Secondly, None of the damned had ever so large a capacity to take in a full sense of the wrath of God as Christ had. The larger any one's capacity is to understand and weigh his troubles fully, the more grievous and heavy is his burden. If a man cast vessels of greater and lesser quantity into the sea, though all will be full, yet the greater the vessel is, the more water it contains. Now Christ had a capacity beyond all mere creatures to take in the wrath of his Father ; and what deep and large apprehensions he had of it may be judged by his bloody sweat in the garden, which
424 THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFF. 'SBRM. XXXIV.
was the effect of his mere apprehensions of the wrath of God. Christ was a large vessel indeed ; as he is capable of more glory, so of more sense and misery than any other person in the world.
Third!}/, The damned suffer not so innocently as Christ suffered ; they suffer the just demerit and recompence of their sin : They have deserved all that wrath of God which they feel, and must feel for ever : It is but that recompence which was meet ; but Christ was altogether innocent : He had done no iniquity, neither was guile found in his mouth; yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. When Christ suffered, he suffered not for what he had done ; but his sufferings were the sufferings of a surety, paying the debts of others. " The Messiah was cut off, but not for himself," Dan. ix. 26. Thus you see what his external sufferings in his body, and his internal sufferings in his soul were.
Thirdly, In the last place, it is evident that such extreme suffer- ings as these, meeting together upon him, must needs exhaust his very spirits, and make him cry, / thirst. For let us consider,
First, What mere external pains, and outward afflictions can do. These prey upon, and consume our spirits. * So David com- plains, Psal. xxxix. 11. " When thou with rebukes correctest " man for iniquity ; thou makest his beauty to consume away as " a moth,"" i. e. look, as a moth frets and consumes the most strong and well wrought garment, and makes it seary and rotten without any noise ; so afflictions waste and wear out the strongest bodies. They make bodies of the firmest constitution like an old rotten garment : They shrivel and dry up the most vigorous and flourishing body, and make it like a bottle in the smoke, Psal. cxix. 83.
Secondly, Consider what mere internal troubles of the soul can do upon the strongest body : They spend its strength, and devour the spirits. So Solomon speaks, Prov. xvii. 22. " A broken spirit u drieth the bones," i. e. it consumes the very marrow with which they are moistened. So Psal. xxxii. 3, 4. " My bones " waxed old, and through my roaring all the day long : for day " and night thy hand was heavy on me : my moisture (or chief sap) " is turned into the drought of summer.'" What a spectacle of pity was Francis Spira become, merely through the anguish of his spirit ? a spirit sharpened with such troubles, like a keen knife, cuts through the sheath. Certainly, whoever hath had any ac- quaintance with troubles of soul, knows, by sad experience, how, like an internal flame, it feeds and preys upon the very spirits, so that the strongest stoop and sink under it. But,
* For as a bottle is scorched and wasted in smoke, so the spirit by continual pains and the constant violent heat of grief is spent and consumed, Mol. on this place.
SERM. XXXIV. THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE. 425
Thirdly, When outward bodily pains shall meet with inward spiritual troubles, and both in extremity shall come in one day ; how soon must the firmest body fail and waste away like a candle lighted at both ends ? Now strength fails a-pace, and nature must fall flat under this load. When the ship in which Paul sailed, fell into a place where two seas met, it was quickly wrecked ; and so will the best constituted body in the world, if it fall under both these troubles together : the soul and body sympathize with each other under trouble, and mutually relieve each otner.
If the body be sick and full of pain, the spirit supports, cheers, and relieves it by reason and resolution all that it can ; and if the spirit be afflicted, the body sympathizes and helps to bear up the spirit ; but now, if the one be over-laden with strong pains, more than it can bear, and calls for aid from the other, and the other be oppressed with intolerable anguish, and cries out under a bur- den greater than it can bear, so that it can contribute no help, but instead thereof adds to its burden, which before was above its strength to bear, then nature must needs fail, and the friendly union betwixt soul and body suffer a dissolution by such an extraordinary pressure as this. So it was with Christ, when outward and inward soitows met in one day in their extremity upon him. Hence the bitter cry, / thirst.
Inference 1. How horrid a thing is sin ! How great is that evil of evils, which deserves that all this should be inflicted and suffered fir the expiation of it!
The sufferings of Christ for sin give us the true account, and fullest representation of its evil. " The law (saith * one) is a bright 44 glass, wherein . we may see the evil of sin ; but there is the red " glass of the sufferings of Christ, and in that we may see more of " the evil of sin, than if God should let us down to hell, and there " we should see all the tortures and torments of the damned. If " we should see them how they lie sweltering under God's wTath " there, it were not so much as the beholding of sin through the red " glass of the sufferings of Christ."
Suppose the bars of the bottomless pit were broken up, and damned spirits should ascend from thence, and come up among us, with the chains of darkness rattling at their heels, and we should hear the groans, and see the ghastly paleness and trembling of those poor creatures upon whom the righteous God hath impressed his fury and indignation ; if we could hear how their consciences are lashed by the fearful scourge of guilt, and how they shriek at every lash the arm of justice gives them.
* Mr. J. B. in bis Evil of Evils, p. 124.
426 THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE. SERM. XXXIV.
If we should see and hear all this, it is not so much as what we mav see in this text, where the Son of God, under his sufferings for it, cries out, / thirst, For, as I shewed you before, Christ's sufferings, in divers respects, were beyond theirs. O then, let not thy vain heart slight sin, as if it were but a small thing ! If ever God shew thee the face of sin in this glass, thou wilt say, there is not such another horrid representation to be made to a man in all the world. Fools make a mock at sin, but wise men tremble at it.