of great encouragement to discouraged souls. It is ordinary, that the
apprehensions of Christians take up Jesus Christ as very lovely, and more
loving than any of the persons of the Godhead, either the Father or the
Holy Ghost. There are some thoughts of estrangedness and distance of the
father, as if the Son did really reconcile and gain him to love us, who
before hated us and upon this mistake, the soul is filled with continual
jealousies and suspicions of the love of God. But observe I beseech you,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, all of them first agreeing in one
testimony. The Father declares from heaven that he is abundantly well
pleased with his Son, not only because he is his Son, but even in the
undertaking and performing of that work of redemption of sinners. It is
therefore his most serious invitation and peremptory command to all to
hear him, and believe in him, Mat. iii. 17, John iii. 23. Nay, if we speak
more properly, our salvation is not the business of Christ alone, as we
imagine it, but the whole Godhead is interested in it deeply, and so
deeply, that you cannot say who loves it most or likes it most. The Father
is the very fountain of it, his love is the spring of all--"God so loved
the world, that he gave his only begotten Son." Christ hath not purchased
that eternal love to us, but is rather the gift, the free gift of eternal
love. And therefore, as we have the Son delighting among the sons of men,
Prov. viii. 31, and delighting to be employed and to do his will, Psal.
xl. 8, so we have the Father delighting to send his Son, and taking
pleasure in instructing him and furnishing him for it, Isa. xlii. 1. And
therefore Christ often professed that he was not about his own work, but
the Father's work who sent him, and that it was not his own will, but his
Father's he was fulfilling. Therefore we should not look upon the head
spring of our salvation in the Son but rather ascend up to the Father,
whose love and wisdom did frame all this. And thus we may be confident to
come to the Father in the Son, knowing that it was the love of the Father
that sent the Son, though indeed we must come to him only in the Son, in
the name of Christ, and faith of acceptation through a Mediator, not
because the Mediator purchaseth his goodwill, but because his love and
good will only vents in his beloved Son Christ, and therefore he will not
be known or worshipped but in him, in whom he is near sinners, and
reconcilin