Patristic A.D. 407
“(Hom. lx. 2) Or He says, in condescension to our weakness, Though there were nothing else which made Me love you, this would, that ye are so loved by My Father, that, by dying for you, I shall win His love. Not that He was not loved by the Father before, or that we are the cause of such love. For the same purpose He shews that He does not come to His Passion unwillingly: No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself.”
Catena Aurea: Gospel of John, as excerpted in the Catena Aurea on John 10:14-21
PD · J. H. Newman (Oxford, 1845) ↗