this a type of Christ; we hear of no reluctance; he submitted quietly to be bound when he was to be offered up. There are two words used in Isaiah, ch. liii. v. 4, the one signifying bearing, the other, taking away. This bearing includes, also, that taking away of the sins of the world, spoken of by St. John, ch. i. v. 29, which answers to both; and so, He, the Great Antitype answers to both the goats, the sin-offering and the scape-goat, Levit. xvi. He did bear our sins on his cross, and from thence did bear them away to his grave, and there they are buried; and they whose sins He did so bear, and take away, and bury, shall hear no more of them as theirs to bear. Is he not, then, worthy to be beheld, in that notion under which John, in the fore-mentioned text, viewed Him, and designates Him?-Behold the Lamb of God, which beareth and taketh away the sins of the world!

You, then, who are gazing on vanity, be persuaded to turn your eyes this way, and behold this lasting wonder, this Lord of Life dying! But the most, alas! want a due eye for this Object. It is the eye of faith alone, that looks aright on Him, and is daily discovering new worlds of excellency and delight in this crucified Saviour; that can view Him daily, as hanging on the Cross, without the childish, gaudy help of a crucifix, and grow in the knowledge of that Love which passeth knowledge, and rejoice itself in frequent thinking and speaking of Him, instead of those idle and vain thoughts at the best, and empty discourses, wherein the most delight, and wear out the day. What is all knowledge but painted folly in comparison of this? Hadst thou Solomon's faculty to discourse of all plants, and hadst not the right knowledge of this root of Jesse; wert thou singular in the knowledge of the stars and of the course of the heavens, and couldst walk through the spheres with a Jacob's staff, but ignorant of this star of Jacob; if thou knewest the histories of all time, and the life and death of all the most famous princes, and could rehearse them all, but dost not spiritually know and apply to thyself the death of Jesus as thy life; thou art still a wretched fool, and all thy knowledge

with thee shall quickly perish. On the other side, if thy capa city or breeding hath denied thee the knowledge of all these things wherein men glory so much, yet, do but learn Christ crucified, and what wouldst thou have more? That shall make thee happy for ever. For this is life eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. John xvii. 3.

Here St. Paul takes up his rest, I determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. 1 Cor. ii. 2. As if he had said, Whatsoever I knew besides, I resolved to be as if I knew nothing besides this, the only knowledge wherein I will rejoice myself, and which I will labour to impart to others. I have tried and compared the rest, and find them all unworthy of their room beside this, and my whole soul too little for this. I have passed this judgment and sentence on all. I have adjudged myself to deny all other knowledge, and confined myself within this circle, and I am not straitened. No, there is room enough in it; it is larger than heaven and earth, Christ and Him crucified; the most despised and ignominious part of knowledge, yet the sweetest and most comfortable part of all: the root whence all our hopes of life, and all our spiritual joys do spring.

But the greatest part of mankind hear this subject as a story. Some are a little moved with the present sound of it, but they draw it not home into their hearts, to make it theirs, and to find salvation in it, but still cleave to sin, and love sin better than Him who suffered for it.

But you whose hearts the Lord hath deeply humbled under a sense of sin, come to this depth of consolation, and try it, that you may have experience of the sweetness and riches of it. Study this point thoroughly, and you will find it answer all, and quiet your consciences. Apply this bearing of sin by the Lord Jesus for you, for it is published and made known to you for this purpose. This is the genuine and true use of it, as of the brazen serpent, not that the people might emptily gaze on the fabric of it, but that those that looked on it might be cured.

"It is true,"

When all that can be said, is said against you, may you say, "but it is all satisfied for; He on whom I rest, made it His, and did bear it for me." The person of Christ is of more worth than all men, yea, than all the creatures, and therefore, his life was a full ransom for the greatest offender.

And as for outward troubles and sufferings, which were the occasion of this doctrine in this place, they are all made exceeding light by the removal of this great pressure. Let the Lord lay on me what He will, seeing He hath taken off my sin, aud laid that on His own Son in my stead. I may suffer many things, but He hath borne that for me, which alone was able to make me miserable.

And you that have this persuasion, how will your hearts be taken up with his love, who has so loved you as to give himself for you; who interposed Himself to bear off from you the stroke of everlasting death, and encountered all the wrath due to us, and went through with that great work, by reason of his unspeakable love! Let Him never go forth from my heart, who for my sake refused to go down from the cross.

