Q. 13. What mean you by the second, that God is our Ruler? A. He that by creation is our absolute Owner, and hath made us reasonable, and with free-will, must needs have the only right and fitness to be our Ruler by his laws and doctrine: and we are bound, as his subjects, to obey him absolutely in all things.1 Q. 14. How gather you that he is our Father, or Benefactor? A. If we have our very being from him, and all the good that the whole creation enjoyeth is his free gift, then as he is love itself, so he is the great Benefactor of the world, but specially to his chosen, faithful people: and no man or angel hath any thing that is good by way of merited exchange from God, but all is of free gift: and we owe him our superlative love, and thanks, and praise. Q. 15. Why are heaven and earth named as the parts of his creation? A. They are all that we are concerned to know: we partly see the difference between them, and God's word tells us of more than we see earth is the place of our present abode in our life of trials in corruptible flesh; heaven is the place where God doth manifest his glory, and from whence he sendeth down those influences which maintain nature, and which communicate his grace, and prepare us for the glory which we shall enjoy in heaven. By heaven and earth is meant all creatures, both spirits and corporeal.m Q. 16. Were there no more worlds made and dissolved before this? It seems unlikely that God, from all eternity, should make nothing till less than six thousand years ago; when he is a communicative good, and delighteth to do good in his works? A. It is dangerous presumption so much as to put such a question with our thought or tongue, and to pry into God's secrets, of which we are utterly incapable (unless it be to shame it, or suppress it). God hath, by Christ and the Holy Ghost, in Scripture, set up a ladder, by which you may ascend to the heaven that you are made for; but if you will climb above the top of the ladder, you may fall down to hell." 1 Psalm lix. 13; lxvi. 7, and ciii. 19; Dan. iv. 17, 25, 32; 1 Tim. vi. 15, and i. 17; Rev. xvii. 14, and xix. 6. CHAP. XI. Of the Person of Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. Q. 1. WHO is Jesus Christ? A. He is God and man, and the Mediator between God and man.° Q. 2. When did he begin to be God? A. He is the eternal God that had no temporal beginning? Q. 3. When did he begin to be a man? A. About one thousand six hundred and eighty-one years ago." Q. 4. If he be God, why is he called the Son of God? Are there more Gods than one? And how doth God beget a son? A. There is but one God: I before opened to you the mystery of the Trinity in unity, to which you must look back. Begetting is a word that we must not take carnally; and a son in the Deity signifieth not another substance. If the sun be said to beget its own light, that maketh it not another substance. But Christ is also, as man, begotten of God, in a virgin's womb.¶ Q. 5. Was Christ God in his low condition on earth? A. Yes, he is still God and man: but his glorified manhood is not like our corruptible flesh, and narrow souls. Q. 7. Hath Christ a soul besides his Godhead? A. Yes, for he is a perfect man, which he could not be without a soul. Q. 8. Then Christ hath two parts: one part is God, and the other man? A. The name of part, or whole, is not fit for God: God is no part of any thing, no, not of the universe of being; for to be a part is to be less than the whole, and so to be imperfect and every whole consisteth of parts; but so doth not God.s Q. 9. Is Jesus Christ one person or two, viz. a divine and human? A. It is dangerous laying too great a stress on words, that are ° 1 Tim. ii. 5; Heb. xii. 24; viii. 6, and ix. 15. P John i. 1-3, &c.; 1 Tim. iii. 16; Rom. ix. 5; Tit. ii. 13. 9 Phil. ii. 7-10. Acts iii. 21; John ii. 17, and vi. 62; Eph. iv. 8-10 $ Gal. iii. 20. either not in Scripture, or are applied to God as borrowed from similitude in man; as the word person signifieth the eternal word, the second in the Trinity, Christ is but one person. And though his human soul and body assumed be substances, they are not another person, but another nature united to his eternal person; yet not as a part of it, but by an union which we have no proper words to express. Christ hath two natures, and but one person. But if you take the word person only for a relation, (as of a king, a judge, &c.,) so Christ, as Mediator, is a person distinct from the same Christ, as the eternal, second person in the Trinity.t Q. 10. It seems then Christ had three natures, a divine, a soul, and a body? A. This is a question about mere names, he hath only the nature of God and of man. But if you go to anatomise man, you may find in him on earth, perhaps, more natures than two, spirit, fire, air, water, and earth: but this is a frivolous dispute. Q. 11. In what nature did Christ appear of old before his incarnation? A. If it were not by an angel, as his agent, it must be by some body, light, or voice, made or assumed for that present time. Q. 