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
* Qu. for ? ED. f That is, Neither against the law nor according to the law ; but above the law and for the sake of the law. ED.
CHAP. VI.] OF CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. 19
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 pre scribed 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. iii. 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 accom
modated, 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 i. 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
* The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not ; but for blasphemy, and because that thou, being a man, makest thy self God.
x. 33,
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. xvi. 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
20 OF CHRIST THE MEDIATOR. [BOOK I.
therefore it is called, the hidden wisdom of God, as in a mystery
: 1 Cor.
ii. 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. iii. 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 re
* lay hid in God : Eph. iii. 9, And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from
vealed, none could ever have reached, for it
the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ.
And which when revealed is, without controversy, so great a mystery, 1 T.im. iii. 16, that the very revelation of it is the greatest argument that
can be brought to prove the truth of our religion ; for all men that under
stand it, must and will with amazement acknowledge and confess, that so
great a plot could not have been hatched in the womb of any created under
standing. As sin was our invention, Eccl. vii. 29, so Christ alone was God s ; and therefore Christ is called,
* The Wisdom of God, which is not spoken of him essentially as second person, but manifestative as mediator, because in him his wisdom to the utmost is made manifest.