Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ

4. IT may then be said, what did the Lord Christ in this Condescension, with respect unto his Divine Nature? The Apostle tells us, that he humbled himself, and made himself of no reputation, Phil. 2. 7, 8. He veiled the Glory of his Divine Nature in ours, and what he did therein, so as that there was no outward Appearance or Manifestation of it. The World hereon was so far from looking on him as the true God, that it believed him not to be a good Man. Hence they could never bear the least intimation of his Divine Nature, supposing themselves secured from any such thing, because they looked on him with their Eyes to be a Man, as he was indeed, no less truly and really than any one of themselves. Wherefore on that Testimony given of himself, Before Abraham was, I am, which asserts a Pre-existence from Eternity in another Nature than what they saw, they were filled with Rage, and took up stones to cast at him, John 8. 58. And they give a Reason of their Madness, Joh. 10. 33. Namely, that he being a Man, should make himself to be God. This was such a thing, they thought, as could never enter into the Heart of a wise and sober Man, namely, that being so, owning himself to be such, he should yet say of himself, that he was God: This is that which no Reason can comprehend, which nothing in Nature can parallel ⟨p. 67⟩or illustrate, that one and the same Person should be both God and Man: and this is the Principal Plea of the Socinians at this Day, who through the Mahometans succeed unto the Jews in an Opposition unto the Divine Nature of Christ.

4. IT may then be said, what did the Lord Christ in this Condescention, with respect unto his Divine Nature? The Apostle tells us, that he humbled himself, and made himself of no reputation, Phil. 2. 7, 8. He vailed the Glory of his Divine Nature in ours, and what he did therein, so as that there was no outward Appearance or Manifestation of it. The World hereon was so far from looking on him as the true God, that it believed him not to be a good Man. Hence they could never bear the least intimation of his Divine Nature, supposing themselves secured from any such thing, because they looked on him with their Eyes to be a Man, as he was indeed, no less truly and really than any one of themselves. Wherefore on that Testimony given of himself, Before Abraham was, I am, which asserts a Pre-existence from Eternity in another Nature than what they saw, they were filled with Rage, and took up stones to cast at him,