590 THE GLORY OP CHRIST AS GOD -MAN. Note further ; he does not pray for the disciples, that they may enjoy such love as is supposed to be peculiar to the internal distinctions in the godhead, but such sort of love in their degree, as he himself enjoyed in his pre- existent soul ; which exposi- tien also renders all the latter verses of this chapter moreintel- ligible : Verse 21, 22, &c: that they may be one aswe are one, andthou hast loved them as thou hast loved me. The love which the great God bears to Christ as man, and the union of Christ as man, to the godhead, is made a pattern of the union of the saints to God, and the love of God to them : But we can hardly suppose the ineffable, eternal and essential, and necessary union and love between the sacred distinctions in the godhead itself, can be a pattern of the unnecessary, unessential, and. vo- luntary union. and love between God and his saints. Yet the onion and love between Christ as man, and God his Father, may be made .a pattern of the love and union between God and believers ; though we must always maintain a high sense of the unknown and sublime difference between the union of the man Christ to the divine nature, or to any particular distinc- tion in it, and the iunion of the saints to God : 'fhe one is so near, as that what God himself speaks and does, is attributed toChrist ; but it would be blasphemy to attribute this to the best of saints. It is a certain and excellent rule for the interpretation of scripture, laid down by all judicious men, and particularly by a great adversary of this doctrine, Dr. Sherlock, " that weshould never have recourse to a strained and metaphorical sense, but when we know that either the nature of the thing, or some other revelation of scripture will not admit of a proper one; and that we must understand words in a proper and natural sense, where there is no apparent reason of a figure." Now there is nothing either in nature or in scripture that forbids this literal exposition, as will more abundantly appear in the following part of this discourse: The second scripture I shall cite for this purpose, to shew that some things inferior to godhead are ascribed to Christ, be- fore and at his incarnation ; is in Phil. ii. 5, 6, 7. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, verse 6. who being in theform of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; verse 7. but made himself of no reputation, em'lo, EM1,4101, which is more exactly translated, he emptied himself*, and took upon him the form of a servant, being made in the like- ness of men, as it is in the Greek, o oiooEenh aiOpmamr 'no1n .. Here the apostle's design is to set Christ before them as a pattern ofhumility ; and this he doth by aggrandizinghis former * See Doctor Goodwin's exposition of this text in a few pages fa Sowing See pages812, 813.
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