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SERMON V.

HEB. i. 1, 2, 3.

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.

THERE is nothing which can more effectually tend to promote in us the Christian life, than right notions, and a firm belief of the Christian doctrine: and no part of this doctrine is either more important in itself, or more likely to influence our practice, than that which more immediately concerns its divine Author, our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ. I would therefore engage your attention to a discourse upon the two natures united in his person, after I have just taken notice how naturally the words I have read will introduce it. The point, directly asserted in the text, is that of a divine revelation; that God was pleased, even from the beginning, to make a gradual discovery of his will, as the wants of his creatures, or the ends of his providence required; and that he had now finished and completed it by the mission of his Son. As it was the apostle's great design to shew

went before it, he begins, and spends this first chapter with setting forth the preeminence and superior dignity of the revealer himself. And the terms he makes use of upon this occasion very fully contain in them the catholic faith with respect to the natures of Christ, as will appear whilst we distinctly treat of each. And indeed, an unprejudiced mind will hardly desire either more or better arguments for the received doctrine in those points, than what he may be supplied withal in the single passage before us.

I. Without any further introduction then, I am first to prove the true and proper divinity of Jesus Christ; not by arguments drawn from the scriptures at large, but by such only as are here suggested to us. They are four;

1st, His filiation or sonship:

2dly, His being styled the brightness of the glory, and the express image of the person of the Father: 3dly, His creation of all things: and,

4thly, His preservation, or upholding of them.

1. With regard to the first particular, it must be allowed, that angels, that Adam, and other men, are sometimes in scripture called sons of God; and yet we never think of ascribing any proper divinity to them, since the title is sufficiently accounted for by their creation or adoption. But in the case before us we must go further, because the same holy writings speak of one who is the Son of God in a far more transcendent and peculiar manner; of one, who is his well-beloved, his only, and his only-begotten Son. There are indeed several distinct grounds and reasons of this high appellation: he is the onlybegotten Son of God, as he was conceived by the

Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary; but neither this, nor the other reasons commonly enumerated by divines, which are all posterior to it, can supply us with the highest and primary notion of our Saviour's sonship. It is plain from scripture, that he had an existence antecedent to his incarnation. In what capacity then, and under what relation? Was he coordinate with the Father, equally underived and unoriginate? This will not be asserted. Was he then made, or created? Nor should this; because the scriptures declare, that all things were made by him, and that without him was not any thing made that was made: he therefore could not be made at all, unless his agency was concerned in his own creation, which is an absurdity that may be resolved into an express contradiction. If then he was neither made nor created, but subsisted with the Father before all time and all creation; and yet was not, like him, absolutely underived, self-existent, and of none; it must follow that he proceeded, in some ineffable and mysterious manner, from the Father; or, in the catholic language, that he was begotten of him. That passage indeed, in the Epistle to the Colossians ", which we render the firstborn of every creature, if it should be translated, as some learned men contend c, born, or begotten before all creation, will sufficiently prove our Saviour's divine and eternal sonship. And the context seems to determine it to this sense, as it there immediately follows, that all things were created by him; which is given as a proof of his an

3.

b

a John i. • Πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως, cap. i. 15. See bishop Brown's Procedure, &c. p. 304. and Dr. Sherlock

tecedent generation: and it is likewise expressly added, that he is before all things; which, compared with the other, seems to point out, not only his eternal existence, but the very manner of it, viz. by generation. Suppose then that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, not merely with regard to any temporal acts or offices, but with respect to the incomprehensible manner of his deriving his nature from him, and see how the case will stand, in order to evince his true divinity. Father and son are terms which we easily understand, when applied to human persons; and, when applied to the divine, we must in a great measure retain the same human ideas, or we shall have none at all. We cannot think that this sort of language was taken up accidentally, and by chance; but that it was purposely designed to convey to us, under the images of this human relation, the real correspondent relation between God the Father and God the Son. If the Father begot the Son, he begot him of his own substance; and since the divine substance cannot be divided, he must communicate to him the whole undivided substance of the Godhead; and by consequence, the Son must have, equally with the Father, all the powers and perfections of it. It is so with men; the son is equal to his father in all the essentials of human nature: and to say that Jesus Christ in his highest capacity is the Son of God, and yet of a different and inferior nature, is the very same absurdity in kind, though much greater in degree, as if we were to call a creature of the irrational species a son of man. The Son of God then is God, as every son of man is man: if the uniform language of scripture does not teach e Col. i. 17.

us this, it teaches us nothing; all faith, all mystery will be resolved into figure, into metaphor, into bare allusion. To prevent such consequences as these, we must insist upon it, that there is a real foundation for this language in the divine nature, and that Jesus Christ is therefore called the proper, the only Son of God, because he was neither made nor created, but begotten; begotten, not figuratively, but in a true and real correspondence to human generation, from or of the substance of the Father, and in his image and likeness. And accordingly he is here said to be the brightness of the glory, and the express image of the person of the Father: which is the second argument, in conjunction with the rest, to evince his divinity.

2. And as under the former article it was shewn that he is God of God, so here it will appear that he is Light of Light; for the just unforced inference from the words is, that he is in relation to the Father as the bright shining forth of the light is to the source of it. The comparison however is not to be extended further than it was originally designed; the rays of light are not only derived, but divided from the body of it; and, though diffused through the world, are but a part of its immense orb. Here therefore the similitude fails; but what it strictly teaches us is this, that the person here styled the brightness of the Father's glory is not himself indeed the underived, unoriginated fountain of light, but yet is a necessary coeval emanation from it; not partially or separately, as in material light, since the uniform undivided essence of God cannot be communicated

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