wants not its aggravations: he hath slighted thy goodness, and accepted
thy enemy as his counsellor; but it was not a pure act of his own, as
the devil’s revolt was: he had a tempter, and the devil had none: he
had, I acknowledge, an understanding to know thy will, and a power
to obey it; yet he was mutable, and had a capacity to fall. It was no
difficult task that was set him, nor a hard yoke that was laid upon him;
yet he had a brutish part, as well as a rational, and sense as well as
soul; whereas the fallen angel was a pure intellectual spirit. Did God
create the world to suffer an eternal dishonor, in letting himself be
outwitted by Satan, and his work wrested out of his hands? Shall the
work of eternal counsel presently sink into irreparable destruction,
and the honor of an almighty and wise work be lost in the ruin of the
creature? This would seem contrary to the nature of thy goodness, to
make man only to render him miserable: to design him in his creation
for the service of the devil, and not for the service of his Creator.
What else could be the issue, if the chief work of thy hand, defaced
presently after the erecting, should forever remain in this marred
condition? What can be expected upon the continuance of his misery, but
a perpetual hatred, and enmity of thy creature against thee? Did God
in creation design his being hated, or his being loved by his creature?
Shall God make a holy law, and have no obedience to that law from that
creature whom it was made to govern? Shall the curious workmanship of
God, and the excellent engravings of the law of nature in his heart,
be so soon defaced, and remain in that blotted condition forever? This
fall thou couldst not but in the treasures of thy infinite knowledge
foresee. Why hadst thou goodness then to create him in an integrity,
if thou wouldst not have mercy to pity him in misery? Shall thy enemy
forever trample upon the honor of thy work, and triumph over the glory
of God, and applaud himself in the success of his subtilty? Shall thy
creature only passively glorify thee as an avenger, and not actively
as a compassionater? Am not I a perfection of thy nature as well as
justice? Shall justice engross all, and I never come into view? It is
resolved already, that the fallen angels shall be no subjects for me
to exercise myself upon; {a557} and I have now less reason than before
to plead for them: they fell with a full consent of will, without any
motion from another; and not content with their own apostasy they envy
thee, and thy glory upon earth, as well as in heaven, and have drawn
into their party the best part of the creation below. Shall Satan
plunge the whole creation in the same irreparable ruin with himself?
If the creature be restored, will he contract a boldness in sin by
impurity? Hast thou not a grace to render him ingenuous in obedience,
as well as a compassion to recover him from misery? What will hinder,
but that such a grace, which hath established the standing angels,
may establish this recovered creature? If I am utterly excluded from
exercising myself on men, as I have been from devils, a whole species
is lost; nay, I can never expect to appear upon the stage: if thou wilt
quite ruin him by justice, and create another world, and another man,
if he stand, thy bounty will be eminent, yet there is no room for mercy
to act, unless by the commission of sin, he exposeth himself to misery;
and if sin enter into another world, I have little hopes to be heard
then, if I am rejected now. Worlds will be perpetually created by
goodness, wisdom, and power; sin entering into these worlds, will be
perpetually punished by justice; and mercy, which is a perfection of
thy nature, will forever be commanded silence, and lie wrapt up in an
eternal darkness. Take occasion now, therefore, to expose me to the
knowledge of thy creature, since without misery, mercy can never set
foot into the world. Mercy pleads, if man be ruined, the creation is
in vain; justice pleads, if man be not sentenced, the law is in vain;
truth backs justice, and grace abets mercy. What shall be done in this
seeming contradiction? Mercy is not manifested, if man be not pardoned;
justice will complain, if man be not punished.
(3.) An expedient is found out, by the wisdom of God, to answer
these demands, and adjust the differences between them. The wisdom of
God answers, I will satisfy your pleas. The pleas of justice shall be
satisfied in punishing, and the pleas of mercy shall be received in
pardoning. Justice shall not complain for want of punishment, nor mercy
for want of compassion. I will have an infinite sacrifice to content
justice; and the virtue and fruit of that sacrifice shall delight mercy.
