s, between
God and Belial? Is it possible these can be reduced to amity, and brought
to so near an union? Yet for all this, it is possible; but love and wisdom
must find out the way. Infinite love and infinite wisdom consulting
together, what distance can they not swallow up? What difficulty can they
not overcome?

And here you have it, the distance undertaken to be removed, both by the
Father and the Son,--(for all this while we can do nothing to help it
forward; while the blessed plot is going on, we are posting the faster to
our own destruction). And this is the way condescended upon; _first_, To
fill up that wide gap between his divine spiritual nature, and our mortal
fleshly nature, it is agreed upon, that the Son shall come in our flesh,
and be made partaker of flesh and blood with the children; and this is
meant by this promise, "the Redeemer shall come to Sion;" which is plainly
expressed by his own mouth, John xvi. 28, "I came forth from the Father,
and am come into the world." There being such a distance between his
majesty and our baseness, love maketh him stoop down and humble himself to
the very state of a servant, Phil. ii. 7, 8. And thus the humiliation of
Christ filleth up the first distance; for "love and majesty cannot long
dwell together," _nec in una sede morantur majestas et amor_;(298) but
love will draw majesty down below itself, to meet with the object of it.
This was the great journey Christ took to meet with us, and it is downward
below himself; but his love hath chosen it, to be like us, though he
should be unlike himself. How divinely doth the divine apostle speak of
it, "And the Word was made flesh, and he dwelt among us," John i. 14. And
therefore the children of Adam may in verity say of him, what the holy
Trinity, in a holy irony spake of man, "Lo, he is become as one of us." It
was a singular and eminent privilege conferred upon man in his first
creation, that the Trinity in a manner consulted about him, "Let us make
man after our image;" but now when man hath lost that image, to have such
a result of the council of the Trinity about it, "let one of us be made
man, to make up the distance between man and us,"--O! what soul can rightly
conceive it without ravishment and wonder, without an ecstacy of
admiration and affection!--that the Lord should become a servant!--the Heir
of all things be stripped naked of all!--the brightness of the Father's
glory, be thus eclipsed and darkened!--and in