DISCOURSE III. 609 He is said to be the first -born ofevery erect-lure. There has been much labour and art of criticism employed to apply these words merely to the divine nature of Christ, by giving them a metaphorical or some unusual sense : But if we suppose this soul of Christ to exist thus early, then he is properly the first-born of every creature in the literal sense of the words ; and in this sense he may be literally called the beginning of the creation of God, as he stiles himself ; Rev. iii. 14. If we join the expressions of the first and second chapters to the Colossians together we may explain the one by the other. He is the image of the invisible God ; by him andfor himwere all things created, and in himall thingsconsist, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence, 4e. for it pleased theFather that in him should dwell all the fulness of the godhead bodily. All the godhead dwelt in him as a spirit, or spiritually before the in- carnation, and bodily since : thus the nineteenth verse of the first chapter comes in properly as a reason for all those attribu- tions both supreme and inferior, viz. because God was pleased to ordain that the divine nature should be united to 'this glorious being, the human soul of Christ, now appearing in a body. Dr. Thomas Goodwin was a learned, a laborious and a suc- cessful enquirer into all those scriptures that treat of our Lord Jesus Christ in order to aggrandize his character ; and when he interprets these verses in volume IL " Of the knowledge of God, &c." he finds himselfconstrained to explain the expressions concerning the divine nature of Christ, as united to man by of anticipation, or as considered in its future union with the man Jesus, and argues strongly for this exposition : But there is no need to bring in such a figure as " prolepsis" or the anticipation of things future, since the real and actual existence of the soul of Christ before the creation makes all this language of scripture just and plain in the literal sense. And what that pious and inge- nious author declares upon this subject 'almost persuades me to believe that had he lived in our day, he would have been a hearty defender of the doctrine which Ipropose. II. The next scripture 1 shall cite for this purpose is that illustrious description of our Lord Jesus in the first chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, wherein there are sufficient evidences of his divine nature : but there are some such expressions as seem to imply also a nature inferior and dependent. He is re- presented as laying the foundations rf the earth, and the heavens are the work gfhishandds; he upholds all things by the wordofhis power : which expressions carry in them an idea too sublime for any mere created nature. And the citation of the first of them from the hundred and second Psalm, proves yet farther that Christ is Jehovah the Creator. But when he is called a Son, a begotten Son, this seems Vot, vi. Q ,
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