01.08. Section Three :: Chapter Two
For the explanation of both these is shown, how Christ sustained a double relation: first, of a surety given, for us; secondly, of a common person in our stead. The difference of these two, and the usefulness of these two considerations, for the explaining all the rest that follows, in this whole discourse.
Of a surety, bound to pay the debt for us, and to save our souls.
And both these, as they have a distinct and differing consideration in themselves, so those several considerations of them will conduce to the understanding of those two things fore-mentioned, as ways and arguments to show how the resurrection of Christ may support our faith, both by way of evidence that the debt is paid, and by way of influence that we are thereby acquitted, and cannot be condemned. The notion of his being risen, who is our surety, clears the first, and that of his rising as a common person, illustrates the other. And I shall here a little to a greater extent insist upon the explication of these two relations, because their consideration will be of use through all the rest that follows, to illustrate thereby the influence that his ascension, and sitting at God’s right hand, have into our justification. And so I shall carry them along throughout this discourse.
So ambassadors for princes represent their masters—what is done to them is reckoned as done to the prince and what they do, according to their commission, is all one as if the prince, whose person they represent had done it himself. In like manner also, the marriages of princes are transacted and solemnized by proxy, as a common person representing his lord, and in his name is married to a princess in her father’s court. And the laws of men authorize it, and the marriage is as good as if both princes themselves had been present, and had performed all the rites of it. And thus to be a common person is more than simply to be a surety for another, it is a farther thing; and therefore these two relations are to be distinctly considered, though they seem to be somewhat of a like nature. Thus an attorney is a different thing from a surety. A surety undertakes to pay a debt for another, or the like; but a common person serves to perform any common act, which by the law is reckoned and virtually imputed to the other, and is to stand as the other’s act, and is as valid as if he had done it. So as the good and benefit which is the consequent of such an act, shall accrue to him whom he personated, and for whom he stood as a common person. Adam was not a surety for all mankind; he undertook not for them in the sense fore-mentioned, but he was a common person representing all mankind; so as what he should do was to be accounted as if they had done it.