how near relation Christ stood to God, as also the infinite and unspeakable love with which it was filled, and mutually endeared on eaeli hand ; and this at the very same time, when he ascended the stage to act a bloody tragedy ; and I think that you are at the highest step the word of God can lead j'on, to ascend by into the meditation of this subject. Should you see a father that has but one only son, and can have no more, send him his mittimus to prison, come into coiu-t himself, and sit judge upon his life ; with his own lips pass sentence of death upon him, and order that it be executed with the most ex- quisite torments that may be; yea, to go to the place himself, and with his own eyes, and those not full of water, as moiu'uing for his death, but full of fire and fury ; j'ea, a countenance every way so set, as might tell all that see it, the man took pleasure in his child's death : you would say, Surely he bitterly hates liis son, or the sin his son hath committed. This you see in God the Father towards his Son ; it was he more than men or devils, that procured his death. Christ took notice of this, that the warrant for his death had his Father's hand and seal to it : ' Shall I not drink of the cup my Father gives me ?' Yea, he stands by and rejoices in it ; his blood was the ' wine that made glad the heart of God ;' ' it pleased the Lord to bruise hint,' Isa. liii. 10. When God corrects a saint, he does it, in a manner, luiwillingly; but wdien Christ sufters, it pleases him ; and this not from want of love in his heart to Christ, nor that any disobedience in Christ had hardened his Father's heart against him, for he never displeased him, but from the hatred he had to sin, and zeal to exalt his mercy towards sinners, by satisfying his justice on his Son.
Section II. — Secondly, He effected our peace by Chiust, that he might for ever hide pride from his saints' eyes. Pride was the stone on which both angels and man st\imbled and fell. In man's recovery, therefore, he will roll that stone as far as may be out of the way ; he will lay that knife aside with which man did himself the mischief: and that he may do this, he transacts the whole business bj' Christ for them. Man's project was to cut off" the entail of his obedience to God, and set up for himself, as a free and absolute prince, without dejjending upon his Maker. A strange plot! for, to effect this, he must first have thrown away that being which God gave him, and, by a self-creation, if such a thing had been possible, have bestowed a new one upon himself; then, indeed, and not till then, he might have had his will. But, alas! his pride to be what he could not, lost liim what he had, and still might have, enjoyed; yet how foolish soever it now appears, and infeasible, that was the plot pride had laid in man's heart. Now God, to preserve his children from all future assaidts and batteries of hell at this door, chose such a way of reconciling and saving them, that when the prince of the world comes to tempt them to pi-ide, he shoidd find nothinjr in them to give the least countenance or coloiu- to such a motion ; so that, of all sins, pride is such a one as we may wonder how it should grow, for it hath no other root to bear it up, but what is found in man's dreaming fancy and imagination. It grows, as sometimes we shall see a mushroom, or moss among stones, where little or no soil is for its root to take hold of. God in this gospel way of reconciling sinners by Christ, makes him fetch all from without doors. Wilt thou, ])0(n- soul, have peace with God? thou must not have it from thine own penance for thy sins : ' The chastisement of our peace was upon him,' Isa. liii. 5. (), know thou art not thy own peace-maker ; that is Christ's name, who did that work, Eph. ii. 14: ' For he is oiu* peace, who hath made both one,' Jew and Gentile one with God, and one with one another. Wouldst thou be righteous? then thou must not appear before God in thine own clothes; it is another's righteousness, not thine own, that is provided for thee : ' Surely shall one say. In the Lord have I righteousness,' Isa. xlv. 21. In a word, wouldst thou ever have a right in heaven's glory, thy penny is not good coin to purchase it with ; the price must not come out of thy purse, but (^n-ist's heart; and, therefore, as it is called the ' piu'chased possession,' in regard of Christ, because he obtained it for us with a great sum, not silver and gold, but his precious blood; so ' an inheritance,' in regard of us, because it descends upon us, as freely as the father's estate on his child, Eph. i. 14. And why all this, but that the lofty looks of man may be humbled, and the haughtiness of man should be bowed down, and the Lord alone exalted in the day of our salvation. The manna is expounded, by Christ himself, to be a type of him,
358 '^HE GOSPEL Of PEACE.