Ussher:

The Satisfaction of Christ¹

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Philippians 2:5-8

You have heretofore heard that point of Christian doctrine which concerns the knowledge of our misery and wretched estate by nature. The substance of all is that we are the children of wrath and disobedience, as well as others. You see then in what state every man stands before he has made his peace with God. You see what the Holy Ghost says, “They are the sons of disobedience, and children of wrath, as well as others.” I tell you this not to discourage a sinner or drive him to desperation, but because it is fitting that he should know the estate in which he is. If they will try arguing with God, if they oppose Him, the Lord will come with a bar of iron, and will break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. “Those, mine enemies, that will not have Me to reign over them, bring them and slay them before Me.”

It is fitting that every man know this, and it is only to awaken us; otherwise, to what purpose do we preach to you? Till the law awakens us, we sleep securely in our sins till the dreadful trumpet of Mount Sinai comes with thundering and lightning. Ephesians 5:14: “Awake thou that sleeps.” Unless this awaken us, in what case are we? We are sleeping men who are dreaming (Jude 8). A sleeping sinner will be a dreaming sinner: he never sees things they are in their proper shape. He thinks, like the church of Laodicea, that he is rich and lacks nothing, when he is really poor, miserable, blind, and naked. He thinks he be admitted into heaven as soon as the best, but this is a dream. “As the hungry man dreams, and behold he eats, but when he awakes, behold he is empty; or as thirsty man that dreams he drinks, but awakes and behold he is faint” (Isaiah 29:8). Thus it is with us: we think we are entering upon the suburbs of heaven, and yet we are but in a dream and are asleep.

Now being thus awakened, consider what you have to do when the dreadful trumpet of the law has awakened you. Consider your state; if you sleep this night, hellfire will be your portion. It would be better for you therefore to awaken yourself before the flames of hellfire awaken you. Consider likewise that you must not be led by yourself; you must renounce your own will. Our states may be pleasing to us, to enjoy in a dream our heart’s lusts here on earth; but consider that unless you cross your will here, it shall be crossed hereafter; yea, it shall be the main cross a man shall have in hell (besides the eternal weight of God’s wrath) that he can will or desire nothing but he shall be crossed in it-not the least thing he desires but he shall have the contrary. Learn then what a woeful thing it is to be our own lords, to follow our own lusts and pleasures; see what we shall gain by it. We shall never enjoy the least portion of our will in the world to come; if we would have but a drop of cold water, we shall be crossed in it. We shall have the opposite of everything we desire.

Having truly and plainly showed our sinfulness, wretchedness, and cursedness by nature, I come unto the remedy, our redemption by Christ. And God forbid that He should create man, the best of His creatures, for destruction! “What gain and profit is there in our blood?” (Psalm 30:9). God is full of grace and compassion, and He considers that we are but dust. And happy are we that we are but dust. Had we been more glorious creatures, like angels, we would not have had the benefit of a Savior. When they rebelled, God considered their makeup; and as with a high hand they rebelled, “so the Lord reserved them in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6; 2 Thessalonians 1 :9). They fell without a Redeemer. It is well for us that God considers that we are but dust. By Jesus Christ He saves us from the wrath to come. It would have been better for us never to have been born than to be born firebrands of hell. But the point is that we are “brands plucked out of the fire” (Zechariah 3:2). It is fitting, therefore, that we should know who our Redeemer is. It is Jesus Christ, and here consider that Christ Jesus offered for us for the satisfaction of God’s justice, and this is His priestly office.

