mouths and hearts,--to preach it, to purchase it, to
seal it, and to bestow it, and the life was manifested,--the life, and that
eternal life, words of force, that have some emphasis in them. The life is
much, that eternal life is more, and yet these had been little to us, if
not manifested to us. Life might have remained hid in God, eternal life
might have resided in Christ, the fountain, for all eternity, and nothing
diminished of their happiness if these had never sprung out and vented
themselves. If that life that was with the Father from the beginning had
never come down from the Father, we would have missed it, not they, we
alone had been miserable by it. Well then, there is a manifestation of
life in Christ's low descent to death, there is a manifestation of the
riches of love and grace in the poverty and emptiness of our Saviour, and
thus he is suited to us and our necessities every way fitly correspondent.
And now it is not only, "as the Father hath life in himself, so the Son
hath life in himself," but there is a derivation of that life to man. That
donation of life to the Son, John v. 26, was not so much for any need he
had of it, as by him to bestow it on us, that it might be, "As the living
Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eats me, even he
shall live by me," John vi. 57. As parents that retain affection to their
children, albeit they have committed great injuries, for which they are
driven out of their houses, yet they will, as it were, underhand bestow
upon them, and exercise that same love in a covered way, by a third
person, by giving to them, to impart to their children. Notwithstanding
this halts too much, for our Father dissembles not his love, but proclaims
it in sending his Son, not doth Christ hide it, but declares, that he is
instructed with sufficient furniture(229) for eternal life, that himself
is the bread of life sent from heaven, that whosoever receiveth it with
delight, and ponders, and meditates on it in the heart, and so digests it
in their souls, they shall find a quickening, quieting, comforting, and
strengthening virtue in him. Nay, there is a strait connection between his
life and ours, "because I live, ye shall live also;" as if he could no
more want us, than his Father can want him, (John xiv. 19.) and as if he
could be no more happy without us, than his Father without him. And whence
is it come to pass, but from his manifestation for this very end and
purpose?