828 THE GLORY OF CHRIST AS GOD-MAN. butes, operations and worship, which are ascribed to him in scripture, we can be in no danger of compliance with the Arian error, which attributes all these divine characters to the man Christ Jesus, and denies his personal union to the godhead. The aggrandizing of the man Jesus has not been esteemed dishonourable to his deity. Doctor John Owen affirms " the nature of the man Christ Jesus to be filled with all the divine graces and perfections whereof a limited created nature is ca- pable, " Meditations on the Glory of Christ, page 112." And Doctor Thomas Goodwin asserts the man Jesus, by virtue of union to the divine nature, to be " as glorious a creature as can possibly be made by God, vol. III. book iii. chapter vii. page 104." And what injury can it be to our holy religion, or what hurt can it do to the gospel of Christ, to suppose his soul to be as glorious and sublime a being as any thing can be which is not God This is doing honour' to the man whom God the Father delights to honour, and in whom the godhead dwells bodily: And while it wonderfully exalts our esteem of the human nature of Christ, it does not diminish the least degree of honour or ado-. ration due to his deity. Nor can any danger arise to the sacred, doctrine of the satis- faction and atonement of Christ, from this exaltation of his per- sonal excellencies and honours ; but rather it sheds a new glory upon this doctrine, and renders our blessed Saviour so much the fitter to undertake that great, that glorious and dreadful work. Suppose it should be said that this human soul, this man Jesus, according to this opinion, is worth ten thousand of us, as the peo- ple said to David. Then certainly he is so much the more proper person to become a surety for ten thousands of sinners ; his life is the more valuable sacrifice to redeem millions of lives; and the death of a man so transcendently excellent is a fitter price to ransom innumerable multitudes of men from death. Yet the infinite merit of his sufferings to satisfy for the infinite offences of mankind, in my judgment arises still from the dignity of his whole person, who is God as well as man, and includes in it the infinite deity united to a finite or created nature ; and probably for this reason, was that expression used, Acts xx. 28. God purchased the churchwith his own blood. IV. tAThis doctrine greatly magnifies the self-denial and the condescending love of our Lord Jesus Christ, in his state of humiliation and death ; it casts a thousand rays of glory upon all the scenes of his humbled estate ; it makes his subjection and obedience to the will of the Father appear much more illustrious, andhis charity and compassion to perishing mankind stand in a very surprising light." Conceive of this glorious human spirit, the only begotten
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