earth
therefore" righteousness will look down from heaven, and countenance the
business, and this will make all of them to meet with a loving salutation.

Now, as this was the contexture of the divine attributes in the business
of redemption, so our Lord and Saviour taketh upon him divers names,
offices, and exercises, different functions for us because he knoweth that
his Father may justly exact of man personal satisfaction, and hath him at
this disadvantage, and that he might have refused to have accepted any
other satisfaction from another person. Therefore he puts on the habit and
form of a supplicant and intercessor for us, and so while he was in the
flesh, he ceased not to offer up "prayers and supplications with strong
cries and tears," and he is said still "to make intercession for us." As
he learned obedience, though a Son, so he learned to be a humble
supplicant, though equal with God. Because our claim depends wholly on
grace, he came off the bench, and stood at the bar, not only pleading but
praying for us, entreating favour and mercy to us. And then, he personates
an advocate in another consideration, and pleads upon terms of justice,
that we be pardoned, because his Father once having accepted him in our
stead he gave a satisfaction in value equal to our debt, and performed all
that we were personally bound to. So then you may understand how it is
partly an act of justice, partly an act of mercy, in God to forgive sin to
believers, though indeed mercy and grace is the predominant ingredient,
because love and grace was the very first rise and spring of sending a
Saviour and Redeemer, and so the original of that very purchase and price.
He freely sent his Son, and freely accepted him in our stead, but once
standing in our room justice craves that no more be exacted of us, since
he hath done the business himself.

A sinner stands accused in his own conscience, and before God, therefore,
to the end that we get no wrong, there is a twofold advocate given us, one
in the earth, in our consciences, another in the heavens with God. Christ
is gone up to the highest tribunal, where the cause receives a definitive
sentence, and there he manageth it above, so that though Satan should
obtrude upon a poor soul a wrong sentence in its own conscience, and bring
down a false and counterfeit act, as it were, extracted out of the
register of heaven, whereby to deceive the poor soul, and condemn it in
itself, yet there is no