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particular kind of death which our Lord had himself predicted; for crucifixion was not the punishment which the Jewish law appointed for the crimes wherewith Jesus was charged, but it was one which the Romans inflicted upon offenders of the meanest condition, or those who had been guilty of the most atrocious and Aagitious crimes. The living body of the sufferer was fastened to two cross pieces of wood, by nails driven through the hands and feet; the feet being nailed to the upright post, and the hands to the two extremities of the transverse beam. In this situation, the miserable objects of this barbarous punishment were left to consume in lingering and dread. ful torments; for as none of the parts essential to life was immediately injured, none of the vital actions immediately impeded, and none of the larger blood vessels set open, the death was necessarily slow; and the mul. titude of nerves that terminate in the hands and feet giving those parts the nicest, sensibility, rendered the sufferings exquisite.

Such was the death to which the unrelenting malice of his enemies consigned the meek and holy Jesus. I must not farther pursue the detail of those minute occurrences, in which, though brought about by natural and common causes, the ancient prophecies concerning the circumstances of our Saviour's passion were remarkably fulfilled. It was not till every tittle was fulfilled, that the patient Son of God, as if then and not before at liberty to depart, said, " It is finished !” bowed his anointed head, and rendered up the ghost Wonderful catastrophe! replete with mysteries; among which the harmony of divine providence and human liberty is not the least. Mechanical causes, governed by a single intellect, could not with more certainty have wrought the predetermined effect: independent beings could not have pursued with greater liberty, than the persons concerned in this horrid transaction, each his separate design. " It is finished!Holy victim! thy sufferings are finished !, All is finished, that wicked men were won. derfully destined to contribute towards the general de. liverance! What remains, infinite power and infinite mercy shall accomplish. The disciples, those few of them who had the courage to be present at this dismal scene, hang their heads in sorrowful despondency, and seem to have abandoned the hope that this was He who should redeem Israel. But Israel is redeemed.

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. The high sacrifice, appointed before the foundation of the world, typified in all the sacrifices of the law, is now slain, and is accepted. That Jesus who accord. ing to his own prediction hath expired on the cross, shall, according to his own prediction, be raised again on the third day. He is raised,he is entered into glory,he is sitten down for ever at the right hand of the Majesty on high : there he pleads the merit of his blood in behalf of those crying sins that caused it to be shed. Nor does he plead in vain. The final judgment is committed to him; and the greatest of sinners that will but forsake their evil ways have no reason to fear the severity of a judge who hath himself been touched with the feeling of our infirmities. On the other hand, let not any deceive themselves with a vain reliance on his merits, who after all that the Son of God hath done and suffered for them, remain impenitent. The sacrifice of the cross was no less a display of the just severity than of the tender mercy of God. The authority of his government must be maintained. This rendered inter: cession and atonement necessary for the pardon of sin in the first instance, the most meritorious intercession, the highest atonement. For those“ who despise so great salvation,” who cannot be reclaimed by the promises and threatenings of the gospel-by the warnings of God's wrath-by the assurances of mercy-by the contemplation of their Saviour's love,—for those who cannot

be reclaimed by these powerful motives from obstinate courses of wilful vice, there assuredly“ remains no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful looking-for of fiery indignation,” which at the last day shall burn with inextinguishable rage against these incorrigible adversaries of God and goodness. Grant, O Lord, that all we who are this day assembled before thee, lamenting our sins and imploring thy mercy, may be permitted, through the intercession of thy Son, to escape the everlasting horrors of that second death!

SERMON XX.

1 Peter iii. 18, 19, 20.

Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit; by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah.

In the first rudiments of our Christian faith, comprised in the Apostles' Creed, which we are made to get by heart in our earliest infancy, we are taught to believe that " our Lord Jesus Christ descended into hell ;” and this belief is solemnly professed by every member of the congregation, when that creed is repeated in the daily service of the church. And it seemed of so much importance that it should be distinctly acknowledged by the Church of England, when we separated from the Roman communion, that our reformers thought proper to make it by itself the subject of one of the articles of religion. They were aware that upon the fact of our Lord's descent into hell the Church of Rome pretended to build her doctrine of purgatory, which they justly esteemed one of her worst corruptions; but, apprehensive that the zeal of reformation might in this, as in some other instances, carry men too far, and induce them to reject a most important truth, on which a dan. gerous error had been once ingrafted,--to prevent this intemperance of reform, they assert, in the third article

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of the Thirty-nine, “ That as Christ died for us and was buried, so it is to be believed that he went down into hell.” The terms in which they state the proposition, imply that Christ's going down into hell is a matter of no less importance to be believed than that he died upon the cross for men—is no less a plain matter of fact in the history of our Lord's life and death than the burial of his dead body. It should seem, that what is thus taught among the first things which children learn, should be among the plainest,--that what is thus laid down as a matter of the same necessity to be believed as our Lord's passion and atonement, should be among the least disputed,—that what every Christian is required to acknowledge as his own belief, in the daily assemblies of the faithful, should little need either explanation or proof to any that have been instructed in the very first principles only of the doctrine of Christ. But so it is, that what the sagacity of our reformers foresaw, the precaution which they used has not prevented. The truth itself has been brought into discredit by the errors with which it has been adulterated; and such has been the industry of modern refinement, and unfortunately so great has been its success, that doubts have been raised about the sense of this plain article of our creed by some, and by others about the truth and authenticity of it. It will therefore be no unprofitable undertaking to show that the assertion in the Apostles' Creed, that “our Lord descended into hell,” is to be taken as a plain matter of fact in the literal meaning of the words to show what proof of this fact we have in holy writ,—and, lastly, to show the great use and importance of the fact as a point of Christian doctrine.

First, then, for the sense of the proposition, “ He descended into hell.” If we consider the words as they stand in the Creed itself, and in connection with what

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