“Some divines have observed seven things in the passion of Christ, altogether contrary to the judgment of the natural man: the great impotency and weakness in him who was omnipotent; the greatest suffering in that which was impassable; the greatest foolishness (according to the judgment of men) in the deepest wisdom; greatest poverty in the God of all riches; greatest shame in the greatest glory and majesty; greatest dereliction and forsaking in the most perfect union; and great severity of the Father against his Son, in the greatest love of the Father to the Son, in the very time of his suffering. Many more might be added in the administration of the kingdom of Christ after his ascension into heaven, both at the first planting of the gospel in the primitive times, and in the time of reformation of religion in divers kingdoms and nations. And therefore as natural sense corrects the errors of our imagination, and makes us see the folly of our fancies, and as natural reason corrects the errors of our sense, and makes us judge otherwise than our sense teaches; so must the divine power, and superior faculty of faith, correct the errors of our natural reason. If we will acquaint ourselves with the secrets of the gospel, and with the proceedings of the kingdom of Christ, we begin no sooner seriously to think upon them, but we seem to ourselves to be transported and carried to another world, and are constrained to acknowledge and confess to the glory of God, that flesh and blood does not reveal these things unto us.” Alexander Henderson, Sermon to the House of Lords, May 28, 1645, in Sermons Preached before the English Houses of Parliament by the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly of Divines, 1643–1645 (Naphtali Press; 2011) 162–163.
