2. How greatly is our nature dignified! He is entered into glory with
God, in changing his glory into a corruptible image. This is inconsistent with that glory he is entered into after his sufferings; there is a repugnancy between his sitting upon a throne, and being subject to the accidents of material things on earth. As Christ was silent in any such doctrine, so were the angels at his ascension (Acts
1:10, 11, 'This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you have seen him taken up into heaven'), when they had a fit occasion to mention it; especially when they mention his coming so again for the comfort of the disciples that were spectators of it. They mention, not a coming every day in body and soul in the wafer, into their mouths, but only of a visible and glorious coming again in the same manner as he ascended. As he hath entered into glory, so the heavens receive him, and contain him, till the time of the restitution of all things. His body is too glorious to pass into the mouths and stomachs of man, and undergo those various changes with their nourishments.
2. How greatly is our nature dignified! He is entered into glory with our nature, and hath lifted up our flesh above the heavens, and hath in this glorified our very dust. In that nature wherein he suffered, in the same nature he hath ascended into the most glorious part of the creation of God, above the highest heavens. The humanity of Christ, and in that our nature, was not taken up for a time, but for ever. It was debased for a short space: Heb. 2:7, 'Thou madest him a little lower than the angels;' or, 'Thou hast made him lower than the angels for a short time.' But he is advanced for ever: 'Thou hast crowned him with glory and honour.' The Redeemer is always to wear our nature; it is never to be out of fashion with him. How glorious is this for us, that the Son of God should take our nature, our dusty humanity, all our infirmities except sinful, to clear our natures from all penal infirmities, to transform our clay (if I may so say) into virgin wax, and wear it as a pledge that the members of his body shall at length be brought to him! Our nature now hath, by Christ's assumption of it, an affinity with the divine, which that of the glorious angels hath not in such a manner. Our nature, not theirs, was assumed, and remains united to the person of the Son of God. It