Also, as there was no remission without shedding of blood, therefore after the blood is shed and the priest offered Himself, there comes a second thing, or else we would never be the better. Christ offered Himself to us, and this makes up our comfort. Many talk of the extent of Christ’s death and passion, saying that He died sufficiently for us, which is improper. For what comfort would it be that Christ was offered for us if there were no more? A bare sufficiency in Christ does not serve the turn; this would be a cold comfort. Suppose a man who was in debt, afraid of every sergeant and every sheriff, should be told, “Sir, there is money enough in the king’s account to discharge all your debts.” This may be very true, but what good is that to him? What comfort does he have by it unless the king offers to come and freely assume his debt? And it would be a cold comfort to us to know that Christ is sufficient for us unless He invites us to take freely of the waters of life. But “Ho, every one that thirsts, come ye to the waters” (Isaiah 55:1). Thus, unless Christ is Offered, to us as well as for us, we are never the better. Now to make this more clear observe that in every rament there are two acts of the minister. The first has relation to God; it is a commemoration of the sacrifice, in which respects the ancient fathers called it a sacrifice. The other is the breaking of bread and pouring out of wine, wherein there is a commemoration of the broken body and the shed blood–not as they are concomitants, the wine in the bread, as the foolish papists dream, for that would rather be a commemoration of His life, when the blood runs in the veins, than of His death. The commemoration of Christ’s death is made by separation of blood from the body, and as there is one act of the minister in consecrating by breaking the body and pouring out the blood, so there is a second act that is ministerial. When the minister says, “Take, eat; this is My body,” it is as if Christ were present, saying, “Come, take My body.” You have as free an interest to it as when you are invited to your friend’s table you have a right to the meat before you. So that as Christ is offered for you, so He is offered to you.² And what now should hinder you, unless you are one who will obstinately oppose your own salvation, and say, “I will not have this Man to rule over me.” You cannot miscarry. But if you will be your own lord, then you must perish in your infidelity. Here are the keys of the kingdom of heaven given unto God’s ministers, unless you willfully oppose your own salvation and shut the door of salvation which Christ has opened so wide for you. The ways of God are plain. Christ has paid a great price for you, and then, as great as it is, He offers it to you.

Now for the former of these, which is Christ’s satisfaction made unto the Father for us, I made choice of this place of Scripture, which sets it out particularly. Herein two things are to be observed:

1. The Person who will thus humble Himself: The grounds his exhortation on the fourth verse, where he tells us that we ought not to look every man on his own things, but on the things of others. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” If Christ had looked only on His own things, He might have saved Himself a great deal of labor and pains. He, being the Son of God, might as soon as He was born have challenged a seat with God in glory, but He passed on to His journey’s end in a thorny and troublesome way. Let then the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who did not mind His own things, but the good of others.

2. What form He was in when He humbled Himself: “He took upon Him the form of a servant, and was obedient unto the death of the cross.” Is this not the deepest humiliation that can be, that He who is above all praise, whom angels adored, that He should be brought from heaven to earth, and not only be a pilgrim there, but have a sorrowful and pitiful pilgrimage, and at last be cut off by a shameful death from the land of the living? This humiliation has no parallel.

The depth of the humiliation consists in the height of the Person thus humbled; and were not He so high, it would have done us no good. It is no small satisfaction that can appease God’s wrath; therefore the apostle to the Hebrews, speaking of Melchizedek, the type of Christ, concludes, “How great this man was!”

Consider the invaluable price when you think of how great He was: “Who, being in the form of God. . . . “He who was a fellow, and fellow-like with God, as good as Himself, as great as Himself, was thus humbled. It was the second Person in the Trinity, He and no other, who was thus humbled for you. He was weary for you and reviled for you. He sweated and fainted for you, went hungry for you, and was buffeted for you. It was He, the second Person of the Trinity, in proper speech, without either trope or figure, who shed His blood for you, died for you, and suffered all these things in His assumed nature, taking on Him the form of a servant, though not in His divine nature. He remained God alone, who could not die, but He fain would for you.

Therefore He took your nature on Himself that he might die for you in the assumed nature. He did not take on Himself the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham. He, being the Fountain of Life and the Prince of our life (and without shedding of blood no redemption could be wrought), having no blood to shed as God, therefore took our nature on Him, as we read in Hebrews 10:5, 7: “Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not, but a body Thou hast prepared me. Then said I, ‘Lo, I come, in the volume of Thy book it is written of Me, to do Thy will, O God.’” It as if He had said, “Lord, I am not able to accomplish thy will, or to be subject to Thee in Thy nature; therefore Thou hast made Me a man so that, in the form of a servant, I might show obedience, which I could not while I was in nature equal unto Thee.”

