humility and his exaltation again; or the way between mankind and Heaven, which, by that flood of wrath and torrent of curses, which were ev μéo, was made utterly impassable,— till Christ, by his sufferings, made a path through it for the ransomed of the Lord to pass over.

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Therefore shall he lift up the head."-It noteth in the Scripture-phrase victory, eluctation, and breaking through those evils, which did urge and press a man before *; and also boldness, confidence, and security to the whole body'. And farther, it is not, he shall be lifted up, but he shall do it himself". He hath the power of life, and the fountain of life in himself". So that following this sense of the words, the meaning is," He shall suffer and remove all those curses which were in the way between mankind and Heaven; and then he shall lift up his head in the resurrection, and break through all those sufferings into glory again ;"--which sense is most punctually and expressly unfolded in those parallel places, Luke xxiv. 26, 46. Philip ii. 8, 9. 1 Pet. i. 11.

"He shall drink of the brook in the way :"-From hence we may note, First, That between mankind and Heaven there is a torrent of wrath and curses, which doth everlastingly separate between us and glory ; μέγα χάσμα ἐστήρικται, a great and fixed gulf, which all the world can neither wade through nor remove. The law at first was an easy and smooth way to righteousness, and from thence to salvation; but now every step thereof sinks as low as Hell. It is written within and without, with curses; which way soever a man stirs, he finds nothing but death before him :-one man's way, by the civility of his education, the ingenuity of his disposition, the engagement of other ends or relations, may seem more smooth, plausible, than another's; but, by nature, they all run into Hell; as all rivers, though never so different in other circumstances, run into the sea. It is as impossible for a natural man of himself to escape damnation, as it is to make himself no child of the old Adam, or not to have been begotten by fleshly parents. The gulf of sin in our nature cannot be cleansed, and therefore the guilt thereof cannot be removed. The image we have lost is, by us, irreparable;

i Col. ii. 14. k Psalm xxvii. 6.

1 Luke xxi. 28. m Qui se humiliaverat,

ipse exaltabit. Hieron. n John v. 26. x. 18.

the law we have violated, inexorable; the justice we have injured, unsatisfiable; the concupiscence of our nature, insatiable; sin, an aversion from an infinite good, and a conversion to the creature, infinite: and therefore the guilt thereof infinite and unremovable too.

We should learn often to meditate on this point, to find ourselves reduced unto these straits and impossibilities, that we cannot see which way to turn, or to help ourselves, for that is the only way to draw us unto Christ. Every man -naturally loves to be, in the first place, beholding to himself; in any extremity, if his own wits, purse, projects, or endeavours will help him out, he looks no farther; but when all his own succours have forsaken them, then he seeks abroad. It is much more true in the matter of salvation: No man never did begin at Christ, but went unto him upon mere necessity, when he had experience of the emptiness of all his other succours and dependences. We all, by nature, are offended at him, and will not have him to reign over us, till thereunto we be forced by the evidence of that infinite and unpreventable misery, under which, without him, we must sink for ever. This is, of all other, the most urging argument unto men at first to consider, That there is a torrent of curses, a sea of death, a reign of condemnation, a hell of sin within, and a hell of torments without, between them and their salvation ;-and there is no drop of that sea, no scruple of that curse, no tittle of that law, which must not all be either fulfilled or endured. Suppose that God should summon thy guilty soul to a sudden appearance before his tribunal of justice; and should there begin to deal with thee even at thy mother's womb: alas, thou wouldst be utterly gone there; even there, a seed of evil doers, the spawn of viperous and serpentine parents, a cursed child, a child of wrath, an exact image of the old Adam, and of the blood of Satan. But then here is, after this, produced a catalogue and history of sins of forty, fifty, or threescore years long; and in them every inordinate motion of the will, every sudden stirring and secret working of inward lust, every idle word, every unclean aspect, every impertinency and irregularity of life, scored up against thy poor soul; and each of them to be produced at the last, and either answered or revenged. O where shall the ungodly and sinners appear, if they have

not right in Christ! And how should men labour to be secured in that right! Who would suffer so many millions of obligations and indictments to lie between him and God uncancelled, and not labour to have them taken out of the way? Now the only way to be brought hereunto is, to deny ourselves, and all we do; to do no good thing for this end, that we may rest in it, or rely upon it when we have done, but after all to judge ourselves unprofitable servants: when we have prayed, to see Hell between Heaven and our prayers; when we have preached, to see Hell between Heaven and our sermons ;-when we have done any work of devotion, to see Hell between Heaven and all our services, if God should mark what is amiss in them, and should enter into judgement with us :-in one word, to see Hell between Heaven and any thing in the world else, save only between Christ and Heaven. Till, in this manner, men be qualified for mercy, they will have no heart to desire it, and God hath no purpose to confer it. Christ must be esteemed worthy of all acceptation, before God bestows him; and the way so to esteem of him is, to feel ourselves the greatest of sinners. And when the soul is thus once humbled with the taste and remembrance of that wormwood and gall which is in sin, there is then an immediate passage unto hope and mercy, and that hope is this:

