1.

Jesus the
Surety.

CHAP. it is said, Isa. liii. 10. ¬wn DwX D'WTION, If his soul shall make itself to be sin; or the speech being directed to God, If thou, Lord, shalt make his soul to be sin. To the same purpose, Paul, 2 Cor. v. 21. "God made him, who had not known sin, to be sin for us." That is, as the innocent victim, without spot and blemish, became sin and mere guilt, by a vicarious substitution, when God, who was to be satisfied, pleased that that substitution should take place; so also God substituted Christ, most holy in himself, and free from all personal sin, in the place of the offenders, and made him sin, that is, a sacrifice for sin, that he might truly bear sin, and satisfy for it, as the sacrifice did in a typical

X.

Wherefore

so called his

sins.

manner.

X. Nay, God so refers the sins of the ethey are al- lect to Christ's account, that however remote from him, yet they are called HIS SINS. For thus he himself speaks of the matter, Psal. lxix. 4, 5. "That which I took not away, I will restore; O God thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee." I suppose that this Psalm contains a prayer of Christ the Lord: which appears from the quotation of its various parts in the New Testament. He complains of his sufferings, and of the insolence of his most unjust enemies, and protests that he had not brought this calamity upon himself by his own fault, but that he had paid what he had not taken away; which robbery, however, he immediately calls his sin,

I.

because he sustained the character of Surety. CHAP. As if he should say, It is true, my God, that I have come under guilt, and am made a curse; but thou knowest all the sins, even to the smallest faults for which I satisfy; and that in all these sins, and in all these follies, which I call mine in respect of suretiship, none of them is my own personal offence, by which I violated thy right, that I should restore what I had taken away. In like manner Paul teaches, that in Psalm xl. Christ is introduced as speaking: now, the person whose speech that Psalm exhibits, thus begins in the 12th verse," MINE INIQUITIES take hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up.”

so that by

liness of

XI. Further, this imputation of our sins XI. Yet to Christ, is to be understood, that by it no that impuprejudice is done either to the truth of the tation, no prejudice is Divine judgment, or to Christ's untainted ho- done, either liness. For God does not so impute our sins to the hoto him, as to judge that he hath committed Christ, or to what we have done: that he was made drunk the truth of the Divine when Noah drenched himself in wine: com- judgment. mitted incest with Lot, or adultery with David, which thought is so far inconsistent with all reason, that I can scarcely believe it could. ever enter the mind of any man of sense, much less of a Christian, or one who fears God. We know that every judgment of God is according to truth: now, it is most false, that Christ committed what was committed by the elect. Neither are our sins ever so reckoned to be his, but that he always remains

CHAP. holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sin

XII. For

ners.

XII. However, since by virtue of that cothey are not venant, of which I spake above, Christ, as

Christ's, ex

cept inas- well by his own will, as by that of the Famuch as he ther, became the Surety of the elect, and in

represents

the person the judgment of God represents and sustains of sinners. their person; their sins are so far imputed to

XIII.

him, and said to be his by imputation, [1.] that he is no less bound to pay, than if he himself, which God forbid! had perpetrated them in his own person. When God judgeth so, he judgeth according to truth: and that judgment is founded on the eternal and most holy will of the Father and the Son.

XIII. Further, in sin the stain and the guilt Whether are to be distinctly considered. How the sins they are alof the elect are imputed to Christ in respect so imputed to Christ as of guilt, is, if I am not mistaken, easily un

to their

stain.

derstood from what has already been said. Nay, I think it also obvious, that their sins are by no means imputed to him as to their stain, in that sense, that by that imputation he is any how physically polluted, or rather morally, if you will, at least inherently. But so far, that he is so treated by God, as if he occupied the place, and represented the person of the filthy and the unclean: and on that account, "his visage was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men," Isa. lii. 14. In which sense Gregory

Note [1.]

I.

Nyssen said well, that Christ bore Tav papri CHAP. ων ἡμῶν εὐπον: THE STAIN OF OUR SINS.

XIV.

How they

are ours,

XIV. Both may be said in a sound sense, viz, that our sins, as many of us as are elect, are ours, not Christ's; and that the same sins not Christ's; are Christ's, and no more ours. They are ours, Christ's not and again because committed by us, and because by ours. them we brought upon ourselves the guilt of eternal death, and thus far they will remain ours for ever: that is, it will be always true that we committed them, and, in so doing, deserved the wrath of God. For what is done, can never become undone, and thus they are not Christ's, because he did not commit them, neither did he contract any personal guilt. Neither could they become his sins; because the nature of things does not suffer that the same numerical act which was committed by us, should be done by Christ. But the sins which we committed became Christ's, when imputed to him as Surety, and he on account of his suretiship took them upon him, that in the most free and holy manner he might satisfy for them; and they cease to be ours, in as much as for the sake of Christ's satisfaction, we neither ought, nor can, in the judgment of God, be brought to condemnation or satisfaction in our own person on their account. And these things seem so evident to me, that there can be no difference as to the matter itself among the orthodox.

XV. Since they are so, I know not why xv. The some should incline rather to say, that the pu- emphatic phrases of

CHAP. nishment or guilt of our sins were translated I. to Christ, than the sins themselves as to their scripture guilt. Since the last is said by scripture itare not to self; a wish to soften its most pure, most wise, ed for ours and most emphatic phrases, by I know not. as better. what smoother ones of our own, is the part of a mind delicate to a fault, and not duly e

be exchan

steeming the wisdom of sacred scripture.