approaching Crucifixion: No MAN taketh away My life from me: I-have power to lay it down, and I-have power to take it up again; see John x. 18. The same omnipotent power which could take it up again, was requisite to LAY IT DOWN; for it was an immortal life; and nothing less than Omnipotence itself, to which all things are possible, could subject a sinless and immortal nature to DEATH: therefore, said the Almighty's Fellow, I, [who am omnipotent,] have POWER to lay it down. "Our Saviour," observes the venerable Bishop Hall, in his Passion Sermon, "stays not death's leisure; but willingly and courageously meets him in the way; and, like a champion that scorns to

be

be overcome, yea, knows he cannot be, yieldeth in the midst of his strength, that he might, by dying, vanquish death. He bowed, and gave up not bowing, because he had given up; but because he would. He cried with a loud voice, saith Matthew. Nature was strong; he might have lived; but he gave up the Ghost, and would die, to shew himself Lord of Life and Death."

It must, notwithstanding, be granted, that although naturally free from the seeds of death, he did not therefore permit himself to be exempted, either from the ordinary temptations of Satan, or from the natural wants and infirmities of men; but was in all points tempted like as we are; and, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses ;

E 3

sicknesses; [OUR'S,-not HIS,] for in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people: for in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted. Heb. ii. 17-18. Had the sacred Body of Christ. been subject to natural death, like the bo-dies of other men, it must, without a special and continuous Miracle, during the interval which elapsed between the dismis-sal and resumption of his spirit,—as well from the ordinary action of the climate of Judea, as from its dreadfully lacerated state before death,-have advanced many

stages

stages towards entire putrefaction; but this would have been contrary to the express terms of Prophecy concerning him, in which David, as quoted by the Apostle Peter, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, b, sheol, (not the place prepared for the Devil and his Angels, but) the invisible state and place of the dead, neither his flesh did see corruption: whom, saith the same Apostle, God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death; because IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE that HE should be holden of it. In addition to which, it might be urged, that as the sin of the representatives of human kind, was committed in an immortal nature; so it would seem requisite, that the Atonement

Atonement for that sin should be accomplished in a nature also immortal; and not

in one, itself liable to dissolution. Indeed,

.

the very reason assigned by an Apostle, why Death had passed upon all men, namely, because all had sinned, exempts the holy Redeemer from that consequence, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.

From all these considerations, then, the conclusion is obvious, that neither death, regarded as the consequence of sin, nor the moral law, considered as the rule of righteousness, had any penal claims on the person of Jesus, on his own account; as, not having been born in sin, but by the power of the Holy Ghost, he was not naturally