[3.] Thirdly, If Christ he not God, yea, God-man, then we shall never he able to ansiver all the challenges that either divine justice or Satan can make upon us. Whatsoever the justice of God can exact, that the blood of God can discharge. Now the blood of Christ is the blood of God, as I have evidenced in the second reason. By reason of the hypostatical union, the human nature being united to the divine, the human nature did suffer, the divine did satisfy. Christ's godhead did give both majesty and efficacy to his sufferings. Christ was sacri- fice, priest, and altar. He was sacrifice as he was man, priest as he was God and man, and altar as he was God. It is the property of the altar to sanctify the tiling offered on it, Mat. xxiii. 19 ; so the altar of Christ's divine nature sanctified the sacrifice of his death, and made it meritorious. Man sinned, and therefore man must satisfy. Therefore the human nature must be assumed by a surety, for man cannot do it. If an angel should have assumed human nature, it would have polluted him. Human nature was so defiled by sin that it could not be assumed by any but God. Now Christ being God, the divine nature purified the human nature which he took, and so it was a sufiicient sacrifice, the person offered in sacrifice being God as well as man. This is a most noble ground upon which a believer may challenge Satan to say iKs worst and to do his worst. Let him present God as terrible, yea, as a consuming fire, Heb. xii. 29 ; let him present me as odious and abominable in the sight of God, as once he did Joshua, Zech. iii. 2, 3 ; let him present me before]the Lord as vile and mercenary, as once he did Job, chap. i. 9-11 ; let him aggravate the height of God's displeasure, and the height and depth and length and breadth of my sins, I shall readily grant all, and agamst all this I will set the infinite satisfaction
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of dear Jesus. This I know, tliat though the justice of God cannot be avoided nor bribed, yet it may be satisfied. Here is a proportionable satisfaction, here is God answering God. It is a very noble plea of the apostle, ' Who is he that condemneth ? It is Christ that died,' Eom. viii. 34. Let Satan urge the justice of God as much as he can, I am sure that the justice of God makes me sure of salvation ; and the reason is evident, because his justice obligeth him to accept of an adequate satisfaction of his own appointing, 1 John i. 7-9. The justice of God maketh me sure of mine own happiness, because if God be just, that satisfaction should be had, when that satisfaction is made, justice requireth that the person for whom it is made shall be received into favour. I confess that unless God had obliged himself by promise, there were no pressing his justice thus far, because noxa sequitur caput. There was mercy in the promise of sending Christ, out of mercy to undertake for us, otherwise we cannot say that God was bound in justice to accept of satisfaction, unless he had first in mercy been pleased to appoint the way of a surety, Gen. ii. 15.i Justice indeed required satisfaction, but it required it of the person that sinneth : Gen. ii. 17, ' But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it ; for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die' — or dying thou shalt die ; or, as others read the words, thou shalt surely and shortly or suddenly die ; and, without controversy, every man should die the same day he is born. ' The wages of sin is death,' Rom. vi. 23 ; and this wages should be presently paid, did not Christ, as a boon, beg poor sinners' lives for a season : for which cause he is called the Saviour of all men, 1 Tim. iv. 10 — not of eternal preservation, but of temporal reservation. It was free and noble mercy to all mankind, that dear Jesus was promised and provided, sealed and sent into the world, John vi. 27, that some might be eternally saved, and the rest preserved from wrath for a time. Here cometh in mercy, that a surety shall be accepted ; and what he doth is as if the person that offended should have done it himself. Here is mercy and salvation surely bottomed upon both. Ah, what sweet and transcendent comfort flows from this very consideration, that Christ is God ! But,
[4.] Fourthly, The great and glorious majesty of God required it, that Christ should he God. God the Father being a God of infinite holiness, purity, justice, and righteousness, none but he who was very God, who was essentially one with the Father, could or durst inter- pose between God and fallen man, John x. 30, and xiv. 9-11, &c. The angels, though they are glorious creatures, yet they are but creatures ; and could these satisfy divine justice, and bear infinite wrath, and purchase divine favour, and reconcile us to God, and procure our par- don, and change our hearts, and renew our natures, and adorn our souls with grace ? and yet all these things must be done, or we undone, and that for ever ! Now if this were a work too high for angels, then we may safely conclude that it was a work too hard for fallen man. Man was once the mirror of all understanding, the hieroglyphic of wisdom, but now quantum mutatus ah illo, there is a great alteration ; for poor sorry man is now sent to school to learn wisdom and instruc-
^ Had net Christ stepped in between man's sin and God's wrath, the world had fallen about Adam's ears.
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tion of the beasts, birds, and creeping things, he is sent to the pismire to learn providence, Prov. vi. 6, to the stork and to the swallow to learn to make a right use of time, Jer. viii. 7, to the ox and the ass to learn knowledge, Isa. i. 3, and to the fowls of the air to learn con- fidence, Mat. vi. Man that was once a master of knowledge, a wonder of understanding, perfect in the science of all things, is now grown blockish, sottish, and senseless, and therefore altogether unfit and unable to make his peace with God, to reconcile himself to God, &c. But,