Here shall justice have punishment to accept, and mercy shall have
pardon to bestow. The rights of both are preserved, and the demands of
both amicably accorded in punishment and pardon, by transferring the
punishment of our crimes upon a surety, exacting a recompense from his
blood by justice, and conferring life and salvation upon us by mercy
without the expense of one drop of our own. Thus is justice satisfied
in its severities, and mercy in its indulgences. The riches of grace
are twisted with the terrors of wrath. The bowels of mercy are wound
about the flaming sword of justice, and the sword of justice protects
and secures the bowels of mercy. Thus is God righteous without being
cruel, and merciful without being unjust; his righteousness inviolable,
and the world recoverable. Thus is a resplendent mercy brought forth
in the midst of all the curses, confusions, and wrath threatened to
the offender. This is the admirable temperament found out by the wisdom
{a558} of God: his justice is honored in the sufferings of man’s surety;
and his mercy is honored in the application of the propitiation to
the offender (Rom. iii. 24, 25): “Being justified freely by his grace,
through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ: whom God hath set
forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his
righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the
forbearance of God.” Had we in our persons been sacrifices to justice,
mercy had forever been unknown; had we been solely fostered by mercy,
justice had forever been secluded; had we, being guilty, been absolved,
mercy might have rejoiced, and justice might have complained; had we
been solely punished, justice would have triumphed, and mercy grieved.
But by this medium of redemption, neither hath ground of complaint;
justice hath nothing to charge, when the punishment is inflicted; mercy
hath whereof to boast when the surety is accepted. The debt of the
sinner is transferred upon the surety, that the merit of the surety may
be conferred upon the sinner; so that God now deals with our sins in
a way of consuming justice, and with our persons in a way of relieving
mercy. It is highly better, and more glorious, than if the claim of one
had been granted, with the exclusion of the demand of the other; it had
then been either an unrighteous mercy, or a merciless justice; it is
now a righteous mercy, and a merciful justice.
2. The wisdom of God appears in the subject or person wherein these
were accorded; the Second Person is the blessed Trinity. There was a
congruity in the Son’s undertaking and effecting it rather than any
other person, according to the order of the persons, and the several
functions of the persons, as represented in Scripture. The Father,
after creation, is the lawgiver, and presents man with the image
of his own holiness and the way to his creatures’ happiness; but
after the fall, man was too impotent to perform the law, and too
polluted to enjoy a felicity. Redemption was then necessary; not
that it was necessary for God to redeem man, but it was necessary
for man’s happiness that he should be recovered. To this the Second
Person is appointed, that by communion with him, man might derive
a happiness, and be brought again to God. But since man was blind
in his understanding, and an enemy in his will to God, there must be
the exerting of a virtue to enlighten his mind, and bend his will to
understand, and accept of this redemption; and this work is assigned
to the Third Person, the Holy Ghost.
(1.) It was not congruous that the Father should assume human nature,
and suffer in it for the redemption of man. He was first in order; he
was the lawgiver, and therefore to be the judge. As lawgiver, it was
not convenient he should stand in the stead of the law‑breaker; and as
judge, it was as little convenient he should be reputed a malefactor.
That he who had made a law against sin denounced a penalty upon the
commission of sin, and whose part it was actually to punish the sinner,
should become sin for the wilful transgressor of his law. He being the
rector, how could he be an advocate and intercessor to himself? How
could he be the judge and the sacrifice? a judge, and yet a mediator
to himself? If he had been the sacrifice, there must be some person
to examine the validity {a559} of it, and pronounce the sentence of
acceptance. Was it agreeable that the Son should sit upon a throne of
judgment, and the Father stand at the bar, and be responsible to the
Son? That the Son should be in the place of a governor, and the Father
in the place of the criminal? That the Father should be bruised (Isa.
liii. 10) by the Son, as the Son was by the Father (Zech. xiii. 70)?
that the Son should awaken a sword against the Father, as the Father
did against the Son? That the Father should be sent by the Son, as the
Son was by the Father (Gal. iv. 4)? The order of the persons in the
blessed Trinity had been inverted and disturbed. Had the Father been
sent, he had not been first in order; the sender is before the person
sent: as the Father begets, and the son is begotten (John i. 14), so
the Father sends, and the son is sent. He whose orders is to send,
cannot properly send himself.
