Page images
PDF
EPUB

the whole debt, and was to pay the utmost farthing, as a surety is to do if it be required of him; though he borrow not the money, nor have one penny of that which is in the obligation, yet if he be sued to an execution he must pay all. The Lord Christ (if I may so say) was sued by his Father's justice unto an execution; in answer whereunto he underwent all that was due to sin, which we proved before to be death, wrath, and curse. If it be excepted (as it is) that God was always well-pleased with his Son, he testified it again and again from heaven, how then could he lay his wrath upon him?

Ans. It is true he was always well-pleased with him, yet it ' pleased him to bruise him and put him to grief.' He was always well-pleased with the holiness of his person, the excellency and perfectness of his righteousness, and the sweetness of his obedience; but he was displeased with the sins that were charged on him, and therefore it pleased him to bruise and put him to grief, with whom he was always well-pleased. Nor is that other exception of any more value, that Christ underwent no more than the elect lay under; but they lay not under wrath and the punishment due to sin.

Ans. The proposition is most false; neither is there any more truth in the assumption. For, first, Christ underwent not only that wrath (taking it passively) which the elect were under, but that also which they should have undergone, had not he borne it for them; he delivered them from the wrath to come.' Secondly, The elect do in their several generations, lie under all the wrath of God in respect of merit and procurement, though not in respect of actual endurance; in respect of guilt not present punishment; so that notwithstanding these exceptions it stands firm, that he was made sin for us, who knew no sin.'

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Isa. liii. 5. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes he was healed.' Of this place something was said before, I shall add some small enlargements that conduce to discover the meaning of the words. 'The chastisement of our peace was upon him;' that is, he was chastised or punished that we might have peace, that we might go free; our sins being the cause of his wounding, and our iniquities of his being bruised; all our sins meet2 c

VOL. V.

ing upon him; as ver. 6. That is, he bare our sins, in Peter's interpretation; he bare our sins (not as some think by declaring that we were never truly sinful, but) by being wounded for them, bruised for them, undergoing the chastisement due unto them, consisting in death, wrath, and curse; so making his soul an offering for sin. He bare our sins; that is, say some, he declared that we have an eternal righteousness in God, because of his eternal purpose to do us good; but is this to interpret Scripture? or to corrupt the word of God? Ask the word what it means by Christ's bearing of sin, it will tell you, his being smitten for our transgressions; Isa. liii. 8. His being cut off for our sins; Dan. ix. 26. Neither hath the expression of bearing sins any other signification in the word; Lev. v. 1. 'He that heareth swearing and doth not reveal it, shall bear his iniquity.' What is that, he shall declare himself or others to be free from sin? No doubtless, but he shall undergo the punishment due to sin, as our Saviour did in bearing our iniquities. He must be a cunning gamester indeed that shall cheat a believer of this foundation.

More arguments or texts on this subject, I shall not urge or produce, though the cause itself will enforce the most unskilful to abound. I have proceeded as far as the nature of a digression will well bear. Neither shall I undertake at this time the answering of objections to the contrary; a full discussion of the whole business of the satisfaction of Christ, which should cause me to search for, draw forth, and confute all objections to the contrary, being not by me intended; and for those which were made at that debate, which gave occasion to this discourse, I dare not produce them, lest happily I should not be able to restrain the conjectures of men, that I purposely framed such weak objections, that I might obtain an easy conquest over a man of straw of mine own erection; so weak were they and of so little force to the shaking of so fundamental a truth, as that is which we do maintain so of this argument hitherto.

CHAP. X.

·Of the merit of Christ; with arguments from thence.

A FOURTH thing ascribed to the death of Christ is merit, or that worth and value of his death, whereby he purchased and procured unto us and for us, all those good things which we find in the Scripture for his death to be bestowed upon us; of this, much I shall not speak, having considered the thing itself under the notion of impetration already; only I shall add some few observations proper to that particular, of the controversy which we have in hand. The word merit is not at all to be found in the New Testament, in no translation out of the original that I have seen; the vulgar Latin once reads promeretur; Heb. xiii. 16. And the Rhemists to preserve the sound, have rendered it promerited. But these words in both languages are uncouth and barbarous, besides that they no way answer ɛvapɛσтɛтa, the word in the original, which gives no colour to merit, name or thing; nay, I suppose it will prove a difficult thing to find out any one word in either of the languages, wherein the holy Scripture was written, that doth properly and immediately in its first native importance signify merit; so that about the name we shall not trouble ourselves; if the thing itself intended thereby be made apparent, which it is both in the Old and New Testament. As Isa. liii. 5. 'The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed;' the procurement of our peace and healing was the merit of his chastisement and stripes; so Heb. ix. 12. Sià rov idíov aiμaros αἰωνίαν λύτρωσιν εὑράμενος, obtaining by his blood eternal redemption,' is as much as we intend to signify by the merit of Christ. The word which comes nearest it in signification, we have Acts xx. 28. Teρietoinσaro, 'purchased with his own blood;' purchase and impetration, merit and acquisition, being in this business terms equivalent; which latter word is used in divers other places; as 1 Thess. v. 9. Eph. i. 14. 1 Pet. ii. 9. Now that which by this name we understand is, the performance of such an action as whereby the thing aimed at by the agent, is due unto him according to the equity and equality required in justice; as, 'to him that worketh, the

