this be
fulfilled, as it would appear God's truth and holiness require? Then we
are gone,--no place for mercy, if this be not fulfilled, that the mercy may
be showed in pardoning sin. Then the truth and faithfulness of God seem to
be impaired. This is the strait that all sinners would have been into, if
God had not found such an enlargement as this--how to show mercy without
wronging justice, and how to save sinners without impairing his
faithfulness. Truly, we may wonder, what was it that could straiten his
majesty so, that he must send his own Son, so beloved of him, and bruise
him, and hide his face from him, yea, and torment him, and not let the cup
pass from him for any entreaties. Might he not more easily have never
added such a commination to the law,--"thou shalt die," or more easily
relaxed and repealed that sentence, and passed by the sinner without any
more, than exacted so heavy a punishment from one that was innocent? Was
it the satisfaction of his justice that straitened him, and put a
necessity of this upon him? But truly it seems it had been no more
contrary to righteousness to have passed over the sinner, without
satisfaction, than to require and take it of one who was not really
guilty. The truth is, it was not simply the indispensable necessity of
satisfying justice, that put him upon such a hard and unpleasant work, as
the bruising of his own Son, for no doubt, he might have as well dispensed
with all satisfaction, as with the personal satisfaction of the sinner.
But here the strait lay, and here was the urgency of the case, he had a
purpose to declare his justice, and therefore a satisfaction must be had
not simply to satisfy righteousness, but rather to declare his
righteousness, Rom. iii. 25. Now, indeed, to make these two shine together
in one work of the salvation of sinners, all the world could not have
found out the like of this--to dispense with personal satisfaction in the
sinner, which the rigour of the law required, and so to admit a sweet
moderation and relaxation, that the riches of his grace and mercy might be
manifested, and yet withal, to exact the same punishment of another
willingly coming in the sinner's place, to the end that all sinners may
behold his righteousness and justice. And so this work of the redemption
of sinners hath these names of God published by himself, (Exod. xxxiv. 6,
7.) to Moses, engraven deeply upon it, mercy and goodness spelled out at
length in it,--for love