their force, or guiding their motions. The restraint of the destructive
qualities of the creatures argues as great a power as the change of
their natures, yea, and a greater. The qualities of creatures may be
changed by art and composition, as in the preparing of medicines; but
what but a Divine Power could restrain the operation of the fire from
the three children, while it retained its heat and burning quality in
Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace? The operation was curbed while its nature was
preserved. All creatures are called his host, because he marshals and
ranks them as an army to serve his purposes. The whole scheme of nature
is ready to favor men when God orders it, and ready to punish men when
God commissions it. He gave the Red Sea but a check, and it obeyed his
voice (Ps. cvi. 9): “He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it was dried up;”
the motion of it ceased, and the waters of it were ranged as defensive
walls, to secure the march of his people: and at the motion of the hand
of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the sea recovered its violence, and
the walls that were framed came tumbling down upon the Egyptian’s heads
(Exod. xiv. 27). The Creator of nature is not led by the necessity of
nature: he that settled the order of nature, can change or restrain the
order of nature according to his sovereign pleasure. The most necessary
and useful creatures he can use as instruments of his vengeance: water
is necessary to cleanse, and by that he can deface a world; fire is
necessary to warm, and by that he can burn a Sodom: from the water
he formed the fowl (Gen. i. 21), and by that he dissolves them in the
deluge; fire or heat is necessary to the generation of creatures, and
by that he ruins the cities of the plain. He orders all as he pleases,
to perform every tittle and punctilio of his purpose. The sea observed
him so exactly, that it drowned not one Israelite, nor saved one
Egyptian (Ps. cvi. 11). There was not one of them left. And to perfect
the Israelites’ deliverance, he followed them with testimonies of his
power above the strength of nature. When they wanted drink, he orders
Moses to strike a rock, and the rock spouts a river, and a channel is
formed for it to attend them in their journey. When they wanted bread,
he {b58} dressed manna for them in the heavens, and sent it to their
tables in the desert. When he would declare his strength, he calls
to the heavens to pour down righteousness, and to the earth to bring
forth salvation (Isa. xlv. 8). Though God had created righteousness or
deliverance for the Jews in Babylon, yet he calls to the heavens and
the earth to be assistant to the design of Cyrus, whom he had raised
for that purpose, as he speaks in the beginning of the chapter (verses
1‒4). As God created man for a supernatural end, and all creatures
for man as their immediate end, so he makes them, according to
opportunities, subservient to that supernatural end of man, for which
he created him. He that spans the heavens with his fist, can shoot all
creatures like an arrow, to hit what mark he pleases. He that spread
the heavens and the earth by a word, and can by a word fold them
up more easily than a man can a garment (Heb. i. 12), can order the
streams of nature; cannot he work without nature as well as with it,
beyond nature, contrary to nature, that can, as it were, fillip nature
with his finger into that nothing whence he drew it; who can cast down
the sun from his throne, clap the distinguished parts of the world
together, and make them march in the same order to their confusion, as
they did in their creation: who can jumble the whole frame together,
and, by a word, dissolve the pillars of the world, and make the fabric
lie in a ruinous heap?
(2.) In effecting his purposes by small means: in making use of the
meanest creatures. As the power of God is seen in the creation of the
smallest creatures, and assembling so many perfections in the little
body of an insect, as an ant, or spider, so his power is not less
magnified in the use he makes of them. As he magnifies his wisdom,
by using ignorant instruments, so he exalts his power, by employing
weak instruments in his service: the meanness and imperfection of the
matter sets off the excellency of the workman; so the weakness of the
instrument is no foil to the power of the principal Agent. When God
hath effected things by means in the Scripture, he hath usually brought
about his purposes by weak instruments. Moses, a fugitive from Egypt,
and Aaron a captive in it, are the instruments of the Israelites’
deliverance. By the motion of Moses’ rod, he works wonders in the
court of Pharaoh, and summons up his judgments against him. He brought
down Pharaoh’s stomach for a while, by a squadron of lice and locusts,
wherein Divine power was more seen, than if Moses had brought him to
his own articles by a multitude of warlike troops. The fall of the
walls of Jericho by the sound of rams’ horns, was a more glorious
character of God’s power, than if Joshua had battered it down with a
hundred of warlike engines (Josh vi. 20). Thus the great army of the
Midianites, which lay as grasshoppers upon the ground, were routed by
Gideon in the head of three hundred men; and Goliath, a giant, laid
level with the ground by David, a stripling, by the force of a sling:
a thousand Philistines dispatched out of the world by the jaw‑bone of
an ass in the hand of Samson. He can master a stout nation by an army
of locusts, and render the teeth of those little insects as destructive
as the teeth, yea, the strongest teeth, the cheek‑teeth, of a great
lion (Joel i. 6, 7). The thunderbolt, which produces sometimes {b59}
dreadful effects, is compacted of little atoms which fly in the air,
small vapors drawn up by the sun, and mixed with other sulphurous
matter and petrifying juice. Nothing is so weak, but his strength can
make victorious; nothing so small, but by his power he can accomplish
his great ends by it; nothing so vile, but his might can conduct to his
glory; and no nation so mighty, but he can waste and enfeeble by the
meanest creatures. God is great in power in the greatest things, and
not little in the smallest; his power in the minutest creatures which
he uses for his service, surmounts the force of our understanding.