Now consider how great this Person is who has suffered all for you. He is Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:5). To have a great prince bound like a thief, arraigned and executed, the consideration of this state of the person would move a stony heart. “He is the Lord of lords, and King of kings” (Revelation 17:14).

Among men the father is more honorable than the son, and the son is but a servant until he is emancipated; but it is not so in the Trinity. The Father and the Son are both equally honorable. Among men the son has the specified nature with the father, but is not the same individual; but it is not so in the Trinity. The Father and the Son there have the selfsame individual nature. “I and my Father are one.” Therefore there must be an equality. The Pharisees themselves could draw this conclusion, that if He were the Son of God, He was equal with God. “Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him because he said God was His Father, making Himself equal with God” (John 5:18) .

A man might ask how that could follow: He was but God’s Son, but God’s Son must be equal to the Father. In making Himself God’s Son, He made Himself equal with God. Know this, .because by this stands the point of our redemption. If a pure and holy angel had suffered ever so much, it would not have availed for our redemption. It is a price no man or angel could meddle with; it required a greater price. It was God Himself who suffered in His assumed nature, He and no other person; for we must understand that, though Christ took on Him the nature of a man, yet not the person of a man.

Here stands the point: the second Person in the Trinity sustained all this humiliation. And therefore observe that, when the point of suffering comes, there is a remarkable speech in Zechariah 13:7. The Father says to the Son that it was against His heart to smite Him. The expression is a lively one; it went to His heart to smite one who was His equal, who did Him no wrong. “Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and against the man who is My fellow.” You know of whom it is spoken by Matthew 26:31: “I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.” The Lord is ready to break Him (Isaiah 53:10). The sword was, as it were, unwilling to smite “the man that is My fellow.” A blow that lights on God’s fellow, equal with God, of what value it is!

Consider the difference between a man and a man; the state of a prince makes great odds between what is done to him and what is done to another man. When David would venture himself into the battle, “Thou shalt,” they say, “go no more with us, lest they quench the light of Israel” (2 Samuel 21:17), and more fully, “Thou art worth ten thousand of us” (2 Samuel 18:3). They would not hazard the person of the king in the battle. Why? Because “thou art worth ten thousand of us.” The dignity of a prince is so great that ten thousand will not countervail the loss of him.

If this is the esteem and worth of David, what is the worth of David’s Prince? If it is thus with a king, what is it with the King of kings and Lord of lords? This is a great ground of the sufficiency of Christ’s suffering. “If the blood of bulls and goats sanctify to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your consciences from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:13-14)? It is not the offering of the body only, but He did it “through the eternal Spirit.”

When the martyrs and saints offered themselves as a sacrifice, they offered it through the flames of their love and therefore embraced the stake. Love is described as being as strong as death; but Christ did not offer His sacrifice with the flames of His love, though love was in Him, the greatest that ever was, but with the everlasting flames of His godhead and deity, with that fire from heaven which is a consuming fire. He did the deed that will purge our consciences from dead works. “Take heed unto your selves, and to the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God which He hath purchased with His precious blood” (Acts 20:28). God has purchased the Church with His own blood Whose blood? God’s blood. The blood of God must be shed. “He who thought it not robbery to be equal with God” must shed His own blood. “Had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory,” that is, they would not have crucified God.

He who was crucified was the glorious Lord God. “Ye denied the Holy One, and killed the Prince of life” (Acts 3: 14-15). Here is the matter: unless the Prince of life had been killed, you could not have life. The apostle sets this down as the ground of all before; he comes to the particulars of His humiliation, and sets down who it was who was thus humbled. He, whom the heaven of heavens could not contain, must descend unto the lowermost parts of the earth-that is a descent indeed. His humiliation appears in that He who was thus high became a man, “and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

Consider the point of His humiliation. Some things have regard to the whole course of His life, others to the conclusion or period of His life. All His life, from His incarnation to His passion, was a continual thread of humiliation; from the manger to His cross, from His birth to His tomb. So here is set down the humbled life of our blessed Savior. For I would not have you think His humiliation consisted only in coming to the cross, where they so mercilessly handled Him. It cost Him more than that. As sinners have the curse of God on them in their life as well as in their death, so Christ must have a miserable life as well as an accursed death. Though the heat came at the end of the tragedy, yet His whole life was a continual suffering. Consider the degrees of it:

“He made himself of no reputation.” He emptied Himself. It was the second Person in the Trinity who thus humbled and emptied Himself (not in His divine nature, but His assumed) of all His transcendent endowments.

