Sermons preached

Answ. With respect to the Office which he had taken upon him, to expiate our Sins, and to recover us from the deserved Wrath and Punishment, into the Love and Favour of God. This Desertion of Christ carrieth a suitableness and respect to our Sin, our Punishment, and our Blessedness.

1. Our Sin. Christ is forsaken to satisfy and make amends for our wilful desertion of God. When Adam sinned, we all turned the back upon God who made us. Yea, all actual Sins are nothing but a forsaking of God for very trifles, an ⟨p. 170⟩Aversion from God, and a Conversion to the Creature. Jer. 2. 13. They have forsaken me, the Fountain of living Waters, and have hewen out unto themselves broken Cisterns, that will hold no Water. Now we that forsook God, deserved to be forsaken by God; therefore what we had merited by our Sin, Christ endured as our Mediator: He himself submitted to Desertion. It is strange to consider what small things draw us off from God. For handfuls of Barley, and pieces of Bread, will that Man transgress, Ezek. 13. 19. For a pair of Shoes, Amos 2. 6. For one morsel of Meat, Heb. 12. 16. Isa. 52. 3. This is the great Degeneracy and Disease of Mankind, that a Trifle will prompt us to forsake God, as a little thing will make a Stone run down-hill, it is its natural Motion. There is nothing that is so easily exposed and put to hazard, as the Favour of God. Now this being the great Sin of Man, and the Cause of other Sins, it was needful that the Odiousness of this Sin should be set forth by the bitterness of Christ's Sorrow under the want of the Love of God. Christ's Complaints show how God's Favour is to be valued, and that it is a dangerous thing to part with it for carnal Satisfactions. The Consolations of God are cheap and small things in the eyes of most Men in the World, What is more slighted than God, and Christ, and our own Salvation, and neglected for very Trifles. And then what more perfect Cure, and better Way to instruct the World, than that these Sins could not be expiated, but by the desertion of the Son of God, and his bitter Complaints for the Suspension of the Effects of the Love of God to him.