oves God the Father. He will think of
Christ the Son with pleasure and gratitude, because he says to
himself, Christ loves me, cares for me; I can have pity and
tenderness from him, if I do wrong. While of God the Father he
thinks only with dread and secret dislike. Thus, from dividing the
substance, he has been led on to confound the persons, imputing to
the Son alone that which is equally true of the Father, till he
comes (as I have known men do) to make for himself, as it were, a
Heavenly Father of Jesus Christ the Son.

Now, my dear friends, it does seem to me, that if anything can
grieve the Spirit of Christ, and the sacred heart of Jesus, this is
the way to grieve him. Oh read your Bibles, and you will see this,
that whatever Jesus came down on earth for, it certainly was not to
make men love him better than they love the Father, and honour him
more than they honour the Father, and rob the Father of his glory,
to give it to Jesus. What did the Lord Jesus say himself? That he
did not come to seek his own honour, or shew forth his own glory, or
do his own will: but his Father's honour, his Father's glory, his
Father's will. Though he was equal with the Father, as touching his
Godhead, yet he disguised himself, if I may so say, and took on him
the form of a servant, and was despised and rejected of men. Why!
That men might honour his Father rather than him. That men might
not be so dazzled by his glory, as to forget his Father's glory.
Therefore he bade his apostles, while he was on earth, tell no man
that he was the Christ. Therefore, when he worked his work of love
and mercy, he took care to tell the Jews that they were not his
works, but the works of his Father who sent him; that he was not
doing his own will, but his Father's. Therefore he was always
preaching of the Father in heaven, and holding him up to men as the
perfection of all love and goodness and glory: and only once or
twice, it seems, when he was compelled, as it were, for very truth's
sake, did he say openly who he was, and claim his co-equal and co-
eternal glory, saying, 'Before Abraham was, I am.'

And, after all this, if anything can grieve him now, must it not
grieve him to see men fancying that he is better than his Father is,
more loving and merciful than his Father is, more worthy of our
trust, and faith, and adoration, and gratitude than his Father is?--
His Father, for whose honour he was jealous with a divine jealousy--
His