P98 QUESTIONS CONCERNING JESUS. 2: There have been thousands of christiansin several ages of the church who have been saved, and yet have not entertained this opinion concerning the sohl of Christ, that it had a being before the world was created, and that it was the first-born ofall the creatures of God ; and therefore this cannot be the sense of that title in those texts. III. I say,therefore, in the third place, that this title, Son of God, is given to Christ, sometimes upon account of his incar- nation and miraculous birth. Luke i. 31, 32. " Thou shalt bring forth a Son, and shalt call his name Jesus : he shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest ;" verse 35. " The HOly Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee ; therefore also that holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called THE SON Or GOD." Though God be theFather of all men by creation, and the Father of all the saints by a new creation or regeneration, yet in a more especial manner he is the Father of the blessed Jesus ; becausehisbody was so formed or begotten by him, iu so peculiar a manner, asno other man ever was. But thiscannot be the chief meaning of the name Son of God in the texts before cited : For surely the belief that the man Christ Jesus was begotten of God and born of a virgin without an earthly father, was not made the term of salvation any where that we can find in the New Testament. It is not this sort of ,sonship that Christ and the apostles lay so great a stress on, nor make the matter of their sermons, hod the labour of their argu- ments, to convince the world of it in ordertotheir salvation. This circumstance of his extarordinary birth, doth not seem to have any such special connexion with the redemption and salvation of men, as to have it made the peculiar matter of their faith and the very article on which their salvation was to depend. . Doubtless many a poor creature might become a true believer in Christ when he was upon earth, by the sight of his miracles, and hearing hisdoctrine, without the knowledge of this particular circumstance of his incarnation or birth ; anddoubtless many a one was converted by the apostles without any notice of this part of the history of Christ ; for w,e scarce find so much as the Men- tion of it in their preaching or writings. This therefore cannot be the meaningof thisname, ih those scriptures. 1V. In the fourth place, Christ may be 'sometimes called the ,Son of God, because of his resurrection from the dead, and his exaltation to universal ,dominion, by the avour and power of God. In this sense Christ is said to be begotten of salvation, I suppose the idea of that title Son of God, arises no higher than to mean in general some glorious relation to God, partly natural,and pertly eennoe meal, wituont a prriae determination how tar this relation reached, as will ap year more particularly afterward,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=