11. But let us travel once more in our
journey of instruction over the lessons taught in the holy Law of
God. The Angel of God speaks to Hagar; and this same Angel is
God. But perhaps His being the Angel of God means that He is not
true God. For this title seems to indicate a lower nature; where
the name points to a difference in kind, it is thought that true
equality must be absent. The last book has already exposed the
hollowness of this objection; the title of Angel informs us of His
office, not of His nature. I have prophetic evidence for this
explanation; Who maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a
flaming fire Psalm civ.
(ciii.) 4.. That
flaming fire is His ministers; that spirit which comes, His
angels. These figures shew the nature and the power of His
messengers, or angels, and of His ministers. This spirit is an
angel, that flaming fire a minister, of God. Their nature adapts
them for the function of messenger or minister. Thus the Law, or
rather God through the Law, wishing to indicate God the Son as a
Person, yet as bearing the same name with the Father, calls Him the
Angel, that is, the Messenger, of God. The title Messenger
proves that He has an office of His own; that His nature is truly
Divine is proved when He is called God. But this sequence, first
Angel, then God, is in the order of revelation, not in Himself.
For we confess Them Father and Son in the strictest sense, in such
equality that the Only-begotten Son, by virtue of His birth, possesses
true Divinity from the Unbegotten Father. This revelation of Them
as Sender and as Sent is but another expression for Father and Son; not
contradicting the true Divine nature of the Son, nor cancelling His
possession of the Godhead as His birthright. For none can doubt
that the Son by His birth partakes congenitally of the nature of His
Author, in such wise that from the One there comes into being an
indivisible Unity, because One is from One.