ture. Ye all know that man consisteth of two parts, wHch are some- times called flesh and spirit, and sometimes called soul and body. Now by a synecdoche, either of these parts may be put for the whole : and so sometimes the soul is put for the whole man, and sometimes the body is put for the whole man, as you may see by comparing the scriptures in the margin together. i^ Christ did assume the whole man, he did assume the soul as well as the body, and both under the term flesh. And indeed, unless he had assumed the whole man, the whole man could not have been saved. If Christ had not taken the whole man, he could not have saved the whole man. Christ took the nature of man that he might be a fit mediator. If he had not been man, he could not have died ; and if he had not been Grod, he could not have satisfied. So great was the difficulty of, restoring the image of God in lost man, and of restoring him to God's favour, and the dignity of sonship, that no less could do it than the natural Son of God his becoming the Son of man, to suffer in our nature ; and so great was the Father's love and the Son's love to fallen man, as to lay a foundation of reconciliation betwixt God and man in the personal union of the divine and human nature of Christ. So much is im- ported in those words, ' the Word was made flesh.' 2 The person of the godhead that was incarnate was neither the Father nor the Holy Ghost, but the Son, the second person, for ' the Word was made flesh.' There being a real distinction of the persons, that one of them is not another ; and each of them having their proper manner of subsistence, the one of them might be incarnate, and not the other ; and it is the Godhead, not simply considered, but the person of the Son subsisting in that Godhead, that was incarnate. And it was very convenient that the second or middle person, in order of subsistence of the blessed Trinity, should be the reconciler of God and man ; and that * he, by whom aU things were made,' Col. i. 16, 17, should be the restorer and maker of the new world ; and that he who was ' the express image of his Father,' Heb. i. 2, 3, should be the repairer of the image of God in us. Oh the admirable love and wisdom of God that shines in this, that the second person in the Trinity is set on work to procure our redemption ! Though reason could never have found out such a way, yet when God hath revealed it, reason, though but shallow, can see a fitness in it ; because there being a necessity that the Saviour of man should be man, and an impossibility that any but God should save him, and one person in the Trinity being to be incarnate, it agrees to reason that the first person in the Trinity should not be the mediator ; for who should send him ? he is of none, and therefore could not be sent. There must be one sent to reconcile the enmity, and another to give gifts to friends ; two proceeding persons, the Son from the Father, and the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son. Accord- ingly the second person, which is the Son, he is sent upon the first errand, to reconcile man to God ; and the third person, the Holy Ghost, he is sent to give gifts to men so reconciled ; so as to reason it
^ Acts xxvii, 37 ; Gen. xlvi. 27 ; Eom. xii. 1, and iii. 20.
* Christ put himself into a lousy, leprous suit of ours, to expiate our pride and robbery in reaching after the Deit}% and to heal us of our spiritual leprosy ; for if he had not assumed our flesh he had not saved us. — [Gregory] Nazianzen.
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