When the Eternal Father saw that we were all dead, and deprived of his grace by sin, what did he do? for the immense love, nay, as the Apostle writes, for the too great love he bore us, he sent his beloved Son to make atonement for us; and so to restore to us that life which sin had robbed us of: Who through his exceeding charity with which He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ.[1] And in granting us his Son (not sparing his Son, that he might spare us), he has granted us every good together with him, his grace, his love, and paradise, since assuredly all these gifts are much less than that of his Son: He that spared not even His own Son, but delivered Him tip for its all, how hath He not also with Him given us all things.[2]
And so, likewise, the Son, through his love towards us, has given himself wholly to us: Who loved me, and de livered Himself for me.[3] In order to redeem us from ever lasting death, and to recover for us the divine grace and heaven which we had forfeited, he became man, and put on flesh like our own: And the Word was made flesh.[4] Be hold, then, a God reduced to nothingness: But emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, … and in habit found as a man.[5] Behold the sovereign of the world humbling himself so low as to assume the form of a servant, and to subject himself to all the miseries which the rest of men endure.
But what is more astonishing still is, that he could very well have saved us without dying and without suf-
- ↑ "Propter nimiam charitatem suam qua dilexit nos, et cum essemus mortui peccatis, convivificavit nos in Christo."—Eph. ii. 4.
- ↑ "Qui etiam proprio Filio suo non pepercit, sed pro nobis omni bus tradidit illum: quomodo non etiam cum illo omnia nobis donavit?"—Rom. viii. 32.
- ↑ "Dilexit me, et tradidit semetipsum pro me."—Gal. ii. 20.
- ↑ "Et Verbum caro factum est."—John, i. 14.
- ↑ "Exinanivit semetipsum formam servi accipiens, … et habitu inventus ut homo."—Phil. ii. 7.
