ÿ%ú. 7H.E ALoytm ? T OF own. VII. Because God intended tQ make a fú11 displayor t1ie- terrors of his justice, and hisdivine resentment for the violations ofhis law ; therefore he appointed his own Son to satisfy for the breach of it, by becoming aproper sacrificeofexpiation or atone- ment : Now, both amongJews and heathens, the original notion and design of an expiatory sacrifice, is, when some other creature or person is put in the room or place of the transgres- sor, and the punishment or pain due to the transgressor is trans- ferred to that other person or creature. Therefore beasts were slam for the offences ofmen, who were supposed to deserve death. And when any person became a surety for a city or nation that was defiledwith sin, among the heathens, that person was substitutedin their room, and so devoted to death. So the Son of God became a surety for sinful men : It pleased the, Fa- ther to make him their sacrifice, and substituted, him in their stead : God ordained that he should put himself into their cir- cumstances, as far as was possible, with a duecondescendeney to his superior character, and that he should sustain, as near as possible, the very same pains and penalties which sinful man had incurred. Since tribulation and anguish of soul andbody, a sense of the wrath of God, and death, werethe appointed penalties of the sinof man ; therefore he determined that his own Son should pass through all these : And since the law curses all that continue not in all the commands of it therefore Christ was made a 'curse for us, that he might redeem asfrom the curse of the law ; Gal. iii. 10-13. Hereby he gave a most awful and sensible demonstration to this visible world of mankind, and perhaps, much mote to the invisible world of angels and devils, how dreadful a thing it is to break the law of a God, what infi- nite evil is contained in sin, andat what a terrible rate it must be expiated andatoned for. VIII. The Son of God being immortal, could not sustain all these penalties of the law which man had broken, without taking the mortal nature of man upon him, without assuming flesh and blood : Thus his incarnation was necessary, that he mightbe ä more proper surety, substitute, and representative of man who had sinned ; and that he might be capable of suffering pain, and anguish, and death itself, in the mein and stead of sinful men. It was because the children who were given to Christ ; Heb. ii. 13, 14. because these children were partakers offlesh and blood, therefore he himself also took part of the same, that through death he might redeem them, that by his own dying he might make atonement for their sins; Heb. x. 5. Sacrifice and of.: faring of beasts, thou wouldst net accept as equivalent for the sins of men : But a body hast thou prepared me, saith our Lord
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