A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of…

1. He was subject to uncommon humiliation and sufferings in his infancy. He was born to that end that he might die; and therefore he did as it were begin to die as soon as he was born. His mother suffered in an uncommon manner in bearing him. When her travail came upon her, it is said, "there was no room in the inn," Luke ii.7. She was forced to betake herself to a stable; and therefore Christ was born in the place of the bringing forth of the beasts. Thus he suffered in his birth, as though he had been meaner and viler than a man, and not possessed of the dignity of the human nature, but had been of the rank of the brute creatures. And we may conclude, that his mother's circumstances in other respects were proportionably strait and difficult, and that she was destitute of the conveniences necessary for so young an infant which others were wont to have; for want of which the new-born babe without doubt suffered much.

Besides, he was persecuted in his infancy. They began to seek his life as soon as he was born. Herod, the chief man of the land, was so engaged to him, that, in order to it, he killed all the children in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under. Christ suffered banishment in his infancy, was driven out of his native country into Egypt, and without doubt suffered much by being carried so long a journey, when he was so young, into a strange country.

II. Christ was subject to great humiliation in his private life at Nazareth. He there led a servile obscure life, in a mean laborious occupation: for he is called not only the carpenter's son, but the carpenter: Mark vi.3. "Is not this the carpenter, the brother of James and Joses, and Judah, and Simon?" He, by hard labour, earned his bread before he ate it, and so suffered that curse which God pronounced on Adam,