Page:A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (John Ball).djvu/279

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or how he is the Mediatour of the New Testament.
267

tures, the humane nature doing that which pertained to the humanity, and the divine nature that which pertained to the divinity,Bellar. de Christ. lib. 5. cap. 7.
§ Potest tamen.
but the humane and divine both concurring to produce one act or work of Mediatorship. As the divine and humane nature concurre to make one Christ, so the acts of the divine and humane nature, distinct in vertue and operation, by co-operation concurrePlura principia ad operationem unam possunt concurrere.
Iun. ibid. cap.
7. not. 1.
to make up the same work of Mediation. Some of the works of Christ the Mediatour, were the works of his humanity in respect of the thing done, and had their efficacy, dignity and value from his divinity, in that they were the works of him that had the divinity dwelling bodily in him: and some the works of his divinity, the humane nature concurring only instrumentally, as the remitting of sins, the giving of the Spirit, the raising of the dead, and such like. The works of Ministery, the Sonne of God performed them in the nature of man.Iun. cont. 2. l. 5.
cap. 5. not. 29.
It was the Sonne of God and Lord of life, that died for us on the Crosse, but it was the nature of man, not of God wherein he died. The works of Authority and power were all performed by the divine nature, yet not without an instrumentall concurrence of the nature of man. Christ suffered as man, but the divine nature did support and sustaine the humane. He died as man, as God he overcame death, conquered, and rose againe: as man he was made an offering for our sins, the worth and value of the Sacrifice was from the divinity. The two natures in Christ be distinct in their essence and properties,Iun. Paral.
lib. 3 in cap. 9.
Hebr.
and so in their operations, that we must not imagine one action of both natures: but as the natures be united in one person, so the operations concurre to make up one work of a Mediatour. Many chiefe, necessary and essentiall acts Iun. animad.
in Bell. contr. 2.
l. 5. ca. 3. not. 9.
concerning our reconciliation with God, are from the Deity of Christ as from the next, proper, immediate and formall beginning. The Incarnation of Christ is from the Deity, which did assume the humanity, which when it was not, could not assume it selfe. The manifestation of God was a work truly divine, from the humanity of Christ as an instrument,Joh. 1.18.
Matt. 11.27.
from the Deity as the true cause. Christ as man teacheth as an instrument, and Christ the Word teacheth as Mediatour: for he is not only Mediatour, who supplyeth the roome of an instrument: but the Deity did move the humanity as his instrument, that is, personally united, and not as anothers. To lay down his lifeJoh. 10.18. passively belongs to the flesh, to lay downhis