CHAPTER VI: Difficulty to find out a person of strength equal to so high an undertaking.
fully accomplished. It is true, the tenor and letter of the law is dispensed with, but not the debt; that is as fully exacted as ever. It is but a dispensation of the party obliged, not of the obligation itself, or of the debt, or of the reason why the debt is exacted. It is not wholly secundum legem, nor yet contra, ὀυδὲ κατὰ νόμον δυδὲ κατὰ νόμου, ἀλλὰ ὑπερ νόμον καὶ ὑπερ νόμου, it is a saying no less solid than elegant, and therefore the more elegant, because it was anciently used in another case. And although the law doth not mention or name a surety, and the malefactor's single bond be only mentioned therein, and the threatening directed against him, and his name is only in the project, because the law in itself supposeth as yet none else guilty, and can challenge none else, yet if some other, that is lord of his own action, subject himself to the law willingly, which will of his is a law to him, and the lawgiver himself, that is lord of the law, accepts this, as seeing the same ends shall be satisfied for which he made the law; in this case the law takes hold of the surety or undertaker, and he may let the malefactor go free.
And now that his wisdom hath found a course and way of mediation between his justice and his mercy, yet who is there in heaven and earth should be a fit mediator, both able and willing to undertake it, and faithful to perform it?
CHAPTER VI
The great difficulty was, to find out a person of strength equal to so high an undertaking.—Neither angels nor men could have found out or presented a fit person.—God manifest in the flesh, for redemption of man, was a mystery above all the thoughts of angels or men, and was worthy only of God's wisdom to find out.
The difficulty is still behind, a mystery so great as would have nonplussed heaven and earth, angels and men, Nodus Deo vindice dignus. So as if God had referred it to a consultation of men and angels, and empannelled all intelligible natures upon this grand jury
for to save men, and offered but thus fairly; though none of you can do it, yet find you but out the way and person, and I will set my power to the effecting of it; they would have returned in a verdict and bill of Ignoramus. After millions of years' consultation, their thoughts would not have presumed to have waded into this depth, so far as to think that justice might dispense in the least measure with so holy a law, and admit a commutation.
But impossible it was they should have thought of the person that should give full satisfaction to his justice, it passed all created powers to perform it (as I shall shew when I shall shew Christ's ability to this work), and as it passed their power to effect it, so their skill and reach. We who could never have found out a remedy for a cut finger, had not God prescribed and appointed one, could much less for this, it being a case of such difficulty. The devils they could not imagine any way, no more for us than for themselves, and therefore tempted man, thinking him when he had sinned sure enough, and hell gates so strongly locked, that no art could find or make a key to open them, or power to break them open. Adam, poor man, he trembled, and knew not which way to turn him, and thought God would have flown upon him presently. The good angels, they know it but by the church:
Eph. 3:10, 'To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God.' In this strait God himself aforehand set his depths of wisdom a-work to find out one, in and by whom all things might be accommodated, and out of those infinite depths found out and invented a way and means of effecting our reconciliation, even in the incarnation and death of his own Son. Before the wound given, he provided a plaster; and to allude to Abraham's speech, provided a sacrifice unknown to us, and a sufficient remedy to salve all again, which otherwise had been past finding out.
For the assumption of our nature into one person with the Son of God, was a thing thought credible when revealed, because possible, yet hardly so conceived, even by Mary, when it was told her by the angel: Luke 1:34, 'How can this thing be?' says she. There is nothing
in all the works of nature to make a correspondent example for it; yea, nature denies such a composition, to confound heaven and earth. All other religions abhor it. It was the great stumbling-block of the Jews, as they object it to him: John 10:33, 'The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy, and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.'
But suppose that mystery had been made known, as some say it was, to the angels, that Christ in our nature should be a head, a mediator of union, the stomaching of which, say some, was their fall; yet to have imagined him a mediator of reconciliation, and that he should satisfy God for us, and be made sin and a curse, they would have trembled to have thought it, if God had not first said it. Nay, when
Christ told his apostles what he was to suffer, their thoughts seemed to abhor it; 'Master, spare thyself,' says Peter: Mat. 16:21, 22, 'From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day;' ver. 22, 'Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying,
Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.'
This invention therefore God's wisdom alone is to have the glory of, and therefore it is called, 'the hidden wisdom of God, as in a mystery:' 1 Cor. 2:7, 'But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory.' The chief piece of which mystery is God manifest in the flesh: 1 Tim. 3:16, 'And, without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness; God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory;' which, had God not revealed, none could ever have reached, for it 'lay hid in God:' Eph. 3:9, 'And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus
Christ.'