THIRDLY. The power of God appears in REDEMPTION. As our Saviour
is called the Wisdom of God, so he is called the Power of God (1 Cor.
i. 24). The arm of Power was lifted up as high as the designs of Wisdom
were laid deep: as this way of redemption could not be contrived but by
an Infinite Wisdom, so it could not be accomplished but by an Infinite
Power. None but God could shape such a design, and none but God could
effect it. The Divine Power in temporal deliverances, and freedom
from the slavery of human oppressors, vails to that which glitters in
redemption; whereby the devil is defeated in his designs, stripped of
his spoils, and yoked in his strength. The power of God in creation
requires not those degrees of admiration, as in redemption. In creation,
the world was erected from nothing; as there was nothing to act, so
there was nothing to oppose; no victorious devil was in that to be
subdued; no thundering law to be silenced; no death to be conquered;
no transgression to be pardoned and rooted out; no hell to be shut; no
ignominious death upon the cross to be suffered. It had been, in the
nature of the thing, an easier thing to Divine Power to have created
a new world than repaired a broken, and purified a polluted one. This
is the most admirable work that ever God brought forth in the world,
greater than all the marks of his power in the first creation.
And this will appear, I. In the Person redeeming. II. In the
publication and propagation of the doctrine of redemption. III. In the
application of redemption.
I. In the Person redeeming. _First_, In his conception.
1. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin
(Luke i. 35): “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of
the Highest shall overshadow thee:” which act is expressed to be the
effect of the infinite power of God; and it expresses the supernatural
manner of the forming the humanity of our Saviour, and signifies
not the Divine nature of Christ infusing itself into the womb of the
virgin; for the angel refers it to the manner of the operation of the
Holy Ghost in the producing the human nature of Christ, and not to the
nature assuming that humanity into union with itself. The Holy Ghost,
or the Third Person in the Trinity, overshadowed the virgin, and by
a creative act framed the humanity of Christ, and united it to the
Divinity. It is, therefore, expressed by a word of the same import with
that used in Gen. i. 2, “The Spirit moved upon the face of the waters,”
which signifies (as it were) a brooding upon the chaos, shadowing it
with his wings, as hens sit upon their eggs, to form them and hatch
them {b60} into animals; or else it is an allusion to the “cloud which
covered the tent of the congregation, when the glory of the Lord filled
the tabernacle” (Exod. xl. 34). It was not such a creative act as we
call immediate, which is a production out of nothing; but a mediate
creation, such as God’s bringing things into form out of the first
matter, which had nothing but an obediential or passive disposition
to whatsoever stamp the powerful wisdom of God should imprint upon
it. So the substance of the Virgin had no active, but only a passive
disposition to this work: the matter of the body was earthy, the
substance of the virgin; the forming of it was heavenly, the Holy
Ghost working upon that matter. And therefore when it is said, that
“she was found with child of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. i. 18), it is to be
understood of the efficacy of the Holy Ghost, not of the substance of
the Holy Ghost. The matter was natural, but the manner of conceiving
was in a supernatural way, above the methods of nature. In reference
to the active principle the Redeemer is called in the prophecy (Isa.