Consider the particulars of it: He “took on Him the form of a servant.” Was not this a great humiliation, that the second Person in the Trinity should stoop so low as to take on Himself the nature of one who is not worth looking on; that He should take dust and ashes upon Himself? God’s greatness is thus expressed: “Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwells on high, who humbles Himself to behold the things in heaven and in the earth” (Psalm 113:5-6). What humiliation is that!

Compare these two humiliations. It is a humiliation to cast but an eye upon the heavens, to look upon the most glorious of all His works, to look upon the angels; “but what is man that Thou so regards him?” that Thou should not only look upon him, but take him up, and make him an inmate under Thine own roof? This is a greater abasement, but here is a further degree: Christ during the time of His pilgrimage, was content to deprive Himself of the glory that He now enjoys. By reason of His hypostatic union with the Godhead, He deserves all honor and glory: “When He brought His first-begotten into the world He saith, ‘And let all the angels worship Him” (Hebrews 1:6). Every knee bows to Him who is thus highly exalted.

We see Christ crowned with glory and honor, all minion and power being made subject unto Him; yet He for thirty-three and a half years was content to be exiled from His Father’s court. “Glorify Thou Me with the glory I had with Thee before the world was” (John 17:5), which is expounded in Proverbs, where the wisdom of God was shown before the world was framed: “Then I was by Him as one brought up with Him; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him” (Proverbs 8:30). This was the work before the foundation of the world that God was doing: the Father was glorifying the Son, .and .the Son was glorifying the Father. The Father took infinite delight in the Son, and the Son took infinite delight in the Father and the Holy Ghost in them both. To be deprived of such a sight and such a glory as this, and for your sake to be banished from that high court, where not to enjoy that fullness of joy was an emptying of Himself–yet all this He did for you.

He did not mind His own things; if He had, He might . have presently sat at God’s right hand, where is fullness of joy forevermore. But His bowels yearned over us, and so He took upon Himself the form of a servant and was found in the shape of a man, that is, as an ordinary man We know what the nature of servitude is. Every man naturally desires liberty; but Christ, that He might make you free, was content to endure a servile estate. Christ, in both respect of God and man, took on Him the form of a servant. For Him to be God’s servant was a humiliation, though for us it is the greatest honor to be God’s servants. Paul called himself “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ.” David called himself the servant of the Lord: “O Lord, I am Thy servant, truly I am Thy servant.” But it was a humiliation for Christ to become God’s servant. For Him “who thought it not robbery to be equal with God” to become God’s servant, and to take a nature on Him that allowed Him to say, “My Father is greater than I; behold My Father and I were one, but now that I have taken on Myself a human nature, I am made inferior to my Father. I have become His servant.” God says, “Behold My servant in whom I am well pleased.” And He says in Isaiah 53:11, “By this knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many.” There is much difference in a free servant and a bond-servant. A very bondman Christ made Himself, being man, and accounts it as great honor as may be, not only to be His Father’s servant but His bondman. Can I show that there is any such humiliation as this? Look at Hebrews 10:5: “Sacrifice and burnt offerings Thou would not, but a body hast Thou prepared Me.” These words have relation to those of the psalmist: “Sacrifice and burnt-offerings Thou did not desire, but mine ears hast Thou opened” (Psalm 40:6). In the margin it is, “Mine ears hast Thou dug,” or “hast Thou bored.” The boring of the ear was an expression of lasting servitude. A servant who had not yet had his ear bored might be freed at the year of redemption, the seventh year; but if not, his ear was bored so that he might be a servant forever according to Exodus 21:6. He who loved his service so well as to have his ear bored was a servant forevermore. “Mine ear, Lord, hast Thou bored. I will be Thy servant forever.”

