Twenty sermons preached at Oxford before His Majesty, and elsewhere

1. The person who it is that will thus humble himself. The Apostle grounds his Exhortation on the fourth verse; where he tells us, We ought not to look every man on his own things, but every man on the things of others, Let this mind be in you, which also was in Christ Jesus. If Christ had looked only on his own things, he might have saved himself a great deal of labour and pains. He being the Son of God, might as soon as he was born have challenged a seat with God in Glory: He need not have gone per viam: He might be Comprehensor in meta: But he would pass on to his journey's end in a thorny and troublesome way. Let then the same mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus; who minded not his own things, but the good of others.

2. What it was wherein he humbled himself. He took upon him the form of a servant, and was obedient unto the death of the Cross. The highest humiliation that can be; that he who is above all praise, whom Angels adored, that he should be brought from heaven to earth; and not only be a Pilgrim there, but have a sorrowful and pitiful Pilgrimage; and at last to be cut off by a shameful death from the land of the living. This Humiliation hath no parallel.

2. What it was wherein he humbled himself. He took upon him the form of a servant, and was obedient unto the death of the Cross. The highest humiliation that can be; that he who is above all praise, whom Angels adored, that he should be brought from heaven to earth; and not only be a Pilgrim there, but have a sorrowful and pittiful Pilgrimage; and at last to be cut off by a shameful death from the land of the living. This Humiliation hath no parallel.

The depth of the humiliation consists in the height of the person thus humbled; and were not he so high, it could have done us no good. It's no small satisfaction that can appease God's wrath: therefore the Apostle, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, speaking of Melchizedek, the type of Christ, concludes, how great this man was.