funk them to the loweft hell. Compare the martyrs quietly bearing the moft fearful deaths. They were fupported by divine confolations flowing into their fouls, without one drop of God's wrath in the cup given them to drink. But from him all divine comforts were with-held. See that desertion of God of which he fo bitterly cried out on the cross, when there was an eclipfe of comfort from his holy foul, as there was of the fun in his chearing beams from the earth, that he might bear that wrath in full measure, O what an amazing step of humiliation was this! Who knows the power of the Lord's wrath? If fatherly anger made David to roar, and vindictive justice devils to tremble under the fearful apprehenfions of the wrath to come upon them; how dreadful behoved that wrath to be which was due to the fins of all the elect when accumulated in one fum, and all charged upon Chrift at once? He was fet up as a mark at which all the arrows of the divine wrath were levelled; the quiver thereof was emptied upon him. No wonder then that he was in an agony, that blood trickled from every pore of his body, and that his holy human foul recoiled as it were from the terrible fhock it underwent under this load of wrath and the curfe of the law.

FIFTHLY, He underwent the curfed death of the crofs. Being betrayed by Judas, forfaken by all his die fciples, denied by the felf-confident Peter, and condemned by Pilate, he was put to death on the cross. This death of Chrift was,

1. Moft painful. No death is without pain. But his death was most painful; for it pleafed the Lord to bruife him. Confider here,

(1.) Our Lord was fcourged, having his bleffed back beaten with fharp rods, Matth. xxvii. 26. which was a moft fhameful and paining thing.

(2.) He was crowned with thorns; and the mad foldiers ftruck him on the head when this prickly crown was on his head, thereby driving the thorns in

to it, and making them penetrate the deeper, Matth. xxvii. 29. 30. whereby it feems he was fo overfpread with his own blood, that Pilate thought him already an object of commiferation, and brought him forth to the Jews, faying, Behold the man, John xix. 5. Add to this what he fuffered from blows and cuffs laid on him without mercy, and their compelling him to bear his own cross, till, fainting with the heavy load and his inward fufferings, they obliged another to drag it to the place of execution.

(3.) He was crucified; which was a moft painful and excruciating death. For confider,

[1] The extending of his body on the crofs, which lying on the ground, his body was with fuch force ftretched out its full length, that his bones were drawn out of joint, as he himself pathetically expreffes it in prophetical language, long before the tragical event took place, Pfal. xxii. 14. My bones are out of joint. His finews were diftended, and his bones diflocated by the violent diftention.

[2] The nailing of the body fo extended unto the crofs. These nails were driven through the hands and feet, the finewy and moft fenfible parts of the body; which could not but occafion greater pain tơ Chrift's body, which was of a finer temperature and more acute feeling than the bodies of other men, as being entirely exempted from the corruption and diftempers these are liable to. And great indeed it seems they were; for he fays, they pierced my hands and feet; in Hebrew they digged thein, as it were with fpades and mattocks, which could not but occafion the moft excruciating and acute pain.

[3] What dreadful pain behoved the lifting up up of the cross with him nailed to it be to his bleffed body, efpecially if done with a fudden jerk, which we may fuppofe to have been probably the cafe, confidering the eagerness of his enemies to have him difpatched; and then thrufting it down again into the ground, that it might ftand upright, attended no doubt with VOL. II.

fhaking from fide to fide? Every one may well perceive what dreadful pain muft have attended all this horrid fcene.

[4.] It was a longfome or lingering death. He hung on the crofs about fix hours, from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon, Mark xv. 25. 34. What pain behoved to attend fuch a long fufpenfion on the cross, his bleffed body hanging all the while by his hands nailed to the upper part?

