That there is a human sympathy in the man-Christ with the believer, cannot be denied, the scriptures (whereof some passages have been cited) are so clear; only, we shall give some properties thereof for helping to understand the same so far as we can reach. (1) First then, we say, it is a real and human sympathy. When we say it is real, it does not only import that He knows the afflictions of His people, nor only that He minds help to them, which two do agree to the Lord JEHOVAH, but it imports a sensible, native, and (to say so) a natural touch of these evils; for He is not one that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Heb. 4). This is as one brother is affected with the straits of another, especially straits that himself has formerly felt; this must needs be asserted as that which follows the reality of Christ’s manhead [humanity; human nature], who, as such, cannot but be supposed to have what properties are belonging to a man. I called it human sympathy to distinguish it from that figurative sympathy which was applicable to Him before His incarnation. This sympathy is really for kind such as one friend has to another, a father or mother to their children, as frequent expressions in Scripture do hold forth; and it is the believing of the reality of this human sympathy that opens the door to all the following consolations, to wit, that our Lord Jesus has a human heart stirred and affected in that same manner (yet inconceivably holy) as ours are towards our friends and children in their necessities, and though Christ be glorified, yet ceases He not to be true man, and so to want [lack][1] this sympathy. James Durham, Excurses 16, Concerning Christ’s Intercession, Commentary upon the Book of the Revelation.
[1] The 1658 edition reads, “and so not to want this sympathie,” which the errata instructed to delete the “not.” The 1660 and Sanders 1680 editions corrected this, but Anderson’s 1680 and all the eighteenth century editions did not.
