A Theatise on the Ineffable Mystery of our Redemption

Extract

Men can judge from this how they should love that Lord who, wicked as they were, and his deadly enemies, forestalled them with his mercy and resolved to bestow on them this signal favour. Saint John, in his Epistle, extols this divine prevention, exhorting us to love our Bedeemer, for he first loved us; that is, he determined to redeem those who were lost before we, being sons of wrath, could love him meritoriously since He had first to give us the power by the grace of the Bedemption. Saint John extols this by the divine words, “God so loved the world as to give his only begotten Son”, (John., Ill, 16). And ‘to give’ him was to deliver him up to the most severe sufferings ever endured. If God had said that he gave Christ solely as King, or as Master, or as an example and model of all the virtues, (as in fact he did give him), we should not have been so astonished, for it is natural to that supreme Goodness to do good and to communicate himself to his creatures, but to “give him” meant to deliver Him over to the worst cruelty and insults ever known. This is what paralyses the minds of those who meditate upon it. For there was no other reason for it except that the Eternal Father knew what great asd unspeakable benefits to mankind would ensue. God’s love for us and desire for our welfare were so intense that he did not think the blood and death of his only Son too dear a price to pay for it.