2. Yet it may be a kind of petition, an expressing his desires in a
in heaven, as his prayers with strong cries were suitable to his condition on earth. Such 'prayers and supplications, with strong cries and tears,' belong only to 'the days of his flesh,' Heb. 5:7, i.e. the state of humiliation, wherein he was encompassed with the infirmities of the flesh; but such a posture becomes him not in heaven, where he is stripped of all those natural infirmities and marks of indigence.
Though such a kind of petitioning is not inconsistent with his humanity as joined to his divinity, and making one person (if it were, he could not then have supplicated in the world, as he did in the garden; for his humanity was joined to his divinity in that humbled, as well as in his exalted state. He was God in the days of his flesh when he lived amongst mortals, as well as now in the days of his glory); yet his praying with so deep a humiliation as he did in this lower region of the earth, is inconsistent with his glorified state in heaven; for if the glory of heaven wipes tears from the eyes of his members, it doth certainly from the eyes of the Head. Nor is it a supplication in the gesture of kneeling, for he is an advocate at the right hand of God, where he is always expressed as sitting, and but once (as I remember) as standing, and that was in the case of Stephen, Acts 7:55. This some of the fathers and others call a servile manner of praying, and say that it was not convenient for the Father to require it of Christ in his elevated state, nor for the Son to perform it.
2. Yet it may be a kind of petition, an expressing his desires in a supplicatory manner. Though he be a king upon his throne, yet being settled in that royal authority by his Father, as his delegate, he is in regard of that inferior to the Father, and likewise in the economy of mediator. And also as his human nature is a creature, he may be a petitioner without any debasement to himself, to that power, by whose authority he is settled in his dignity, constituted in his mediatory office, and was both made and continues a creature.
Though God 'hath put all things under him,' yet he did not put himself under him, but remains in his full authority, 1 Cor. 15:27. His divine nature in union with his human, is no argument against it, for then he should not have petitioned on earth. He was then the same