own People do here close with them and do not to me seem to discern the mischievous Consequences that will fall upon the whole Doctrine of Redemption if once our Saviour's Obedience be excluded from being the meritorious Cause of Man's Salvation For as to my self I am at present very well satisfied that if the Law had never been fulfilled by Obedience the Breach of it had never been expiated by any Punishment inflicted for such Breach whatsoever For God's Design in promulging his Law was that it should be obeyed For most certain it is that it cannot be indifferent to him whether we obey what the Law commands or suffer what it threatens No! his Design is that we should be holy and safe Such a Design flows from his Nature and is an Effect of his essential Bounty and Goodness and therefore came from him freely without the Invitation or Sollicitation of any Thing besides his own Propension or Inclination But Judgment that is Punishment for the Breach of his Law is his strange Work that is it does not come from him as his Goodness and Bounty does freely and spontaneously but is extorted from him by the Interposition and Provocation of Sin To accomplish therefore the principal and more natural Design of his Law it is necessary that his Law should be obeyed for there is no other way of fulfilling of it And therefore He who told us that not one Jot or Tittle of it should fail told us likewise that he came to fulfil it Fulfil it not only as the Antitype of it but likewise as a Subject to it The Law then was fulfilled by our Saviour's Obedience and by his Obedience alone For all the rest of Mankind broke it And had he not fulfilled it by obeying it the Vengeance of it had always continued For it must have continued so long as it was justly due and it must be justly due so long as the Law remains broken and not obeyed We owe our Reward therefore to our Saviour's Obedience as we do our Redemption to his Death Nay which is more and more direct to our Text because the Law must of necessity be obeyed and because He alone did obey it therefore for that Reason as well as for several others there is not Salvation in any other I would desire them whom it chiefly concerns seriously to consider it And now having seen what Reason says to the Doctrine of our Saviour's Imputed Righteousness the next Thing to be enquired because the next Thing proposed will be to see what the Scriptures say to it In order to which take we notice in the 1. First place That our Saviour at his Incarnation did take upon him the same Flesh and Blood with us Men. For because he the Man Christ Jesus and we do both of us derive from one and the same single and common Stock Adam and because we are several Propagations and Branches from that one Stock therefore we may be truly reckoned because in reality so we are the several and distinct Parcels of that common Flesh and Blood out of which all Mankind are made But tho' the Son of God became Man in order to be the Saviour of Man and tho' he was made of the same Blood with all Men in order to his becoming Man yet because we know that the distinct Parcels of this common Flesh and Blood have and that justly too very different and sometimes contrary Allotments of Justice therefore we take notice 2. In the second place That all those who according to his Gospel are sincere and penitent are secure of having the Communications of his Spirit And then tho' that Flesh and Blood of which they with him are made Partakers be common to all
reasonable Let us try the Matter in a sew Instances which will direct our Meditations to a great many more and see whether the Business be so or no. The Merits of our Saviour's Death we say and so do the Scriptures are made over to us We may add but we need not that they are so made over by his last Will and Testament And if we do add it the Scriptures will bear us out in it The Merits of his Obedience also are as we with the Scriptures say made over to us By the first we obtain Redemption from the Curse of the Law By the last an Inheritance with the Saints in Light Now what says the Light of Nature when it discovers it self in the Practices of Mankind in the like Cases 1. Why in the first place The Father has served and obliged his Prince by a due Regard to his Laws and to himself and by a Defence of both from the disobedient Attempts and rebellious or hostile Outrages of all others In such Defence he has been a great Sufferer has lost his Estate his Limb perhaps his Life The Son of this very Man guided more by his own vicious Inclinations than by his Father's Example dips his Hand in Treason and thereby forfeits his Life to the Law and to his Prince Suppose we now that the Prince grants this Son his Life in Consideration of the Father's Services and Merits and so cancels the Demerits of the Son by putting the Deserts of the Father in the Scale against them which especially if the Father died in the Prince's Cause is the ascribing or imputing which you will the good Deserts of one Man to another who is utterly destitute of such Deserts Now such a Case as this being supposed will any Man accuse the Prince of Injustice for the Grant of such a Pardon Was not the Injury done to himself And may he not remit such an Injury by esteeming the great Services of the Father and the Benefits that he himself received and the Mischiefs which the Father sustained by such his Services a sufficient Counterpoise to the Injury of the Son And may he not be satisfied that the near Relation and dear Affection of the Father to the Son may make the Son's Pardon a Gratification and Requital to him for all his own Services and Sufferings Surely these Things may be allowed among Men And I