The instruments effecting it vexe their wicked hands. * This fore-knowledge and counsel of God, as it did no way necessitate or enforce them to it ; so neither doth it excuse their fact from the least aggravation of its sinfulness. It did no more compel or force their wicked hands to do what they did, than the mariner's hoisting up his sails, to take the wind to serve his design, compels the wind. And it cannot excuse their action from one circum- stance of sin ; because God's end and manner of acting was one thing, their end and manner of acting another. His, most pure and holy ; theirs, most malicious and daringly wicked. Idem quod duojaciunt, non est idem. To this purpose a grave divine well ex- presses it.
In respect of God, Christ's death was justice and mercy. In re^ spect of man, it was murder and cruelty. In respect of himfelf, it "was obedience and humility -f\ Hence our note is,
Doct. That our Lord Jesus Christ was not only put to death, but to the worst of' deaths, even the death of the cross.
To this the apostle gives a plain testimony, Phil. ii. 8. " He " became obedient to death, even the death of the cross ;" where his humiliation is both specified ; he was humbled to death ; and aggravated by a most emphatical reduplication, even the death of the cross. So Acts v. 30. " Jesus whom ye slew and hanged on a " tree :" q. d. it did not suffice you to put him to a violent death, but you also put him to the most base, vile and ignominious death ; " you hanged him on a tree."
On this point we will discuss these three particulars, viz. The
* The Jews cannot be excusable, for they acted not in obedience to the secret purpose of God ; but, being excited by hatred and corrupt affections, they slew tha innocent Jesus, contrary to the law. Pareus.
f Morning Exercises at St. Giles's, p, 289.
322 -THE FOL'XTAIN OF LIFE. SERM. XXVL,
nature or kind, the manner and reasons of Christ's death upon the tree.
1. I shall open the kind or nature of his death, by shewing you that it was a violent, painful, shameful, cursed, slow, and succourless death.
First, It was a violent death that Christ died. Violent in itself* though voluntary on his part. K He was cut off out of the land of " the living," Isa. liii. 8. And yet " he laid down his life of him- " self; no man took it from him," John x. 17. I call his death violent, because he died not a natural death, i. e. he lived not till nature was consumed with age, as it is in many ^who live till their, balsamum radicate, i§ radical moisture," like the oil in the lamp, be quite consumed, and then go out like an expiring lamp. It was not so with Christ : for he was but in the flower and prime of his time when he died. And indeed, he must either die a violent death, or not die at all ; partly, because there was no sin in him, to open a door to natural death ; as it doth in all others. Partly? because else his death had not been a sacrifice acceptable and satisfactory to God for us. That which died of itself was never offered up to God ; but that which was slain, when it was in its full strength and health. The temple was a type of the body of Christ, John ii. 19- Now, when the temple was destroyed, it did not drop down as an ancient structure decayed by time, but was pulled down by violence, when it was standing in its full strength; Therefore he is said to suffer death, and to be put to death for us in the flesh, 1 Pet. iii. 18. That is the first thing. It was a violent., though a voluntary death. For violent is not oppossed to volun- tary, but to natural.
Secondly, The death of the cross was a most painful death. In- deed in this death were many deaths, contrived in one. The cross was a rack as well as a gibbet. The pains which Christ suf- fered upon the cross, are by the apostle emphatically stiled rac, udivag r* ^amrs, Acts ii. 24. " The pains of death :" but properly they signify the pangs of travail : yea, the birth-pangs, the most acute sorrows of a travailing woman. His soul was in travail, Isa. liii. his body in bitter pangs ; and being as Aquinas speaks, optime com- plectionatus, of the most excellent crasis, exact and just tempera- ment ; his senses were more acute and delicate than ordinary ; and all the time of his suffering, so they continued ; not in the least blunted, dulled, or rebated, by the pains he suffered.
" The death of Christ, doubtless, contained the greatest and " acutest pains imaginable * : because these pains of Christ alone?
* Continebat pcenas maximns, quia miseriam Ulam Mam aguabqt, qua hominum peccaf merebantur. Ames, gaeditat.
SE11M. XXVI. THE FOUXTAIX OF LIFE. 323
" were intended to equalize all that misery which the sin of men " deserved," all that pain which the damned shall, and the elect deserve to feel. Now, to have pains meeting at once upon one person, equivalent to all the pains of the damned ; judge you what a plight Christ was in.
Tli'irdhj, The death of the cross was a shameful death : not only because the crucified were stripped quite naked, and so exposed as spectacles of shame; but mainly, because it was a kind of death which was appointed for the basest, and vilest of men.
The free-men when they committed capital crimes, were not condemned to the cross. No, that was looked upon as the death appointed for slaves *. Tacitus calls it servile suppUcium, the pun- ishment of a slave : and to the same sense Juvenal speaks, pone crucem servo, put the cross upon the back of a slave. As they had a great esteem of a free-man, so they manifested it, even when they had forfeited their lives, in cutting them off by more honourable kinds of death. This, by hanging on the tree, was always ac- counted most ignominious. To this day we say of him that is hanged, He dies the death of a dog : and yet it is said of our Lord Jesus, Heb. xii. 2. He not only endured the cross, but also despised the shame. Obedience to his Father's will, and zeal for our sal- vation, made him digest the shame of it, and despise the baseness that was in it.
Fourtlily, The death of the cross was a cursed death. Upon that account he is said to be " made xuraoa, sl curse for us ; For it is " written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree," Gal. hi. 13. " His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but " thou shalt in any wise bury him that day ; for he that is hang- " ed is accursed of God f ." * The very symbol of lifting them up betwixt heaven and earth carried much shame in it. For it im- plieth this in it, that the person so used, was so execrable, base, and vile, that he deserved not to tread upon the earth or touch the surface of the ground any more. And the command for bury- ing them that day, doth not at all mitigate, but rather aggravates this curse : speaking the person to be so abominable, that as he is lifted up into the air, and hanging between heaven and earth, as unworthy ever to set foot more upon the earth ; so when dead, they were to hasten to bury him, that such an abominable sight