kind, his
brother,--(he was not ashamed to call us brethren,)--flesh of his flesh, and
bone of his bone. This may make boldness of access, that we have not God
to speak to, or come to immediately, as he is clothed with glory and
majesty, and as the Jews heard him on mount Sinai, and desired a mediator
between him and them, but that great prophet promised to them hath come,
and we have him between us and God,--as low as we, that we may speak to
him, "riding upon an ass," a low ass, that every one may whisper their
desires in his ear--and yet as high as God, that he may speak to God, and
have power with him. Truly, this is a sweet trysting place to meet God
in, that no sinner may have any fear to come to it, to this treaty of
peace and reconciliation. How may it persuade us of that great privilege
that we may "become the sons of God," when the Son of God is become the
Son of man, John i. 11, 12. Truly, though it be hard to be believed, that
such as we should become the sons of the great King, yet it is nothing so
strange as this, that the eternal and only begotten Son of the great God,
should become the Son of wretched man. That highness will be easily
believed, if we consider this lowness. It will not be so hard to persuade
a soul that there is a way of union and reconciliation to God, of being
yet at peace with him, if this be pondered,--that God hath married his own
nature with ours,--in one person, to be a pledge of that union and peace.
And then how much quickening and comfort may it yield us, that he was not
only a man, but a miserable man, and that not through any necessity, but
only the necessity of love and compassion. He had enough of mercy to save
us as God, he had enough of love and compassion as man, but he would take
on misery too in his own person, that he might be experimentally merciful
to us. Certainly, the experience of misery and infirmity must superadd
some tenderness to the heart of our High Priest. But though it did not
help him to be more pitiful, yet it was done for us, to help us to have
more confidence in him, and boldness to come unto him. What an
encouragement is it for a poor man to come unto the once poor Jesus
Christ, who "had not where to lay his head?" He knows the evil of
poverty, and he chose to know it, that he might have compassion on thee.
With what boldness may poor afflicted and despised believers come to him!
Why? Because himself had experience of all that, and he was familiarl