Innumerable evils have compaffed me about,. mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, fo that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me. This is defcriptive of his woful condition while he flood in the place of our fin-offering. He saw himself compaffed about, beset all around and hedged in by evils. Whether he looked backward to antiquity or forward to futurity; turn himself, and fix his eyes where he would, evils ftared him in the face. The things that presented themselves every-where were evils, in their natures real evils, and in number past counting. Thefe were iniquities. Wicked, immoral and mifchievous: injuftice, falfehoods and dishonesty: eal and flagrant breaches of all law and good order. They were his own.

Mine iniquities, fays he. They had been, and
in fact were fill, other people's; but, fays he,
they are mine; I own, and thus openly confess
them to be mine: let all men know that they
now cease to be their's, and by affignment are
become mine: the blame is paffed over from
them, and is now upon me: therefore let.
them be comforted and let the forrow be mine.

They

that thes seriptures have immediate reference The Mediation of X is absurd & fallacions

to

They have feized, and taken hold upon him. They come in contact with his mind. They as the bodily hang, and fasten upon it, and are hairs on the head. They prefs him and hem him in, and inclose him every way. They hurt him. He hangs down his head as if faulty, fhame covers his face, and deadly fickness feizes his heart. He is not now able to look up, because he is almost overset with the fight, and fenfe of the nature and number of the iniquities laid upon him.

This is the mediator's own confeffion and lamentation over his difmal ftate', prophetically drawn up by David, that ages confider it before he appeared. cumftanced, as though he faw

might read and

He was fo cirevery man and

woman in the world, fenfible, juft, honeft, useful difcreet, honorable, and worthy of notice; and himself the only one that had left nothing uncreditable and immoral unattempted. For though he was every moment perfectly confcious, that he himself was holy and

of any fin, yet by his

free from the commission own confent and choice,

the fault of the whole world, was fo faftened

and

and fitted upon him, that he bore and felt every species and degree of bitterness and internal pangs of woe, as would have arisen from a consciousness of his having perpetrated every wicked action, that human nature have been, or fhall be guilty of. For fuch was the nature of the divine appropriation, fo far was it beyond any thing of the kind to be found among creatures, that scarce any thing fit to be called a fhadow of it, is to be seen, As I faid, in respect of the commiffion of fin, he was perfectly innocent and free; but yet, fin was applied to him, and the application by imputation was fo home and dreadful, that in point of woful felf-reflections, confternation, anguifh, trembling and piercing forrows, it was the very fame, as if he had been the author of every evil deed, and had

been guilty in perfon of every thing that

dishonors human nature, and blots the character of a rational creature.

Thus we have it in 1. John 3. 8. The Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil. This work was to bind men in the bonds of iniquity, and entangle them in a guilty character,

that

that God might be under an obligation either to hate and condemn them, or connive at fin. And when he had fucceeded in the feduction of the first human pair, he thought he had brought him under a neceffity either to expel the favorite race or be a partial tyrant, punishing in one, what he winked at in another. This appears to be the connection of his scheme, to render the happiness of man either impoffible in itself, or an arbitrary and overbearing act in God. Either way would answer his end, the latter efpecially.

But to disappoint the worst being in the uni verfe, and to crufh a defign fo full of unprovoked malice and ill-will, the Son of God appeared, and confented to have all the fault removed from

its original and real ftate, and and fathered fathered upon him. And to have it fo done, as that there might be no fufpicion of a a farce; but charge it fo home, with fuch a realizing application of the fault to him, that it might be to all intents and purposes the fame, as if nobody had been guilty of an offence but himself. and being thus volun

tarily entangled in our whole fault, himself became

responsible to himself for every particular relative

to the bufinefs.

P

And

And in order to check the infolence of the enemy, and work the thoughts of his love deeper into human hearts, the father made the Son, not only faulty, but the fault itself. 2. Corinthians 5. 21. For he made him to be fin for us who knew no fin. The beaft unto which the jewish finner transferred his fin, and the typical water into which they washed their faults, were called fin; pointing at, and fhadowing this tranfaction. Jefus therefore was hereupon, appointed and made to be, nominally and characteristically, the im morality itself of the whole world. He was looked upon, not as an offender only, but as if he had been effentially the offence itself

ས་

and was counted either as God or

as if he had ceafed to exist, man, and vanished into fin, as if he was naturally and conftitutionally the whole of it, and nothing else.

This was it that in the garden fpread palė“ death upon his cheeks, and extorted from perfect mildness and patience itfelf, the bitter and woful cries of overwhelming forrows and agony. He had cried out by the prophet before, Is it nothing to you, all ye that pafs by? Behold and

fec