III. That excellent state to which we are advanced by our Redeemer.

1. If we reflect upon the horror of our natural state, it will exceedingly heighten the mercy that delivered us. This I have in part opened before, therefore I will be the shorter in describing it. Man by his rebellion had forfeited God's favour, and the honour and happiness he enjoyed in paradise; Psal. 49. 20. And as there is no middle state between sovereignty and misery, he that falls from the throne stops not till he comes to the bottom; so when man fell from God and the dignity of his innocent state, he became extremely miserable. He is under the servitude of sin, the tyranny of satan, the bondage of the law, and the empire of death.

1. Man is a captive to sin. He is fallen from the hand of his counsel, under the power of his passions. Love, hatred, ambition, envy, fear, sorrow, and all the other stinging affections (of which is true what Solinus speaks of the several kinds of serpents in Africa, Quantus nominum tantus mortium numerus) exercise a tyranny over him. And if “no man can serve two mastes,” as our Savious tells us, Mat. 6. 24. how wretched is the slavery of man, whose passions are so opposite, that in obeying one, he cannot escape the lash of many imperious masters ? He is possessed with a legion of impure lusts. And as the demoniac in the gospel was sometimes cast into the fire, and sometimes into the water; so is he hurried by the fury of contrary passions. This servitude to sin is in all respects complete. For those who serve, are either born servants, or bought with a price, or made captives by force: and sin hath all these kinds of title to man. " He is conceived and born in sin," Psal. 51. 66 He is sold under sin,” Rom. 7. “ And sells himself to do evil.” Isa. 28. 15. As that which is sold passes into the possession of the buyer,-so the sinner exchanging himself for the pleasures of sin, is under its power. Original sin took possession of our nature, and actual sin of our lives. He is the servant of corruption by yielding to it: “ For of whom a man is overcome, of the same he is brought in bondage.” 2 Pet. 2. 19. The condition of the most wretched bondslave is more sweet and less servile than that of a sinner. For the severest tyranny is exercised only upon the body, the „soul remains free in the midst of chains ; slaves are called a úplata bodies, Rev. 18. 13, but the power of sin oppresses the soul, the

most noble part, and defaces the bright character of the Deity that was stamped upon its visage. The worst slavery is terminated with this present life. “ In the grave the prisoners rest together, they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and the great are there, and the servant is free from his master.” Job 3. 18, 19. But there is no exemption from this servitude by death, it extends itself to eternity. I

2. Man since his fall is under the tyranny of satan, who is called the god of this world, and is more absolute than all temporal princes, his dominion being over the will. He overcame man in paradise, and by the right of war rules over him. The soul is kept in his bondage by subtile chains, of which the spiritual nature is capable. The understanding is captivated by ignorance and errors; the will by inordinate and dangerous lusts; the

memory by the images of sinful pleasures, those mortal visions which enchant the soul, and make it not desirous of liberty. Never did cruel pirate so incompassionately urge his slaves to ply their oars in charging, or flying from an enemy, as satan incites those who are his captives “to do his will.” 2 Tim. 2. 26. And can there be a more afflicting calamity, than to be the slaves of one's enemy, especially if base and cruel ? This is the condition of man, he is a captive to the devil, who was “a liar, and a murderer from the beginning. He is under the rage of that bloody tyrant, whose ambition was to render man as miserable as himself, who in triumph upbraids him for his folly, and adds derision to his cruelty.

3. Fallen man is under the curse and terror of the law. For being guilty, he is justly exposed to the punishment threatened against transgressors, without the allowance of repentance to obtain pardon. And conscience, which is the echo of the law in his bosom, repeats the dreadful sentence, This is an accuser which none can silence, a judge that none can decline: and from hence it is that men all their life are “subject to bondage,”

” Heb. 2. being obnoxious to the wrath of God, which the awaken.ed conscience fearfully sets before them.

This complicated servitude of a sinner the scripture represents under great variety of similitudes, that the defects of one may be supplied by another. Every sinner is a servant, John 8. 34. Now a servant by flight may recover his liberty: but the sinner is a captive in chains 2 Tim. 2. ult. A captive may be freed by

laying down a ransom; but the sinner is deeply in debt: every debtor is not miserable by his own fault, Mat. 18. it may be his infelicity, not his crime, that he is poor; but the sinner is guilty of the highest offences, Isa. 1. 6. A guilty person may enjoy his health; but the sinner is sick of a deadly disease, an incurable wound: he that is sick and wounded may send for the physician in order to his recovery; but the sinner is in a deep sleep, 2 Tim. 2. 26. The apostle sets forth the conversion of a sinner by the word avavýpe, which signifies an awakening out of sleep, caused by the fumes of wine or strong liquor; which is an excellent resemblance of the sinner's state, wherein the spiritual senses are bound up, and the passions, as thick and malignant vapours, cloud the mind, that it cannot reflect upon his miseries. He that is asleep may awake; but the sinner is in a state of death, which implies not only a cessation from all vital actions, but an absolute disability to perform them. The understanding is disabled for any spiritual perception, the will for any holy inclinations, the whole man is disabled for the sense of his wretched state. This is the spiritual death which justly exposes the sinner to death temporal and eternal.

