Incarnation and the Emblem Writers
No. 404
Christ’s incarnation, whereby this divine person, this branch of paradise, was taken as it were from heaven, its natural soil, taken out of the bosom of his Father from whom he eternally proceeded or sprang, and was as it were cut off from him, from the glory he had with him before the world was; and emptied himself in his humiliation, to be ingrafted into the mean, inferior race of mankind, that may fitly, by reason of the manner of its propagation, be compared to a tree with many branches from one seed or root, and is often compared to a tree in Scripture. (See “Miscellanies” no. 991.) Christ was as it were cut off from his natural stock in his humiliation. He emptied himself. He was, in some sense, cut off from the glory that he had with the Father before the world was, during his humbled state. And he took the human nature, that was comparatively a mean, worthless, barren stock. This human nature was not changed by Christ’s taking it upon him, though it be dignified and its fruit exceedingly changed, even as the stock is not changed by the scion’s being grafted upon it. It remains human nature still, and will forever; Christ is true man still, as well as God, and so will remain to all eternity. But this nature is infinitely dignified, and its fruit infinitely changed for the better, by virtue of the scion that is implanted into it. The nature of neither stock nor scion is changed, but both remain the same they were before, though both are united into one tree and live by one life. So neither the human nature [nor the divine] are changed one into the other, though both are united in one person. - “Images,” no. 166