Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ

BUT whereas not only the Denial, but Misapprehensions hereof have pestered the Church of God in all Ages, we must in the first place reject them, and then declare the Truth.

1. THIS Condescension of the Son of God did not consist in a laying aside, or parting with, or separation from the Divine Nature, so as that he should cease to be God, by being Man. The Foundation of it lay in this, that he was in the form of God, and counted it not robbery to be equal with God, Phil. 2. v. 6. That is, being really and essentially God in his Divine Nature, he professed himself therein to be equal with God or the Person of the Father. He was in the Form of God, that is, he was God, participant of the Divine Nature, for God hath no Form but that of his Essence and Being; and hence he was equal with God, in Authority, Dignity and Power. Because he was in the Form of God, he must be equal with God, for there is Order in the Divine Persons, but no Inequality in the Divine Being. So the Jews understood him, that when ⟨p. 64⟩he said, God was his Father, he made himself equal with God. For in his so saying, he ascribed unto himself equal Power with the Father, as unto all Divine Operations, My Father, saith he, worketh hitherto, and I work, Joh. 5. 17, 18. And they by whom his Divine Nature is denied, do cast this Condescension of Christ quite out of our Religion, as that which hath no Reality or Substance in it. But we shall speak of them afterwards.

1. THIS Condescention of the Son of God did not consist in a laying aside, or parting with, or separation from the Divine Nature, so as that he should cease to be God, by being Man. The Foundation of it lay in this, that he was in the form of God, and counted it not robbery to be equal with God, Phil. 2. v. 6