4. Every man as descending from Adam, is born a sacrifice to death. His condition in this world is so wretched and unworthy the original excellency of his nature, that it deserves not the name of life: it is a continual exercise of sinful actions dishonourble to God, and damning to himself, and after the succession of a few years in the defilements of sin, and the accidents of this frail state, in doing and suffering evil, man comes to his fatal period, and falls into the bottomless pit, the place of pollutions and horrors, of sin and torments. It is there "that the wrath of God abides on him; and who knows the power of his. wrath? According to his fear, so is his wrath." Psal. 90. 12. Fear is an unbounded passion, and can extend itself to the apprehension of such torments, which no finite power can inflict: but the wrath of God exceeds the most jealous fears of the guilty conscience. It proceeds from infinite justice, and is executed by Almighty power, and contains eminently all kinds of evils. A Jake of flaming brimstone, and whatever is most dreadful to sense, is but an imperfect allusion to represent it.

And how great is that love which pitied and rescued us from sin and hell? This saving mercy is set out for its tenderness

and vehemence by the commotion of the bowels, at the sight of one in misery, Luke 1. 78. especially the working of the mother, when any evil befals her children: such an inward deep resentment of our distress was in the Father of mercies. "When we were in our blood, he said unto us, live," Ezek. 16. 6. And that which further discovers the eminent degree of his love in this; he might have been unconcerned with our distress, and left us under despair of deliverance. There is a compassion which ariseth from self-love, when the sight of another's misery surprises us, and affects in such a manner as to disturb our repose, and imbitter our joy, by considering our liableness to the same troubles, and from hence we are inclined to help them. And there is a compassion that proceeds from pure love to the miserable, when the person that expresses it, is above all the assaults of evil, and incapable of all affections that might lessen his felicity, and yet applies himself to relieve the afflicted; and such was God's towards man.

If it had been a tolerable evil under which we were fallen, the mercy that recovered us had been less: for benefits are valued by the necessity of the receiver. But man was disinherited of paradise, an heir of hell, his misery was inconceivably great. Now the measure of God's love is proportionable to the misery from whence we are redeemed. If there had been any possible remedy for us in nature, our engagements had not been so great: but only he that created us by his power, could restore us by his love. Briefly, it magnifies the divine compassion, that our deliverance is full and entire. It had been admirable favour to have mitigated our misery, but we have a perfect redemption sweetened by the remembrance of those dreadful evils that oppressed us. As the three Hebrew martyrs came unhurt out of the fiery furnace, "The hair of their heads were not singed, nor their coats changed, nor the smell of the fire passed on them," Dan. 3. 27. So the saints above have no marks of sin and misery remaining upon them, not the "least spot or wrinkle" to blast their beauty, nor the least trouble to diminish their blessedness; but for ever possess the fulness of joy and glory, a pure and triumphant felicity.

II. The greatness of the divine love towards fallen man appears in the means by which our redemption is accomplished. And those are the incarnation and sufferings of the Son of God. The incarnation manifests this love upon a double account.

1. In regard of the essential condition of the nature he assumed.

2. Its servile state and meanness.

1. The essential condition of the human nature assumed by our Redeemer discovers his transcendent love to us. For what proportion is there between God and man? Infinite and finite are not terms that admit comparison, as greater and less; but are distant, as all and nothing. The whole world before him, is “ but as the drop of the bucket that hath scarce weight to fall ; and the small dust of the balance, that is not of such moment as to turn the scales; it is as nothing, and counted less than nothing, and vanity,” Isa. 40. 15, 17. The Deity in its own nature includes independence and sovereignty. To be a creature implies dependance and subjection. The angelical nature is infinitely inferior to the divine, and man is lower than the angels ; yet

“ the word was made flesh.” Add to this, he was not made as Adam in the perfection of his nature, and beginning the first step of his life in the full exercise of reason, and dominion over the creatures, but he came into the world by the way of a natural birth, and dependance upon a mortal creature. The eternal wisdom of the Father stooped to a state of infancy, which is most distant from that of wisdom, wherein though the life, yet the light of the reasonable soul is not visible; and the mighty God, to a condition of indigence and infirmity. The Lord of nature submitted to the laws of it. Admirable love! wherein God seemed to forget his own greatness, and the meanness of the creature. This is more endeared to us by considering,

2. The servile state of the nature he assumed. An account of this we have in the words of the apostle, Phil. 2. 5, 6, 7, 8.

. " let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ; who being

j in the form of God,” that is, enjoying the divine nature with all its glory eternally, and invariably. As to be in the form of a king, signifies not only to be a king, but to have all the con-spicuous marks of royalty, the crown, sceptre, throne, the guards and state of a king. Thus our Saviour possessed that glory that is truely divine, before he took our nature, John 17. 5. The angels adored him in heaven, and by him “ princes reigned on the earth.” Prov. 8. 15. It is added, “ he thought it no robbery to be equal with God,” Phil. 2. 6. that is, being the essential image of the Father, he had a rightful possession of all