DISCOURSÉ eo6 31. His soul was not left in hell.. John xii. 27. Now is my soul troubled. Mat. xxvi. 38. My soul is exceeding sorrowful. Luke x. 21. Jesus rejoiced in spirit. John xi. 23. and xiii. 21. Jesus was troubled in spirit. Now since we have the human soul or spirit of Christ mentioned several times in scriptureon other occasions, and yet never once mentioned with relation to his incarnation, but always find his coming into our world des- . aribed by taking flesh and blood, body, the fashion of a man, the likeness of sinful flesh, &c. there is much reason to sup- pose that Christ had a human soul before, and did not then begin to have it. IV. " Though the Jews were much at a loss in our Savi- our's time in their sentiments of the Messiah, and had very va- rious and confused notions of him, yet it is certain that amongst many of the learned of that nation, and probably amongst many of the vulgar too, there was a tradition of the pre existenceof the soul of the Messiah." Philo the Jew, who lived very near the time of our Saviour, interprets several of those scriptures of the Old Testament concerning the Mediator or Logos which we do: He calls him the Son of God, and yet he makes him ex- pressly a man, the prince of the angels, the prophet of God, the light of the people ; and though he talks with some confusion on this subject, and gives him some suchcharacters as seem to make this Logos truly divine, and one with God, yet other characters also are such as seem to be inferior, to godhead, and very happily agree with this doctrine of the pre- existent soul of Christ in union with his divine nature, as will plainly appear in what follows. In some parts of his works Philo describes the Logos as a particular divine. power, Svvxp,s, which he also calls oo ux, or wisdom, as Solomon does in the eighth of Proverbs, and heat- tributes to this wisdom or word an existence before any creature, the contrivance of the creation of the world and all things in it, with other divineand incommunicable ascriptions. Sometimes the ancient Jews make it the same with God himself ; so the targums do, which are Jewish commentaries upon scripture, when they speak' of the memra or word, thereby representing either divine powers or properties in a personal manner, or the divine nature itself in a particular manner of agency, re- lation or subsistence. In other places Philomakes the Logos or word to signify that gloriousarchangel which the ancient Jews suppose tobe the supreme of creatures, formed before all the angels and all the other parts of the creation, " in whom was the name of God," who was sent to conduct Moses and the Jews into Canaan ; Exod. xxiii. 20. This glorious spirit Philo calls " the most honourable Logos, the archangel, prince of the angels and
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=