2. His death was moft fhameful and ignominious, Heb. xii. 2. He endured the crofs, defpifing the fame. Much fhame was caft on him. They fpit upon him and mocked him. The death of the crofs was a death for bondmen, feldom for freemen, and those only of the bafer fort, and for fome of the higheft crimes. While he was a-dying he ftood naked on the cross; for they that were crucified were firft flript naked of all their cloaths, Matth. xxvii. 35. He was crucified in the midft of two thieves, as if he had been the chief of them, and that without the gate, as the blafphemer was to be ftoned without the camp. They wagged their heads at him. He was mocked in his prophetical office: they blindfolded him, and bade him prophesy who fmote him. He was mocked in his prieftly office, He faved others, but himfelf he cannot Jave. And he was mocked in his kingly office; they cried unto him, Hail king of the Jews; and this title, This is Jefus the King of the Jews, was infcribed on his crofs, as giving him out for a mock monarch. 3. It was a curfed death, Deut. xxi. 23. He that is hanged, is accurfed of God. That was but a ceremonial curfe, but it was a real one to him, Gal. iii. 13. He was made a curfe for us. There were many other kinds of death among the Jews: but that kind only was accurfed; and therefore it behoved Chrift our Surety fo to die. It is thought this crucifying of criminals was forbidden in the time of the Emperor Conftantine.

SIXTHLY, He was buried, that fo there might be

fall affurance given of his death, upon the reality of which the hopes and happiness of his people depend, inafmuch as thereby tranfgreffion was finished, an end put to fin, reconciliation made for iniquity, and everlafting righteoufnefs brought in. He was buried too, that he might conquer death in its darkeft and ftrongeft hold, even in the gloomy receffes of the grave; to fanctify and, fweeten it to all his friends and followers, that it may be to them a place of repofe, where their bodies may reft till the refurrection; that his people may have power and ftrength to bury ûn, fo as it may never rife up against them to their condemnation; and to teach his followers to give one another's dead bodies a just and decent interment.

The perfons who concerned themselves in our Lord's funeral were Jofeph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, John xix. 38.-42. They were rich men, fenators and counfellors in the Jewish ftate, and of as bright and diftinguished characters as any who fat in the fanhedrim; and yet they were fo far from reckoning it a dishonour, that they counted it à piece of fingular glory to be employed in this laft act of kindness to their dead Lord. Now, when the apoftles were all fled, and none of them appeared to fhew this respect to their Mafter, Providence ftirred up these two great and rich men to act a part upon this occafion which was truly great and honourable. And those persons were well affected to our Redeemer. Though the weakness of their faith moved them to conceal their profeffion during his life, yet now when he is dead, and none of all his followers have the courage to own or concern themselves about him, they boldly appear in acting this part of fincere friends to him.

The place where our Lord was buried was a new fepulchre in a garden, wherein no man had ever been laid, John xix. 41. Thus our Lord was buried not in his own, but in another man's grave. As in the days of his life he was in fuch circumftances, that he himfelf faid, The foxes have boles, and the birds of the air

have nests, but the Son of man has not where to lay, his head; to when he was dead, he had no grave of his own to be laid in. When he was born, he was born in another man's houfe; when he preached, he preached in another man's fhip; when he prayed, he prayed in another man's gaiden; when he rode to Jerufalem, he rode on another man's afs; and when he was buried, he was buried in another man's grave. He had nothing peculiar to himself but his cross; which no man would touch, far less take from him, even when he was ready to faint under the weight of it, till Simon of Cyrene was compelled to bear it. The grave belonged to Jofeph of Arimathea, who was a rich man; and thus there was a 'memorable fulfilment of that prophecy, I. liii. 9. He made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death. Tho' upon the cross he was infulted and defpifed, yet he was honourably laid in the grave. It was a new grave; which a wife providence fo ordered, that the Jews might have no ground to furmife, either that fome other buried before had rifen, or that his refurrection was not the effect of his own power, but of virtue flowing from the body of fome faint for merly interred there, as in the cafe of that dead man, who being let down into the grave of Elisha, and touching his bones, revived, and ftood up on his feet, 2 Kings xiii. 21. This grave was in a garden; which' Joeph contrived to have to, that it might be a memorandum to him, while living amidst all the pleafures and products of his garden, to think of death, and to be diligent in preparing for it. In a fepulchre in a garden Chrift's body was laid. In the garden of Eden death and the grave received their power, and now in a garden are conquered, difarmed, and triumphed over. In a garden Chrift began his paffion, and in a garden he would rife and begin his exaltation. Chrift fell to the ground as a corn of wheat, John xii. 24. and therefore was fown in a garden among the feeds, for his dew is as the dew of herbs, If,