QUEST. XXXIX. _Why was it requisite that the Mediator should be Man?_ ANSW. It was requisite that the Mediator should be Man, that he might advance our nature, perform obedience to the law, suffer, and make intercession for us in our nature, have a fellow-feeling of our infirmities, that we might receive the adoption of sons, and have comfort and access with boldness unto the throne of grace. QUEST. XL. _Why was it requisite that the Mediator should be God and Man in one Person?_ ANSW. It was requisite that the Mediator, who was to reconcile God and Man, should himself be both God and Man, and this in one Person, that the proper works of each nature might be accepted of God for us, and relied on by us, as the works of the whole Person. Our Mediator having been considered as God and Man, in one person, we have a farther account of the necessity of being so. And, I. It was necessary that he should be a divine Person, for several reasons here assigned, with others that may be added. As, 1. If he had not been God, he could not have come into the world, or been incarnate, and have had the guilt of our sins laid on him, with his own consent; for he could not have been a party in the everlasting covenant, in which this matter was stipulated between the Father and him; and, had he not consented to be charged with the guilt of our sin, he could not have been punished for it, inasmuch as God cannot punish an innocent person; and, if such an one be charged with this guilt, and consequently rendered the object of vindictive justice, as our Saviour is said to have been, in scripture, it must be with his own consent. Now the human nature could not consent to its own formation, and therefore it could not consent to bear our iniquities; since to consent supposes the person to be existent, which Christ, had he been only Man, would not have been before his incarnation, and therefore he could not have come into the world as a Surety for us, and so would not have been fit, in this respect, to have discharged the principal part of the work, which he engaged in as Mediator.