iv. 2), “The branch of the Lord,” in regard of the Divine hand that
planted him: in respect to the passive principle, the fruit of the
earth, in regard of the womb that bare him; and therefore said to be
“made of a woman” (Gal. iv. 4). That part of the flesh of the virgin
whereof the human nature of Christ was made, was refined and purified
from corruption by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, as a skilful
workman separates the dross from the gold: our Saviour is therefore
called, “that holy thing” (Luke i. 35), though born of the virgin: he
was necessarily some way to descend from Adam. God, indeed, might have
created his body out of nothing, or have formed it (as he did Adam’s)
out of the dust of the ground: but had he been thus extraordinarily
formed, and not propagated from Adam, though he had been a man like
one of us, yet he would not have been of kin to us, because it would
not have been a nature derived from Adam, the common parent of us all.
It was therefore necessary to an affinity with us, not only that he
should have the same human nature, but that it should flow from the
same principle, and be propagated to him.[867] But now, by this way of
producing the humanity of Christ of the substance of the virgin, he was
in Adam (say some) corporally, but not seminally; of the substance of
Adam, or a daughter of Adam, but not of the seed of Adam: and so he
is of the same nature that had sinned, and so what he did and suffered
may be imputed to us; which, had he been created as Adam, could not be
claimed in a legal and judicial way.
2. It was not convenient he should be born in the common order of
nature, of father and mother: for whosoever is so born is polluted.
“A clean thing cannot be brought out of an unclean” (Job xiv. 4). And
our Saviour had been incapable of being a redeemer, had he been tainted
with the least spot of our nature, but would have stood in need of
redemption himself. Besides, it had been inconsistent with the holiness
of the Divine nature, to have assumed a tainted and defiled body. He
that was the fountain of blessedness to all nations, was not to be
subject to the curse of the law for himself; which he would have been,
had he been conceived in an ordinary {b61} way. He that was to overturn
the devil’s empire, was not to be any way captive under the devil’s
power, as a creature under the curse; nor could he be able to break the
serpent’s head, had he been tainted with the serpent’s breath. Again,
supposing that Almighty God by his divine power had so ordered the
matter, and so perfectly sanctified an earthly father and mother from
all original spot, that the human nature might have been transmitted
immaculate to him, as well as the Holy Ghost did purge that part of the
flesh of the virgin of which the body of Christ was made, yet it was
not convenient that that person, that was God blessed for ever as well
as man, partaking of our nature, should have a conception in the same
manner as ours, but different, and in some measure conformable to the
infinite dignity of his person: which could not have been, had not
a supernatural power and a Divine person been concerned as an active
principle in it; besides, such a birth had not been agreeable to the
first promise, which calls him “the Seed of the woman” (Gen. i. 15),
not of the man; and so the veracity of God had suffered some detriment:
the Seed of the woman only is set in opposition to the seed of the
serpent.
3. By this manner of conception the holiness of his nature is secured,
and his fitness for his office is assured to us. It is now a pure and
unpolluted humanity that is the temple and tabernacle of the Divinity:
the fulness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily, and dwells in him
holily. His humanity is supernaturalized and elevated by the activity
of the Holy Ghost, hatching the flesh of the virgin into man, as the
chaos into a world. Though we read of some sanctified from the womb,
it was not a pure and perfect holiness; it was like the light of fire
mixed with smoke, an infused holiness accompanied with a natural taint:
but the holiness of the Redeemer by this conception, is like the light
of the sun, pure, and without spot. The Spirit of holiness supplying
the place of a father in the way of creation. His fitness for his
office is also assured to us; for being born of the virgin, one of our
nature, but conceived by the Spirit of a Divine person, the guilt of
our sins may be imputed to him because of our nature, without the stain
of sin inherent in him; because of his supernatural conception he is
capable, as one of kin to us, to bear our curse without being touched
by our taint. By this means our sinful nature is assumed without sin
in that nature which was assumed by him: “flesh he hath, but not sinful
flesh” (Rom. viii. 3). Real flesh, but not really sinful, only by way
of imputation. Nothing but the power of God is evident in this whole
work: by ordinary laws and the course of nature a virgin could not bear
a son: nothing but a supernatural and almighty grace could intervene to
make so holy and perfect a conjunction. The generation of others, in an
ordinary way, is by male and female: but the virgin is overshadowed by
the Spirit and power of the Highest.[868] Man only is the product of
natural generation; this which is born of the virgin is the holy thing,
the Son of God. In other generations, a rational soul is only united
to a material body: but in this, the Divine nature is united with the
human in one person by an indissoluble union.
