QUESTION Ili. 449 manifested to ushereby; for all this abasement of the godhead of Christ is merely relative and not real. And as it is plain that the divine nature of Christ could not be separated from the bosom of his Father,_ when he came into this world and took flesh upon him, so neither could the human nature leave this bosom of the Father, if it had no prior exist-. ence, and was never there. Therefore in the common scheme all thisglorious and pathetic representation sof the love of Christ in leavim,, the joys and glories of heavenwhen he came to dwell upon earth, has no ideas belonging to it, and it can be true in no sense, sinee it can neither be attributed to the human nor to the . divine nature of Christ, nor to his wltolepersem I grant that. by the figure of communication of properties, what is true of one nature may be attributed to the whole person, or sometimes to the other nature ; yet that which is not true concerning either nature of Christ separated, nor concerning the two natures uni- ted, cannot be attributed to him at all : So that partingwith the bosom of his Father; and forsaking the joys and glories he pos- sessed there; are, according to the common scheme, words of which we have no ideas. But now if we conceive the soul of Christ in its pre-existent State, as the first-born of every creature, the darling of the soul of God, who, as it were, lay in the bosom of the Father, to come forth from the Father and come into this world; John xvi.. 28. to part with the joys and glories it was possessed of there before the foundation of the world; John xvii. 5. to dwell in a feeble mansion of flesh and blood, pain and sorrow, to he cramp., ed and confined in buman,limbs, and to sustain the pangs and. punishment of a cursed death on the cross for the sake of rebel- lious creatures. This is amazing love indeed ; this has a surpri-; zing and sensible reality in it, andshould awaken all the powers of our souls to admire and adore both God the Father for send- ing his Son Jesus Christ, and Christ himself for consenting to such an abasement. SECTION II.-It has been made evident in the foregoing section that our best divines following the track of scripture light and the sacred dictates of the wordof God, have set the trans eendent love of God the Father in sendinghis Son, and the love, of Christ inihis incarnation and death, in a most beautiful and affecting light, if we suppose` the soul of Christ to have had a pre-existent state of joy and glory with the Father before the world was. But ,t fear their expressions are scarce consistent with any, clear or just ideas or conceptions, while they deny each part of the human nature of Christ, that is, his soul as well as his body, to exist before his incarnation. There is'yet another and`a very remarkable instance where- in our protestant divines in a very just and affecting manner re VOL. v1. .Ij` k
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