shall deliver me? A profane, secure sinner thinks it nothing to break the holy Law of God, to please his flesh, or the world; he counts sin a light matter, makes a mock of it, as Solomon says, Prov. xiv. 9. But a stirring conscience is of another mind: Mine iniquities are gone over my head; as a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. Psal. xxxviii. 4.

Sin is such a burden as makes the very frame of heaven and earth, which is not guilty of it, yea, the whole creation, to crack and groan, (it is the Apostle's doctrine, Rom. viii. 22,) and yet, the impenitent heart whose guiltiness it is, continues unmoved, groaneth not; for your accustomed groaning is no such matter.

Yea, to consider it in connexion with the present subject, where we may best read what it is, Sin was a heavy load to Jesus Christ. In Psal. xl. 12, the Psalmist, speaking in the person of Christ, complains heavily, Innumerable evils have compassed me about: Mine iniquities, (not His, as done by Him, but yet His, by His undertaking to pay for them,) have taken hold of me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth me. And surely, that which pressed Him so sore who upholds Heaven and earth, no other in Heaven or on earth could have sustained and surmounted, but would have sunk and perished under it. Was it, think you, the pain of that common outside of his death, though very painful, that drew such a word from him, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Or was it the fear of that beforehand, that pressed a sweat of blood from him? No, it was this burden of sin, the first of which was committed in the garden of Eden, that then began to be laid upon Him and fastened upon his shoulders in the garden of Gethsemane, ten thousand times heavier than the cross which he was caused to bear. That might be for a while turned over to another, but this could not. This was the cup he trembled at more than at that gall and vinegar to be afterwards offered to him by his crucifiers, or any part of his external sufferings: it was the bitter cup of wrath due to sin,

which his Father put into his hand, and caused him to drink, the very same thing that is here called the bearing our sins in his body.

And consider, that the very smallest sins contributed to make up this load, and made it so much the heavier; and therefore, though sins be comparatively smaller and greater, yet learn thence to account no sin in itself small, which offends the great God, and which lay heavy upon your great Redeemer in the day of His sufferings.

At His apprehension, besides the soldiers, that invisible crowd of the sins he was to suffer for, came about him, for it was these that laid strongest hold on him: he could easily have shaken off all the rest, as appears, Matt. xxvi. 33, but our sins laid the arrest on him, being accounted His, as it is in that forecited place, Psal. xl. 12, Mine iniquities. Now, amongst these were even those sins we call small; they were of the number that took him, and they were amongst those instruments of his bloodshed. If the greater were as the spear that pierced his side, the less were as the nails that pierced his hands and his feet, and the very least as the thorns that were set on his precious head. And the multitude of them made up what was wanting in their magnitude; though they were small, they were many.

[2] They were transferred upon Him by virtue of that covenant we spoke of. They became His debt, and He responsible for all they came to. Seeing you have accepted of this business according to My will, (may we conceive the Father saying to his Son,) you must go through with it; you are engaged in it, but it is no other than what you understood perfectly before; you knew what it would cost you, and yet, out of joint love with Me to those I named to be saved by you, you were as willing as I to the whole undertaking. Now therefore the time is come, that I must lay upon you the sins of all those persons, and you must bear them; the sins of all those believers who lived before, and all who are to come after, to the end of the world. The Lord laid on Him the iniquity

of us all, says the Prophet, (Isa. liii. 6.) took it off from us and charged it on him, made it to meet on Him, or to fall in together, as the word in the original imports. The sins of all, in all ages before and after, who were to be saved, all their guiltiness met together on His back upon the Cross. Whosoever of all that number had least sin, yet had no small burden to cast on Him: and to give accession to the whole weight, every man hath had his own way of wandering, as the Prophet there expresseth it, and He paid for all; all fell on Him. And as in testimony of his meekness and patience, so, in this respect likewise, was He so silent in His sufferings, that though His enemies dealt most unjustly with Him, yet He stood as convicted before the justice-seat of His Father, under the imputed guilt of all our sins, and so eying Him, and accounting His business to be chiefly with Him, He did patiently bear the due punishment of all our sins at His Father's hand, according to that of the Psalmist, I was dumb, I opened not my mouth because Thou didst it. Psal. xxxix. 9. Therefore the Prophet immediately subjoins the description of his silent carriage, to that which he had spoken of, the confluence of our iniquities upon Him: As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth. Isa. liii. 7.

