DISSERTATION IV. 303 a distinct treatise ofthe Glory of Christ as God-man, whichmay shortly see the light*. In this viewof things we have no need to make Christ to be the Son of God, properly in his divine nature, or to attribute any character of derivation, generation, or dependence, to his pure godhead, which carries a seeming impropriety in it. His Son- ship, even under the Old Testament, as well as under theNew, is better accounted for this way ; and his angelic character, as the messenger of God in all ages, and the revealer of his will to the patriarchs, as well as to us, is preserved and explained, . without sinking pure Godhead down to inferior characters, or at- tributing superior and divine characters, titles and prerogatives, to an angelic or inferior nature. The learned and pious Dr. Thomas Goodwin, that deep and happy enquirer into the sense of scripture, gives numerous instances wherein the divine nature of Christ must be supposed by way of prolepsis to be united to man in many of the expressions of scripture concerningChrist. Those glorious texts, John i. 1 -3. Col. i. 10, 17. Heb. i. 2, 3. Phil. ii. 6. Prov. viii. 22=31. arc all interpreted by him in this light, in his second book of the Knowledge of God the Father, and his Son Jesus Christ. Vol. II. fol. " It is Christ, says he, considered as God man, who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature, by whom, and for whom, all things were created in heaven or earth, visible or invisible, who is before all things, and by whom all things consist, who is the Son of God, whomhe hath appointed the heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, who is the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, who by himself purged away our sins, who was in the form of God, and thought it no robbery to be equal with God, who is the Word by whom all things were made, and who was with God in the beginning, who was set up front ever lasting, and brought up before the hills," &c. And that learn- ed author contends, that these attributions cannot belong to the pure, simple divine natureof Christ, without taking in the infe- rior nature which was designed to be united to him, and there- fore, in the language of scripture, it is mentioned in such a man- ner as though it were actually united. There is very little difference between my opinion, and the sentiments of that great man in the exposition of all these scrip - tures, except only, that he attributes to the human nature of Christ before its existence, and considered only in its designed and future union with the divine nature, those same scriptural properties, characters, and transactions, which I would rather # This treatise was published in l746.
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