•^ Never did any mere creature challenge to himself the honour due to God, but miscarried and were confounded. Witness tlie angels that God cast out of heaven, 2 Pet. ii. 4; and Adam tliat he cast out of paradise, Gen. iii. 22-24 ; and Herod, whom the angel smote with a fatal blow, Acts xii. 23 ; and those several Popes that we read of in ecclesiastical stories ; and therefore had Jesus Christ been but a mere creature, divine justice would have confounded him for making himself a God.
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blessed Trinity. ' All things that the Father hath are mine,' This he speaketh in the person of the mediator, ' Because of his fulness we all receive grace for grace,' John i. 16 ; and herein sheweth the unity of essence in the holy Trinity, and community of power, wisdom, sanctity, truth, eternity, glory, majesty. Such is the strict union of the persons of the blessed Trinity, that there is among them a perfect communion in all things, for ' all things that the Father hath are mine.' And let thus much suffice for the proof of the godhead of Christ.
Concerning the manhood of Christ, let me say, that as he is very God, so he is very man : 1 Tim. ii. 5, ' the man Christ Jesus,' Christ is true man, but not mere man ; verus, sed non merus. The word is not to be taken exclusively, as denying the divine nature. Christ is 0edv9po)iTo<;, both God and man ; sometimes denominated from the one nature, and sometimes from the other ; sometimes called God, and sometimes man ; yet so as he is truly both, and in that respect fitly said to be a mediator betwixt God and men, having an interest in and participating of both natures. This title, ' the Son of man,' is given to Christ in the New Testament four score and eight times, the design being not only to express a man, according to the Syrian dialect then used, i^^2 12, bar nosho; nor only to express Christ's humanity, who was truly man, in all things like unto us, sin only excepted ; nor only to intimate his humility, by calling himself so often by this humble name ; but also to tell us to what a high honour God hath raised our nature in him, and to confute their imaginations who denied him to be very man, flesh, blood, and bones, as we truly are ; and who held, that whatever he was, and whatever he did, and whatever he suffered, was only seeming and in appearance, and not real ; and to lead us to that original promise, the first that was made to mankind, ' The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head,' Gen. iii. 15, that so he might intimate, saith Epiphanius, that himself was the party meant, intended, and foretold of by all the prophets, who was to come into the world, to all nations in the world, Jews and Gentiles originally alike descended of the woman, who both had a like interest in the woman and her seed, though the Jew^s did and might challenge greater propriety in the seed of Abraham than the Gentiles could, Rom. iii. 1,2; but they having been a long time, as it were, God's favourites, a selected people, a chosen nation, did wholly appropriate the Messias to themselves, and would endure no co-partners, Exod. xix. 6 ; 1 Pet. ii. 9 ; nor that any should have any right, title, or interest in him but themselves ; and therefore they would never talk otherwise than of the Messias, the King of Israel, the son of David, never naming him once the light of the Gentiles, the expectation of the Gentiles, the hope and desire of the eternal hills, the hope of all the ends of the earth, the seed of the woman, the Son of man, as descending from Eve, extracted from Adam, and allied unto all mankind. i And it is observable that the evangelist Luke, at the story of Christ's baptism, when he was to be installed into his ministry, and had that glorious testimony from heaven, deriveth his pedigree up to the first Adam, the better to draw all men's eyes to that first promise concerning the seed of the woman, and to cause them to own him for that seed there promised, and for that ^ Isa. xlii. 6; Hab. iii. 6 ; Vs. Ixv. 5 ; Gen. iii. 15; Luke iii. 23, to the end.
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effect that is there mentioned of dissolving the works of Satan, And as that evangelist giveth that hint when he is now entering this quarrel with Satan, even in the entrance of his ministry, so doth he very fre- quently and commonly by this very phrase give the same intimation for the same purpose. No sooner had Nathanael proclaimed him the Son of God : John i. 49, * Nathanael answered, and said unto him, Kabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel :' but he instantly titles himself the Son of man, ver. 51 ; not only to shew his humanity, for that Nathanael was assured of by the words of Philip, who calls him Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph, ver. 45 ; but also to draw the thoughts of the hearers to the first promise, and to work them to look for a full recovery of all that by the second Adam which was lost in the first. Though the gates of heaven were shut against the first Adam by reason of his fall, yet were they open to the second Adam : ver. 51, 'And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you' — this double aisseveration, ' Verily, verily,' puts the matter beyond all doubt and controversy — ' hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man,' — the Jacob's ladder, the bridge that joineth heaven and earth together, as Gregory hath it.^ This 51st verse doth greatly illustrate Christ's glory, and further confirm believers' faith, that Christ is Lord of angels even in his state of humiliation, and hath them ready at his call, as he or his people shall need their service, to move from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth. This title, ' the Son of man,' shews that the Son of God was also the Son of man ; and that he delighted to be so, and therefore doth so often take this title to himself, ' the Son of man.'