Chap. 16 The Second Corollary. The necessity of our Mediators being God and Man.
If you say you know God and keep not his commandments, you are a Liar. But now join these together, To know what a glorious God this is, and how sin works against this God.
Some knows somewhat of God's attributes, and can discourse of him, yet perhaps never knew before how sin made against this God, this is that people fail in; certainly both together has not been known by most people. I remember a speech I have read of a German divine upon his sick bed; he cries out thus, In this disease I have learned what sin is, and how great the majesty of God is: These together. We cannot know what sin is, except we know how great the majesty of God is; put these together, and these two together, will make men understand that they did never consider of before, what their lives are, and how people go on in a resolute, inconsiderate way, and know not what they do, and what God is.
Therefore we may pray as Christ in another case, Father forgive them they know not what they do: poor creatures they know not what they do; they never imagined what the greatness of the glory of God is.
CHAP. XVI.
The Second Corollary.
The Necessity of our Mediators being God and Man.
Secondly, hence appeareth, the necessity that our Mediator between God and us, must be God as well as man: great is the mystery of godliness that God is manifest in the flesh. Well, but what is the reason of this mystery of godliness? How comes it to pass that there is a necessity of such a mystery of godliness for saving of poor
Souls? That God must be manifested in the flesh? That God must be man? That all the angels in Heaven, and men in the world, could not
be a Mediator between God and us, but our Mediator must be truly and verily God as well as man? What is the reason of this?
That that I have been speaking of gives a full reason of it, our sins have so wronged God, has been so much against God, that it is only
God can make up the wrong, only such a Mediator as Christ that is both God and man, that can make it up.
I suppose most of you know so far in your catechism, That Christ is God and Man; but suppose I should put this question to you, you say Christ is God and man; but give me a sound reason, Why it is necessary that Christ must be God and Man? Why cannot man be saved by any Savior but such a one as must be verily and truly God and man? I suppose you will give a sound substantial reason, and say, God appointed and has ordained it should be so: but though it be God's will, and God has ordained it, yet there is another reason, and this it is; You may say (when you hear Christ was God and man that mighty Savior) here is the reason of all that, because sin does so wrong and strike at God, and oppose God, that of necessity whosoever comes to be a Mediator between God and us, must be
God as well as man. Therefore the Scripture said of Christ, his name shall be called Wwonderful, counsellor, the mighty God. Isa. 9. 6.
Christ is the mighty God, and the mighty God in the work of reconciliation, in reconciling God and us together, then he shews himself mighty. Because if all the world had undertaken to meditate between God and us, such is the breach between God and us, that all the men in the world could have done no more than if so be you had gone and put a piece of paper to a mighty flame, as if one had a mighty flame coming upon him, and he puts a piece of paper to keep it off; we know that will quickly burn it; he must put some Brass or Iron.
So that wrong is done to God by the sin of man, That if all the men in world, all the Created powers in Heaven and Earth, had come to have stood between God and us, to have satisfied God for that