DISSERTATION f. 223 imports, a honourable title or character which the great God as- sumes, upon the account of: his, being the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as mail, or his constituting him; God -man, and Me- diator. The Father is also a proper name which belongs to God, considered as sustaining the character of prime agent in all the works ofcreation; providence, government, and salva- tion. But when this godhead is considered its itsunion to man, and as part: of the complex person, then it does not assume to itself these. supreme characters, nor the title, of Father in the Trinity ; and being joined to the man Christ Jesus; it may re- ceive those characters of office and inferiority which belong to`a Mediator, as well as it renders the person of Christ God-man fit to sustain these offices. In this view, although Christ Jesus the Son be united to the saine godhead, which is the very essence and nature of the Father, yet it cannot be said properly, that he is.personally uni- ted to the Father because this union to human nature, though it does not diminish any thing of the divine perfections, yet it alters the relative titles. and characters that belong to God, as he appears the Father of all things, the sovereign ma- jesty, the prime almighty Creator, and Governor of heaven and earth. The similitude which I have used in the Christian Doctrine of the lriì4, Proposition XVIII. would set this in a fair light, if I may repeat part of it again, viz. Suppose a king should send an ambassador extraordinary to a foreign country ; and sup- pose the soul of the king himself, or one of his intellectual pow- ers, could be so unted also to the body, or,person, of the am- bassador, as to animate, actuate and move him, and become, as ït were,, one person with him; then the soul Of the king himself might be said to sustain both his own character as king, and the inferior character of the ambassador, and fulfil both those offices under a distinct sort of personality, or in two distinct persons. Thus we may apprehend, how God the Father, the King of heaven, sent down his Son, 'a distinct person, in whom the same godheaddwells, as an ambassador extraordinary, to earth. And thus this eternal godhead being the same in the Father and Son, sustains the superior character of a sovereign King, in the person of the Father, and may he said also to sustain the inferior cha- racter of an ambassador, and to fulfil that office in the person of the Son. We must not expect human similies should be entire and perfect images of things divine : If theygiveus some illus- tration of sacred mysteries it is sufficient. The holy scripture seems to favour this representation when it describes the god- head, or sometimes even the Father, as subsisting in the roan
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