A fourth volume containing one hundred and fifty sermons on several texts of Scripture…

1. It was necessary that he should give up himself out of Obedience, partly that his Love might be Rational. The Lord is a God of Judgment, a wise God, and all he doth is with Reason. Now the only supreme Reason why Christ loves us, is the Will of God, and the Command of his Father. Solomon saith, Prov. 17.18. A Man void of Understanding striketh Hands, and becometh Surety in the presence of his Friend. How is that? that is, before his Friend asks or desires it: it is a Fault to be over-forward and prodigal of Favours. It is a Rational Love that is in Christ, and partly he doth it out of Obedience, to preserve a Respect to God the Father. Christ loves us for his sake, and therefore we should love God in Christ the more. And partly it is the Wisdom of God, that the Reasons of Love should lie without Man himself, and be found among the Divine Persons, because of the Father's Good-will and Command.

1. It was necessary that he should give up himself out of Obedience, partly that his Love might be Rational. The Lord is a God of Judgment, a wise God, and all he doth is with Reason. Now the only supream Reason why Christ loves us, is the Will of God, and the Command of his Father. Solomon saith, Prov. 17.18. A Man void of Vnderstanding striketh Hands, and becometh Surety in the presence of his Friend. How is that? that is, before his Friend asks or desires it: it is a Fault to be over-forward and prodigal of Favours. It is a Rational Love that is in Christ, and partly he doth it out of Obedience, to preserve a Respect to God the Father. Christ loves us for his sake, and therefore we should love God in Christ the more. And partly it is the Wisdom of God, that the Reasons of Love should lie without Man himself, and be found among the Divine Persons, because of the Father's Good-will and Command.

2. It was convenient that Christ should give himself out of his own Love, partly that Christ might be a fit Mediator. It cannot stand with God's Justice, to punish an Innocent Person for a Nocent, unless he himself be willing; therefore that Christ might be a Mediator, he had a Will of his own, otherwise God could not in Honour exact the Debt of Christ, but that there was a voluntary Susception, he took it upon himself. The Lord Christ, when he condescended to the Father's Motion, when by his own Will he gave up himself, and set himself wholly apart to be our Redeemer, God might justly require the Debt of him. When Paul would take Onesimus his Debt upon himself, Philemon might justly require it of him;