N03467:577
Discourses on various important subjects, nearly concerning the great affair of the soul's eternal…
Discourses on various important subjects, nearly concerning the great affair of the soul's eternal salvation, viz. I. Justification by faith alone. II. Pressing into the Kingdom of God. III. Ruth's resolution. IV. The justice of God in the damnation of sinners. V. The excellency of Jesus Christ. : Delivered at Northampton, chiefly at the time of the late wonderful pouring out of the spirit of God there. / By Jonathan Edwards, A.M. Pastor of the Church of Christ in Northampton. ; [Three lines from Deuteronomy]
Boston: printed by S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1738
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.
1. In the Person of Christ do meet together, infinite Glory, and the lowest Humility. Infinite Glory, and ⟨p. 251⟩the Virtue of Humility, meet in no other Person but Christ. They meet in no created Person; for no created Person has infinite Glory: And they meet in no other divine Person but Christ. For though the divine Nature be infinitely abhorrent to Pride, yet Humility is not properly predicable of God the Father, and the Holy Ghost, that exist only in the divine Nature; because it is a proper Excellency only of a created Nature; for it consists radically in a Sense of a comparative Lowness and Littleness before God, or the great Distance between God and the Subject of this Virtue; but it would be a Contradiction to suppose any such Thing in God.
But in Jesus Christ, who is both God and Man, these two diverse Excellencies, are sweetly united. He is a Person infinitely exalted in Glory & Dignity. Phil. 2. 6. Being in the Form of God, he thought it not Robbery to be equal with God. There is equal Honour due to him with the Father. John 5. 23.—That all Men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. God himself says to him, Thy Throne, O God, is for ever and ever, Heb. 1. 8. And there is the same supreme Respect, and divine Worship, paid to him by the Angels of Heaven, as to God the Father; as there, Verse 6. Let all the Angels of God worship him.
But however he is thus above all, yet he is lowest of all in Humility. There never was so great an Instance of this Virtue, among either Men or Angels, as Jesus. None ever was so sensible of the Distance between God and him, or had a Heart so lowly before God, as the Man Christ Jesus.