Christ took on Himself the form of such a servant; nay Christ was more than an ordinary slave. He was one bound to an everlasting slavery, for He was the Son of a handmaid. Now the children of a handmaid were not to go forth at the year of jubilee. “The wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself” (Exodus 21:4), meaning that he who was the son of a handmaid must be bound. Now Christ was the son of a handmaid, for which we have Mary’s own confession: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” and, “He hath looked upon the low estate of His handmaid” (Luke 1:38, 48). Hence David said, “O Lord, I am Thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid” (Psalm 116:16). I am not only Thy servant, but Thy bond-servant. I am he who was born in Thy house; and out of Thy house I will never go.” Thus Christ a servant in respect of God.

But it is not only thus. He is not only a servant in regard of God, but He took on Him the form of a servant in respect of men too. Look what relations are between men who have superiority and subjects. Christ, who was born a free child, yet made Himself a servant unto man. He had a reputed father, but a true and a natural mother; from the twelfth year of His age till the thirtieth He went with them and was subject unto them (Luke 2:51). No apprentice was more subject to his master in his trade than Christ was to His reputed father; he kept Him close to his trade.

Look on Him out of the family, in the commonwealth. He paid tribute. He might have stood on His privileges. He asked, “Of whom do the kings of the earth exact tribute?” And they answered, “Of strangers. Then are the children free.” If the son of a temporal prince is free, how more shall the Son of God be free! But yet “it behooves us to fulfill all righteousness.”

He would be a subject unto Caesar, and in recognition of His subjection He would pay tribute, though fetched it out of the fish’s belly. Hence the apostle tells us, “For this cause you pay tribute to testify your subjection” (Romans 13:6). Neither was Christ only a servant to those who were in some authority, but generally among men He was in the state of a servant. “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). Not to be a master to command, and have others to attend Him; but He came to be a servant.

See in what esteem He was had, We account a slave one step above a beast; for liberty is that whereby a man breathes, and a man were better off dead than to have his liberty taken from him. So Christ was not only a bondman in regard of His Father, but in regard of men. In the estimation of men He was vilified as a bondman; and that will appear by the price for which He was sold. It was thirty pieces of silver. To consider what the price was is a considerable part of His passion. There is a prophecy cited out of Jeremiah in your books, but it is Zechariah, though I have seen some copies that mentioned neither, but only, “according to the words of the prophet.” The quote is, “Cast it unto the potter, a goodly price that I was priced at of them” (Zechariah 11:13). He speaks it with disdain: “And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord.” There is a parallel passage which will expound it clearly: “If an ox shall push a man servant or a maid servant that he die, the owner of the ox shall give to the master of the servant thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned” (Exodus 21:32). It was the very price that was paid for a slave, thirty shekels. Such a base estimation they had of Christ, as if He were a bondman; the same price that was given for a slave that was killed by an ox, for this same price was He sold. In the second book of Josephus, chapter 12, when Ptolemy Philadelphus would redeem all the Jews who were bondmen, it was set down what he paid for a slave. There is set down a great sum of money, and the number of the slaves Here stands the valuation, divide the number of drachmas by the number of slaves, and you shall find the quotient for every man 120 drachmas; four drachmas make a shekel, thirty shekels was the ordinary rate cried in the market for the price of a bondman.

Thus Christ took on Himself the form of a bondman not only God’s bondman, but in the estimation of men so despicable that they valued Him at no higher rate than thirty pieces of silver. This is but the beginning and entrance on Christ’s humiliation, to be made m the tude of sinful flesh, and in the verity of true flesh. Christ had all infirmities, such as weariness, hunger, thirst, which follow a sinful man, which were not sinful; such a nature He took upon Himself, and then He became obedient by both active and passive obedience. That which remains of the pains of His life to the passage of His doleful death we will speak of in the next sermon. James Ussher, “The Satisfaction of Christ,” in The Puritan Pulpit: The Irish Puritans, ed., Don Kistler (Orlando, Florida: Soli Deo Gloria, 2006), 115-128. [Some spelling modernized; footnotes mine; and underlining mine.]