12. I hear some say, that Christ is not one God with the Father, but a kind of under God, his first creature above angels. A. The Scriptures fully prove Christ to be God, and one God with the Father: the form of baptism proveth it. There be some learned men that to reconcile this controversy say, that Christ hath three natures, 1. The divine: 2. A super-angelical: 3. A human. And that God, the Eternal Word, did first of all produce the most perfect of all his creatures, above angels, like an universal soul, and the Godhead uniting itself to this, did, by this, produce all other creatures; and, at last, did in and by this unite itself hypostatically to the human nature of Christ. They think divers texts do favour this threefold nature; and that the Arians erred only by noting the super-angelical nature, and not noting the divine united to it. But I dare not own so great a point, which I find not that the universal church 1 John v. 7; 1 Tim. ii. 5; Eph. iv. 5, 6; Rem. v. 17, 18, ever owned; nor do I see any cogent proof of it in the Scrip ture." Q. 13. But God doth all his works in order: and he made angels far nobler than man: and is it like then that he setteth a man so far above all angels as personal union doth import ? A. It is not like, if we might judge by the conjectures of our reason: but God's lower works are none of them perfectly known here to us; much less the most mysterious, even the glorious person of the Son of God. If God will thus glorify his mercy to man, by setting him above all the angels, who shall say to him, 'What doest thou?' And if there be in Jesus Christ a first created superangelical nature, besides the divine and human, we shall know it when we see as face to face. In the mean time, he will save those that truly believe in him as God and man.x Q. 14. Why is Christ called "our Lord?" A. Because he is God; and also, as Mediator, all power in heaven and earth is given him, and he is made Head over all things to his church. (Matt. xxviii. 28; Eph. i. 22, 23.) Q. 15. What do his names "Jesus Christ" signify. A. Jesus signifieth a Saviour, and Christ, anointed of God. He being anointed by God to the office of a Mediator, as the great Prophet, Priest, and King of the church. CHAP. XII. How Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary. Q. 1. Doтн it not seem impossible, that Christ should be begotten on a virgin without a man? A. There is no contradiction in it: and what is impossible to him that made all the world of nothing? Q. 2. But it seems incredible that God should be made man? A. God was not at all changed by Christ's incarnation. The John i. 1, 2; Matt. xxviii. 19; Col. i. 15-18; Heb. i. 2-4; Rev. i. 5, 8. * Heb. i. and ii. Matt. viii. 20; Luke i. 35. Godhead was not turned into flesh or soul, but united itself thereto." Q. 3. But it seemeth an incredible condescension in God to unite the nature of man to himself, in personal union. A. When you understand what it is, it will not seem incredible to you, though wonderful. Consider, 1. That it doth not turn the human nature into divine. 2. Nor doth it give it any of that part or work which was proper to the divine nature, and second person in the Trinity, from eternity. 3. The divine nature is united to the human, only to advance this to the excellent office of mediation, and that Christ in it may be Head over all things to the church. 4. And it will abate your wonder if you consider, that God is as near to every creature as the soul is to the body in him we live, move, and have our being. And he is more to us than our souls are to our bodies. 4. You now make me think that God is one with every man and creature, as well as with Christ. I pray you wherein is the difference? A. God's essence is every where alike; but he doth not appear or work every where alike as he is more in heaven than on earth, because he there operateth and appeareth in glory, and as he is more in saints than in the ungodly, because in them he operateth his grace; so he is in Jesus Christ, otherwise than he is in any other creature: 1. In that he by the divine power qualified him as he never did any other creature. 2. And designeth him to that work which he never did any other creature, 3. And fixeth him in the honourable relation to that work. 4. And communicateth to him, by an uniting act, the glory which he doth not to any other creature: and though it is like there is yet more unknown and incomprehensible to us, yet these singular operations express a singular, operative union. The sun, by shining on a wall, becomes not one with it but by its influence on plants, it becometh one with them, and is their generical life. Q. 5. But how is the second person in the Trinity more united to the human nature, than the Father and the Holy Ghost? Are they divided? A. You may as well ask, why God is said to make a the world. by his word, and by his Son: though the persons are undivided in their works on the creature, yet creation is eminently ascribed to the Father, incarnation and redemption to the Son, and sanc |