Christ fulfilled all Ps. Ixix. 5 37, testified concerning him, " He hath done all things righteousness. well." And he declared this truly, as he did every thing else concerning himself: "For I do those things that please him," John viii. 29. And hence he boldly appealed to his enemies, ver. 46, "Which of you convinceth me of sin ?" Nay, even to his Father himself, Ps. lxix. 5: "O God, explained. thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from thee:" for I suppose this Psalm contains a prayer of the Lord Christ, as appears from several parts of it being often quoted in the New Testament. And these words, I think, contain a protestation of the Lord Jesus to his Father, of his own innocence; of which Theodorus, in Catena, has given no improper paraphrase: "Whether I have been guilty of any fault against them, thou thyself knowest, and art my witness, I have done nothing. But I think the meaning may be more fully expressed, thus: It is true, my God, I have taken guilt upon me, and am made a curse; but thou knowest all my sins, even to the slightest offence, for which I suffer; that in all there is not the least fault of mine, by which I have violated thy law, so as to restore what I have taken. The truth of this protestation the Father attests, when, Is. liii. 11, he calls Christ his "righteous servant," and "justified him in the spirit," 1 Tim. iii. 16, declaring that, as man, he was innocent of every crime falsely laid to his charge; on the contrary, he honoured his Father by his perfect obedience; and, as mediator, so diligently executed his office, that he was deficient in nothing. Allowed also that it was done for our good. X. It is also allowed, that the most holy obedience of Christ was for our good; because therein we have, 1st, A confirmation of his heavenly doctrine; the works of his most perfect holiness, no less than his miracles, being a demonstration that he was a preacher of divine truth sent down from heaven. 2dly, A living law and most perfect pattern of holiness, worthy of God and of the children of God, of which we had an exact delineation in the written law; but its shining forth in its lively image and native light in Christ and his actions, is fitted to stir up every man to love it, who beholds it with a spiritual eye. Mankind wanted this even to discern the unspotted image of the divine holiness in one of their brethren; which at length they obtained in Christ, who "left us an example, that we should follow his steps," 1 Pet. ii. 21. 3dly, A pointing out of the way to heaven: Christ teaching us not only by his words, but his actions, that "without holiness no one shall see the Lord," Heb. xii. 14. But it is XI. But we must proceed a step further, and affirm, moreover to that the obedience of Christ was accomplished by him, in our room, in order thereby to obtain for us a right to eternal life. The law, which God will have secured be believed, that it was done in our room. inviolable, admits none to glory but on condition of perfect obedience, which none was ever possessed of but Christ, who bestows it freely on his own people. This is what the apostle declares, Rom. v. 16: "But the free gift of Jesus Christ is of many offences unto justification:" that is, though we want those works, for which the reward may be due; nay, though for so many sins we may have deserved an eternal curse; nevertheless, there is something sufficient, not only for abolishing many offences, but likewise to be the meritorious cause of righteousness; namely, the obedience of one; and it becomes ours by gratuitous gift. More clearly still, ver. 19, "For as by one man's disobedience many were made [constituted] sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made [constituted] righteous." The former" one man" was Adam, the root and federal head of mankind. By his disobedience, all mankind, as belonging to him, were involved in the guilt of the curse: and as he sustained the person of all, what he did amiss is accounted as done by all. The other is the " one man" Christ, who neither sinned in and with Adam, nor had the dominion of sin and death passed upon him, and who is worthy to be both lord and head, a second Adam, and the origin and source of the inheritance to be devolved on his brethren. He is possessed of an obedience, even to the whole law of God, which enjoined him to have a perfect love for the glory of his Father, and for the salvation of his brethren. By that obedience, the collective body of those who belong to him are constituted righteous; that is, are judged to have a right to eternal life, no less than if every one had performed that obedience in his own person. That obeChrist sufficient for redeeming all the elect, bedignity of his dience of cause of the XII. Nor should it be thought strange that the obedience of Christ is sufficient to acquire to all a right to eternal life; even though it became him, as man, to yield obedience for himself. For we are here to consider the dignity of the person obeying; who being man in such a manner, as at the same time to be the eternal person. and infinite God, is much more excellent than all the elect, taken together; and therefore his obedience is deservedly esteemed of such value, as may be imputed to all, for obtaining a right to a blessed immortality. And although the divinity, in the abstract, did not obey; yet he who did is God; and thus the divinity of the person contributes very much to the dignity of the obedience. It is certain that, as man, he owed obe- bar, that as dience for himself; but since he became man on our owed it for account, he also performed that obedience in our room. Moreover, as man, he was not necessarily under the law, as prescribing the condition of happiness; because, if we set aside the condition of the suretiship undertaken for us, he would have enjoyed all manner of happiness, from the first Nor is it any man he also himself. moment of his incarnation, on account of the union of the humanity with the Godhead; as we have more fully shown, chap. III. §. 