could be seven times heat and not burn, that lions could be hungry and not bite, is strange, miraculously strange, but super-miraculous that God _could_ die; but that God _would_ die is an exaltation of that. But even of that also it is a super-exaltation, that God should die, must die, and _non exitus_ (said Saint Augustine), God the Lord had no issue but by death, and _oportuit pati_ (says Christ himself), all this Christ ought to suffer, was bound to suffer; _Deus ultimo Deus_, says David, God is the God of revenges, he would not pass over the son of man unrevenged, unpunished. But then _Deus ultionum libere egit_ (says that place), the God of revenges works freely, he punishes, he spares whom he will. And would he not spare himself? he would not: _Dilectio fortis ut mors, love is strong as death_;[376] stronger, it drew in death, that naturally is not welcome. _Si possibile_ says Christ, _if it be possible, let this cup pass_, when his love, expressed in a former decree with his Father, had made it impossible. _Many waters quench not love._[377] Christ tried many: he was baptised out of his love, and his love determined not there; he mingled blood with water in his agony, and that determined not his love; he wept pure blood, all his blood at all his eyes, at all his pores, in his flagellation and thorns (_to the Lord our God belonged the issues of blood_), and these expressed, but these did not quench his love. He would not spare, nay, he could not spare himself. There was nothing more free, more voluntary, more spontaneous than the death of Christ. It is true, _libere egit_, he died voluntarily; but yet when we consider the contract that had passed between his Father and him, there was an _oportuit_, a kind of necessity upon him: all this _Christ ought to suffer_. And when shall we date this obligation, this _oportuit_, this necessity? When shall we say that began? Certainly this decree by which Christ was to suffer all this was an eternal decree, and was there any thing before that that was eternal? Infinite love, eternal love; be pleased to follow this home, and to consider it seriously, that what liberty soever we can conceive in Christ to die or not to die; this necessity of dying, this decree is as eternal as that liberty; and yet how small a matter made he of this necessity and this dying? His Father calls it but a bruise, and but a bruising of his heel[378] (the serpent shall bruise his heel), and yet that was, that the serpent should practise and compass his death. Himself calls it but a baptism, as though he were to be the better for it. I _have a baptism to be baptised with_,[379] and he was in pain till it was accomplished, and yet this baptism was his death. The Holy Ghost calls it joy (_for the joy which was set before him he endured the cross_),[380] which was not a joy of his reward after his passion, but a joy that filled him even in the midst of his torments, and arose from