SECT. III.

Of the prophetic office of Jesus Christ.

CONSIDERING the manifold errors and the deep ignorance in which mankind was almost universally lost and bewildered, it was absolutely necessary that he who mediated for God with men, in order to the reconciling them to him, should in the first place take care to inform them of the nature, and instruct them in the will of God; without which it was impossible for them so much as to know what it is to be reconciled to him. And accordingly this was the first mediatorial office that our Saviour undertook, viz. to prophesy to the world, i. e. to reveal and publish the gospel to mankind, wherein the nature and the will of God, and the method of our salvation, are plainly stated and described, so far forth at least as it is necessary to our reconciliation to him. Upon which account he is called the Light of the world, the Sun of Righteousness, the Way and the Truth, and the bright morning Star; all which refer to his prophetic office, which is the fountain of all that spiritual light that shines through the world: for, long before our Saviour was born, it was foretold of him, that he should execute the office of a prophet; so Deut. xviii. 15. The Lord thy God shall raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken; which prophecy St. Peter applies to our Saviour, Acts iii. 22. And upon this and other prophecies of the Old Testament it is evident, it was a general anticipation among the Jews in our Saviour's time, that the Messias should be a prophet: for thus, upon Christ's feeding five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes, they cried out, This is of a truth

that prophet that should come into the world, John vi. 14. so upon his restoring the centurion's servant, they were amazed, and glorified God, saying, that a great prophet was risen up among them, Luke vii. 16. And so also his own disciples style him a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.

Now this prophetic office of Christ consisted not so much in foretelling of future events, (though this he also did so far as it was needful for the church,) as in expounding, declaring and making known the will of God to us by divine revelation: for so, to prophesy signifies no more than to speak from or in the stead of another; pò in composition being all one with ò: thus Exod. vii. 1. God said to Moses, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet; that is, he shall be thy mouth to deliver to Pharaoh what I shall deliver to thee: for so the word is explained, Exod. iv. 16. He shall be thy spokesman, he shall be to thee instead of a mouth. And in this sense the poets were anciently called the prophets of the muses; so Theocritus,

Μουσάων δὲ μάλιστα τίειν ἱεροὺς ὑποφήτας

i. e. "the sacred prophets of the muses;" and St. Paul himself, Titus i. 12. calls the heathen poets their prophets, quoting a passage out of Epimenides; who, though he is styled by Laertius copiéσTATOS, a great favourite of the gods, and, as he relates the story, directed the Athenians how to lustrate their city in a time of pestilence, yet, if we may credit Aristotle, οὐ περὶ τῶν ἐσομένων ἐμαντεύετο, i. e. “ he never prophesied of things to come," Rhet. 1. iii. c. 17. but was only a divine, as Plutarch calls him, and

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θεοφιλὴς καὶ σοφὸς περὶ τὰ θεῖα, i. e. " a friend of God, " and one that had a deep insight into divine things." By which it is evident, that prophesying doth not necessarily include, in the true acceptation of it, foretelling futurities, but only denotes declaring the mind and will of God in any matter by divine inspiration. For so Justin Mart. in Cohortat, ad Græc. tells us, that the prophets declared those things to the world, ἃ τὸ ἅγιον ἐπ ̓ αὐτοὺς κατελθὸν πνεῦμα τοὺς τὴν ἀληθῆ θεοσέβειαν μανθάνειν βουλομένους δι ̓ αὐτῶν διδάσκειν #роńρηται, i. e. "which the Holy Ghost descending "upon them, had intended by them to teach those persons who were truly willing to be instructed in "the true worship of God." And accordingly St. Chrysostom, ὁ προφήτης ερμενευτής ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ, a prophet is not only an interpreter, but an interpreter of God." And so also Dionysius the Areopagite styles the prophets τῆς ἀῤῥήτου σοφίας παTépes, i. e. "the fathers of secret wisdom," Epist. ix. because they discovered those things to the world which were discoverable only by divine inspiration. And in this large sense of the word, Christ's prophetic office is to be understood, viz. as a declaring and signifying the will of God to mankind, concerning the way and method of our reconciliation to God, and eternal salvation by him. But for the fuller explication of this his mediatorial office, I shall endeavour, first, to shew how excellently he was fitted and accomplished for it; and secondly, how fully and effectually he hath discharged it. As for the first, how excellently he was fitted and accomplished for this office will evidently appear by these three considerations:

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I. That when he came down to prophesy to us,

he came immediately from the bosom of the Father. For as he was the eternal Son of God, he was always with him from all eternity, and always intimate and infinitely dear and familiar to him; and therefore, as such, must not only be supposed fully to comprehend his nature, and perfectly to know his will, but also to be privy to his most secret thoughts and counsels. And it is upon this account perhaps chiefly that he is called the Logos, or Word of God; because, as St. Gregory Nazianzen discoursed, Orat. 36. he hath the same relation to God the Father that a word or inward thought hath to the mind; not only in regard of his generation without any passion, but because of his intimate conjunction with him, by which he perfectly understands him, and so hath full power to declare him. For the Father is known, saith he, by the Son, and the Son is a brief and easy demonstration of the Father, as every thing that is begotten is a λóyos, the silent word of that which begat it. So that as it is the office of our speech to declare our minds to one another, so it is the office of this eternal Word of the Father to declare his mind and word to the world: and who can be so proper to declare the Father's mind to us, as he who from all eternity hath been so familiar to his inmost thoughts and purposes? Hence St. John, chap. i. verse 18. No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him; and indeed his being in the bosom of the Father, i. e. being most near and intimate to him, did perfectly qualify him to declare him. For in that nearness and intimacy he could not but have a most perfect knowledge of him; and this not by the instructions of angels, nor

by dreams or visions, as other prophets had; no, nor merely by the Holy Ghost neither, but by an immediate personal intuition of his Father's thoughts and purposes, which from all eternity were exposed to his view and prospect.

II. It is also to be considered, that as he came down immediately from God to prophesy to us, so he came down into our own nature, which gave a vast advantage to his ministry. For had he preached to us, as he did to the Jews from mount Sinai, in his divine person, the glory and majesty thereof would have so amazed and confounded us, that, like them, we should not have been able to attend him; and our minds would have been so struck with the terrible manner of his ministry, that we could never have fixed our thoughts as we ought upon the matter of it. For so the Jews, upon God's preaching personally to them in the proper equipage of his divine majesty, were struck with such sacred horror, as that they were not able to bear it; but made it their request that they might not hear the voice of the Lord any more, and that for the future he would speak with them by Moses; whose voice they could more easily bear, and better attend to: which request of theirs God thought so reasonable, that he promises to raise up unto them a prophet of their own brotherhood, like unto Moses, meaning the Word incarnate, and bids them hearken to him, Deut. xviii. 15, 16, i. e. Since you cannot endure to hear me speaking to you in the majesty of my divinity, I will hereafter allay and qualify it, by assuming one of your own kind and kindred into personal union with it; in and by whom I will vouchsafe to speak to you in such a familiar and condescending