have fuffered every trifle to joftle him out of my heart? I have neglected him a thousand times, and made him fay, Is this thy kindness to thy friend? Is this the reward I shall have for all that I have done, and fuffered for thee? Wretch that I am, how have I requited the Lord! This fhames, humbles, and breaks the heart.

And when from fuch fights of faith, and confiderations as these, the heart is thus affected, it affords a good argument, indeed, that thou art gone beyond all the attainments of temporary believers; flesh and blood hath not revealed this.

Inference 1: Have the believing meditations of Christ, and his fufferings, fuch heart-melting influences? Then fure there is but little faith among men. Our dry eyes and hard hearts, are evidences against us, that we are ftrangers to the fights of faith.

How is

God be merciful to the hardness of your hearts. Christ and his love flighted among men! How hallow doth his blood run to fome eyes! O that my head were waters, and mine eyes fountains of tears for this! What monsters are carnal hearts ? We are as if God had made us without affections, as if all ingenuity and tenderness were dried up. Our ears are so accuftomed to the founds of Christ, and his blood, that now they are become as common things. If a child die, we can mourn over our dead; but who mourns for Christ as for an only fon? We may fay of faith, when men and women fit fo unaffected under the gofpel, as Martha faid of Chrift concerning her brother LaZarus, If thou (precious faith) hadft been here, fo many hearts had not been dead this day, and in this duty. Faith is that burning-glafs which contracts the beams of the grace, and love, and wisdom, and power of Jejus Chrift together, reflects thefe on the heart, and makes it barn; but without it, we feel nothing favingly.

Inference 2. Have the believing meditations of Christ, and his fufferings, fuch heart-melting influences? Then furely, the proper order of raifing the affections, is to begin at the exercife of faith. It grieves me to fee how many poor Chriftians frive with their own dead hearts, endeavouring to raise and affect them, but cannot: they complain and ftrive, ftrive and complain, but can discover no love to the Lord, no brokenness of heart; they go to this ordinance and that, to one duty and another, hoping that now the Lord will affect it, and fill the fails; but come back difappointed, and afhamed, like the troops of Tema. Poor Chriftian, hear me one word; poffibly it may do thy business, and stand thee in more ftead, than all the me

SERM. XXV. thods thou haft yet ufed. If thou wouldst indeed get a heart evangelically melted for fin, and broken with the kindly fenfe of the grace and love of Christ, thy way is not to force thy affections, nor to vex thyfelf, and go about complaining of a hard heart, but fet thyfelf to believe, realize, apply, infer, and compare by faith as you have been directed; and fee what this will do: "They fhall look on me whom they have pierced, and "mourn." This is the way, and proper method to raise the heart, and break it.

Inference 3. Is this the way to get a truly broken heart? Then let thofe that have attained brokenness of heart this way, blefs the Lord whilst they live, for fo choice a mercy; and that upon a double account.

1. For as much as a heart fo affected and melted, is not attainable by any natural or unrenewed perfon; if they would give all they have in the world, it cannot purchase one such tear, or groan over Chrift; mark, what characters of special grace it bears, in the defcription that is made of it, in that forementioned place, Zech. xii. 10. Such a frame as this is not born with us, or to be acquired by us; for it is there faid to be poured out by the Lord upon us, "I will pour upon them," &c. There is no hypocrify or diffimulation in thefe mournings, they being compared to the mourning of a man for his only fon; and lure parents hearts are not untouched when they behold fuch fights.

Nature is not the principle of it, but faith; for it is there faid, they fhall look on me; i. e. believe and mourn. Self is not the end and centre of thefe forrows; it is not fo much for damning ourselves, as for piercing Chrift: "They fhall look on me whom they have pierced, and shall mourn;" fo that this is forrow after God, and not a flash of nature, as difcourfed in the former point. Therefore you have cause to bless the Lord, whilft you live for fuch a special mercy as this is. And,

2. As it is the right, fo it is the choiceft, and most precious gift that can be given you; for it is ranked among the prime mercies of the new covenant, Ezek. xxxvi. 26. This fhall be the covenant; "A new heart aldo will I give you, and a new

fpirit will I put within you; and I will take away the ftony "heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh." What wouldst thou have given fometimes for fuch a heart as now thou haft, though it be not yet as thou wouldst have it? And however you value and esteem it, God himself fets no common value on it: for mark what he faith of it, Pfal. ii. 17. "The facrifices of God are a broken heart: a broken and a

"contrite fpirit, O God, thou wilt not defpife;" i. e. God is more delighted with such a heart, than with all the facrifices in the world; one groan, one tear, flowing from faith, and the fpirit of adoption, are more to him, than the cattle upon a thousand hills. And to the fame fenfe he speaks again, Ifa lxvi. I, 2. "Thus faith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and "the earth is my footftool: Where is the house that ye build "to me? And where is the place of my reft?- -But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor, and of a contrite fpirit, and trembleth at my word;" q. d. All the magnificent temples, and glorious structures in the world, give me no pleasure, in comparison of fuch a broken heart as this.

