A29699:380
Paradise opened, or, The secrets, mysteries, and rarities of divine love, of infinite wisdom,…Paradice opened, or, The secreets, mysteries, and rarities of divine love, of infinite wisdom,…
Paradise opened, or, The secrets, mysteries, and rarities of divine love, of infinite wisdom, and of wonderful counsel laid open to public view also, the covenant of grace, and the high and glorious transactions of the Father and the Son in the covenant of redemption opened and improved at large, with the resolution of divers important questions and cases concerning both covenants ... : being the second and last part of The golden key / by Thomas Brooks ...Paradice opened, or, The secreets, mysteries, and rarities of divine love, of infinite wisdom, and of wonderful counsel laid open to publick view also, the covenant of grace, and the high and glorious transactions of the Father and the Son in the covenant of redemption opened and improved at large, with the resolution of divers important questions and cases concerning both covenants ... : being the second and last part of The golden key / by Thomas Brooks ...
London: printed for Dorman Newman, 1675
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
The person of the Godhead that was incarnate, was neither the Father nor the Holy Ghost, ⟨p. 155⟩but the Son, the second Person, for the Word was made Flesh. There being a real distinction of the Persons, that one of them is is not another; and each of them having their proper manner of subsistence, the one of them might be incarnate, and not the other; and it is the Godhead, not simply considered, but the Person of the Son, subsisting in that Godhead, that was incarnate. And it was very convenient, that the second or middle Person (in order of subsistence) of the blessed Trinity, should be the Reconciler of God and man; and that he by whom all things 1were made, should be the Restorer and Maker of the new World; and that he who was the express Image of his Father, should be the Repairer of the Image of God in us. Oh the admirable love and wisdom of God that shines in this, that the second Person in the Trinity is set on work to procure our Redemption! Though reason could never have found out such a way, yet when God hath revealed it, reason, though but shallow, can see a fitness in it; because there being a necessity that the Saviour of man should be man, and an impossibility that any but God should save him; and one Person in the Trinity being to be incarnate, it agrees to reason, that the first Person in the Trinity should not be the Mediator; for who should send him? he is of none, and therefore could not be sent: There must be one sent to reconcile the enmity, and another to give gifts to friends; two proceeding Persons, the Son from the Father, and the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son: Accordingly the second Person, which is the Son, he is sent upon the first errand, to reconcile man to God; and the third person, the Holy Ghost, he is sent to give gifts to men so reconciled; so as to reason, it is suitable, and a very great congruity; that God, having made all things by his Son, should now repair all things by his Son; that he that was the middle Person in the Trinity, should become the Mediator between God▪ and man; that he that was the express Image of the Father's Person, should restore the Image of God, defaced in man by his sins. Ah Christians, how well does it become you ⟨p. 156⟩to lose your selves in the admiration of the wisdom of God, in the contrivance of the work of our Redemption!