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" Let us take notice , < c By whom this heavenly anthem is sung . " ** What are the contents of it . " I . For the First , it is said , that an innumerable company of the heavenly
host praised God . And we may well wonder what should occasion such mighty expressions of joy in those blessed spirits . Is it a time of joy when the great God is introducing himself in our flesh ; when he is abasing himself to dust and ashes ; when the infinite God is retiring ,
and shrinking up himself into a small worm ? Is it a time of joy with them when the brightness of the Deity , from whose reflections only they borrow all their shining and lustre , is now eclipsed in a frail body ? Strange , that they should make this day of heaven ' s humiliation , their festival and day of thanksgiving .
Yet , possibly , we may give a threefold account of it . * 1 . The holy angels rejoiced at the birth of Christ , because it gave them occasion to testify their deepest humility and subjection .
" To be subject to Christ , whilst he sat upon the throne of his kingdom , arrayed with unapproachable light , controlling all the powers of heaven with a beck , was no more than his dreadful majesty and his infinite glory exacted from them ; but to be subject to him in a cratch , as well as on a throne , when he had , as it were , hid his beams , and made himself recluse in the human
nature ; this was not obedience only , but in a sense it was condescension . Some of the schoolmen , those busy priers into all the secrets of heaven , think that the pride which tumbled the apostate angels out of heaven , was their disdaining to serve Christ in his state of exinanition
and debasement ; which they then , by revelation , knew would certainly come to pass in the fulness of time : and that the rest of their fellow-angels preserved their station , by professing their cheerful willingness to be common servants to the Mediator , when he himself should appear in the form of a servant . Now is the
time of their trial : their King , whose infinite essence gilds all the universe , doth now lie housed in a stable , cradled in a manger ; there he lies under all the dishonours of men , obscure in his birth , and shortly to be exposed to hardships , to the assaults of the devil , to buffetings and cruel scourgings , and at last to die as a malefactor /* &c . —P . 266 .
" Let me observe , that the abasing nativity of Jesus Christ , is the highest advancement of God ' s glory . " This is a strange riddle to human reason ; which is apt to judge it a moat
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preposterous course , for God to raise his glory out of the humiliation and abasement , yea , out of the very ruins of his Son . What if God had thrown open the gates of heaven , and given all the world a prospect into that heavenly and
glorious palace ; .-. . would not this have been more expressive of God ' s glory , than thus to cloister it up and immure the Deity in clay ; to expose Him who was God , to the miseries of wretched man , to an ignoble and cursed death ?"—Pp . 278 , 279 .
Fearing the perusal of my extracts may become as wearisome to the reader as the labour of transcribing them is to myself , I shall adduce only one passage from Charnock . Describing the goodness of God in redemption , he says ,
This was much more expensive goodness than what was laid out in creation ; The redemption of one soul is preciousy Ps . xlix . 8 ; much more costly than the whole fabrick of the world , or as many worlds as the understandings of angels in their utmost extent can conceive to be
created : for the effecting of € his , God parts with his dearest treasure , and his Son eclipses his choicest glory ; for this God must be made man , Eternity must suffer death , the Lord of angels must
weep in a cradle , and the Creator of the world must hang like a slave ; he must be in a manger in Bethlehem , and die upon a cross on Calvary ; Unspotted Righteousness must be made sin , and Unblemished Blessedness be made a curse . He
was at no other expense than the breath of his mouth to form man ; the fruits of the earth could have maintained innocent man without any other cost ; but his broken nature cannot he healed without the invaluable medicine of the blood of God . "—Works , I . 376 .
I shall make a quotation or two from Flavel , who was as accurately skilled in the technicalities of orthodoxy , as he was tender , affectionate and persuasive in his preaching . He
was a writer greatly valued by Doddridge and Orton , and whose works have been oftener republished than those of almost any other of the Nonconformists :
" The incarnation of Christ wa 3 a most wonderful humiliation of him , inasmuch as thereby he is brought into the rank and order of creatures , who is over all , God blessed for ever , Rom . ix . 5 . This is the astonishing mystery , 1 Tin ) . iii . 16 , that God should be manifest m the flesh ; that the eternal God should
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716 Uncharitable Spirit of Dr . J . JP . Smith towards Mr . Belsham ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1821, page 716, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2507/page/20/
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