do not at all question but that these or such like Things have been practised in all Governments and yet that their Justice has not been taxed for such their Practice And yet I do assert and maintain That the Pardon of Man's Sin in Consideration of his Saviour's Sufferings does much more critically and nicely come up to the Rules of an exact Justice than the Pardon of the Rebel in the present Instance does and I am well enough satisfied that what has been already offered will abundantly make good such an Assertion But sawcie Man will not allow what his God says or does to be true and just tho' at the same time he will allow and approve the same or the like Practices in his Fellow-Creature 2. But to proceed Secondly The Father by his Labour and Toil of his Body or by that of his Brains purchases to himself an Estate His Son enjoys his Share in it while the Father lives and the whole of it after his Death How comes the Father's Purchase to derive to the Son You will answer By the Law But the Question returns By what Act does the Law make the Father's Purchase to become the Son's Why it may be replied that as the Son descended from the Father so it is but fit that his Estate should do so too Well! be it so or any thing else for more may be said in the Case But still in the Case the Father's Right being extinct by his Death moves that is is transferr'd upon another So that he comes rightfully to possess the Estate who yet did not purchase it nor earn it nor perhaps do any one Act for the obtaining the Possession of it Not only the Estate then but the Right and Title to the Estate which is undoubtedly lodged in the Purchase and must be made good by it is transferr'd from one Man to another and that too not by or for any Action of Desert in the Man who enters but by an Act of Law call it Imputation Translation or what you please And which is more such a Translation both of Estate and Title is accounted just by all Mankind generally speaking For it is not material in the Case that some arbitrary and despotical Governments do in some few Instances vary from it because not only the rest of Mankind but even they themselves do by their contrary Practice in other and more Cases condemn their own Practice in this Now to our Purpose Shall the transferring not only of one Man's Estate to another but even of the Right and Title in that Estate be thought just between Men among themselves and that too by that Light of Reason which is confessedly given them by God And shall it at the same time be unlawful and unjust for God so to make over his Purchase his Right and Title to any Thing as he thinks fit to Mankind as one Man may do to another Certainly he has as good a Right and as full Power of disposing of what is his own as any Man or any Law of Man whatsoever And therefore when he tells us that he does so in the Case under our present Consideration it would become us in Modesty in Reason and because the Case does very much import our Welfare in Interest likewise to believe his Word and to approve his Doings And that too more especially because in those very Writings in which the Conveyance is contained he seems all along to word such his Conveyance in Law-Terms thereby giving us at least an Hint that in the Transaction of Man's Salvation by our Saviour he did in a great measure condescend to those Methods and Ways of Judicial Proceedings that Men by that Light of Reason which they received from him had instituted among themselves And therefore when we had forsaken his Family by revolting from that Duty which we owed him as his Natural Children as he calls himself our Father in Christ Jesus so he calls us his Adopted Sons upon his restoring us to such his Family and in order to the Renovation of our lost Title he does esteem us to be Regenerate that so by becoming again the Children of God we may inherit the Kingdom of him our Father So he calls us the Heirs of Salvation and makes us a Title to the Purchase of our Saviour by calling us his Brethren He reckons us as Joint-Heirs with him and discourses in several Places of our Inheritance Now when we are assured by Multitudes of other Places of Scripture that all these Appellations and Titles are given to us not only in Terms in the like Cases made
use of at that Time by the most celebrated Laws but also in Consideration of our Saviour's Purchase I say when we find Things so and that too in the Book of God wrote professedly on this Subject does it become us to think that the Holy Ghost the Indicter of these Things did only word himself at random Or ought we not rather to think that in so doing he had a Regard to those Legal Ways of Conveyances which were established by Man's Reason and Sense of Justice in those Laws which were then most current in the World We cannot I am sure we cannot rationally think so For why are we told that we are bought with a Price Why are we told that our Saviour purchased us with his Blood Why are we told that we are redeemed not with corruptible Things as Silver and Gold but with the precious Blood of Christ but that our Redemption and Salvation did as to the Justice and Equity of it answer to those Legal Ways of transferring of Rights from Man to Man For our Redemption was purchased by our Saviour so it is expresly worded and by him therefore conveyed and made over to us because otherwise it could in no Sense be called our Redemption Indeed a Purchase does in the very import of the Word imply the Acquisition of a Thing in a Legal way and by so doing does in the Nature of the Thing imply also a Legal Power of making over such Thing to another For he can only legally sell or otherwise give or convey who has a Legal Right in