"That Christ hath drunken up and dried that torrent of curses," which was between us and Heaven, and hath made a passage through them all by himself unto his Father's kingdom. He was made sin, and a curse for us; that so he might swallow up sin and death, and might be the destruction of Hell P. I will here but touch upon two things. First, What Christ suffered. Secondly, Why he suffered. For understanding of the first, we must note, First, That Christ's human nature was, by the hypostatical union, exalted unto many dignities, which, to all the creatures in the world besides, are utterly incommunicable; as the communication of properties, the adoration of angels, the primogeniture of the creatures, the co-operation with the Deity in many mighty works, the satisfaction of an infinite justice by a finite passion, &c. Exalted likewise it was by his spiritual unction

• Lament. iii. 19, 22. P Hosea xiii. 14.

above all his fellows, with that unmeasurable fulness of grace, as wonderfully surpasseth the united and cumulated perfections of all the angels in Heaven. Secondly, We must note likewise, That all these things Christ received for the work of man's redemption; and therefore he had them in such a manner, as was most suitable and convenient for the execution of that work. Now Christ was to fulfil that work by a way of suffering and obedience; by death to destroy him that had the power of death, as David, by Goliah's sword, slew him that was master of the sword. As there fell a mighty tempestuous wind upon the Red Sea, whereby the passage was opened for Israel to go out of Egypt into Canaan; so Christ was to be torn and divided by his sufferings, that so there might be a passage for us to God, through that sea of wrath which was between our Egypt and our Canaan, our sin and our salvation. Here, then, are two general rules to be observed concerning the sufferings of Christ: First, That the economy or dispensation of his mediatorship, is the measure of all that he suffered. So much as that required, he did suffer, and more he did not: for though he suffered as man, yet he suffered not because he was a man, but because he was a mediator. Secondly, Inasmuch as a mediator between God and sinners was to be holy and separate from sinners (for if he should have been a sinner, he had been one of the parties, and not a mediator), therefore none of those sufferings which are repugnant to his holiness, and by consequence unserviceable to the administration of his office, could belong unto him. Such things then as did no way prejudice the plenitude of his grace, the union of his natures, the quality of his mediation, such things as were suitable to his person, and requisite for our pardon, such as were possible for him, and such as were necessary for us,— those things he suffered as the punishment of our sins.

Now punishments are of several sorts: some, are sins; some, only from sins. Some things, in several respects, are both sins and punishments. In relation to the law, as deviations, so they are sins: in relation to the order and dispo

¶ Deus naturarum bonarum Creator optimus, malarum voluntatum justissimus ordinator. Aug. de Civit. Dei, lib. 11. cap. 17. lib. 14. cap. 26. et Tom. 7. cont. Julian. Pelag. lib. 5. cap. 3. De Grat. et Lib. Arbitr. cap. 23, de Prædest. сар. 10.

sition of God's providence, so they are punishments: as hardness of heart, and a reprobate sense. Other punishments are from sin; and, in this regard, sin is two ways considerable, either as inherent, or as imputed: from sin as inherent, or from the consciousness of sin in a man's self, doth arise remorse, or torment, and the worm of conscience. Again; Sin, as imputed, may be considered two ways: Either it is imputed upon a ground in nature; because the persons to whom it is imputed, are naturally one with him that originally committed it, and so it doth seminally descend, and is derived upon them ;-thus Adam's sin of eating the forbidden fruit is imputed unto us, and the punishment thereof on us derived, namely, the privation of God's image, and the corruption of our nature. Or else it is imputed upon a ground of voluntary contract, vadimony, or susception; so that the guilt thereupon growing, is not a derived, but an assumed guilt, which did not bring with it any desert or worthiness to suffer, but only an obligation and obnoxiousness thereunto. As if a sober and honest person be surety for a prodigal and luxurious man, who, spending his estate upon courses of intemperance and excess, hath disabled himself to pay any of his debts; the one doth for his vicious disability deserve imprisonment, unto which the other is as liable as he, though without any such personal desert. Now then the punishments which Christ suffered, are only such as agree unto sin thus imputed', as all our sins were unto Christ. Again; In punishments, we are to distinguish between punishments inflicted from without, and punishments ingenerated, and immediately resulting from the condition of the person that suffereth. Or between the passions and actions of the men that are punished. Punishments, inflicted, are those pains and dolorous impressions, which God, either by his own immediate hand, or by the ministry of such instruments as he is pleased to use, doth lay upon the soul or body of a man. Punishments, ingenerated, are those which grow out of the weakness and wickedness of the person, lying under the sore and invincible pressure of those

• Τὸ ἐμὸν ἀνυπότακτον ἑαυτοῦ ποιεῖται, ὡς κεφαλὴ τοῦ παντὸς σώματος· ἕως μὲν οὖν ἀνυπότακτος ἐγὼ καὶ στασιώδης, Ανυπότακτος τὸ κατ ̓ ἐμὲ καὶ ὁ Χριστὸς Aéyerai. Greg. Nazian. Orat. 36.