Watts - BX5200 .W3 1813 v.6

472 QUESTIONS CONCERNING JESUS. image of-himself but one, and that is his own well- beloved Son Jesus Christ. Heb. i. 2. He is the brightness of his Fa- !ther's glory, and the express image of his person. He is the imageof God, 2 Cor. iv. 4. and in Col. i. 13. He is the image of the invisible God. Now this expression seems to have aprime reference to his human nature ; or, as the learned and pious Doctor Goodwin asserts and proves, it must at least include his human nature in it, because every thing that relates directly to the divine nature of Christ is as invisible as God theFather, and therefore his divine nature considered alone would never have been so particularly described as the image of the invisible God. VII. The great God himself has required us to make this his image the medium of our worship;paid to him. Eph. ii. 18. By him we have access unto the Father. Col. iii. 17. Give thanks to Godeven the Father by him. And he also requires men and angels to worship this his image. John v. 23. That all men shouldhonour the Son, even as they honour the Father. Heb. i. 8. Let all the angels of God worship him. Thus far has the blessed God indulged or encouraged that natural inclination in man to reverence the image of that divine Being which he worships. VIII. To this end it has pleased the great God in a special manner to assume into the nearest union withhimself this his own Son, and thereby to render him a more complete image of himself: Thus the Son, who is the express image of the Father and the brightness or splendor of his glory ; Heb. i. 3. is also one with the Father, as Christ expresses it ; John xiv. 10. He that hath seen me, bath seen the Father : And the reason he gives is this, I am in the Father, and the Father inme. John x. 30. I andmy Father are one, that is, by this union, as it is explained verse 38. And this is done not only to render him capable of his glorious offices, but of divine honours too ; that Jesus Christ might be worshipped, and yet that according to God's original command, that which is not God might not be made the object of our worship. Since there cannot he more gods than one, and since proper deity could not he communicated to the man Jesus, who is the image of the invisible God, to render him a partaker of our worship any other way, therefore proper deity is united to him that he might be one with God. And thus as the Word who was God was made flesh ; John-i. 1, 14. by his personal union to flesh, so the man Jesus may be said to become God, or to be God, by his personal union to God. Thus the human nature of Christ being a creature most like to God, and being inhabited also by godhead, is the brightest image of the invisible God, and is one with God himself, and that as our divines express it by a personal union : And thus he is taken into as much participation of that worship which men

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