II. The End of these Sufferings.

That we being dead to sin, should live unto righteousness.] The Lord doth nothing in vain; He hath not made the least of his works to no purpose; in wisdom hath He made them all, says the Psalmist, And this is true, not only in regard of their excellent frame and order, but of their end, which is a chief point of wisdom. So then, in order to the right knowledge of this great work put into the hands of Jesus Christ, it is of special concern to understand what is its End.

Now this is the thing which Divine wisdom and love aimed at in that great undertaking, and therefore it will be our truest wisdom, and the truest evidence of our reflex love, to intend the same thing, that in this, the same mind may be in us, that was in Christ Jesus in his suffering for us; for this very end it is expressed, That we being dead to sin, should live to righ

teousness.

In this there are three things to be considered: 1st. What

this death and life is; 2dly. The designing of it in the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ; 3dly. The effecting of it by them.

1st. What this death and life is. Whatsoever it is, surely it is no small change that bears the name of the great and last natural change that we are subject to, a death, and then another kind of life succeeding to it.

In this the greatest part of mankind are mistaken, that they take any slight alteration in themselves for true conversion. A world of people are deluded with superficial moral changes in their life, some rectifying of their outward actions and course of life, and somewhat too in the temper and habit of their mind. Far from reaching the bottom of nature's wickedness, and laying the axe to the root of the tree, it is such a work as men can make a shift with by themselves. But the renovation which the Spirit of God worketh, is like Himself: it is so deep and total a work, that it is justly called by the name of the most substantial works and productions; a new birth, and more than that, a new creation, and here, a death and a kind of life following it.

This death to sin, supposes a former living in it, and to it; and while a man does so, he is said indeed to be dead in sin, and yet withal, this is true, that he lives in sin, as the Apostle, speaking of widows, joins the expressions, 1 Tim. v. 6, She that liveth in pleasure, is dead while she liveth. So, Eph. ii. 1, Dead in trespasses and sins, and he adds, wherein ye walked, which imports a life, such an one as it is; and more expressly, ver. 3, We had our conversation in the lusts of our flesh. Now, thus to live in sin, is termed being dead in it, because, in that condition, man is indeed dead in respect of that Divine life of the soul, that happy being which it should have in union with God, for which it was made, and without which it had better not be at all. For that life, as it is different from its natural being, and a kind of life above it, so, it is contrary to that corrupt being and life it hath in sin; and therefore, to live in sin, is to be dead in it, being a deprivement of that

Divine being, that life of the soul in God, in comparison whereof not only the base life it hath in sin, but the very natural life it hath in the body, and which the body hath by it, is not worthy of the name of life. You see the body, when the thread of its union with the soul is cut, become not only straightway a motionless lump, but within a little time, a putrefied, noisome carcass; and thus the soul by sin cut off from God who is its life, as is the soul that of the body, hath not only no moving faculty in good, but becomes full of rottenness and vileness: as the word is, Psalm xiv. 2, They are gone aside and become filthy. The soul, by turning away from God, turns filthy; yet, as a man thus spiritually dead, lives naturally, so, because he acts and spends that natural life in the ways of sin, he is said to live in sin. Yea, there is somewhat more in that expression than the mere passing of his life in that way; for instead of that happy life his soul should have in God, he pleases himself in the miserable life of sin, that which is his death, as if it were the proper life of his soul: living in it imports that natural propension he hath to sin, and the continual delight he takes in it, as in his element, and living to it, as if that were the very end of his being. In that estate, neither his body nor his mind stirreth without sin. Setting aside his manifest breaches of the Law, those actions that are evidently and totally sinful, his natural actions, his eating and drinking, his religious actions, his praying, and hearing, and preaching, are sin at the bottom. And generally, his heart is no other than a forge of sin. Every imagination, every fiction of things framed there, is only evil continually; Gen. vi. 5: every day, and all the day long, it is his very trade and life.

Now, in opposition to this life of sin, this living in it and to it, a Christian is said to die to sin, to be cut off or separated from it. In our miserable natural state, there is as close a union betwixt us and sin, as betwixt our souls and bodies: it lives in us, and we in it, and the longer we live in that condition, the more the union grows, and the harder it is to dissolve it; and it is as old as the union of soul and body, begun with it, so that