(2.) Nor was it congruous that the Spirit should be sent upon this
affair. If the Holy Ghost had been sent to redeem us, and the Son to
apply that redemption to us, the order of the Persons had also been
inverted; the Spirit, then, who was third in order, had been second
in operation. The Son would then have received of the Spirit, as the
Spirit doth now of Christ, “and shew it unto us” (John i. 15). As the
Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, so the proper function
and operation of it was in order after the operations of the Father
and the Son. Had the Spirit been sent to redeem us, and the Son sent by
the Father, and the Spirit to apply that redemption to us, the Son in
his acts had proceeded from the Father and the Spirit; the Spirit, as
sender, had been in order before the Son; whereas, the Spirit is called
“the Spirit of Christ,” as sent by Christ from the “Father” (Gal.
iv. 6; John xv. 27). But as the order of the works, so the order of
the Persons is preserved in their several operations. Creation, and a
law to govern the creature, precedes redemption. Nothing, or that which
hath no being, is not capable of a redeemed being. Redemption supposeth
the existence and the misery of a person redeemed. As creation precedes
redemption, so redemption precedes the application of it. As redemption
supposeth the being of the creature, so application of redemption
supposeth the efficacy of redemption. According to the order of these
works, is the order of the operations of the Three Persons. Creation
belongs to the Father, the first person; redemption, the second work,
is the function of the Son, the second person; application, the third
work, is the office of the Holy Ghost, the third person. The Father
orders it, the Son acts it, the Holy Ghost applies it. He purifies our
souls to understand, believe, and love these mysteries. He forms Christ
in the womb of the soul, as he did the body of Christ in the womb of
the Virgin. As the Spirit of God moved upon the waters, to garnish
and adorn the world, after the matter of it was formed (Gen. i. 2),
so he moves upon the heart, to supple it to a compliance with Christ,
and draws the lineaments of the new creation in the soul, after the
foundation is laid. The Son pays the price that was due from us to
God, and the Spirit is the earnest of the promises of life and glory
purchased by the merit of that {a560} death.[792] It is to be observed,
that the Father, under the dispensation of the law, proposed the
commands, with the promises and threatenings, to the understandings of
men; and Christ, under the dispensation of grace, when he was upon the
earth, proposeth the gospel as the means of salvation, exhorts to faith
as the condition of salvation; but it was neither the functions of the
one or the other to display such an efficacy in the understanding and
will to make men believe and obey; and, therefore, there were such few
conversions in the time of Christ, by his miracles. But this work was
reserved for the fuller and brighter appearance of the Spirit, whose
office it was to convince the world of the necessity of a Redeemer,
because of their lost condition; of the person of the Redeemer, the Son
of God; of the sufficiency and efficacy of redemption, because of his
righteousness and acceptation by the Father. The wisdom of God is seen
in preparing and presenting the objects, and then in making impression
of them upon the subject he intends. And thus is the order of the Three
Persons preserved.
(3.) The Second Person had the greatest congruity in this work. He by
whom God created the world was most conveniently employed in restoring
the defaced world (John i. 4): who more fit to recover it from its
lapsed state than he that had erected it in its primitive state (Heb.
i. 2)? He was the light of men in creation, and therefore it was most
reasonable he should be the light of men in redemption. Who fitter to
reform the Divine image than he that first formed it? Who fitter to
speak for us to God than he who was the Word (John i. 1)? Who could
better intercede with the Father than he who was the only begotten and
beloved Son? Who so fit to redeem the forfeited inheritance as the
Heir of all things? Who fitter and better to prevail for us to have
the right of children than he that possessed it by nature? We fell from
being the sons of God, and who fitter to introduce us into an adopted
state than the Son of God? Herein was an expression of the richer grace,
because the first sin was immediately against the wisdom of God, by an
ambitious affectation of a wisdom equal to God, that that person, who
was the wisdom of God, should be made a sacrifice for the expiation of
the sin against wisdom.
3. The wisdom of God is seen in the two natures of Christ, whereby
this redemption was accomplished. The union of the two natures was the
foundation of the union of God and the fallen creature.
1st. The union itself is admirable: “The Word is made flesh” (John
i. 14), one “equal with God in the form of a servant” (Phil. ii. 7).
