* Our author must allude to a diflference in the vowel-points; Var:, as in Isa. Ixvi. 7, signifying jaams, and Vah, with the scghol instead of the tsere, being translated cord or rope. The word occurs also in composition with % under the meaning of " cords," or " fetters," as iu Job xxsvi. 8, "'sb-'Vaha . — Ed.
182 WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN AND ON [BOOK 11.
" raise him from tlie dead/' as the judge by his order delivereth an acquitted prisoner or one who hath answered the law. The same work he also takes unto himself: John x. 17, 18, "I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." For although men by violence took away his life, when " with wicked hands they cruciiied and slew him," Actsii. 23, iii. 15, yet because they had neither authority nor ability so to do without his own consent, he saith no man did, or could, take away his life; — that is, against his will, by power over him, as the lives of other men are taken away ; for this neither angels nor men could do. So, also, although the Father is said to raise him from the dead by taking off the sentence of the law, which he had answered, yet he himself also took his life again by an act of the love, care, and power of his divine nature, his living again being an act of his person, al- though the human nature only died. But the peculiar efficiency in the reuniting of his most holy soul and body was an effect of the power of the Holy Spirit: 1 Pet. iii. 18, " He was put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit;" ^uoToinklg ds rw Uvsv/j^art, — " he was restored to life by the Spirit." And this was that Spirit whereby he preached unto them that were disobedient in the days of Noah, verses 19, 20; or that Spirit of Christ which was in the prophets from the foundation of the world, chap. i. 1 1 ; by which he preached in Noah unto that disobedient generation, 2 Pet. ii. 5, whereby the Spirit of God strove for a season with those inhabitants of the old world, Gen. vi. 3 ; — that is, the Holy Spirit of God. To the same purpose we are instructed by our apostle: Rom. viii. 11, " If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you;" — "God shall quicken our mortal bodies also by the same Spirit whereby he raised Christ from the dead;" for so the relation of the one work to the other requires the words to be understood. And he asserts again the same expressly, Eph. i. 17-20. He prays that God would give his Holy Spirit unto them as a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, verse 1 7. The effects thereof in them and upon them are described, verse 18. And this he desires that they may so be made partakers of as that, by the work of the Spirit of God in themselves, renewing and quick- ening them, they might have an experience of that exceeding great- ness of his power which he put forth in the Lord Christ when he raised him from the dead. And the evidence or testimony given unto his being the Son of God, by his resurrection from the dead, is said to be " according to the Spirit of holiness," or the Holy Spirit, Rom. i. 4. He was positively declared to be the Son of God by his
CHAP. IV.] THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST. 183
resurrection from the dead, sv 8uvd/ubsi, xa-a Uviu/j,a ay/wcui/^jc, — that is, by the " powerful working of the Holy Spirit." This, also, is the intendment of that expression, 1 Tim. iii. 16, " Justified in the Spirit." God was " manifest in the flesh," by his incarnation and passion therein; and "justified in the SiDirit," by a declaration of his acquitment from the sentence of death and all the evils which he underwent, with the reproaches wherewith he was contemptuously used, by his quickening and resurrection from the dead, through the mighty and effectual working of the Spirit of God.
Tenthly, It was the Holy Spirit that glorified the human nature [of Christ], and made it every way meet for its eternal residence at the right hand of God, and a pattern of the glorification of the bodies of them that believe on him. He who first made his nature holy, now made it glorious. And as we are made conformable unto him in our souls here, his image being renewed in us by the Spirit, so he is in his body, now glorified by the effectual operation of the same Sj^irit, the exemplar and pattern of that glory which in our mortal bodies we shall receive by the same Spirit; for "when he shall appear, we shall be like him," 1 John iii. 2, seeing he will " change our vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto him- self," Phil. iii. 21.