I have transcribed this passage at large because, as I said, what I intend to prove in the present discourse is declared fully therein. Thus, therefore, he speaks: " How, then, did he make our sins to be his own, and how did he bear our iniquities ? Is it not from thence, that we are said to be his body ? as the apostle speaks, ' You are the body of Christ, and members, for your part, or of one another.' And as when one member suffers, all the members do suffer; so the many members sinning and suffering, he, according unto the laws of sympathy in the same body (seeing that, being the Word of God, he would take the form of a servant, and be joined unto the common habitation of us all in the same nature), took the sorrows or labours of the suffering members on him, and made all their infirmities his own; and, according to the laws of Inmianity (in the same body), bare our sorrow and labour for us. And the Lamb of God did not only these things for us, but he underwent torments, and was punished
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1 78 ON JUSTIFICATION,
for us; that which he was no ways exposed unto for himself, but we were so by the multitude of our sins: and thereby he became the cause of the pardon of our sins, — namely, because he underwent death, stripes, reproaches, translating the thing which we had de- served unto himself, — and was made a curse for us, taking unto him- self the curse that was due to us ; for what was he but (a substitute for us) a price of redemption for our souls ? In our person, therefore, the oracle speaks, — whilst freely uniting himself unto us, and us unto himself, and making our (sins or passions his own), ' I have said. Lord, be merciful unto me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee/"
That our sins were transferred unto Christ and made his, that thereon he underwent the punishment that was due unto us for them, and that the ground hereof, whereinto its equity is resolved, is the union between him and us, is fully declared in this discourse. So saith the learned and pathetical author of the Homilies on Matt. v., in the works of Chrj'sostom, Hom. liv., which is the last of them, " In came sua omnem camem suscepit, crucifixus, omnem carneni crucifixit in se." He speaks of the church. So they speak often, others of them, that " he bare us," that " he took us with him on the cross," that " we were all crucified in him;" as Prosper, " He is not saved by the cross of Christ who is not crucified in Christ," Resp. ad cap., Gal. cap. ix.
This, then, I say, is the foundation of the imputation of the sins of thg^ church unto Christ, — namely, that he and it are one person; the grounds whereof we must inquire into.
But hereon sundry discourses do ensue, and various inquuies are made, — What o, person is? in wJiat sense, and in hotu many senses, that word may be used? what is the true notion of it? what is a natural person ? what a legal, civil, or political person ? in the exphca- tion whereof some have fallen into mistakes. And if we should enter into this field, we need not fear matter enough of debate and alterca- tion. But I must needs say, tliat these things belong not unto our present occasion; nor is the union of Christ and the church illustrated, but obscured by them. For Christ and believers are neither one natural person, nor a legal or political person, nor any such person as the laws, customs, or usages of men do know or allow o£ They are one mystical person ; whereof although there may be some im- perfect resemblances found in natural or jjolitical unions, yet the union from whence that denomination is taken between him and us is of that nature, and ariseth from such reasons and causes, as no personal union among men (or the union of many j)ei'sons) hath any concernment in. And therefore, as to the representation of it unto our weak understandings, unable to comprehend the depth of heavenly mysteries, it is compared unto unions of divers kinds and
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natures. So is it represented by that of man and wife; not as unto those mutual affections which give them only a moral union, but from the extraction of the first woman from the Jiesh and bone of the first man, and the institution of God for the individual society of life thereon. This the apostle at large declares, Eph. v. 25-32: whence he concludes, that from the union thus represented, " We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones," verse 30; or have such a relation unto him as JEve had to Adam, when she was made of his flesh and bone, and so was one flesh with him. So, also, it is compared unto the union of the head and members of the same natural body, 1 Cor. xii. 12; and unto ^ political union also, between a ruling or political head and its political members; but never ex- clusively unto the union of a natural head and its members com^orised in the same expression, Eph. iv. 15; Col. ii. 19. And so also unto sundiy things in nature, as a vine and its branches, John xv. 1, 2. And it is declared by the relation that was between Adam aind his posterity, by God's institution and the law of creation, Rom. v. 12, etc. And the Holy Ghost, by representing the union that is between Christ and believers by such a variety of resemblances, in things agreeing only in the common or general notion of union, on various grounds, doth sufficiently manifest that iVis not of, nor can be reduced unto, any one kind of them. And this will yet be made more evi- dent by the consideration of the causes of it, and the grounds where- into it is resolved. But whereas it would require much time and diligence to handle them at large, which the mention of them here, being occasional, will not admit, I shall only briefly refer unto the heads of them : —