When the apostle speaks of “God manifested in the flesh,” he speaks
“the wisdom of God in a mystery” (1 Tim. iii. 16); that which is
incomprehensible to the angels, which they never imagined before it
was revealed, which perhaps they never knew till they beheld it. I am
sure, under the law, the figures of the cherubims were placed in the
sanctuary, with their “faces looking towards the propitiatory,” in a
perpetual posture of contemplation and admiration (Exod. xxxvii. 9),
to which the apostle alludes (1 Pet. i. 12). Mysterious {a561} is the
wisdom of God to unite finite and infinite, almightiness and weakness,
immortality and mortality, immutability, with a thing subject to
change; to have a nature from eternity, and yet a nature subject to
the revolutions of time; a nature to make a law, and a nature to be
subjected to the law; to be God blessed forever, in the bosom of his
Father, and an infant exposed to calamities from the womb of his mother:
terms seeming most distant from union, most uncapable of conjunction,
to shake hands together, to be most intimately conjoined; glory and
vileness, fulness and emptiness, heaven and earth; the creature with
the Creator; he that made all things, in one person with a nature that
is made; Immanuel, God, and man in one; that which is most spiritual to
partake of that which is carnal flesh and blood (Heb. ii. 14); one with
the Father in his Godhead, one with us in his manhood; the Godhead to
be in him in the fullest perfection, and the manhood in the greatest
purity; the creature one with the Creator, and the Creator one with the
creature. Thus is the incomprehensible wisdom of God declared in the
“Word being made flesh.”
2d. In the manner of this union. A union of two natures, yet
no natural union. It transcends all the unions visible among
creatures:[793] it is not like the union of stones in a building, or
two pieces of timber fastened together, which touch one another only in
their superficies and outside, without any intimacy with one another.
By such a kind of union God would not be a man: the Word could not so
be made flesh. Nor is it a union of parts to the whole, as the members
and the body; the members are parts, the body is the whole; for the
whole results from the parts, and depends upon the parts: but Christ,
being God, is independent upon anything. The parts are in order of
nature before the whole, but nothing can be in order of nature before
God. Nor is it as the union of two liquors, as when wine and water are
mixed together, for they are so incorporated as not to be distinguished
from one another; no man can tell which particle is wine, and which is
water. But the properties of the Divine nature are distinguishable from
the properties of the human. Nor is it as the union of the soul and
body, so as that the Deity is the form of the humanity, as the soul is
the form of the body: for as the soul is but a part of the man, so the
Divinity would be then but a part of the humanity; and as a form, or
the soul, is in a state of imperfection, without that which it is to
inform, so the Divinity of Christ would have been imperfect till it
had assumed the humanity, and so the perfection of an eternal Deity
would have depended on a creature of time. This union of two natures
in Christ is incomprehensible: and it is a mystery we cannot arrive
to the top of, how the Divine nature, which is the same with that of
the Father and the Holy Ghost, should be united to the human nature,
without its being said that the Father and the Holy Ghost were united
to the flesh; but the Scripture doth not encourage any such notion; it
speaks only of the Word, the person of the Word being made flesh, and
in his being made flesh, distinguisheth him from the Father, as “the
{a562} only begotten of the Father” (John i. 14). The person of the Son
was the term of this union.
(1.) This union doth not confound the properties of the Deity and
those of the humanity. They remain distinct and entire in each other.
The Deity is not changed into flesh, nor the flesh transformed into God:
they are distinct, and yet united; they are conjoined, and yet unmixed:
the dues of either nature are preserved. It is impossible that the
majesty of the Divinity can receive an alteration. It is as impossible
that the meanness of the humanity can receive the impressions of the
Deity, so as to be changed into it, and a creature be metamorphosed
into the Creator, and temporary flesh become eternal, and finite mount
up into infinity: as the soul and body are united, and make one person,
yet the soul is not changed into the perfections of the body, nor the
body into the perfections of the soul. There is a change made in the
humanity, by being advanced to a more excellent union, but not in the
Deity, as a change is made in the air, when it is enlightened by the
sun, not in the sun, which communicates that brightness to the air.
