Looking unto Jesus a view of the everlasting gospel, or, the souls eying of…

4. The Guilt of sin which he was now to undergo; upon him was laid the iniquity of us all. ¹All the sins of all Believers in the world, from the first Creation, to the last Judgment, were laid on him: Oh what a weight was this! Surely one sin is like a Talent of Lead; Oh then what were so many thousands of millions? The very earth it self groans under the weight of sin until this day. David cried out, that his iniquities were a burden too heavy for him to bear: ²Nay, God himself complains, Behold, I am pressed under you, as a Cart is pressed that is full of sheaves. Now then, no wonder if Christ bearing all the sins of Jews and Gentiles, bond and free, cry out, My Soul is heavy; for sin was heavy on his soul.—In that I say, all the sins of all Believers were laid on Christ, understand me soberly; my meaning is not that Believers sins were so laid on Christ, as that they ceased to be Believers sins according to their physical and real in-dwelling, but only that they were laid on Christ by Law-imputation, or by legal-obligation to satisfactory punishment. I make a difference betwixt sin, and the guilt of sin; for sin it self is macula, the blot, the defilement, and blackness of sin, which I conceive, is nothing but the absence and privation of that moral rectitude and righteousness ⟨p. 347⟩which the Law requireth: but the guilt of Sin is somewhat issuing from this blot and blackness, according to which the Person is liable and obnoxious to eternal punishment. Some indeed give a distinction of the guilt of sin; there is reatus culpae, the guilt of sin, as sin, and this is all one with sin, being the very essence, soul, and formal being of sin; they call it a fundamental, or potential guilt; and there is reatus poenae, reatus personae, reatus actualis, the guilt or obligation to punishment, the actual guilt, or actual obligation of the person who hath thus sinned to punishment; and this guilt is a thing far different from sin it self, and is separable from sin: yea, and is removed from sin in our justification. Now this was the sin or guilt, which was laid on Christ, in which sense the Apostle speaks, who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the Tree; ³how bare our sins on the Tree, but by his sufferings?—And he hath laid on him the iniquity of us all?—how laid on him, but by imputation?—And he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; how made sin for us?