the Thing sold given or conveyed And he can only legally purchase who pays a Legal Price When therefore the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures does so word the Manner of God's bestowing and our receiving Salvation in and by our Saviour as to do it in such Terms which were at that time Terms of the most celebrated Law next to his own that ever yet was or perhaps ever will be in the World and when he does so frequently and almost constantly it would become us to believe and think that he designed and that too even by his manner of expressing the Thing to insinuate to us that the Salvation he all along speaks of was bestowed in a way of Conveyance at that time familiar among Mankind in such a way as was established both by their own Laws and by their own Practice in such a way that their best Reason granted to them by himself had set on foot And that upon this Account his way of doing it so as is by him expressed and that too all along in that very Book where he affords us the Discoveries of it is just equitable and legal I do but run over these Things and in a manner glance at them because I rather design to give an Hint to others more able so to do than to pursue them my self For if a Man well-studied in the Civil Law a Law that will weigh with Mankind so long as good and sound Reason has a free Passage in the World But I say would such a Man so throughly acquaint himself with the New-Covenant the Covenant of Grace in Jesus Christ as to be able exactly to compare it with that Law which is the Business of his Profession I do not at all question but that such a Comparison judiciously managed would go a great way in removing those Doubts which have been started by People of all Parties concerning Man's Redemption And because several Learned Men I know are very well versed in both those Laws I do the rather hope that God will put it into the Heart of some of them to bless the World with such a Christian and beneficial Piece of Learning But this by the by In the mean time from what has been said in short we may learn thus much That the Salvation of Man is the Purchase of the Son of God that the Benefit at least of such Purchase is by the Purchaser made over to Man that in Consideration of that Intimate Union that is between him and Man by his taking upon him the same Flesh and Blood with Man and by affording to Man the Communications of his Spirit a Way is opened as for the more congruous and equitable Way of such Conveyanee on the one Side so on the other Side for the more congruous and equitable Way of Man's entring upon the Possession of such Purchase and that when the whole Thing is strictly sifted and examined it will be found to be agreeable to the just and equitable Rules of Law as well as to the express and plain Revelations of the Gospel But I desist Only I would offer an Inference or two that may relate to our Practice before I do so 1. And first If God spared not his own Son when he had put himself into the Place of Sinners we may from thence conclude that neither will he spare us when we our selves are Sinners and that too by our own default For besides that he was and was so proclaimed by God himself his only Son in whom he was well pleased I say besides that the Generosity Charity and Candor of such an Undertaking as our Saviour's was by which he shewed more Tenderness to others than to himself may be thought to be a very considerable Motive even to Justice it self so far as is possible to remit to him a great deal of that Rigour and Severity which Sin does deserve And then if notwithstanding such his Undertaking yet he was fain to pay the uttermost Farthing that is to die how can we hope to escape if we the Original and therefore also the Principal Sinners come under the Severity of so exact a Justice We may be sure that the Portion of Vengeance allotted to us in such a Case will not be less severe For if God so treated his Beloved because interposing Son how do we think he will treat avowed and professed Rebels Or as our Saviour himself speaks in the like Case If these things are done in the green Tree what shall be done in the dry 2. And as this Consideration may serve us for Caution so the next that is the second may serve us for Consolation And I shall give it in the Words of the Apostle in the Eighth to the Romans ver 32. He that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all how shall he not with him also freely give us all Things For his delivering up his Son for our sakes to become Man to lead an hard and uncomfortable Life and to die a miserable and scandalous Death that both by his Life and Death he might work out our Salvation is such an exalted Evidence of God's Love to us that Imagination it self can hardly conceive that any thing can extinguish it but our Ingratitude for it And our Natural Reason and Common Sense may easily instruct us that he whosoever he be that is ready and willing and that too even to Performance to do us the
