1. Not man. This is clear. All men were sunk into the gulf of misery,
man to be found that ever was his own ransomer, or paid a price for his own redemption.
(2.) No creature is able to do it for us. All creatures are nothing in their original; there could be then nothing of dignity in a mere creature to answer the dignity of the person offended. The plaster would be too narrow for the wound. The whole creation of creatures was of a finite goodness, and nothing to the honour due to so great a majesty. If a creature could satisfy, it could not be by his own strength, but by a great deal of grace conferred upon him, so that he had not paid what was his own to God, but what was God's own already. No creature but must be sustained by the grace of God, that he may not fall into utter ruin while he is satisfying. Angels themselves could not do it but by grace; and the more any creature should do by the grace of God, the more he would be obliged by God, and the less compensate him. Again, it must be one creature, or a multitude of creatures. How one mere creature could satisfy for a numberless number of men, every one of them foully polluted, cannot well be conceived by common reason. One creature can only be supposed to be a sufficient ransom for one of the same kind.
There could not be a dignity in any creature to answer the dignity and equal the value of all mankind. If a multitude of creatures were necessary, there must be as many creatures satisfying as were creatures sinning; so God would lose one species of creature to restore another, or an equal number of creatures to them that were redeemed. But indeed no creature could satisfy if the wrong was infinite; and by the rights of justice the satisfaction is to be proportioned to the greatness of the injury and the majesty of the person injured. Those being infinite, no creature was able to manage this affair and bring it to a happy period, because no creature but is finite, and cannot be otherwise than finite, infiniteness being the incommunicable property of the Deity; therefore neither man nor any angel was able to effect it.
1. Not man. This is clear. All men were sunk into the gulf of misery, and he that was unable to redeem himself, could not pretend to an