the inhabitants
of the earth are as poor grasshoppers, or crawling worms, about whose
throne there are ten thousand times ten thousand glorious spirits
ministering unto him, as Daniel saw him, (chap. vii. 9, 10,)--that such a
one should not only admit such as we to come to him, and offer our suits
to his Highness, but himself first to come down unto Adam, and offer peace
to him, and then send his own Son! And what were we that he should make
any motion about us, or make any mission to us? Rom. v. 10. While we were
yet "enemies," that we were when he sent. O how hath his love triumphed
over his justice! But needed he fear our enmity, that he should seek
peace? Nowise; one look of his angry countenance would have looked us into
nothing,--"Thou lookest upon me, and I am not; one rebuke of his for
iniquity, would have made our beauty consume as the moth, far more the
stroke of his hand had consumed us," Psalm xxxix. 11. But that is the
wonder indeed,--while we were yet "enemies;" and weak too, neither able to
help ourselves, nor hurt him in the least, and so could do nothing to
allure him, nothing to terrify him, nothing to engage his love, nothing to
make him fear; yet then he makes this motion, and mission to us, "God
sending," &c.

God sending, and "sending his own Son," that is yet a step higher. Had he
sent an angel, it had been wonderful, one of those ministering spirits
about the throne being far more glorious than man. But "God so loved the
world, that he sent his Son." Might he not have done it by others? But he
had a higher project; and verily, there is more mystery in the end and
manner of our redemption, than difficulty in the thing itself. No
question, he might have enabled the creature, by his almighty power, to
have destroyed the works of the devil, and might have delivered captive
man some other way. He needed not, for any necessity lying upon him, to go
such a round as the Father to give the Son, and the Son to receive,--as God
to send, and the Son to be sent. Nay, he might have spared all pains, and
without any messenger, immediately pardoned man's sin, and adopted him to
the place of sons. Thus he had done the business, without his Son's, or
any other's travail and labour in blood and suffering. But this profound
mystery, in the manner of it, declares the highness and excellency of the
end God proposed, and that is the manifestation of his love; "Behold, what
manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us,