Athanasius makes the burning bush to be a type of Christ’s incarnation
(Exod. iii. 2): the fire signifying the Divine nature, and the bush the
human. The bush is a branch springing up from the earth, and the fire
descends from heaven; as the bush was united to the fire, yet was not
hurt by the flame, nor converted into fire, there remained a difference
between the bush and the fire, yet the properties of the fire shined
in the bush, so that the whole bush seemed to be on fire. So in the
incarnation of Christ, the human nature is not swallowed up by the
Divine, nor changed into it, nor confounded with it, but so united,
that the properties of both remain firm: two are so become one, that
they remain two still: one person in two natures, containing the
glorious perfections of the Divine, and the weaknesses of the human.
The “fulness of the Deity dwells bodily in Christ” (Col. ii. 9).
(2.) The Divine nature is united to every part of the humanity.
The whole Divinity to the whole humanity; so that no part but may
be said to be the member of God, as well as the blood is said to be
the “blood of God” (Acts xx. 28). By the same reason, it may be said,
the hand of God, the eye of God, the arm of God. As God is infinitely
present everywhere, so as to be excluded from no place, so is the Deity
hypostatically everywhere in the humanity, not excluded from any part
of it; as the light of the sun in every part of the air; as a sparkling
splendor in every part of the diamond. Therefore, it is concluded,
by all that acknowledge the Deity of Christ, that when his soul was
separated from the body, the Deity remained united both to soul and
body, as light doth in every part of a broken crystal.
(3.) Therefore, perpetually united (Col. ii. 9). The “fulness of
the Godhead dwells in him bodily.” It dwells in him, not lodges in
him, as a traveller in an inn: it resides in him as a fixed habitation.
As God describes the perpetuity of his presence in the ark by his
habitation or dwelling in it (Exod. xxix. 44), so doth the apostle the
inseparable duration of the Deity in the humanity, and the indissoluble
union of the humanity with the Deity. It was united on earth; {a563}
it remains united in heaven. It was not an image or an apparition, as
the tongues wherein the Spirit came upon the apostles, were a temporary
representation, not a thing united perpetually to the person of the
Holy Ghost.
(4.) It was a personal union. It was not an union of persons, though
it was a personal union; so Davenant expounds (Col. ii. 9), Christ did
not take the person of man, but the nature of man into subsistence with
himself. The body and soul of Christ were not united in themselves, had
no subsistence in themselves, till they were united to the person of
the Son of God. If the person of a man were united to him, the human
nature would have been the nature of the person so united to him, and
not the nature of the Son of God (Heb. ii. 14, 16), “Forasmuch then as
the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise
took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had
the power of death, that is, the devil. For verily he took not on him
the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.” He took
flesh and blood to be his own nature, perpetually to subsist in the
person of the Λόγος, which must be by a personal union, or no way: the
Deity united to the humanity, and both natures to be one person. This
is the mysterious and manifold wisdom of God.
3d. The end of this union.
(1.) He was hereby fitted to be a Mediator. He hath something like to
man, and something like to God. If he were in all things only like to
man, he would be at a distance from God: if he were in all things only
like to God, he would be at a distance from man. He is a true Mediator
between mortal sinners and the immortal righteous One. He was near to
us by the infirmities of our nature, and near to God by the perfections
of the Divine; as near to God in his nature, as to us in ours; as
near to us in our nature, as he is to God in the Divine. Nothing that
belongs to the Deity, but he possesses; nothing that belongs to the
human nature, but he is clothed with. He had both the nature which had
offended, and that nature which was offended: a nature to please God,
and a nature to pleasure us: a nature, whereby he experimentally knew
the excellency of God, which was injured, and understood the glory due
to him, and consequently the greatness of the offence, which was to be
measured by the dignity of his person: and a nature whereby he might be
sensible of the miseries contracted by, and endure the calamities due
to the offender, that he might both have compassion on him, and make
due satisfaction for him. He had two distinct natures capable of the
affections and sentiments of the two persons he was to accord; he was a
just judge of the rights of the one, and the demerit of the other.[794]
He could not have this full and perfect understanding if he did not
possess the perfections of the one, and the qualities of the other;
the one fitted him for “things appertaining to God” (Heb. v. 1),
and the other furnished him with a sense of the “infirmities of man”
(Heb. iv. 15).