stock of him, and finally, hanged him up by the hands and the feet
alive, and gave him vinegar to increase his affliction, when he
complained that his anguish had made him thirsty. And yet all this
could not take his heart off the work of our redemption. To die
he came, die he would, and die he did before he made his return
to the Father, for our sins, that we might live through him.
7 Nor may what we read of in the word concerning those temporal
sufferings that he underwent be over-looked, and passed by without
serious consideration; they being a part of the curse that our sin
had deserved! For all temporal plagues are due to our sin while we
live, as well as the curse of God to everlasting perdition, when
we die. Wherefore this is the reason why the whole life of the
Lord Jesus was such a life of affliction and sorrow, he therein
bare our sicknesses, and took upon him our deserts: So that now
the curse in temporals, as well as the curse in spirituals, and
of everlasting malediction, is removed by him away from God's
people; and since he overcame them, and got to the cross, it was
by reason of the worthiness of the humble obedience that he yielded
to his Father's law in our flesh. For his whole life (as well as
his death) was a life of merit and purchase, and desert. Hence it
is said, "he increased in favour with God" (Luke 2:52). For his
works made him still more acceptable to him: For he standing in the
room of man, and becoming our reconciler to God; by the heavenly
majesty he was counted as such, and so got for us what he earned
by his mediatory works; and also partook thereof as he was our
head himself. And was there not in all these things love, and
love that was infinite? Love which was not essential to his divine
nature, could never have carried him through so great a work as
this: Passions here would a failed, would a retreated, and have
given the recoil; yea, his very humanity would here have flagged