CHAP.

So that though the Pardon of Man's Sins is iffued through Chrift, and granted for the Sake, and Confideration of his Sufferings, it is nevertheless, with respect to Man, a free, gratuitous Pardon, and a fpecial, undeferved, unobligated A&t of Grace; and the Sinner is as much.obliged to Mercy, as if there was no Chrift: but by taking that Method, and fending his Son, his Love and his Mercy are fo much the more enhans'd to Man. It appears by right Reason in the Book of Job, who was a Deift; that though God is in himfelf of a placable and propitious Difpofition, yet, when he is difpleafed, He infifts upon one to intervene between himself and the Offender, with Sacrifice, whom He thinks proper to accept, before He will become actually reconciled with the Offender. My Anger (faid he to Eliphaz) is kindled against thee, and thy two Friends; because ye have not spoken of me the Things that are right, as my Servant Job, Therefore take unto you now feven Bullocks, and feven Rams, and go to my Servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a Burnt-Offering, and my Servant Job fball pray for you, for him will I accept, his Face or Perfon, as in the Margin; left I deal with

you after your Folly, ch. xlii. 7, 8. He was fo appeafable and good as to appoint the Means to his. Favour, but would not however be actually appeas'd, till the Sacrifice was first offer'd by Ilim, whom He appointed; and because appointed, therefore only to be accepted. They might have thought from the Apprehenfions they had of his natural Goodness, that Repentance had been fufficient to pacify Him. But we see how vain are fuch Thoughts, and how contrary to God's Thoughts.

XI.

IF the Mediator is confider'd as the Surety of the Covenant, as He is ftiled, and God the Father as a Legislator, all Difficulties vanish. Suppofe at the Creation of our World, He, who is called the Lamb flain from the Foundation of it, in gving fuch a Talent to the new Creature Man, as Liberty and Freedom of Will, by the abufing of which in breaking the Law, God might be difhonoured, (as He had been before by the fallen Angels) fhould engage with God, as our Surety: "That all we his Creatures fhould not apoftatize "from his Government;" He that made them under God, and endow'd them with that religious Faculty would undertake for that.

Now in Virtue of that Promife and Undertaking as our Surety, (which either then commenc'd, or we know not when it did) it was right and dutiful in the Mediator to fulfil his Engagement; and, well knowing the Punishment of the Law to Difobedience, having freely bound himfelf as our Surety, it was a juft Debt of Obedience in Him to his Father to come into the World, at the propereft Time, to perform his Engagement, and perform it as cheerfully as he undertook it, without any Reluctance but what is natural and becoming Flesh and Blood at the Profpect of Death. And that Obedience unto Death being due to the Father in Juftice of his Son's Engagement, and in Confideration of his Undertaking as our Sponsor or Surety, it was right in the Father, and, as this Son was innocent, He could have no other Right to oblige him, to appoint that it fhould be fo, and ordain it as his Will to be obey'd by Him, in difpenfing his Love and Salvation to the World. It was just in

God

XI.

God the Father after that, but not before that, CHAP. to require fo much of the Mediator, and strictly exact and demand, as he did, the Performance from Him.

AND thus the requiring Will of the Father infifting upon fo much to be done, and our Lord's ready Compliance therewith, (as it is every where reprefented in the Scripture) being the Confequence, not the Caufe of the Willingness and heroick Goodness of his Son, our Saviour in his ante-mundane State firft engaging, and after undergoing fo bitter and fhameful a Death for us; and this being made an Act of Counsel, it may very well be faid, he was deliver'd by the deter min'd Counsel of God; all the little Objections of God's glutting his Revenge, Cruelty, &c. upon his innocent Son, fo often and fo falfly imputed by our Author, and others of his way of thinking, to this Difpenfation of God in Chrift reconciling the World to himself, entirely vanish, and disappear,

FOR the Law knows neither Cruelty nor Revenge. If the Punishment of Sin is Death, and fo justly due to it as to be called its Wages, had we fuffer'd the Punishment in Perfon, it had neither been Cruelty nor Revenge in God; how then fhould it take that Denomination, when tranflated upon another, with his own Confent, and in Favour to Him relax'd to a lefs Degree, and for a fhorter time? That Punishment may be tranflated by a human Legislator from a guilty Perfon to an innocent, where the guilty Perfon is belov'd by the innocent, is clear from the applauded Inftance of Zaleucus King of the Locri, who, when he had made a Law that both the Eyes

24

CHAP. Eyes of an Adulterer fhould be put out, and XI, his Son being catch'd in Adultery, rather than

the Law fhould be wholly broken, commanded one Eye of his Son, and another of his own, to be put out. And for that Fact Val. Maximus commends him both as a juft Judge, and a merciful Father.

IF any Injuftice this way, upon our Saviour, in requiring his Life as a Ranfom and Sacrifice for us; it would be the fame Injustice in God to fend him into the World to lay down his Life as a Teftimony to the Truth of that Doctrine, that God is reconcilable to Sinners; fince He knew taking away his Life would be the Confequence of publishing that Truth, or of fhewing himself fo unlike the rest of the World, as to be perfectly righteous. Plato himself acknowledges the Corruption of the World to be fo prodigious, "if a Man perfectly righteous fhould come upon "Earth, he would find fo much Oppofition, "that we would be imprifon'd, reviled, fcourg"ed, and in fine, crucified by fuch, who, tho' "they were extremely wicked, would yet pafs "for righteous Men."

"that

WILLINGNESS and Confent to foreseen Sufferings take off all Imputation of Injury or Hardship towards the vicarious Sufferer. In ins ferior Judicatures, it is true, if an innocent Perfon fhould offer himself to Death, before a Judge of the Law, in room of one guilty and deferving of it, and had received Sentence accordingly, he could not be accepted for two Reasons, 1. Because the Perfon offering had no Property in his own Life, and therefore guilty of tendering what was not his own. 2. Becaufe the Judge

has

has no Power over an innocent Perfon's Life to CHAP. take it away, in any refpect, unless he had for- XI. feited it to the Law by his Guilt. Was the Judge to admit of the Exchange, he himself would become a Criminal, in condemning the innocent and acquitting the guilty; in fuch a fubordinate Judge it would be no lefs than mifplacing Punishment, and perverting the due Courfe of Juftice, contrary to his Truft, and the Rule of the Law, which was to guide his Proceeding; neither has he it in his Power ever after to make a personal Amends to the Sufferer for accepting his Offer.

BUT now, if we reflect upon God as a Le giflator, and the Mediator between Him and Man, as having Life in himself, a Power to lay it down, and take it up at his Liberty, no Imagination of Injustice can be afcribed to God, nor ill Ufage to the Mediator as proceeding from Him. So far from that, that the Willingness of the Son to lay down his Life, and take it again in the Cause of Man's Salvation, was one of the particular Grounds and Reasons of the Father's loving him, John x. 17, 18. The Legiflator in that Cafe can't be injur'd, nor yet despised in his Mercy of accepting the Exchange; because in lieu of the Life of the Offender, which he gives, he receives that of the Offerer, and that must be an Equivalent to the Juftice of his Law requiring Death, and equally anfwers the Ends of Government, the Support of his Authority. And the Offerers who can foon take up the Life he laid down, can't be injured, becaufe for the Life which he lays down, he receives from the Legislator the Life of the Offender, which is dearer to him. But if inflicted Punishment in the Death of the Mediator had not taken place, the Law threat