O then, for ever blets the Lord, that hath done that for you, which none elfe could do, and which he has done but for few befides you.

Opens the Nature and Quality of the Death CHRIST died upon the Cross.

ACTS ii. 23. Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and flain.

HAVING confidered, in order, the preparative acts for

the death of Chrift, both on his own part, and on his enemies part; we now come to confider the * death of Christ itself, which was the principal part of his humiliation, and the chief pillar of our confolation. Here we fhall in order confider,

First, The kind and nature of the death he died.

Secondly, The manner in which he bare it, viz. patiently, folitarily, and inftructively; dropping divers holy and inftructive leffons upon all that were about him, in his feven laft words upon the cross.

Thirdly, The funeral folemnities at his burial.

* The death of Chrift was the last step of his humiliation; by which he underwent the most grievous, the moft dreadful, and the greatest punishment for the fins of men. Amef

VOL. I.

X X

SERM. XXVI. Fourthly, and lastly, The weighty ends and great designs of his death. In all which particulars, as we proceed to difcufs and open them, you will have an account of the deep abasement and 'humiliation of the Son of God.

In this text, we have an account of the kind, and nature of that death which Chrift died: as alfo of the causes of it, both principal and instrumental.

First, The kind and nature of the death Chrift died, which is here defcribed more generally, as a violent death, Ye have flain him and more particularly, as a molt ignominious, cursed, difhonourable death; ye have crucified him.

Secondly, The caufes of it are here likewife expreffed: and that both principal and inftrumental. The principal caufe, permitting, ordering, and difpofing all things about it, was the determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God. There was not an action or circumftance, but came under this most wise and holy counfel and determination of God.

The inftruments effecting it, were their wicked hands. † This fore-knowledge and counfel of God, as it did no way neceffitate or enforce them to it; fo neither doth it excuse their fact from the least aggravation of its finfulness. It did no more compel or force their wicked hands to do what they did, than the mariner's hoifting up his fails, to take the wind to ferve his defign, compels the wind. And it cannot excufe their action from one circumftance of fin; becaufe God's end and manner of acting was one thing; their end and manner of acting another. His, moft pure and holy; theirs, moft malicious and daringly wicked. Idem quod duo faciunt, non eft idem. To this purpofe a grave divine well expreffes it.

In refpect of God, Chrift's death was juflice and mercy. In respect of man, it was murder and cruelty. In refpect of himfelf, it was obedience and humility ‡. Hence our note is,

Doct. That our Lord Jefus Chrift was not only put to death, but to the worst of deaths, even the death of the cross.

To this the apostle gives a plain teftimony, Phil. ii. 8. "He "became obedient to death, even the death of the crofs;" where

The Jews cannot be excufable, for they acted not in obedience to the fecret purpose of God, but being excited by hatred and corrupt affections they flew the innocent Jefus, contrary to the law. Pareus.

Morning exercife at St. Giles's, p. 289.

his humiliation is both fpecified; he was humbled to death; and aggravated by a moft emphatical reduplication, even the death of the cross. So Acts v. 30. "Jesus whom ye flew and "hanged on a tree :" q. d. it did not fuffice you to put him to a violent death, but you alfo put him to the most base, vile and ignominious death; you "hanged him on a tree."

In this point we will difcufs these three particulars, viz. The nature or kind, the manner, and reafons of Christ's death upon the tree.

I. I fhall open the kind or nature of his death, by shewing you that it was a violent, painful, fhameful, curfed, flow, and fuccourless death.

Firft, It was a violent death, that Chrift died. Violent in itself, though voluntary on his part. "He was cut off out of "the land of the living," Ifa. liii. 8. And yet "he laid down "his life of himself; no man took it from him," John x. 17. I call his death violent, because he died not a natural death, i. e. he lived not till nature was confumed with age, as it is in many who live till their balfamum radicale, " radical moisture," like the oil in the lamp, be quite confumed, and then go out like an expiring lamp. It was not fo with Chrift: for he was but in the flower and prime of his time when he died. And indeed, he muft either die a violent death, or not die at all; partly, because there was no fin in him, to open a door to natural death; as it doth in all others. Partly, because else his death had not been a facrifice acceptable and as fatisfactory to God for us. That. which died of itself was never offered up to God; but that which was flain, when it was in its full ftrength and health.. The temple was a type of the body of Chrift, John ii. 19. Now, when the temple was deftroyed, it did not drop down as an ancient structure decayed by time, but was pulled down by violence, when it was standing in its full ftrength. Therefore he is faid to fuffer death, and to be put to death for us in the flesh, 1 Pet. iii. 18. That is the first thing. It was a violent, though a voluntary death. For violent is not oppofed to voluntary, but to natural.

The

Secondly, The death of the cross was a moft painful death. Indeed in this death were many deaths, contrived in one. cross was a rack as well as a gibbet. The pains which Christ fuffered upon the crofs, are by the apostle emphatically stiled τοις ωδίνας το θανατο, Ats ii. 24.9 "The pains of death:" but properly they fignify the pangs of travail : yea, the birth-pangs, the most acute forrows of a travailing woman. His foul was