An end of doctrinal controversies which have lately troubled the churches

CHAP. 3. Of the Incarnation and Hypostatical Union.

§. 1. NO wonder that it seemeth hard to Man, to understand how the Divine Nature assumeth the Humane into Union, when it is so far beyond our reach to conceive how God is near to all his Works, and how he operateth on every man. Christ hath told us, That ⟨p. xxiii⟩we know not how a man is born of the Spirit, no more than we know whence the Wind cometh and whither it goeth: And can we easilier know how God became Man?

§. 2. It is certain, that God being infinite, is as near to us as is possible; our Souls can be no nearer to our Bodies, nor perhaps to themselves. And though Philosophers dispute, Whether Spirits be in loco, and whether God be in us, or we in him, and whether he be quasi locus & spatium to the World; yet it is past question, that he is omnipresent, and intimately proximus to all things.

§. 3. It is not therefore his mere Presence or Proximity of being that is this Hypostatical Union; else it would extend to all the World. It is harder therefore to prove, that God is not as nearly united to all, than to prove, that he is not so united to the Humane Nature of Christ. Which caused Peter Sterry and such others, to hold, That Christ hath three Natures; that is, That the Divine Nature first produced the prime, superangelical, emanant Nature, (by which he seemeth to mean an universal Soul to the Matter of the World) and that this superangelical Nature did unite it self to all, but eminently to the humane Nature of Christ, which he calleth One top-Branch in the Tree of Beings. Some say the superangelical Nature being Christ's only Soul assuming but a Body; others, that it assumed a Body and Soul.