.232 THE ARIAN INVITED TO ORTHODOX FAITH. sidered in his human nature abstracted from the divine, though the unionwas never dissolved : It was his proper work on earth to represent himself as man, rather than as God, for had the Jews known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory ; I Cor. ii. S. III. To this I .would add, in the last place, That if the sonshipof Christ does not belong to his godhead, even when he is called the Son of God, but belongs rather to his office as Me- dieter, or to the derivation of his human nature, both soul and body from God the Father, in a peculiar and extraordinary way, then wheresoever he is represented as a Son, whether as Son of God or Son. of man, still his souship is an inferior part of his character_; and on this account we may expect many things as- sorted or denied concerning him, which cannot preperly be as- serted or denied concerning his supreme nature or godhead, which has nothing' in itself so much derivative and dependent, as seems to be implied in the word Son. Now, if we should allow the inference which the objector makes, viz. that if our Saviour in his whole complex person, should deny, concerning himself, those properties which he pos- sesses in one of his natures, it would approach toonear to an equivocation," yet when lie speaks of himself expressly in his inferior character, or in his inferior nature, as a Son, or as Me- diator, he may then expressly deny anydivine'and supreme pro- pertyof himself, considered in his divine nature, without any ofsuch an imputation. Though he would not say Christ not God, or Christ is not man, yet he might freely declare; that his divine nature is not man, or the Son of man is not God ; and in the same sense the Son can donothing of himself, and the Son of man knows not the dayof judgment. I was willingto answer this objection particularly, because it is generally supposed by the Arian writers to be unanswerable, though it has diverted me too far from the subject of personality, which I was pursuing. Perhaps itmay he yet further objected here, against the uni- tyof the person of Christ, that the human and the divinenatures are still two persons, for they are two distinct intelligent agents, And the pronouns I, thou, and he, may be applied to either of them, considered apart. Answer I. To this I answer, the same maybe said concern- ing any of the foregoing instances that I gave of two substances united into onecompound substance : So the complex house may be called two houses ; and the complex tree be called two trees ; and Great Britain may. be called two nations ; and a man And .wife may be called two persons still : There is a sense in which they are two, though thereis another sense in which they are one. But I think it is stífficient to denominate each of these examples
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