burden of that lay upon Christ's shoulders on the cross. That done, it is further necessary, that souls so delivered be likewise purified and renewed, for they are designed for perfection of holiness in the end, and it must begin here.

Yet it is not possible to persuade men of this, that Christ had this in his eye and purpose when he was lifted up upon the cross, and looked upon the whole company of those his Father had given him to save, that he would redeem them to be a number of holy persons. We would be redeemed; who is there that would not? But Christ would have his redeemed ones holy; and they who are not true to this His end, but cross and oppose Him in it, may hear of Redemption long and often, but little to their comfort. Are you resolved still to abuse and delude yourselves? Well, whether you will believe it or not, this is once more told you: there is unspeakable comfort in the death of Christ, but it belongs only to those who are dead to sin, and alive to righteousness. This circle shuts out the impenitent world; there it closes, and cannot be broken through; but all who are penitent, are by their effectual calling lifted into it, translated from that accursed condition wherein they were. So then, if you will live in your sins, you may; but then, resolve withal to bear them yourselves, for Christ, in his bearing of sin, meant the benefit of none but such as in due time are thus dead, and thus alive, with Him.

3. But then, in the third place, Christ's sufferings and death effect all this. [1.] As the exemplary cause, the lively contemplation of Christ crucified, is the most powerful of all thoughts to separate the heart and sin. But [2.] besides this example, working as a moral cause, Christ is the effective natural cause of this death and life; for he is one with the believer, and there is a real influence of his death and life into their souls. This mysterious union of Christ and the believer, is that whereon both their justification and sanctification, the whole frame of their salvation and happiness, depends. And in this particular view the Apostle still insists on it, speaking of Christ and believers as one in his death and resurrection, cruci

fied with him, dead with him, buried with him, and risen with him. (Rom. vi. 4, &c.) Being arisen, he applies his death to those he died for, and by it kills the life of sin in them, and so is avenged on it for its being the cause of his death: according to that expression of the Psalmist, Raise me up that I may requite them. (Psal. xli. 10.) Christ infuses, and then actuates and stirs up that faith and love in them, by which they are united to him; and these work powerfully in producing this.

[3.] Faith looks so steadfastly on its suffering Saviour, that as they say, Intellectus fit illud quod intelligit, the mind becomes that which it contemplates. It makes the soul like him, assimilates and conforms it to his death, as the Apostle speaks, Phil. iii. 10. That which Papists fabulously say of some of their saints, that they received the impression of the wounds of Christ in their body, is true, in a spiritual sense, of the soul of every one that is indeed a saint and a believer it takes the very print of his death, by beholding him, and dies to sin; and then takes that of his rising again, and lives to righteousness. As it applies it to justify, so, to mortify, drawing virtue from it. Thus said one, "Christ aimed at this in all those sufferings which, with so much love, he went through; and shall I disappoint him, and not serve his end?”

[4.] That other powerful grace of Love joins in this work with Faith; for love desires nothing more than likeness and conformity: though it be a painful resemblance, so much the better and fitter to testify love. Therefore it will have the soul die with Him who died for it, and the very same kind of death: I am crucified with Christ, says the great Apostle (Gal. ii. 20.) The love of Christ in the soul, takes the very nails that fastened him to the cross, and crucifies the soul to the world, and to sin. Love is strong as death, particularly in this. The strongest and liveliest body, when death seizes it, must yield, and that become motionless, which was so vigorous before thus the soul that is most active and unwearied in sin, when this love seizes it, is killed to sin; and as death separates a man from his dearest friends, and society, this love breaks all its ties and

friendship with sin. Generally, as Plato hath it, love takes away one's living in one's self, and transfers it into the party loved; but the divine love of Christ doth it in the truest and highest manner.

By whose stripes ye were healed.] The misery of fallen man, and the mercy of his deliverance, are both of them such a depth, that no one expression, yea, no variety of expressions added one to another, can fathom them. Here we have divers very significant ones. 1. The guiltiness of sin as an intolerable burden, pressing the soul and sinking it, and that transferred and laid on a stronger back: He bare. Then, 2. The same wretchedness, under the notion of a strange disease, by all other means incurable, healed by His stripes. And 3. It is again represented by the forlorn condition of a sheep wandering, and our salvation to be found only in the love and wisdom of our great Shepherd. And all these are borrowed from that sweet and clear prophecy in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah.