reward is reckoned not of grace but of debt;' Rom. iv. 4. That there is such a merit attending the death of Christ, is apparent from what was said before; neither is the weight of any operous proving it imposed on us, by our adversaries seeming to acknowledge it no less themselves. So that we may take it for granted (until our adversaries close with the Socinians in this also). Christ then by his death did merit and purchase for all those for whom he died, all those things which in the Scripture are assigned to be the fruits and effects of his death. These are the things purchased and merited by his bloodshedding and death; which may be referred unto two heads. First, Such as are privative; as, 1. Deliverance from the hands of our enemies; Luke i. 74. From the wrath to come; 1 Thess. i. ult. Secondly, The destruction and abolition of death in his power; Heb. ii. 14. Thirdly, Of the works of the devil; 1 John iii. 8. Fourthly, Deliverance from the curse of the law; Gal. iii. 13. Fifthly, From our vain conversation; 1 Pet. i. 18. Sixthly, From the present evil world; Gal. i. 4. Seventhly, From the earth and from among men; Rev. xiv. 3, 4. Eighthly, Purging of our sins; Heb. i. 3. Secondly, Positive; as, first, Reconciliation with God; Rom. v. 10. Eph. ii. 16. Col. i. 20. Secondly, Appeasing or atoning of God by propitiation; Rom. v. 25. 1 John ii. 2. Thirdly, Peace-making; Eph. ii. 14. Fourthly, Salvation; Matt. i. 21. All these hath our Saviour by his death, merited and purchased for all them for whom he died; that is, so procured them of his Father, that they ought in respect of that merit, according to the equity of justice, to be bestowed on them for whom they were so purchased and procured; it was absolutely of free grace in God, that he would send Jesus Christ to die for any; it was of free grace for whom he would send him to die; it is of free grace that the good things procured by his death, be bestowed on any person, in respect of those persons on whom they are bestowed. But considering his own appointment and constitution, that Jesus Christ by his death should merit and procure grace and glory for those for whom he died, it is of debt in respect of Christ that they be communicated to them. Now that which is thus merited, which is of debt to be bestowed, we do not say that it may be bestowed, but it ought so to be; and it is injustice if it be not. Having said this

little of the nature of merit, and of the merit of Christ, the procurement of his death for them in whose stead he died, it will quickly be apparent how unreconcilable the general ransom is therewith. For the demonstration whereof we need no more but the proposing of this one question, viz. if Christ hath merited grace and glory for all those for whom he died; if he died for all, how comes it to pass that these things are not communicated to, and bestowed upon all? Is the defect in the merit of Christ, or in the justice of God? How vain is it to except that these things are not bestowed absolutely upon us, but upon condition; and therefore was so procured, seeing that the very condition itself is also merited and procured; as Eph. i. 3, 4. Phil. i. 29. hath been already declared.

Fifthly, The very phrases of dying for us,' bearing our sins,' being our surety,' and the like, whereby the death of Christ for us is expressed, will not stand with the payment of a ransom for all. To die for another, is in Scripture to die in that other's stead that he might go free; as Judah besought his brother Joseph to accept of him for a bondman instead of Benjamin, that he might be set at liberty; Gen. xliv. 33. And that to make good the engagement wherein he stood bound to his father, to be a surety for him. He that is surety for another (as Christ was for us, Heb. vii. 22.) is to undergo the danger that the other may be delivered. So David wishing that he had died for his son Absalom, 2 Sam. xviii. 33. intended doubtless a commutation with him, and a substitution of his life for his, so that he might have lived. Paul also, Rom. v. 7. intimates the same, supposing that such a thing might be found among men, that one should die for another; no doubt alluding to the Decii, Menecæus, Euriolus, and such others, whom we find mentioned in the stories of the heathen, who voluntarily cast themselves into death, for the deliverance of their country or friends: continuing their liberty and freedom from death, who were to undergo it, by taking it upon themselves, to whom it was not directly due: and this plainly is the meaning of that phrase, 'Christ died for us;' that is, in the undergoing of death there was a subrogation of his person in the room and stead of ours. Some, indeed, except that where the word wep is used in this phrase, as Heb. ii. 9. That he by the

« PreviousContinue »