476 TAE ATONEMENT or dultlsr. for one past offence, nor merit any favour of Gcid for a criminal creature. But, alas ! man is so far from being able to fúlfil perfect righteousness for time to come, that in this fallen state, he candó nothing that is truly good c `He broke the law of God in days. past, and he goes on to break it daily and hourly. His un-, derstanding is grown so dark, his will so perverse, and his affections and appetites so corrupt and vicious, by his depar- ture from God, that he cannot answer the present demands of duty ; much less can he bring ah offering of righteousness to atone for past iniquities. " Weare by nature dead in trespasses and sins." V. Neither can this guilty, wretched creature man, make any satisfaction to the broken law of God by his sufferings, any more than by his doings. For" the penalty of the law is tribulation and anguish of soul and body, the wrath of God and death : and how far this dreadful sentence reaches, what miseries are implied in it, and how long the execution of it must continue, who cantell ? This we know, that God himself, who sees the full evil, and complete desert or demerit of sin, bath, in some places of scripture, threatened eternal punishment of sinners. And if we may venture to judgeconcerning the greatness of. the guilt, and demerit of our offences against God, by thesame rules, by which reason teaches us tojudge of the guilt and deme- rit of an offence against our fellow-creatures, we must say the guilt of sin is infinite; and therefore the punishment due to a sinning creature is everlasting, because he cannot any other way sustain punishment equal to his infinite demerit of sin. Among men the crime is always aggravated in proportion to the person, against whom it is committed : Therefore any offence against a father, or aking, hasmuch more guilt in it,-and is more severely punished, than the same offence committed against an inferior, or an equal. An attempt upon the life of a neighbour, is punished with imprisonment or a fine: But an attempt made on the life of a king deserves death. Now the great God our Creator, being a king of, infinite glory andmajesty, infinitely superior to his creature man, every offence against this God, has a sort of infinity in it* : And God may demand,satisfaction equal to the offence, thatis infinite, which poor sinful mancan never pay, so as to out-live the payment. * Every circumstance that aggravates any crime, must aggravate it in a degree proportionable to that circumstance; otherwise we could never determine what is the degree of this aggravation, nor adjust the punishment inproportion to it. On this account, ifthe crime he committed against God, an infinite being, the guilt must be infinitely aggravated. - ,
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