(2.) So also of the sins of others: Num. xiv. 33, " And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms." " Bear your whoredoms ;" that is, " My anger for them, and the punishment due to them." Num. xxx. 15, he that compels by his power and authority another to break a vow shall himself be liable to the punishment due to such a breach of vow. Ezek, xviii. 20 is an explanation of all these places : " The soul that sinneth, it shall die," — "it shall be punished." "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father," etc., — " The son shall not be punished for the sin of the father, nor the father for the sin of the son." In brief, this expression, "to bear iniquities," is never otherwise used in Scrip- ture but only for " to undergo the punishment due thereunto."
Thus much, then, we have clearly evinced : God did so lay our sins on Christ as that he bare and underwent that which was due to them, God inflicting it on him, and he willingly undergoing it; which is my second demonstration from this place, that the death of Christ is also a punishment ; which is all that I shall urge to that purpose. And this is that, and all, that we intend by the satisfaction of Christ.
But now, having laid so great stress, as to the doctrine under demonstration, upon this place of the prophet, and finding some attempting to take away our foundation, before I proceed I shall divert to the consideration of the annotations of Grotius on this whole chapter, and rescue it from his force and violence, used in contending to make what is here spoken to suit the prophet Jere- miah, and to intend him in the first place; to establish which vain conjecture, he hath perverted the sense of the whole and of every particular verse, from the beginning to the end of this prophecy.
CHAPTER XXV.
A digression concerning the 53d chapter of Isaiah, and the \andication of it from the perverse interpretation of HuGO Grotius.
This chapter is well by some termed "Carnificiua Rabbinorum," — a place of Scripture that sets them on the rack, and makes them turn
456 VINDICI^ EVANGELIC^.
themselves all ways possible to escape the torture which it puts their unbelieving hearts unto. Not long since a worthy and very learned friend told me, that speaking Avith Manasseh Ben Israel at Amsterdam, and urging this prophecy unto him, he ingenuously told him, "Profecto locus iste magnum scandalum dedit;" to whom the other replied, "Recte, quia Christus vobis lapis scandali est." Hulsius, the Hebrew professor at Breda, professes that some Jews told him that their rabbins could easily have extricated themselves from all other places of the prophets, if Isaiah in this place had but held his peace, Huls. Theolog. Judaic, lib. i. part. ii. Diet. Sapp. de Tempor. Messise.^ Though I value not their boasting of their extricating them- selves from the other prophecies, knowing that they are no less en- tangled with that of Daniel, chap. ix. (of which there is an eminent story in Franzius de Sacrificiis concerning his dispute with a learned Jew on that subject^), yet it appears that by this they are confessedly intricated beyond all hope of evading, until they divest themselves of their cursed hypothesis.
Hence it is that with so much greediness they scraped together all the copies of Abrabanel's comment on this chapter, so that it was very hard for a Christian a long time to get a sight of it, as Constan- tine I'Empereur acquaints us in his preface to his refutation of it, because they thought themselves in some measure instructed by him to avoid the arguments of the Christians from hence by his applica- tion of the whole to Josiah ; and I must needs say he hath put as good, yea, a far better colour of probability upon his interpretation than he with whom I have to do hath done on his.
How ungrateful, then, and how unacceptable to all professors of the name of Jesus Christ, must the labours of Grotius needs be, who hath to the utmost of his power reached out his hand to relieve the poor blind creatures from their rack and torture, by applying, though successlessly, this whole prophecy to Jeremiah, casting him- self into the same entanglements with them, not yielding them in- deed the least relief, is easy to conjecture. And this is not a little aggravated, in that the Socinians, who are no less racked and tor- tured with this scripture than the Jews, durst never yet attempt to accommodate the things here spoken of to any other, though they have expressed a desire of so doing, and which if they could com- pass, they would free themselves from the sharpest sword that lies at the throat of their cause, seeing if it is certain that the things here mentioned may be applied to any other, the satisfaction of Christ
' " AHqui Judtei mihi confess! sunt, rabbinos suos ex proplieticis scripturis facile sc extricare potuisse, raodo Esaias tacuisset."
* Disput. decima, de sacrificiorum duratione, tlies. 82-84, etc.
' " Abrabincl tarn avido a Judais passim conquiritui", ut vix tandem ejus compos fieri potuerim. Nam cum Chnstiani superiorem putant ; qui solide eorum argumenta^" etc. — Constant. I'Empei'. prolog, ad lectorem, prjsfix. Com. Abrab. in cap. liii. Esa.