§. 47. Of experimentall Learning.
IT is said of the Son of God, that he a 1.1 learned obedience.
A thing is learned two waies.
- 1. By attaining to the knowledge of that which we knew not before. In this sense saith Christ, Learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, Matth. 9. 13.
- 2. By an experimentall evidence of what we knew before. In this sense saith the Apostle, I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content, (Phil. 4. 11.) that is, by experience I finde that this is my best course. Thus it is said, They shall learn warre no more, (Isa. 2. 4) they shall experimentally finde no more Warre amongst them. I have learned by experience, that the Lord hath blessed me for thy sake, saith Laban to Iacob, Gen. 30. 27. Thus we say in common speech, when by experience of paying anothers debt, we finde how costly a thing it is to be a Surety, I have learned what suretiship is. Thus Christ learned what it was to be a Surety for sinners.
In this particular case of Christ, that so excellent a person as the Son of God, so beloved of the Father, so pure, so harmlesse, should suffer so as he did, was a new lesson, never heard of before, first learned by him.
Yea further in his own example he so practised this lesson, as he became an example to others, so to teach it others, as they might learn it of him.
Christ had an experimentall proof of sufferings. He had not onely a ge∣nerall notion that the humane nature which he assumed was subject to manifold sufferings, but he learned it to be so by experience in his own person: he sensi∣bly felt the smart, pain, weight and grief thereof: witnesse his great agony set down §. 38.
Of the end and use of this experimentall learning, See Chap. 2. vers. 18. § 183, 186.