The polluted nature of man is no other than a bundle of desperate diseases: he is spiritually dead, as the Scriptures often teach. Now this contradicts not, nor at all lessens the matter; but only because this misery, justly called death, exists in a subject animated with a natural life, therefore, so considered, it may bear the name and sense of sickness, or wounds: and therefore it is gross misprision,-they are as much out in their argument as in their conclusion, who would extract out of these expressions any evidence that there are remains of spiritual life, or good, in our corrupted nature. But they are not worthy the contest, though vain heads think to argue themselves into life, and are seeking that life, by logic, in miserable nature, which they should seek, by faith, in Jesus Christ, namely, in these His stripes, by which we are healed.

It were a large task to name our spiritual maladies; how much more severally to unfold their natures! Such a multitude of corrupt false principles in the mind, which, as gangrenes, do spread themselves through the soul, and defile the whole man; that total gross blindness and unbelief in spiritual

things, and that stone of the heart, hardness and impenitency; lethargies of senselessness and security; and then, (for there be such complications of spiritual diseases in us, as in naturals are altogether impossible,) such burning fevers of inordinate affections and desires, of lust, and malice, and envy, such racking and tormenting cares of covetousness, and feeding on earth and ashes, (as the Prophet speaks in another case, Isa. xliv. 20,) according to the depraved appetite that accompanies some diseases; such tumours of pride and self-conceit, that break forth, as filthy botches, in men's words, and carriage one with another! In a word, what a wonderful disorder must needs be in the natural soul, by the frequent interchanges and fight of contrary passions within it! And, besides all these, how many deadly wounds do we receive from without, by the temptations of Satan and the world! We entertain them, and by weapons with which they furnish us, we willingly wound ourselves; as the Apostle says of them who will be rich, they fall into divers snares and noisome lusts, and pierce themselves through with many sorrows. (1 Tim. vi. 9, 10.)

Did we see it, no infirmary or hospital was ever so full of loathsome and miserable spectacles, as, in a spiritual sense, our wretched nature is in any one of us apart: how much more when multitudes of us are met together! But our evils are hid from us, and we perish miserably in a dream of happiness! This makes up and completes our wretchedness, that we feel it not with our other diseases; and this makes it worse still. This was the Church's disease, Rev. iii. 17: Thou sayest, I am rich, and knowest not that thou art poor, &c. We are usually full of complaints of trifling griefs which are of small moment, and think not on, nor feel our dangerous maladies: as he who shewed a physician his sore finger, but the physician told him he had more need to think on the cure of a dangerous imposthume within him, which he perceived by looking at him, though himself did not feel it.

In dangerous maladies or wounds, there be these evils: a tendency to death, and with that, the apprehension of the

terror and fear of it, and the present distemper of the body. So there are in sin, 1. The guiltiness of sin binding over the soul to death, the most frightful eternal death; 2. The terror of conscience in the apprehension of that death, or the wrath that is the consequence and end of sin; 3. The raging and prevailing power of sin, which is the ill habitude and distemper of the soul. But these Stripes, and that blood which issued from them, are a sound cure. Applied unto the soul, they take away the guiltiness of sin, and death deserved, and free us from our engagement to those everlasting scourgings and lashes of the wrath of God; and they are likewise the only cure of those present terrors and pangs of conscience, arising from the sense of that wrath and sentence of death upon the soul. Our iniquities which met on Him, laid open to the rod that back which in itself was free. Those hands which never wrought iniquity, and those feet which never declined from the way of righteousness, yet, for our works and wanderings, were pierced; and that tongue dropped with vinegar and gall on the cross, which never spoke a guileful nor sinful word. The blood of those Stripes is that balm issuing from that Tree of Life so pierced, which can alone give ease to the conscience, and heal the wounds of it: they deliver from the power of sin, working by their influence a loathing of sin, which was the cause of them; they cleanse out the vicious humours of our corrupt nature, by opening that issue of repentance: They shall look on Him and mourn over Him whom they have pierced. (Zech. xii. 10.)

Now, to the end it may thus cure, it must be applied: it is the only receipt, but in order to heal, it must be received. The most sovereign medicines cure not in any other manner, and therefore, still their first letter is, R, Recipe, take such a thing.

This is amongst the wonders of that great work that the sovereign Lord of all, who binds and looses at His pleasure the influences of heaven, and the power and workings of all the creatures, would himself in our flesh be thus bound, the only Son bound as a slave, and scourged as a malefactor! And his