13, 14. Nor does it that we are under no necessity of obeying. XIII. It would likewise be false to infer from this, hence follow, that "if Christ performed obedience for us, we ourselves are under no necessity of obeying, because no demand can be made on the principal debtor, for what the surety has performed in his room." Our obedience may be considered, either as it is the duty of the rational creature, with respect to his sovereign Lord; or as it is a condition of acquiring a right to eternal life in the latter respect Christ accomplished it for us; and therefore, under that relation, it neither is nor can be required of us, as if for want of perfect obedience we could be excluded from eternal life. But in the former respect, we by all means owe obedience, and the obligation to it is rather increased than diminished by this instance of Christ's love. For what more proper, than by this to show our gratitude, and declare, not so much by words as actions, that we acknowledge him for our Lord, who has purchased us for himself? And in fine, that as adopted sons we decline no obedience to our heavenly Father, whom his natural Son, and of the same substance with himself, so cheerfully obeyed. Christ also dictive justice XIV. But besides, Christ satisfied the vindictive satisfied vin- justice of God, not only for our good, but also in our by suffering. room, by enduring those most dreadful sufferings, both in soul and body, which we had deserved, and from which he, by undergoing them, did so deliver us, that they could not, with the wrath and curse of God, as the proper punishment of our sin, be inflicted on us. If there is any point in our divinity accurately proved, and solidly defended against the exceptions of the Socinians, by illustrious persons in the church, it is certainly this: which I choose not to repeat, desiring the reader to fetch the arguments from a Grotius, a Junius, a Turretine, a Hornbeck, an Essenius, and the like renowned heroes, which will baffle all the efforts of the adversaries properly to answer. CHAPTER VI. What Sufferings of Christ are Satisfactory. among the One contends, that Christ's satisfactory were only sufferings those during hours of darkness. the three I. BUT it is really to be lamented, that, 'in these our days, a new question should be started orthodox; namely, which of the sufferings of Christ ought to be deemed satisfactory in our room. There is one in particular, who seems to acknowledge none of the sufferings of Christ to be satisfactory for us, but those which Christ underwent during the three hours of the solar darkness, while he was upon the cross, and before he expired; excluding from the number of satisfactory sufferings, that agony and horror, which he endured in the garden of Olivet* the night in which he was apprehended, and that blood which he shed before and when he was crucified, and after he expired on the cross. He had not, says he, commenced his satisfactory actions, when, by a word, he levelled his enemies with the ground, cured Malchus, and promised paradise to the thief: no expiation was yet made, when an angel came to strengthen him. Nay, he affirms that Christ did not suffer corporal death as our surety, and in our room, and that consequently it belongs not to the satisfaction which he made to the justice of God, if indeed he then fully satisfied God, when he died. But in case Christ should seem to have suffered all these things in vain, the learned person concludes, that they were done in order to satisfy the veracity of God, which had foretold that thus it should be, and to fulfil the types by which they were prefigured in the Old Testament; distinguishing, moreover, between convincing and compensating punishments, between warlike sufferings and judiciary. He calls those compensating and judiciary, which Christ endured during the three hours of darkness: the others only convincing and warlike sufferings; having this tendency, that Christ might become a merciful High Priest. The ground of this opinion explained. more fully II. But it will be worth while to trace the hypothesis of this very learned person from the foundation, which he has done himself very accurately, in a letter to a friend, published after the first and second editions of my work. For he maintains: 1st, That when God threatened if he sinned, with death, he meant that death, which our This was the garden of Gethsemane, which lay at the foot of the mount of Olives. first parents incurred on the very day they sinned, and which Christ the surety underwent in the room and stead of some, and which the damned themselves, who are without a surety, shall suffer and be forced to undergo for themselves. But that is the death of the whole man; because the subject of it is man, made up of soul and body united; and consists, not only in the privation of the sense of God's favour, and of a communion with him, and of a joyful delight in the enjoyment of him, but it is also attended with all the torture and racking pain, which the almighty wrath of God can inflict. 2dly, Our first parents underwent that death immediately upon their sin: for in the cool of the same day in which they sinned, when drawing towards the evening, they heard the voice of the Lord continually walking in the garden. It was not that articulate voice which Adam was before accustomed to hear, and was afterwards pleased with its sound, but such as was heard at Sinai, Ex. xix. 16, 17; and described Ps. xxix. and lxxvii. 18, 19. The voice of thunder and lightning, a token of God's powerful wrath, which the guilty creature could neither bear nor avoid, which made Adam and Eve hide themselves in the thickest of the trees of the garden, just as the damned will desire to do, Rev. vi. 15. 3dly, While our first parents endured this threatened death, satisfaction was made to the veracity of God, but not to his justice, demanding a plenary and sufficient compensation. But, on account of the mediatorial covenant between the Father and Son, there intervened the long-suffering of God, or a deferring of his wrath, which removed that death from man, and deferred it to the day of wrath and the last judgment. 4thly, Christ the surety, in the fulness of time, underwent this same death of the whole man, in soul and body united while on the cross he was forsaken of God, and, at the same time, had the sensation of his most dreadful wrath, who, while demanding payment of him, was pleased to bruise him; a bruising not inflicted by men, but immediately by God, who punished him with affliction and imprisonment, which will be the punishment of the damned; as it was of Christ, who is said to be and afflicted and in prison, Is. liii. 4-8. 5thly, Men were not able to behold this dreadful part of his punishment; for a most horrid and outward darkness concealed Christ from every eye. His whole man suffered this death, till divine justice was satisfied; and it sufficiently appeared to have been satisfied, when God removed the darkness, that the creature, who had before acted as an enemy against him, on whom God was taking vengeance, might again refresh himself, and when he likewise comforted him with such a sense of his paternal love, as now to be able to call God his Father, and commend his spirit into his hands, &c. 6thly, Moreover, he felt and properly bore this death on the cross, when he cried out, " My God! why |