832 THE GLORY OF CHnnST AS GOD-MAN. to suffer such sorrows, and at the same time, can lay ajust foun- dation for raising our own love and zeal, and gratitude both to the Father and the Son, to such unknown and superior degrees, and can set before our eyes such an astonishing example of humi- lity, charity, and self-denial ; surely these are such advantages to the christian scheme, and such honours to the blessed gospel, as should not be slightly rejected. It should be also considered that the Arians raise a very common' and plausible objection against the vulgar explication of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ, because that scheme allows no real self-emptying, no literal and proper abasement and suf- fering of the Son of God, but only a relative abatement by being united to the man who did suffer. The authór of the " Sober Appeal to a Turk or an Indian," endeavours to expose the com- mon scheme of the doctrine of the Trinity ; because it supposes only a " relative humiliation, a relative or nominal suffering of the Son of God by his uniting himself to a man, while he him- self really suffered nothing, underwent no diminution, but was all the while possessed of the highest glory, andof the same un- changeableblessedness, page 145." Whereas this doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul of Christ sets the whole scheme of the self-denial and sufferings of Christ, in as glorious and advan- tageous a light as their doctrine can pretend to do; and yet at the same time secures the divinity of Christ, together with all the honours of its condescending grace, by supposing this pre- existent soul always personally united to his divine nature. Thus all this sort of pretences for the support of the Arian error is destroyed at once, by admitting this doctrine. V. This doctrine of the pre-existent soul of Christ, not only casts a new lustre upon several parts of the gospel, and dis- plays the glories of the person of Christ, and the wonders of his love in a fairer light, but it also " enables us to defend the doc- trine of the deity of Christ with greater justice and success against manyother cavils of the Socinian and Arian writers :" For while wekeep this doctrine in our eye, we are by no means constrained to interpret any expression in the Old Testament concerning the divine nature of Christ, which carries in it some- thing inferior to the majesty of godhead : Herewe have a sub- ject proper to receive these meaner attributions. There is no need to call the mere godhead of Christ a man, an angel, a messenger ; there is no need to animate a human shape with pure deity in order to wrestle with Jacob, to eat anddrinkwith Abra- ham, to appear in the form of a flame in the bush to Moses, to travel through the wilderness in a cloudy pillar in the sight of all Israel, in order to direct the motion of their camp : There is no need to suppose the pure godhead talking with Joshua, andconversing familiarly with Gideon, nor holding a plumb -line in his hind while he stood upon the wall in view of Amos. The .
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=