2. He who was actually the Son of God before his conception, nativity, endowment with power or exaltation, is not the Son of God on these accounts, but on that only which is antecedent to them. Now, by virtue of all the arguments and testimonies before cited, as also of all those that shall be pi-oduced for the proof and evincing ■of the eternal deity of the Son of God, the proposition is unmove- iably established, and the inference evidently follows thereupon.
But yet the proposition, as laid down, may admit of farther con- firmation at present. It is, then, testified to, Prov. xxx. 4, " What is his name, and what is his Son's name, if thou canst tell?" He was, therefore, the Son of God, and he was incomprehensible, even then before his incarnation. Ps. ii. 7, " Thou art my Son; thcr' day have I begotten thee." Isa. ix. 6, " Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given : and the government shall be upon his shoulder : and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlast- ing Father, The Prince of Peace." He is a Son, as he is the everlast- ing Father. And to this head of testimonies belongs what we urged before from Prov, viii. 22, etc. " He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature," Col. i. 15, which surely as to his incarnation he was not. " Before Abraham was, I am," John viii. 58. But of these places, in the following chapter, I shall speak at large.
3. Christ was so the Son of God that he that was made like him was to be ivithout father, mother, or genealogy: Heb. vii. 8, "With- out father, without mother, without descent, having neither begin- ning of days nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God." But now Christ, in respect of his conception and nativity, had a mother (and one, they say, that supplied the room of father), had a genealogy that is upon record, and beginning of life, etc.; so that upon these accounts he was not the Son of God, but on that wherein he had none of all these things, in the want whereof Melchisedec was made like to him. I shall only add, —
4. That which only manifests the filiation of Christ is not tlie cause of it. The cause of a thing is that which gives it its being. The manifestation of it is only that which declares it to be so. That all things insisted on as the causes of Christ's filiation, by them with Avhom we have to do, did only declare and manifest him so to be
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who was the Son of God, the Scripture wituesseth : " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God," Luke i. '35. He shall be called so, — there- by declared to be so: " And great was the mystery of godUness: God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory," 1 Tim. iii. 16. All the causes of Christ's filiation as- signed by our adversaries are evidently placed as manifestations of God in him, or of his being the Son of God : " Declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resur- rection from the dead," Rom. i. 8, 4. The absurdity of assigning dis- tinct and so far different causes of the same effect of filiation, whether you make them total or partial, need not be insisted on.
Farther (to add one consideration more), says Socinus, "Christ was the Son of God upon the account of his holiness and righteo^isness, and therein his likeness to God." Now, this he had not, according to his principles, in his infancy. He proves Adam not to have been righteous in the state of innocency, because he had yielded actual obedience to no law: no more had Christ done in his infancy. Therefore, — (1.) He was not the Son of God upon the account of his nativity; nor (2.) did he become the Son of God any otherwise than we do, namely, by hearing the word, learning the mind, and doing the will of God. (3.) God did not give his only- begotten Son for us, but gave the son of Mary, that he might (by all that which we supposed he had done for us) be made the Son of God. And so (4.) this sending of Christ doth not so much commend the love of God to us as to him, that he sent him to die and rise that he might be made God and the Son of God. (5.) Neither can any eximious love of Christ to us be seen in what he did and suffered ; for bad he not done and suffered what he did, he had not been the Son of God. (6.) And also, if Christ be, on the account of his excellencies, graces, and gifts, the Son of God (which is one way of his filiation insisted on), — and to be God and the Son of God is, as they say, all one, and as it is indeed, — then all who are renewed into the image of God, and are thereby the sons of God (as are all believers), are gods also!