come our implacable judge, and doom us to a place of dismal torment, where we shall live with everlasting horror and despair; so that now we can no longer persevere in our impenitence, without trampling at the same time on the highest encouragements, and charging headlong through the most amazing dangers.

IV. That as he acts for and in the behalf of God and men, so he partakes of the natures of both. For, that this high and important office might be the more effectually executed and performed, the eternal Father thought meet to place it in the hands of his own eternal Son, the Son of his natural generation, to whom he communicated from all eternity his own divine essence and nature, and whom, in due time, he appointed to assume the human nature, into a personal union with his divinity; that so being God-man in one person, he might be the better fitted and accomplished to mediate between God and man. For in mediating authoritatively for God with us, he was to perform the office of a divine king, to rule and govern us, as God's vicegerent, and either reduce us under his authority, or chastise us for our rebellion against him; which is a sphere so vast and so sublime, as needs no less than some divine intelligence to inform and actuate it: for to wield the divine sceptre and government is a province that requires a divine knowledge and power; for the souls and hearts of men are the principal seat and subject of the divine government, and therefore it is very requisite that he who is intrusted with the administration of it should have a thorough and perfect inspection of all our most secret thoughts, and intentions, and purposes, and

resolutions; otherwise how is it possible he should take cognizance of them, so as to command, and overrule, and reward, and punish them? But to know the hearts of men is in scripture always appropriated to the divine omniscience; so 1 Kings viii. 39. Thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of the children of men: and if only God's all-searching eye can penetrate into the hearts of men, who but a God can rule and govern them? And accordingly our Saviour, upon whose shoulders this inward and spiritual government rests, challenges to himself this divine prerogative, which is so necessary a qualification for it, Rev. ii. 23. And all the churches shall know, saith he, that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts, and will give every one of you according to his works. Nor is it less requisite to qualify him for this spiritual empire that he should be almighty, than that he should be omniscient; for to enable him to rule the hearts and souls of men, it is necessary that he should have the command and disposal of all those outward events and accidents in which they are any way concerned, since it is by these in a great measure that their hearts are swayed, their affections formed, their intentions and resolutions squared and regulated, and in a word, their good and evil actions rewarded and punished in this world; and to wield and manage, moderate and dispose such infinite numbers of events as concern such infinite numbers of men so vastly distant from one another in place, condition, and temper, requires a power that can do whatsoever it pleases both in heaven and earth, which the Psalmist appropriates to the divine power as its peculiar prerogative, Psalm cxxxv. 6, 7. and if it be only a

divine power that can manage and dispose all the affairs of all men, what can be more requisite than that he who rules and governs them should communicate of the divine omnipotence? And accordingly our Saviour, upon whom this government is devolved, assures his disciples, that all power was communicated to him both in heaven and earth, Matt. xxviii. 18. which, being the prerogative of the divine power, seems impossible to have been communicated to any but a divine person. And therefore the prophet Isaiah, speaking of the government of Christ, tells us, that his name should be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, Isa. ix. 6. where, by Counsellor and mighty God, he seems to design his infinite knowledge and power, whereby he should be qualified for this his divine government; for so mighty God doth always in the scripture-phrase signify Almighty God: so in Deut. vii. 21. Psalm 1. 1. Jer. xxxii. 18. Heb. i. 12. and elsewhere. By all which it is evident, that to mediate authoritatively for God with men is a province so sublime, as that it requires no less than divine perfections in the person that undertakes and manages it, and consequently that it is requisite he should be God.

Nor is it less requisite to render his government more awful and majestic: for though the condition of the person alters not the nature of the authority he is vested with, yet in the estimation of men the same authority is more or less venerable, according as the quality and condition of the persons clothed with it is more or less considerable. Since therefore the quality of the person doth always cast a cloud or lustre on the office, it was very requisite that he who was authorized to mediate for God with

men, which is the highest office under God the Father, should be a person of the highest rank and dignity next to God the Father himself; and consequently that he should be God the Son; and hence the author to the Hebrews, chap. i. to render his authority more awful, takes a great deal of pains to emblazon the dignity of his person, in which he gives him such styles and characters, as cannot without extreme force be applied to any but a person divine; he styles him the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person; the founder of the earth, and the maker of the heavens, and the upholder of all things by the word of his power, verse 3. 10. he tells us, that he was set far above the angels, and that the Father had ordered all his angels to worship him, declaring him to be God in these terms, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; and then he concludes all with this application, Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard of him, chap. ii. verse 1. which shews that, in the apostle's sense, to mediate for God is a station so sublime, that it was very fit it should be supplied (as it was) with a person of the highest dignity, that so his person might reflect a majesty on his office, and render it more awful and venerable in the world.

And as, to accomplish him for this high office of mediating for God with men, it was most fit he should be God, so it was no less requisite he should be man. For man being naturally a sensitive as well as a rational creature, in this degenerate state of his nature, wherein his sensitive part is predominant, there are no sorts of objects do so vigor

ously impress and affect him, as those which strike immediately on his senses; and hence it is that he so greedily prefers carnal before rational, and sensitive before spiritual goods; notwithstanding the latter are in themselves infinitely greater and more eligible; and that in his conceptions of spiritual objects he is so prone to blend and intermix them with carnal and corporeal phantasms, because his mind is so estranged from spiritual objects, by its continual intimacy and familiarity with sensual ones, that it can hardly frame any idea of them without disguising them into some bodily semblance. God therefore being a spiritual and invisible essence, and upon this account far removed out of the ken and prospect of our sense, our sensual and depraved minds must either be naturally indisposed to think seriously of, and consequently to be duly affected by him, which renders us prone to irreligion; or sophisticate our conceptions of him with corporeal images and phantasms, which renders us prone to idolatry to prevent both which, God, in great condescension to this deplorable weakness of the human mind, hath always thought meet to converse with us under some sensible appearance or visible symbol of his divine presence. Thus when God conducted his chosen people through the Red sea and wilderness, he went before them in a pillar of cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire by night; and when afterwards he gave them his law, he descended upon mount Sinai in a bright and glorious flame, overcast with thick and solemn clouds, in which illustrious appearance he afterwards made his entrance into the tabernacle, where he made his constant abode, and from whence he frequently exhibited himself to