{b62} The _Second_ act of power in the person redeeming, is the union
of the two natures, the Divine and human. The designing indeed of this
was an act of wisdom; but the accomplishing it was an act of power.
1. There is in this redeeming person a union of two natures. He is
God and man in one person (Heb. i. 8, 9). “Thy throne, O God, is for
ever and ever: God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of
gladness,” &c. The Son is called God, having a throne for ever and ever,
and the unction speaks him man: the Godhead cannot be anointed, nor
hath any fellows. Humanity and Divinity are ascribed to him (Rom. i. 3,
4). “He was of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared
to be the Son of God, by his resurrection from the dead.” The Divinity
and humanity are both prophetically joined (Zech. xii. 10), “I will
pour out my Spirit;” the pouring forth the Spirit is an act only of
Divine grace and power. “And they shall look upon me whom they have
pierced;” the same person pours forth the Spirit as God, and is pierced
as man. “The Word was made flesh” (John i. 14). Word from eternity was
made flesh in time; Word and flesh in one person; a great God, and a
little infant.
2. The terms of this union were infinitely distant. What greater
distance can there be than between the Deity and humanity, between
the Creator and a creature? Can you imagine the distance between
eternity and time, Infinite Power and miserable infirmity, an immortal
spirit and dying flesh, the highest Being and nothing? yet these are
espoused. A God of unmixed blessedness is linked personally with a
man of perpetual sorrows: life incapable to die, joined to a body
in that economy incapable to live without dying first; infinite
purity, and a reputed sinner; eternal blessedness with a cursed nature,
Almightiness and weakness, omniscience and ignorance, immutability
and changeableness, incomprehensibleness and comprehensibility; that
which cannot be comprehended, and that which can be comprehended; that
which is entirely independent, and that which is totally dependent;
the Creator forming all things, and the creature made, met together to
a personal union; “The word made flesh” (John i. 14), the eternal Son,
the “Seed of Abraham” (Heb. ii. 16). What more miraculous, than for God
to become man, and man to become God? That a person possessed of all
the perfections of the Godhead, should inherit all the imperfections of
the manhood in one person, sin only excepted: a holiness incapable of
sinning to be made sin; God blessed forever, taking the properties of
human nature, and human nature admitted to a union with the properties
of the Creator: the fulness of the Deity, and the emptiness of man
united together (Col. ii. 9); not by a shining of the Deity upon
the humanity, as the light of the sun upon the earth, but by an
inhabitation or indwelling of the Deity in the humanity. Was there not
need of an Infinite Power to bring together terms so far asunder, to
elevate the humanity to be capable of, and disposed for, a conjunction
with the Deity? If a clod of earth should be advanced to, and united
with the body of the sun, such an advance would evidence itself to be
a work of Almighty power: the clod hath nothing in its {b63} own nature
to render it so glorious, no power to climb up to so high a dignity:
how little would such a union be, to that we are speaking of! Nothing
less than an Incomprehensible Power could effect what an
Incomprehensible Wisdom did project in this affair.
