616 THE GLORY OF CHRIST AS GOD-MAN. natural and easy explication if they are applied to this glorious human spirit sometimes considered as distinguished from the di- vine nature, sometimes as personally united to it, and that either in its own existence before its incarnation, or in its incarnate state according as the context requires : For since both natures have their part and share in man's redemption, they are thus distin- guished in the holy scripture, some expressions relating more properly to the one nature, some to the other, and some including both natures united. 'There is no need of paraphrasing these scriptures at large, and giving an example how these texts may then be interpreted, since this key being given, the way lies open for every unlearned Christian to penetrate into the sense of them, and to explain many other scriptures besides those I have cited, by the help of the same doctrine. Advantage IL " This doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul of Christ not only explains dark and difficult scriptures, but it discovers to us many beauties and properties of expression in the word of God, and casts a lustre upon some of those passages whose justness and beauty were not before observed." Let me mention a few of them : 1. When man is said to be created in the image of God; Gen. i. 27. it may refer to the God-man, to Christ in his pre- existent state. God says, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ; the word is redoubled perhaps to intimate that Adam was made in the likeness of the human soul of Christ, who was the first of God's creatiòn, as well as that he bore something of the image or resemblance of the divine nature itself : And hereby Christ has the honour of being set up as the first and fairest image of God, and the grand pattern of all human souls who were to bear his likeness. 2. Again, when God is said to grieve, to repent, to be angry, to come down from heaven, to stand, to speak, to receive and assume to himself many of the actions and passions of human nature, we are wont to explain them as mere figures of speech, employing human expressions to represent divine actions: But if we snnpose the divine nature of Christ united to, this pre-exis- tent soul, then these expressions perhaps may be taken in a more literal sense than we imagined ; When he that was true God, by virtue of this union, came down front heaven, stood, spake, grieved, rejoiced, and was pleased or angry at the view he took of the affairs of men. Doctor Owen in his Meditations on the Glory of Christ," asserts, that, " it had been absurd to bring in God under perpetual anthropopathies, as grieving, repenting, being angry; well pleased, and the like, were it not but that the divine person intended was to take on him the nature wherein such affections do dwell." 3. And not only human actions afire attributed to God, but
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