coming down in the likeness of sinful flesh for us, and what we owe to
the Holy Ghost for quickening our spirits, and afterward for the
resurrection of our bodies, whose hearts would not these overcome and lead
captive to his love and obedience?

Sermon XXXIII.

Verses 12, 13.--"Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the
flesh, to live after the flesh; for if ye live after the flesh, ye
shall die," &c.

Was that not enough to contain men in obedience to God--the very essential
bond of dependence upon God as the original and fountain of his being! And
yet man hath cast away this cord from him, and withdrew from that
allegiance he did owe to his Maker, by transgressing his holy
commandments. But God, not willing that all should perish, hath confirmed
and strengthened that primitive obligation by two other as strong if not
more. If the Father did most eminently appear in the first, the Son is
manifested in the second, and that is the work of the redemption of man,
no less glorious than his first creation. He made him first, and then he
sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, to make him again by his
Spirit, and now a threefold cord is not easily broken. It seems this
should bind invincibly, and constrain us not to be our own, but the
Lord's, and now truly, they who are in Jesus Christ, are thrice indebted
wholly to God. But the two last obligations are the most special and most
wonderful, that God sent his Son for us, to redeem us from sin and misery,
and to restore man to happiness took on a miserable and accursed
habit,--that so glorious a person gave himself for so base an one,--that so
excellent a Lord became a servant for the rebel,--that he whose the earth
is, and the fulness thereof, did empty himself of all to supply us,--and in
a word, the most wonderful exchange be made that ever the sun saw, God for
men, his life a ransom for their life. All the rare inventions and fancied
stories of men come infinitely short of this. The light never saw majesty
so abased and love so expressed as in this matter, and all to this
purpose, that we who had undone ourselves might be made up again, and the
righteousness of the law fulfilled in us. At first he made us, but it cost
him nothing but a word, but now, to buy that which was taken captive by
sin, and at so dear a rate,--"ye are bought with a price, and this price
more precious than the sum of heaven and earth could amount to." Suppose
by