3. Especially since the union is so strait. It is not such a union
as is between a man and his house he dwells in, whence he goes out and
to which he returns, without any alteration of himself or his house;
nor such a union as is between a man and his garment, which both
communicate and receive warmth from one another; nor such as is between
an artificer and his instrument wherewith he works; nor such a union
as one friend hath with another: all these are distant things, not one
in nature, but have distinct substances. Two friends, though united by
love, are distinct persons; a man and his clothes, an artificer and his
instruments, have distinct subsistencies; but the humanity of Christ
hath no subsistence, but in the person of Christ. The straitness of
this union is expressed, and may be somewhat conceived, by the union of
fire with iron; “fire pierceth through all the parts of iron, it unites
itself with every particle, bestows a light, heat, purity, upon all
of it; you cannot distinguish the iron from the fire, or the fire from
the iron, yet they are distinct natures; so the Deity is united to the
whole humanity, seasons it, and bestows an excellency upon it, yet the
natures still remain distinct. And as during that union of fire with
iron, the iron is incapable of rust or blackness, so is the humanity
incapable of sin: and as the operation of fire is attributed to the
red‑hot iron (as the iron may be said to heat, burn, and the fire may
be said to cut and pierce), yet the imperfections of the iron do not
affect the fire; so in this mystery, those things which belong to the
Divinity are ascribed to the humanity, and those things which belong to
the humanity, are ascribed to the Divinity, in regard of the person in
whom those natures are united: yet the imperfections of the humanity
do not hurt the Divinity.”[869] The Divinity of Christ is as really
united with the humanity, as the soul with the body; the person was
one, though the natures were two; so united, that the sufferings of
the human nature were the sufferings of that person, and the dignity
of the Divine was imputed to the human, by reason of that unity of both
in one person; hence the blood of the human nature is said to be the
“blood of God” (Acts xx. 28). All things ascribed to the Son of God,
may be ascribed to this man; and the things ascribed to this man, may
be ascribed to the Son of God, as this man is the Son of God, eternal,
Almighty; and it may be said, “God suffered, was crucified,” &c., for
the person of Christ is but one, most simple; the person suffered, that
was God and Man united, making one person.[870]
4. And though the union be so strait, yet without confusion of the
natures, or change of them into one another. The two natures of Christ
are not mixed, as liquors that incorporate with one another when they
are poured into a vessel; the Divine nature is not turned into the
human, nor the human into the Divine; one nature doth not swallow up
another, and make a third nature distinct from each {b64} of them.[871]
The Deity is not turned into the humanity, as air (which is next to
a spirit) may be thickened and turned into water, and water may be
rarified into air by the power of heat boiling it. The Deity cannot
be changed, because the nature of it is to be unchangeable; it would
not be Deity, if it were mortal and capable of suffering. The humanity
is not changed into the Deity, for then Christ could not have been a
sufferer; if the humanity had been swallowed up into the Deity, it had
lost its own distinct nature, and put on the nature of the Deity, and,
consequently, been incapable of suffering; finite can never, by any
mixture, be changed into infinite, nor infinite into finite. This union,
in this regard, may be resembled to the union of light and air, which
are strictly joined; for the light passes through all parts of the air,
but they are not confounded, but remain in their distinct essences as
before the union, without the least confusion with one another. The
Divine nature remains as it was before the union, entire in itself;
only the Divine person assumes another nature to himself.[872] The
human nature remains, as it would have done, had it existed separately
from the Λόγος, except that then it would have had a proper subsistence
by itself, which now it borrows from its union with the Λόγος, or, word;
but that doth not belong to the constitution of its nature. Now let us
consider, what a wonder of power is all this: the knitting a noble soul
to a body of clay, was not so great an exploit of Almightiness, as the
espousing infinite and finite together. Man is further distant from God,
than man from nothing. What a wonder is it, that two natures infinitely
distant, should be more intimately united than anything in the world;
and yet without any confusion! that the same person should have both a
glory and a grief; an infinite joy in the Deity, and an inexpressible
sorrow in the humanity! That a God upon a throne should be an infant in
a cradle; the thundering Creator be a weeping babe and a suffering man,
are such expressions of mighty power, as well as condescending love,
that they astonish men upon earth, and angels in heaven.
_Thirdly_, Power was evident in the progress of his life; in the
miracles he wrought. How often did he expel malicious and powerful
devils from their habitations; hurl them from their thrones, and make
them fall from heaven like lightning! How many wonders were wrought
by his bare word, or a single touch! Sight restored to the blind,
and hearing to the deaf; palsy members restored to the exercise of
their functions; a dismiss given to many deplorable maladies; impure
leprosies chased from the persons they had infected, and bodies
beginning to putrefy raised from the grave. But the mightiest argument
of power was his patience; that He who was, in his Divine nature,
elevated above the world, should so long continue upon a dunghill,
endure the contradiction of sinners against himself, be patiently
subject to the reproaches and indignities of men, without displaying
that justice which was essential to the Deity; and, in especial manner,
daily merited by their provoking crimes. The patience of man under
great affronts, is a greater argument of power, than the brawniness
of his arm; a strength employed {b65} in the revenge of every injury,
signifies a greater infirmity in the soul, than there can be ability
in the body.