our Saviour who as we have shewed had an absolute and uncontroulable Power to dispose of his own Life as he himself pleased did put himself in our stead became a Sacrifice for us and so in his own Person suffered that Death which we by our Sins had deserved But then to the making good of our present Proposition we add That as he suffered Death for the Expiation of our Sins so if he had not finished and compleated such Expiation he had not rose again For so long as the Guilt remained so long the Punishment was and that too in Justice to be continued For in such Case there had been the same Reason for the Continuation of the Punishment that there was for its first Infliction And therefore as it was first inflicted for a Guilt so it must have been continued for the Continuation of such Guilt From which we do infer That if he was justly acquitted from the Continuation of the Punishment then he was also acquitted from the Guilt and if he was justly acquitted from the Guilt that then he had by his Punishment made a sufficient Expiation for it And that he was acquitted from the Punishment due to the Guilt and that he was justly acquitted too the Resurrection singly and by it self will make out an undoubted and uncontroulable Argument For our natural and common Sense does assure us that a Resurrection to Life is an Acquittance and Discharge from Death And Reason will tell us that because a Discharge from Death can only come from God and because God cannot but be just therefore that Acquittance and Discharge that is made by a Resurrection must needs be just too And therefore from the Whole we may infer That the Resurrection of our Saviour from that Death which he suffered as the Punishment of our Sins was a demonstrative Argument and Proof that by his Death he had paid a sufficient Ransom and had made a sufficient Expiation for such Sins So that strictly speaking in his Death consisted the Punishment of our Sins in the Infinite Value of his Death consisted the Expiation of our Sins and in the Resurrection appears the full Proof and Evidence of such his Expiation Before we part with this Head it may not be improper to take notice that because his Death was of infinite Value that therefore there was a sufficient Ransom paid for our Sins by that Death so soon as it was suffered For it must be confessed that the Ransom was then made when the Debt was paid And because that is Truth and Justice we do from thence infer That our Saviour might and that justly too have resumed his Life so soon as he had laid it down And so he might for any thing that Justice can offer to the contrary have descended alive from the Cross after he had once died upon it Nor needed his Resurrection in point of Justice to have been deferred to the third Day but might had God so pleased have been caused on the first But tho' it might justly have been done so yet we do not find that it was actually so done for the Scriptures tell us that he did not rise till the third Day From whence we observe That as he died to save Man from Sin so he did for some time continue in a State of Death to satisfie and assure us that he did so die And so as his Death had a regard to God's Justice so his Continuance so long under the Power of Death had a regard to our Faith The first was the Purchase of our Salvation The last was our Assurance of and therefore also our Comfort in such a Purchase By which we may understand that his Love was expressed to us even in the Grave and tho' as the Psalmist speaks no Man remembreth God in the Pit yet we may hence learn that even in the Pit our God both can and has remembred us We may also under this Head take notice That as our Saviour had never died at all as we observed before because he himself was perfectly Innocent if he had not by his own Choice put himself in the stead and so exposed himself to the Punishment of the Guilty so we may be confident that he whose Innocence was so singular and illustrious as not to be in the least tarnished whilst he inhabited in mortal Flesh and Blood must now that Flesh and Blood is spiritualized see the First to the Corinthians chap. 15. ver 44. be rather the more free if that were possible from all possibility of Stain or Guilt And we may be secure that if his glorified Body shall ever live free from Sin it shall for that single Reason if yet there were no other live free from Death too So true is that of the Apostle in the Sixth to the Romans ver 9. that Christ being raised from the Dead dieth no more Death hath no more Dominion over him and that in the Revelations I am he that was dead and am alive and live for evermore So that the Victory which our Saviour obtained over Death by his Resurrection cannot so well be looked upon as a single Conquest since it is to extend it self to all Successions of Ages and Time and is to last when Time shall be no more that is for ever and ever 3. As our Saviour by his Resurrection did so far subdue Death as to obtain to himself a future and secure Immortality so also he did by the same Resurrection so far subdue Death as to secure a future and glorious Resurrection to all those who are so far planted into the likeness of his Death as to be dead to Sin and alive to God For if we live to him while we live here we may from his Resurrection have a comfortable Assurance that notwithstanding we die for a time as he did yet we shall be raised again and live with him for evermore To this purpose we must recollect that when he died he did not die for his own Sins but for ours And then if in his Death he laid down his Life in our stead we may be easily satisfied that it was in our stead that he took it up again at his Resurrection For if our Guilt had not been cancelled and so our Debt discharged by his Death then his Death as we observed under the last Head had been continued still And as then we did conclude that he had therefore satisfied the Debt because he was released from the Penalty so now we do conclude that because the Debt so discharged was ours and not his own therefore the Benefit of the Release must redound to us as well as to him For it must needs be unjust in the Creditor to detain us in Prison for that Debt which our Surety has paid And because we know that the Creditor in the present Case is God himself and because we know also that such a Creditor can do no Injustice therefore we know that as when our Saviour laid down his