(3.) By some his human nature was opposed — for no stone did Satan leave unturned in the pursuit of his gi'eat design. And that which in all these things he aimed at, was the substitution of a false Christ in the room of Him who, in one person, was both the Son of man and the Son of the livino' God. And herein he infected the minds of men with endless imaginations. Some denied him to have any real human nature, but [alleged him] to have been a phantasm, an appearance, a dispensation, a mere cloud acted by divine power; some, tliat he was made of heavenly flesh, brought from above, and which (as some also affirmed) was a parcel of the divine nature. Some affirmed that his body was not animated, as ours are, by a
40 THE PERSON OF CHRIST.
rational soul, but was immediately acted by the power of the Divine Being, wliich was unto it in the room of a living soul ; some, that his body was of an ethereal nature, and was at length turned into the sun ; with many such diabolical delusions. And there yet want not attempts, in these days, of various sorts, to destroy the verity of his human nature ; and I know not Avhat some late fantastical opinions about the nature of glorified bodies may tend unto. The design of Satan, in all these pernicious imaginations, is to break the cognation and alliance between Christ in his human nature and the church, whereon the salvation of it doth absolutely depend.
3. He raised a vehement opposition against the hypostatical union, or the union of these two natures in one person. This he did in the Nestorian heresy, which greatly, and for a long time, pestered the church. The authors and promoters of this opinion granted the Lord Christ to have a divine nature, to be the Son of the living God. They also acknowledged the truth of his human nature, that he was truly a man, even as we are. But the personal union between these two natures they denied. A union, they said, there was between them, but such as consisted only in love, power, and care. God did, as they imagined, eminently and powerfully manifest himself in the man Christ Jesus — had him in an especial regard and love, and did act in him more than in any other. But that the Son of God assumed our nature into joersonal subsistence with himself — whereby whole Christ was one person, and all his mediatory acts were the acts of that one person, of him who was both God and man — this they would not acknowledge. And this pernicious imagination, though it seem to make great concessions of trutli, doth no less effectually evert the foundation of the church than the former. For, if the divine and human nature of Christ do not constitute one indi- vidual j^erson, all that he did for us was only as a man — which would have been altogether insufficient for the salvation of the church, nor had God redeemed it with his own blood. This seems to be the opinion of some amongst us, at this day, about the person of Christ. They acknowledge the being of the eternal Word, the Son of God ; and they allow in the like manner the verity of his human nature, or own that man Christ Jesus. Only they say, that the eternal Word was in him and with him, in the same kind as it is with other believers, but in a supreme degree of manifestation and power. But, though in these things there is a great endeavour to put a new colour and appearance on old imaginations, the design of Satan is one and the same in them all, viz., to oppose the building of the church upon its j^roper, sole foundation. And these things shall be afterward expressly spoken unto.
I intend no more in these instances but briefly to demonstrate,
VARIOUS FORMS OF OPPOSITION. 41
that the principal opposition of tlie gates of hell unto the church lay always unto the building of it, by faith, on the person of Christ.
It were easy also to demonstrate that Mohammedanism, which hath been so sore a stroke unto the Christian profession, is nothing but a concurrence and combination of these two ways, of force and fraud, in opposition unto the person of Christ.
It is true that Satan, after all this, by another way, attempted the doctrine of the offices and grace of Christ, with the worship of God in him. And this he hath carried so far, as that it issued in a fatal antichristian apostasy; which is not of my present consideration.
But we may proceed to what is of our own immediate concern- ment. And the same work with that before described is stiU earned on. The person of Christ, the faith of the church concerning it, the relation of the church unto it, the building of the church on it, the life and preservation of the church thereby, are the things that the gates of hell are engaged in opposition unto. For,
1. It is known with what subtlety and urgency his divuie nature and person are opposed by the Socinians. What an accession is made daily unto their incredulity, what inchnation of mind multi- tudes do manifest towards their pernicious ways, are also evident unto all who have any concernment in or for religion. But this argument I have laboured in on other occasions.