DISSLRTATIOItt .1. 221 ing and united godhead, would render him a most illustrious image of the Father, if there were no superior sense in which also he were the express image of God ; for there is no being through which the godhead shines in all its perfections with such brightness, such express likeness, and such glory as in the per' son of Jesus Christ; 2 Cor. iv. 6. 6. Yet farther, if we can receive the doctrine of the pre- existence of Christ's human soul, which seems to be the most ob- vious and natural sense of many scriptures, if we can believe that it was formed the first of creatures before the foundation of the world, and was present with God in the beginning of all things, which is no hard matter for an Arian to grant, then we may also justlybelieve this union between God and man to have began before the world was, in some unknown moment of God's own eternity : For when the human soul of Christ was first brought into existence, it might be united in that moment to the divine nature. Thus hrist was, in this sense also, the first-born of every creature. For his complex person had a being before the crea- tion was formed ; andperhaps, this may be the best way of ex- pounding the doctrine of the most primitive fathers concerning the ante-mundane generation of Christ, that is, his becoming the Son of God in a new manner just before the world was made. See thefourth Dissertation on the Logos. According to this view of things, it is easy to understand how he had some hand in the creation as God -man* ; that is, as Jesus Christ, by whom God createdall things; Eph. iii. 9. How all things were created by him, and for him, and by him all things consist ; Col. i. 16. And be upholds all things by the word of his power ; Heb. i. 3. For he was God-man from the beginning of his existence as man. Thus divine perfections always belonged to him his godhead was -co-essential and co- eternal with the godhead of the Father, for it was the same divine essence; and his person as God -man existed before the foundation of the world. These glorious attributions, by this means, appear to have a just foundation in the divine and human natures of Christ united, even without entering into any of the particular and internal dis- tinctions and personalities which belong to the divine essence itself, and -which are more abstruse and incomprehensible ; and therefore they are not the first and most necessary things to be taught or learned in the doctrine of the Deity of Christ. Lastly, The human soul of Christ being this anciently united to the divine nature, did about seventeen hundred years ". * Doctor Thomas Goodwin does at large maintain and prove, that Christ, as God.man, created ail things, and under this thiracter be was the instrument by which God created the world. .a See his Discourse of the Knowledge of QoJ CudChrist." Rook3. Chapter 10, 11, 12. page 178, 190.
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