Twenty sermons preached at Oxford before His Majesty, and elsewhere

2. This humane nature being thus assumed, he was content to deprive himself a long time of that estate of glory, which he might have in our humane nature always (after it's assumption) enjoyed, and in that time was as obedient, as the meanest and poorest servant of his Father. Nor was he only actively, but passively obedient; He was obedient unto the death: He was content to lay down his life for our Redemption. And it was not every death that would serve the turn, but it must be the death of the Cross, the most accursed shameful and painful death, that death which was most suitable, and best able to answer the wrath of God.

2. This humane nature being thus assumed, he was content to deprive himself a long time of that estate of glory, which he might have in our humane nature alwayes (after it's assumption) enjoyed, and in that time was as obedient, as the meanest and poorest servant of his Father. Nor was he only actively, but passively obedient; He was obedient unto the death: He was content to lay down his life for our Redemption. And it was not every death that would serve the turn, but it must be the death of the Cross, the most accursed shameful and painful death, that death which was most suitable, and best able to answer the wrath of God.

First, He humbled himself by taking our nature upon him: He that thought it no robbery to be equal with God, took upon him the form of a man. If it were an abasement for God to look upon heaven the most glorious of his works, how much more to take upon him a clod, or piece of this earth, and unite it to his own sacred person for ever. This was a descending indeed, he descended first that he might ascend. Eph. 4.9. Now that he ascended, what is it, but tha• he descended first into the lower parts of the earth? That is, he descended into the womb of the Virgin; and it was a great abasement indeed for him thus to descend: Wherefore the Psalmist speaking of the wonderful framing of the Babe in the womb, saith,