Father and the Son, were the foundation from which the promise of Christ proceeded. These eternal acts are expressed in such words as these: "I have found a ransom." (Job. xxxiii. 24.) "I have laid help upon one that is mighty." (Ps. lxxxix. 19.) "The council of peace was between them both: i. e. between Jehovah and the Branch." (Zech. vi. 13.) "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." (2 Cor. v. 19.) As this ancient council and covenant between the persons in the GODHEAD, which was before the world began, was the foundation from whence the promise came; so it was given forth and uttered by God himself, (who cannot lie) immediately upon the fall, first to Adam, (Gen. iii. 15.) afterwards to Abraham, (Gen. xxii.) and uttered most fully and clearly by that herald of the Lord of Hosts, the prophet Isaiah, who spoke out and publicly proclaimed it, that the Lord God would send "a Saviour, a great one;" who should deliver his church and people out of the hands of all their spiritual enemies. And this promise made unto the Fathers, God

hath fulfilled, in giving, sending, and consecrating his co-equal Son to be a covenant unto the people, and for salvation to the ends of the earth. When God gave his Son to take our nature into personal union with himself, and the advent of the Saviour drew near, a New Testament prophet, filled with the Holy Ghost, broke forth saying, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and bath raised up an horn of salvation for us, in the house of his servant David; as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us. To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; the oath which he sware to our father Abraham, that he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness, before him all the days of our lives." (Luke i. 68-75.) The Lord Jesus became incarnate, and lived in his incarnate

state in this our world, to obey the law, as the surety and representative of his people he entered on the open public execution of his office, under the fresh unction of the Holy Ghost, having his Father publicly, and by an audible voice from heaven, declaring and testifying concerning him, that he was his beloved Son in whom he was well pleased. And our Christ, as he brought in everlasting righteousness by his life of consummate obedience to the law, so he was as the substitute of the elect, solemnly arrested by the divine justice, and charged with the sins of all his people, which the Father laid upon him in agreement with covenant promises and stipulation, and made him to be sin by imputation: which judicial act of the Father, carried into execution made the soul of Christ heavy unto death. He being surrounded and environed on all sides with the sins, iniquities, and transgressions of his people, felt the shock of infinite wrath, and as he bore the sins of his people in his own body on the tree, so the curse, 'the punishment, the desert of sin, yea,

what was tantamount to the second death, was executed and inflicted on him. "He was (saith the apostle,) made a curse for us." In his body, and in his soul, in every faculty, sense, part, and member, he suffered, the just for the unjust. He was, for the iniquities of his people, stricken with the rod of justice, cut off for a season from all enjoyment of the consolations which flow from the brightness of his Father's manifestative presence, and from all comfort in the creature: he that had all fulness, and who filleth all in all, was emptied so as to have nothing left, no comfort in God, nor in the creature. As holy Mr. Flavel expresses it, Christ's sufferings were ? designed to equalize all the torments of 'the damned in hell, to be equal to the ' demerit of sin;' and I add, to satisfy all the demands of justice, and bring more honour to God's holiness, than sin had dishonour; and more glory to justice, than if sin had never entered into the world.

And this brings me to my second head, in which I have proposed to shew, how

that the promise made unto the fathers, was fulfilled by the Lord, in his raising up. Jesus from the dead.

The Lord had begun and most gloriously fulfilled his great promise concering giving his only-begotten Son, and sending him in the likeness of sinful flesh; in laying sin upon him, in executing the tremendous curse due to all the sins of the elect, on his holy immaculate body and soul; and the Messiah made his soul an offering for sin. By his obedience unto death, he finished the transgression, made an end of sin, made reconciliation for iniquity, and brought in everlasting righteousness: which having done, he cried out, like a triumphant conqueror, "It is finished." He was made the whole curse, to redeem us from the whole of it. There was, says the incomparable Dr. Goodwin, a curse went out against his soul, and he in his soul bore the wrath of God, after which he cried out, "It is finished." And as he was to redeem our bodies too from death, therefore, after all this he must die, as it is appointed unto men once to die. Is that a law, saith