2) Now for Mr. Stock’s public opposition in the pulpit, I can hardly be induced to believe that he aimed at me therein; if he did, I must needs say he was deceived, when he reckoned me amongst those good men, who make the universality of all the elect, and all men to be one. Indeed I wrote but even now, that God did execute his decree of election in all by spiritual generation: but if any shall say, that by all thereby I should understand the universality of all and every one in the world, and not the universality of all the elect alone, he should greatly wrong my meaning, for I am of no other mind than Prosper was: “Habet populus Dei plenitudinem suam, et quamvis magna pars hominum salvantis gratiam aut repellat aut negligat, in electis tamen et praescitis atclue ab omni generalitate discsetis,specialis qusedam censetur universitas, ut de toto mundo, totus mundus liberatus, et ‘de omnibus hominibus, omnes homines videantur assumpti.” That Christ died for his apostles, for his sheep, for his friends,29 for his Church, may make peradventure against those, who make all men to have a share alike in the death of our Saviour: but I profess myself to hold fully with him, who said: “ Etsi Christus pro omnibus mortuus est, tamen specialiter pro nobis yassus est, quia pro Ecclesia passus est.” Yea, and in my former writing I did directly conclude, that as in one respect Christ might have been said to die for all, so in another respect truly said not to have died for all; and my belief is, that the principal end of the Lord’s death, was, “that he might gather together in one the children of God scattered abroad,” and, that for their sakes he did specially sanctify himself, that they “also might be sanctified through the truth.” And therefore it may be well concluded, that Christ in a special manner died for these; but to infer from hence, that in no manner of respect he died for any others, is but a very weak collection, especially the respect by me expressed being so reasonable, that no sober mind advisedly cconsidering thereof can justly make question of it, viz. That the Lamb of God offering himself a sacrifice for the sins of the world, intended by giving satisfaction to God’s justice to make the nature of man which he assumed, a fit subject for mercy, and to prepare a sovereign medicine that should not only be a sufficient cure for the sins of the whole world, but also should be laid open to all, and denied to none, that indeed do take the benefit thereof: for he is much deceived that thinks a preaching of a bare sufficiency is able to yield sufficient ground of comfort to a distressed soul, without giving a further way to it, and opening a further passage.

To bring news to a bankrupt that the king of Spain hath treasure enough to pay a thousand times more than he owes, may be true, but yields but cold comfort to him the miserable debtor: sufficiency indeed is requisite, but it is the word of promise that gives comfort. If here exception be taken, that I make the whole nature of man fit for mercy, when it is as unfit a subject for grace as may be.

I answer. That here two impediments do occur, which give a stop unto the peace, which is to be made betwixt God and man. The one respects God the party offended, whose justice hath been in such sort violated by his base vassals, that it were unfit for his glorious majesty to put up such an injury without good satisfaction. The other respects man the party offending, whose blindness, stupidity, and hardness of heart is such, that he is neither sensible of his own wretchedness, nor God’s goodness, that when God offers to be reconciled unto him, there must be much entreaty to persuade him to be reconciled to God’.33 In regard of the latter I acknowledge with the apostle, “That34 the natural man receives not the things of the spirit, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he, because spiritually discerned.” And this impediment is not taken away by Christ’s satisfaction (which is a work of his priestly function) but by the enlightening of the mind, and softening the heart of the sinner, which are effects issuing from the execution of the prophetical, and kingly office of our Redeemer. When therefore I say, that by Christ’s satisfaction to his Father he made the nature of man a fit subject for mercy, I mean thereby, that the former impediment arising on God’s part is taken away, that if it were not for the other (for the having whereof we can blame none but ourselves, and in the not removing whereof ad cannot say God hath done us any wrong) there were no let, but all men might be saved; and if it pleased God to extend his mercy unto all, as he keeps his freedom therein, in having compassion on whom he will have mercy, and leaving others in blindness, natural hardness of their own heart, yet the worth of Christ’s satisfaction is so great, that his justice therein should be no looser.

