,too סבל easy to conceive, how the great God bears sin; viz. as he pardons, removes, or takes away the guilt of it; and our translators have once [Hos. xiv. 2.] and the Septuagint hath several times so rendered it. Isa. liii. 11. will admit the sense of carrying off, or away, Isa. xlvi. 4, Even I will carry you off, and I will deliver you. This word is also used Isa. liii. 4, he hath carried our sorrows; which doubtless St. Matthew (chap. viii. 17) understood in the sense of removing or carrying off, when he sath; himself took [away] our infirmities, and bare [carried off] our sicknesses. 48. (3.) And in the same sense, or one near akin to it, our blessed Lord,* and the Jewish high-priests, priests, and levites, bare sin, as they made atonement for sin, or suffered or did those things which *This idea the writers of the New-Testament give us of atonement and pardon; particularly in relation to our Lord. John i. 29, The Lamb of God [o aiger] which taketh away the sin of the world. 1 John iii. 5, He was manifested that he [agn] might take away our sins. Rom. xi. 27, When [aeλwa] I shall take away their sins. Heb. x. 4, It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should [aPaigɛiv] take away sins. Ver. 11, Which can never [Egiɛλɛ] take away sins. Put away sin, and bear the sins of many, signify the same thing, Heb. ix. 26, 28. God was pleased to appoint as proper, on their part, either for the removal, or to signify the removal or taking away of guilt. Even as the scape-goat made atonement for sin, by bearing or carrying upon him all the iniquities of the children of Israel unto a land not inhabited; [Lev. xvi. 10, 22.] which was a figurative way of signifying the total removal of guilt. Thus also the angel, God sent before the Israelites, and those who forgave such as had offended them, might bear sin, by taking it away, or removing it out of their thoughts, so far as it was disgusting, or so far as concerned the punishment of it. Or 49. (4.) They might bear sin, and God might bear a sinful place or people, as they forbear, or endured it with lenity and patience; for so the word nasa sometimes signifies. Prov. xxx. 21, four things the earth cannot bear. Isa. i. 14, Your appointed feasts I am weary to bear. Jer. xliv. 22, So that the Lord could no longer bear, because of the evil of your doings, &c. 50. (5.) The word also denotes to bear a burden; and so metaphorically to bear, or to be liable to bear, or endure punishment and suffering. Thus criminals bore D their own iniquities. And when the innocent were so related to, or connected with the criminals, as that the innocent must of course and unavoidably suffer with them, in this case the innocent are said to bear the sin of the guilty, as they shared in their sufferings. So the children of the Israelites bare the whoredoms of their parents in the wilderness. And so Lot would have been consumed in the iniquity of Sodom, had he not escaped for his life, Gen. xix. 15. Also in national cases, when a people, one generation after another, corrupt themselves, and depart from God; at length, when they have filled up their measure, God justly brings upon the last and most corrupt generation such signal judgments, as shew his great displeasure against them and their wicked ancestors. This was the sad case of the wretched Jews in the Babylonish captivity, Lam. v. 7. [42] See Luke xi. 47-51. Gen. xv. 16. Mat. xxiii. 32. But 51. (6.) How the prophet Ezekiel bare inquities of the children of Israel by lying upon his side, is uncertain. If he personated the Israelites; then he prophetically represented in his own person the punish ment which they themselves should really bear. If as others think, he personated God; then he prophetically represented God's bearing their sin patiently, or his forbearing their punishment a certain number of years. 52. Upon the whole, it is abundantly evident, no proof can be drawn from Scripture, that bearing sin includes the notion of "transferring of guilt" from the nocent to the innocent. CHAPTER IV. OF VICARIOUS PUNISHMENT, AND ATONEMENT. 53. III. BUT if the sacrifice was substituted in the stead of the offender, and suf fered the death due to him: or, in other words, if the death of the victim was a vicarious punishment ;* then it will follow, that the victim did so far bear the sin of the of fender, that it suffered in his stead, and bore the punishment which should have fallen up tur. * Victimae anima, seu vita, vice sontis ipsius animae daOutram de Sacr. p. 337. Victimae Mosaicae piaculares sontium in locum surrogatae erant; ut quae idem poenae genus (nempe vitae exitium) passae fuerint, quo sontes ipsi liberati erant. Ibid. p. 349. on him. Ans. The victim is never said to be offered, or to die in the stead of the sinner. Abraham (Gen. xxii. 13) took the ram and offered him up for a burnt-offering instead of his son Isaac. But every body knows this is foreign to the present purpose. The cutting off the heifer's head in case of secret murder (Deut. xxi. 1-10,) might represent the punishment due to the murderer, and the readiness of the elders to punish him, by shedding his blood, could he be found; and so was a proper mean of clearing themselves of the guilt which would have lain upon them, had they taken no notice of a murder committed in their neighbourhood; nor expressed their abhorrence on it, and their readiness to discover and punish the murderer. And thus indeed, till the murderer was discovered, the slaying the heifer served their purpose as well as if they had put him to death. But not as if the heifer died either in their stead, or his stead, (for, if afterwards he was found, he was to suffer capital punishment) but as by the whole ceremony they signified their willingness and true desire to find him out and to punish him. Which, as the case stood, was all they could possibly do. |