I am sufficiently satisfied that he neither knows where he
is nor what he doth, or hath no due comprehension of the things he treats
about. That which he opposeth, if he intend to oppose any thing by me
asserted, is, that whereas Christ is God, the essential properties of his
divine nature are to be considered as the formal motive unto, and object
of, faith, love, and obedience; and whereas he is man also, his
excellencies, in the glorious endowment of his human nature, with his
alliance unto us therein, and his furniture of grace for the discharge of
his office, are proposed unto our faith and love in the Scripture. And of
these things we ought to take a distinct consideration; our faith
concerning them being not only taught in the Scripture, but fully confirmed
in the confessions and determinations of the primitive church. But the
person of Christ, wherein these two natures are united, is of another
distinct consideration; and such things are spoken thereof as cannot, under
any single enunciation, be ascribed unto either nature, though nothing be
so but what formally belongs unto one of them, or is the necessary
consequent and exurgency of their union. See Isa. ix.
6; 1 Tim. iii.
16; John i. 14. It is of the “glory of
the Word of God made flesh” that I discourse. But this man talks of what
would have belonged to Christ as God-man, whether he had been mediator or
not; as though the Son of God either was, or was ever designed to be, or
can be, considered as God-man, and not as mediator. And thence he would
relieve himself by the calumny of assigning a distinction unto
me between the graces of Christ’s person as mediator, and the graces of his
person as God and man (that is, one person); which is a mere figment of his
own misunderstanding. Upon the whole, he comes to that accurate thesis of
his own, — that there are no personal graces in Christ but what belong to
his Deity or humanity. Personal graces belonging unto the humanity, or
human nature of Christ, — that nature being ἀνυπόστατος, or such as hath no personal subsistence
of its own, — is a notion that those may thank him for who have a mind to
do it. And he may do well to consider what his thoughts are of the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ, mentioned Phil. ii.
6–11.