stery, you must first descend into the depths of your own natural
wretchedness and misery, in which man was lying when it pleased God to
come so low to meet him and help him. I say you must first go down that
way in the consideration of it, and then you shall ascend to the use and
knowledge of this mystery of godliness.

God's sending, hath some weight of wonder in it, at the very first
apprehension of it. If you did but know who he is, and what we are, a
wonder it had been that he had suffered himself to be sent unto by us,
that any message, any correspondence should pass between heaven and earth,
after so foul a breach of peace and covenant by man on earth. Strange,
that heaven was not shut up from all intercourse with that accursed earth.
If God had sent out an angel to destroy man, as he sent to destroy
Jerusalem, (1 Chron. xxi. 15,)--if he had sent out his armies to kill those
his enemies, who had renounced the yoke of his obedience, it had been
justice, Matth. xxi. 41; xxii. 7. If he had sent a cruel messenger against
man, who had now acted so horrid a rebellion, it had been no strange
thing. As he did send an angel with a flaming sword to encompass the tree
of life, he might have enlarged that angel's commission, to take vengeance
on man: and this is the wonder, he did not send after this manner. But
what heart could this enter into? Who could imagine such a thing as this?
God to send, and to send for peace, to his rebellious footstool! Man could
not have looked for acceptance before the throne, if he had presented and
sent first up supplications and humble cries to heaven; and therefore
finding himself miserable, you see he is at his wits end, he is desperate,
and gives it over, and so flies away to hide himself, certainly expecting
that the first message from heaven should be to arm all the creatures
against him to destroy him. But, O what a wonderful, yet blessed
surprisal! God himself comes down, and not for any such end as vengeance,
though just, but to publish and hold forth a covenant of reconciliation
and peace, to convince man of sin, and to comfort him with the glad
tidings of a Redeemer, of one to be sent in the likeness of flesh. It is
the grandeur and majesty of kings and great men to let others come to them
with their petitions; and it is accounted a rare thing if they be
accessible and affable: but that the Lord of lords and King of kings, who
sitteth in the circle of the heavens, and before whom all