And if our sins were thus accounted His, then, in the same way, and for that very reason, His sufferings and satisfaction must of necessity be accounted ours. As He said for his disciples to the men who came to take him, If it be me ye seek, then let these go free; so He said for all believers, to his Father, His wrath then seizing on him, If on me Thou wilt lay hold, then let these go free. And thus the agreement was; He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Cor. v. ult.

So then, there is a union betwixt believers and Jesus Christ, by which this interchange is made; He being charged with their sins, and they clothed with His satisfaction and righteous

This union is founded, 1st, in God's decree of Election, running to this effect, that they should live in Christ, and so,

choosing the Head and the whole mystical Body as one, and reckoning their debt as his, in His own purpose, that He might receive satisfaction, and they salvation, in their Head, Christ. The execution of that purpose and union, began in Christ's incarnation, it being for them, though the nature he assumed is theirs in common with other men. It is said, Heb. ii. 16, He took not on Him the nature of Angels, but the seed of Abraham, the company of believers: He became man for their sakes, because they are men. That he is of the same nature with unbelieving men who perish, is but by accident, as it were; there is no good to them in that, but the great evil of deeper condemnation, if they hear of Him, and believe not; but He was made man to be like, yea, to be one with the Elect, and He is not ashamed to call them brethren, as the Apostle there says, Heb. ii. 11. 2dly, This union is also founded in the actual intention of the Son so made man; He presenting himself to the Father in all He did and suffered, as for them, having them, and them only, in His eye and thoughts, in all. For their sakes do I sanctify myself. John xvii. 1. 9. Again, 3dly, This union is applied and performed in them, when they are converted and ingrafted into Jesus Christ by faith; and this doth actually discharge them of their own sins, and entitle them to His righteousness, and so, justify them in the sight of God. 4thly, The consummation of this union, is in glory, which is the result and fruit of all the former. As it began in Heaven, it is completed there; but betwixt these two in Heaven, the intervention of those other two degrees of it on earth was necessary, being intended in the first, as tending to the attainment of the last. These four steps of it are all distinctly expressed in our Lord's own prayer, John xvii. 1st, God's purpose that the Son should give eternal life to those whom He hath given Him, ver. 2. 2dly, The Son's undertaking and accomplishing their redemption, in ver. 4, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do. 3dly, The application of this union, and its performance in them, by their faith, their believing, and keeping

His word, ver. 6. 8, and in several of the subsequent verses. And then lastly, the consummation of this union, ver 24, I will that they whom Thou hast given me, be with me where I am. There meet the first donation, and the last.

Now, to obtain this life for them, Christ died in their stead. He appeared as the High Priest, being perfectly and truly what the name was on their plate of gold, Holiness to the Lord, Exod. xxviii. 36, and so bearing their iniquity, as it is there added of Aaron, ver. 38. But because the High Priest was not the Redeemer, but only prefigured him, he did not himself suffer for the people's sin, but turned it over upon the beasts which he sacrificed, signifying that translation of sin, by laying his hand upon the head of the beast. the head of the beast. But Jesus Christ is both the great high-priest and the great sacrifice in one; and this seems to be here implied in these words, Himself bare our sins in His own body, which the Priest under the Law did not. So, Isa. liii. 10, and Heb. ix. 12, He made His soul an offering for sin. He offered up himself, his whole self. In the history of the Gospel, it is said, that His soul was heavy, and chiefly suffered; but it is the bearing sin in His body, and offering it, that is oftenest mentioned as the visible part of the sacrifice, and as His way of offering it, not excluding the other. Thus, (Rom. xii. 1,) we are exhorted to give our bodies, in opposition to the bodies of beasts, and they are therefore called a living sacrifice, which they are not without the soul. So, Christ's bearing it in His body, imports the bearing of it in his soul too. [3.] His bearing of our sins, hints that He was active and willing in his suffering for us; it was not a constrained offering. He laid down his life, as He himself tells us, John x. 18; and this expression here, He bare, implies, He took willingly off, lifted from us that burden, to bear it Himself. It was counted an ill sign amongst the heathens, when the beasts went unwillingly to be sacrificed, and drew back, and a good omen when they went willingly. But never was sacrifice so willing as our Great Sacrifice; and we may be assured He hath appeased his Father's wrath, and wrought atonement for us. Isaac was in