XXI. Rev. i. 5. that sleep, and the firstborn from the dead? espe- SERM. cially since that of the Psalmist, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee, was (according to St. Col. i. 18. Paul's exposition) verified in the raising him. this respect Christ also did much excel all others, xiii. 32, 33. who upon the same ground are called the sons of God. In Acts xxvi. 23. iii. 15. 6. xxix. 1. 3. Christ is capable of this title by reason of that high office, in which by God's especial designation he was instated. If ordinary princes and judges (as being deputed by God to represent himself in the dispensation of justice, or as resembling God in the exercise of their power and authority) have been called the children of the Most High, in the lan- Ps. lxxxii. guage of holy scripture; with how much greater truth and reason may he be called so, who was most signally consecrated and commissionated to the most eminent function that ever was or could be; who did whatever he did in God's name, who represented and resembled God so exactly? It is his own argumentation and inference; If he called them gods, John v. 35, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God? That extraordinary sanctification and mission did render him worthy and capable of that appellation, far beyond all others, who have for the like reason obtained it. 36. Eph. i. 22. did John xvii. and 2. 4. Whereas also it is said, that God did appoint, Heb. i. or constitute our Saviour heir of all things; give him head above all things to the church, did put all things under his feet; did give him xxviii. 18. power over all flesh; did commit unto him all au Matt. xi. 27. Heb. i. 3, &c. 36. John v. 22. SERM. thority in heaven and earth; did exalt him to the XXI. highest place of dignity and authority next to himPhil. ii. 9. self, at the right hand of the Majesty in the highest; yea did place him upon his own throne and Acts ii. 33. tribunal in his room, so that the Father judgeth no but hath committed all judgment to the Son; well may he in that respect be entitled the Son of God; as thereby holding the rank and privilege suitable to such a relation; he being the Chief of the family, and next in order to the great PaterfaEph. iii. 15. milias of heaven and earth. Of him, saith St. Paul, all the family in heaven and earth is named: Moses verily, saith the Apostle to the Hebrews, was faithful in all his house as a servant, but Christ as Heb. i. 4, a Son over his own house: and, Being made so much better than the angels, saith the same apostle, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they, (they being only called servants, or ministers; he being entitled a Son and heir.) Heb. iii. 5, 6. 5,7. In these respects is our Saviour properly, or may be fitly, denominated the Son of God, with some peculiarity and excellency beyond others: but his being with such emphasis called God's only begotten Son, (denoting an exclusion of all others from this relation upon the same kind of ground,) doth surely import a more excellent ground thereof, than any of these mentioned. For the first Adam did also immediately receive his being from the power and inspiration of God, (God formed his body and 'A' is a breathed a soul into it.) And Isaac, Samuel, and nivou. John the Baptist had also a generation extraordinary and miraculous, as being born of parents mortified Heb. xi. 11, by age and unapt for generation, by interposition of the divine power, (so it is expressly said of Sarah, ταυτα γενε 12. δύναμιν ἔλαβεν εἰς καταβολὴν σπέρματος, she received SERM. power from God for conception of seed;) which_XXI. productions do not so greatly differ from the production of Christ as man. And how can we conceive that the production of angels should be so much inferior to our Saviour's temporal generation, if there were no other but that? And although our Saviour was the first and chief, yet was he not the only Son of the resurrection ; There were, as the Apostle to the Hebrews saith, Heb. ii. 10. many sons of this kind brought to glory; and Christ Rom. viii. was firstborn among many brethren; this is also 29. a ground not proper or perspicuous enough for such a denomination; and indeed before it came to pass, he was called God's Son; he was so when he lived, he was so when God so loved the world, that he gave him for its salvation. 18. Neither doth the free collation of power and dig-John iii. 16, nity, how eminent soever, well suffice to ground this singularity of relation; for we see others also in regard to their designment and deputation to offices of power and dignity, although indeed subordinate and inferior to those he received, to be entitled the sons of God; and however this is rather the foundation of a metaphorical, than of a natural and proper sonship, which is too slender and insufficient for him, who in the most solemn and august strain is denominated such. 17, 29. Likewise although our Saviour be the heir of all things, yet hath he co-heirs, whom God hath, as St. Rom. viii. Paul speaketh, together enlivened, and together Eph. ii. 5, raised, and together seated with him in thrones of Heb. ii. 10. glory and bliss; beside that privileges of this kind SERM. are rather consecutive and declarative of this his XXI. relation to God, than formally constitutive thereof: Rom. viii. If a son, then an heir, saith St. Paul; inheritance follows sonship, and declares it, rather than properly makes it. 17. Moreover those prerogatives of singular affection and favour appropriated to Christ, together with all those glorious preferments consequent on them, do also argue some higher ground of this relation: for how could it be, that merely upon account of that temporal generation, (which did only make him a Heb. iv. 15. man, of like passions and infirmities to us, sin only excepted,) or in respect to any thing consequent thereupon, God should affect him with so special a dearness, and advance him to dignities so superlative, ὑπεράνω πάσης ἀρχῆς, καὶ ἐξουσίας, καὶ δυνάμεως, καὶ Eph. i. 21. kupiótytos, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is 1 Pet. iii. named; angels and authorities and powers being, as St. Peter says, made subject unto him? Such proceedings (that generation only, or any thing resulting from it, being supposed) do not seem consistent with that decent congruity and natural equity, which God is ever wont to observe in his regard to persons and in his ordering of things. 22. We must therefore search for a more excellent and more proper ground of this magnificent relation, or peculiar sonship; and such an one we shall find clearly deducible from testimonies of holy scripture, (and by several steps of discourse we shall deduce it.) 1. It is thence first evident, that our Saviour had in him somewhat more than human, according to which he is said to have existed before his temporal generation here among men. Even as men after death are in regard to a superviving part of them, SERM. their immortal soul, said to be and live; for, even XXI. then, saith our Lord, all men do live to God. For, Luk. xx.38. before his birth here, he is said to have been in heaven, and to have descended thence; No man, John iii. 13. saith he, hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man, which is in heaven: even when he visibly lived here, he was (as himself affirms) secundum aliquid sui, according to somewhat invisible in him, then actually in heaven; and according to that somewhat he was before in heaven; and by union of that invisible being to human visible nature, he is said to have descended from heaven. His ascension into heaven was but a translation of the human nature thither, where according to a more excellent nature he did abide before the incarnation; for, What, saith John vi. 62. he again, if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? from hence he is declared worthy and capable of so transcendent preferments; for, He that cometh from above, out of heaven, is John iii. 31. above all things; because, The second man is the 1 Cor. xv. Lord from heaven. He, as to his manifestation in 47. the flesh, was junior to St. John the Baptist, but in truth was of more ancient standing, and thence was to be preferred before him, as St. John himself per-John i. 15. ceived and professed; He that, said St. John, comes after me is preferred before me, because he was before me. He did subsist even before Abraham viii. 23. was born, whence without absurdity he could affirm, that he and Abraham had interviews and intercourse together; so he discoursed with the Jews; Thou John viii. art not, said they, yet fifty years old, and hast thou 58. seen Abraham? he replied; Verily, verily, I say |