The covenant of life opened, or, A treatise of the covenant of grace

Now the active obedience of Christ falls under a twofold consideration. 1. As the Man Christs perfect conformity to the Law of God, so as man he was obliged to do and suffer all that he did and suffered,¹ even to lay down his life for man. But had he been only man his righteousness had neither▪ been by condignity meritorious, no• yet satisfactory for us. But 2. The whole course of Christs obedience from his birth to the grave, by doing and suffering, is to be considered as the doing and suffering of so excellent a person, his being born, his praying, preaching, dying, coming from a Person God-Man. Now the Law required not praying, preaching of ⟨p. 227⟩God-man, the blood of God, or the dying of him who was God-Man. And so all these being both so excellent, and then so undue, have respect of satisfaction to God. 2. The active obedience of Christ & all that Christ did and suffered were performed by him in his state of humiliation: In which he was poor, [Greek or Hebrew], 2 Cor. 8.9. for us, so also by the same ground a weeping man, hungry, thirsty, weary for us, made lower then the Angels by the suffering of death, ²Heb. 2.9. Humbled by partaking of flesh and blood, because of the children, Heb. 2.14. Emptied himself for us, Ph. 2. This was, as Pareus well saith, perpetua quaedam passio & paena peccatorum nostrorum, fuit tota vita Christi: All these have a respect of punishment and suffering. For since Christ was both a viator and a comprehensor, and such a holy sinless person, he ought to have had the actual possession of the Crown of Glory from the womb, and so should have been free of weeping, hunger, thirst, weariness, groaning, sighing, sadness, persecution, reproaches, &c. all which adhered to all his active holiness, and therefore in that his actions were satisfactory passions. For satisfaction is defined a voluntary restoring of the equivalent, and as good in the place of what is taken away▪ and the good restored must be,