* Not that all that are hanged should be damned, for the contrary appears in that Luke xiiii. 43. Neither is hanging in itself, or by the law of nature, or by civil law, more execrable than any other death.
OF THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 147
are redeemed from the curse because Christ was made a curse for us ; he remitteth that curse to us which he received in himself. That father hit the mark who saith^i Chrisius suppUcium nostrum sine reatu suscepit, ut solveret reatum, et Jiniret siipplicium, Christ hath taken our punishment without guilt, to loose the guilt and end the punishment. We were subject to the curse, because we had trans- gressed the law ; Christ was not subject, because he had fulfilled it. Earn ergo execroiionem suscepit, cui obnoxius nan erat, quum suspenr susfuit in ligno, ut eocecrationem solveret, quce adversus nos erat, He therefore took that curse, to the which he was not subject, when he hanged upon the tree, to loase the curse which was against us. 2 Such a curse or execration was Christ made for us, as was that from which he redeemed us ; and that curse from which he redeemed us was no other than the cm-se of the law, and that the curse of the law included all the punishment which sinners were to bear or suffer for transgression of the law, of which his hanging on the cross was a sign and symbol ; and this curse was Christ made for us, that is, he did bear and suffer it to redeem us from it. Christ was verily made a curse for us, and did bear both in his body and soul that curse, which by reason of the transgression of the law was due to us ; and therefore I may well conclude this head with that saying of Jerome, Injuria Domini, nostra gloria, The Lord's injury is our glory. ^ The more we ascribe to Christ's suffering, the less remaineth of ours ; the more pain- fully that he suffered, the more fully are we redeemed ; the greater his sorrow was, the greater our solace ; his dissolution is our consolation, his cross our comfort ; his annoy our endless joy ; his distress in soul our release, his calamity our comfort ; his misery our mercy, his ad versity our felicity, his hell our heaven. Christ is not only accursed, but a curse ; and this expression is used both for more significancy and usefulness, to note out the truth and realness of the thing, and also to shew the order and way he took for bringing us back unto that blessedness which we had lost. The law was our righteousness in our innocent condition, and so it was our blessedness ; but the first Adam, falling away from God by his first transgression, plunged himself into all unrighteousness, and so inwrapped himself in the curse, James i. 24. Now Christ the second Adam, that he may restore the lost man into an estate of blessedness, he becomes that for them which the law is unto them, namely, a curse ; beginning where the law ends, and so going backward to satisfy the demands of the law to the uttermost, he becomes first a curse for them and then their righteousness, and so their blessedness, Rom. x. 24. Now Christ's becoming a curse for us stands in this, that whereas we are all accursed by the sentence of the law because of sin, he now comes in our room, and stands under the stroke of that curse which of right belongs to us ; so that it lies not now any longer on the backs of poor sinners, but on him for them and in their stead ; therefore he is called a surety, Heb. vii, 22. The surety stands in the room of a debtor, malefactor, or him that is any way obnoxious to the law. Such is Adam and all his posterity. We are by the doom of the law evil-doers, transgressors, and upon that score we stand indebted to the justice of God, and lie under the stroke of his wrath. Now the
^ Bede in Gal. iii. ' CEcumenius in Gal. iii. ' Jerome in Gal. iii.
148 THREE IMPROVEMENTS MORE TO BE MADE, ETC.
Lord Jesus, seeing us in this condition, he steps in and stands between us and the blow ; yea, he takes this wrath and curse off from us unto himself. He stands not only or merely after the manner of a surety among men, in the case of debt ; for here the surety indeed enters bond with the principal for the payment of the debt ; but yet he ^ expects that the debtor should not put him to it, but that he should discharge the debt himself : he only stands as a good security. No, Christ Jesus doth not expect that we should pay the debt ourselves, but he takes it wholly to himself. As a surety for a murderer or traitor, or some other notorious malefactor, that hath broken prison and is run away, he lies by it body for body, state for state, and imdergoes whatsoever the male- factor is chargeable withal for satisfying the law ; even so, the Lord Jesus Christ stands surety for us runagate malefactors, making him- self liable to all that curse which belongs to us, that he might both answer the law fully and bring us back again to God. As the first Adam stood in the room of all mankind fallen ; so Christ the second Adam stands in the room of all mankind which is to be restored ; he sustains the person of all those which do spiritually descend from him, and unto whom he bears the relation of a head, Eph. i. 22, 23. Christ did actually undergo and suffer the wrath of God, and the fearful effects thereof, in the punishments threatened in the law. As he became a debtor, and was so accounted, even so he became payment thereof ; he was made a sacrifice for sin, and bare to the full all that ever divine justice did or could require, even the uttermost extent of the curse of the law of God. He must thus undergo the curse, because he had taken upon him our sin. The justice of the most high God, revealed in the law, looks upon the Lord Jesus as a sinner, because he hath un- dertaken for us, and seizeth upon him accordingly, pouring do\\Ti on his head the whole curse, and all those dreadful punishments which are threatened in it against sin ; for the curse folio weth sin as the shadow the body, whether it be sin inherent or sin imputed ; even as the bless- ing follows righteousness, whether it be righteousness inherent or righteousness imputed. But, '