But if this justice (you will say) be satisfied, how comes it to pass that God exacts payment again from any? I answer, We must take heed we stretch not our similitudes beyond their just extent, lest at last we drive the matter too far, and be forced to say (as some have done) that we cannot see how satisfaction and forgiveness stand together, and so by denying Christ’s satisfaction be injurious to God’s justice, or by denying remission of sins become injurious to God’s mercy. We are therefore to understand, that the end of the satisfaction of God’s justice is to make way for God’s free liberty in shewing mercy, that so mercy and justice meeting, and embracing one another, God may be just, and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus. Now the general satisfaction of Christ, which was the first act of his priestly office, prepares the way for God’s mercy, by making the sins of all mankind pardonable, the interposition of any bar from God’s justice notwithstanding, and so puts the sons of men only in a possibility of being justified, a thing denied to the nature of fallen angels, which the Son was not pleased to assume; but the special application of this satisfaction vouchsafed by Christ unto those persons only whom his father hath given him out of the world, which is an appendant, or appertaineth to the second act of his priesthood, viz. his intercession, produceth this potentia in uctum, that is, procureth an actual discharge from God’s anger; and makes justification, which before was a part of our possibility, to be a part of our present possession.

If it be said: It is a great derogation to the dignity of Christ’s death to make the sins of mankind only pardonable, and brings in a bare possibility of justification.

I answer, It is a most unchristian imagination to suppose the merit of Christ’s death, being particularly applied to the soul of a sinner, produces no further effect than this. St. Paul teaches us that we be not only justifiable, but “justified by his blood,” yet not simply as offered on the cross, but “through faith in his blood,” that is, through his blood applied by faith. “The blood of Jesus Christ his son,” saith St. John, “cleanses us from all sins;” yet cleanse it doth not by being prepared, but by being applied: prepared it was when he poured it out once upon the cross, applied it is when he washes us from our sins therein. It is one thing therefore to speak of Christ’s satisfaction, in the general absolutely considered; and another thing, as it is applied to every one in particular. The consideration of things as they are in their causes, is one thing; and as they have an actual existence, is another thing. Things as they are in their causes are no otherwise considerable, but as they have a possibility to be. The application of the agent to the patient, with all circumstances necessarily required, is it that gives to the thing an actual being. That disease is curable for which a sovereign medicine may be found, but cured it is not till the medicine be applied to the patient; and if it so fall out, that, the medicine being not applied, the party miscarries, we say, he was lost, not because his sickness was incurable, but because there wanted a care to apply that to him that might have helped him.

All Adam’s sons have taken a mortal sickness from their father, which, if it be not remedied, will, without fail, bring them to the second death: no medicine under heaven can heal this disease, but only a potion confected of the blood of the Lamb of God, who came “to take away the sins of the world;” which, as Prosper truly notes, “habet quidem in se ut omnibus prosit, sed si non bibitur non medetur.” The virtue thereof is such, that if all did take it, all without doubt should be recovered, but without taking it there is no recovery; in the former respect it may be truly said, that no man’s state is so desperate, but by this means it is recoverable, (and this is the first comfortable news that the Gospel brings to the distressed soul) but here it resteth not, nor feedeth a man with such a possibility, that he should say in his heart, “Who shall ascend into heaven to bring Christ from above?” but it brings the word of comfort nigh unto him, even to his mouth and heart, and presents him with the medicine at hand, and desireth him to take it; which being done accordingly, the cure is actually performed. James Ussher, The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, D.D, (Dublin, Hodges and Smith; London, Whittaker, 1847).  Full citation informaiton here: James Usser (1581–1656) on the Extent and Intent of the Death of Christ. [Some spelling modernised; some reformatting; footnotes not included here; and underlining mine.]

Credit to Tony for entry #1.

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¹An earlier publication of this work entitles this sermon, “Our Remedy, or Our Redemption by Christ,” in James Usher, Eighteen Sermons Preached in Oxford 1640 (London: Printed by S. Griffin, for John Rothwell at the Foutain in Cheapside, 1660), 353-369. The entire  modern version of the sermon is reproduced here.

²Interestingly, this is the same expression Thomas Ford uses in his discussion of the extent of the satisfaction.