The harmony of the divine attributes in the contrivance and accomplishment of man's redemption…

4. The Satisfaction of Divine Justice by the Sufferings of Christ, affords the strongest assurance to Man, who is a guilty and suspicious creature, that God is most ready to pardon sin. There is in the natural Conscience when opened by a piercing conviction of sin, such a quick sense of Guilt, and Gods Justice, that it can never have an entire confidence in his Mercy, till Justice be atoned. From hence the convinced Sinner is restlessly inquisitive, how to find out the way of reconciliation with a Righteous God. Thus he is represented inquiring by the Prophet,¹ Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow my self before the most High God? shall I come before him with Burnt-Offerings, with Calves of a year old? will the Lord be pleased with thousands of Rams, or with ten thousand rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my Body for the sin of my Soul? The Scripture tells us that some consumed ⟨p. 299⟩their Children to render their Idols favourable to them. But all these means were ineffectual: their most costly Sacrifices were only food for the fire. Nay, instead of expiating their old, they committed new sins, and were so far from appeasing, that they inflamed the Wrath of God, by their cruel oblations. But in the Gospel there is the most rational and easy way propounded, for the Satisfaction of God and the Justification of Man. The Righteousness of Faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thy heart, ²Who shall ascend into Heaven? (that is to bring down Christ from above) Or who shall descend into the deep? (that is to bring up Christ again from the dead) But if thou wilt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. The Apostle sets forth the anxiety of an awakened Sinner, he is at a loss to find out a way to escape Judgment: for things that are on the surface of the Earth, or floating on the Waters, are within our view, and may be obtained: but those that are above our Understanding to discover, or Power to obtain, are proverbially said to to be in the Heavens above, or in the Deeps. And 'tis applied here to the different ways of Justification, by the Law and the Gospel. The Law propounds Life, upon an impossible condition: