1st. The habitual righteousness of Christ as mediator in his human nature, was the absolute, complete, exact conformity of the soul of Christ to the will, mind, or law of God; or his perfect habitually inherent righteousness. This he had necessarily from the grace of union; from whence it is that that which was born of the virgin was a “holy thing,” Luke i. 35. It was, I say, necessary consequentially, that it should be so; though the effecting of it were by the free operations of the Spirit, Luke ii. 52. He had an all-fulness of grace on all accounts. This the apostle describes, Heb. vii. 26, “Such an high priest became us, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” Every way separate and distant from sin and sinners he was to be; whence he is called “The Lamb of God, without spot or blemish,” 1 Pet. i. 19. This habitual holiness of Christ was inconceivably above that of the angels. He who “ “Sensus est de angelis, qui si cum Deo confederantur, aut si eos secum Deus conferat, non habens rationem eorum quæ in illis posuit, et dotium ac donorum quæ in illos contulit, et quibus eos exornavit et illustravit, inveniat eos stolidos. Sanè quicquid habent angeli, a Deo habent.” — Mercer. in loc.chargeth his angels with folly,” Job iv. 18; “who putteth no trust in his saints; and in whose sight the heavens” (or their inhabitants) “are not clean,” chap. xv. 15; always embraceth him in his bosom, and is always well pleased with him, Matt. iii. 17. And the reason of this is, because every other creature, though never so holy, hath the Spirit of God by measure; but he was not given to Christ “by measure,” John iii. 34; and that because it pleased him that in him “should all fulness dwell,” Col. i. 19. This habitual grace of Christ, though not absolutely infinite, yet, in respect of any other creature, it is as the water of the sea to the water of a pond or pool. All other creatures are depressed from perfection by this, — that they subsist in a created, dependent being; and so have the fountain of what is communicated to them without them. But the human nature of Christ subsists in the person of the Son of God; and so hath the bottom and fountain of its holiness in the strictest unity with itself.