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THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.

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"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." That Jesus Christ is here webs, they will last their hour; but remember the rough hand of death will sweep you and them to destruction together; and heaven will pour down eternal blessings on the babe in Christ, whom you despise, when notwithstanding all your fancied worth and wisdom, it has no blessing left for you. It is acknowledged that this is a subject replete with mystery. The Scriptures plainly declare that there is but one God. On their authority this is to be believed. The Scriptures, as plainly as they assert that the Father is God over all, assert that Jesus Christ is God, and represent the Holy Spirit as God. How the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are in some respects distinct, and yet but one God, it is not for man to explain. But this forins no objection to its truth. What is there that is not mysterious to man? Let some philosopher, that denies the divinity of Jesus, because he cannot comprehend how the Father and the Son can be but one God, tell us of some object in nature that is not mysterious, before he rejects the Scriptures for describing a mysterious God.

A blade of grass contains mysteries that no philosopher can unravel. Should the nature of the Creator of the universe be less mysterious than that of a blade of grass? Look at yourself; you are a world of mysteries. What is your body? You cannot answer. What is your spirit? You are still more unable to reply, and can no more comprehend your own spirit, than you can the God of heaven. How does spirit act on matter? your limbs move at the direction of your mind? Still you can give no satisfactory statement. You are ingulfed in mystery. Does your nature consist of a body and a spirit merely, or do a body, an animal soul, and an immortal spirit, unite in you? Even this you cannot answer, nor tell whether you yourself are compounded of two, or of three, distinct parts or principles. Let man then comprehend and explain his own nature before he endeavours to unfold that of the infinite God; then it will be soon enough to listen to the Unitarian's arguments against the divinity of Jesus, because it is a subject fraught with mystery.

An eloquent passage from Skelton, a writer comparatively little known, shall conclude this long note.

"As to the doctrine of the Trinity, it is even more amazing than that of the Incarnation: yet, prodigious and amazing as it is, such is the incomprehensible nature of God, that I believe it will be extremely difficult to prove from thence, that it cannot possibly be true. The point seems to be above the reach of reason, and too wide for the grasp of human understanding. However, I have often observed, in thinking of the eternity and immensity of God; of his remaining from eternity to the production of the first creature, without a world to govern, or a single being to manifest his goodness to; of the motives that determined him to call his creatures into being; why they operated when they did, and not before; of his raising up intelligent beings, whose wickedness and misery he foresaw; of the state in which his relative attributes, justice, bounty, and mercy, remained through an immense space of duration, before he had produced any creatures, to exercise them towards; in thinking, I say, of these unfathomable matters, and of his raising so many myriads of spirits, and such prodigious masses of matter, out of nothing; I am lost, and astonished, as much as in the contemplation of the Trinity. There is but a small distance in the scale of being between a mite and me; although that which is food to me is a world to him, we mess, notwithstanding, on the same cheese, breathe the same air, and are generated much in the same manner; yet how incomprehensible must my nature and actions be to him! He can take but a small part of me with his eye at once; and it would be the work of his life to make the tour of my arm: I can eat up his world, immense as it seems to him, at a few meals: he, poor reptile! cannot tell but there may be a thousand distinct beings, or persons, such as mites can conceive in so great a being. By this comparison I find myself vastly capacious and comprehensive; and begin to swell still bigger with pride and high thoughts; but the moment I lift up my mind to God, between whom and me there is an infinite distance, then I myself become a mite, or something infmitely less; I shrink almost into nothing. I can follow him but one or two steps in his lowest and plainest works, till all becomes mystery, and matter of amazement, to me. How, then, shall I comprehend himself How shall I understand his nature? or account for his actions? In these, he plans for a boundless scheme of things, whereas I can see but an inch before (a) John i. 1.

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THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST ARGUED

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"And the Word They shall call his Jesus Christ there

spoken of is clear from a following verse. was made flesh and dwelt among us." name Immanuel, that is, God with us."b fore is God with us. "Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever.' "1 C

The Father is represented as addressing Christ as God. "Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever." d While the Father pronounces him God, God possessed of an everlasting dominion, shall we hesitate to acknowledge him divine?

Christ is called the true God. "We are in him that is true, and in his Son Jesus Christ; this (or he) is the true God and eternal life." That the person here called the true God is Jesus Christ, is evident not merely from the natural import of the passage, but from chap i. ver. 2. of this epistle, where Chirst is called "that eternal life that was with the Father, and was manifested to us."

Christ is called the great God, and the mighty God: "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." It is Christ, and not the Father, who will appear as the Judge of the world; consequently as the appearing of Christ is that of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ is here declared to be the great God.

"Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, (or, The Father of the everlasting age,) The Prince of Peace." These are titles which no mere mortal could sustain. Yet if Jesus were merely a man, there is no more reason for applying them to him, than to Moses or Elijah.

me.

Christ is called the Lord or Jehovah. This is God's in

In that he contains what is infinitely more inconceivable, than all the wonders of his creation put together; and I am plunged in astonishment and blindness, when I attempt to stretch my wretched inch of line along the immensity of his Nature. Were my body so large, that I could sweep all the fixed stars, visible from this world in a clear night, and grasp them in the hollow of my hand; and were my soul capacious in proportion to so vast a body; I should, notwithstanding, be infinitely too narrow-minded to conceive his wisdom, when he forms a fly: and how then should I think of conceiving of himself? No; this is the highest of all impossibilities. His very lowest work checks and represses my vain contemplations; and holds them down at an infinite distance from him. When we think of God in this light, we can easily conceive it possible, that there may be a Trinity of Persons in his nature."

(6) Matt. i. 23.

(c) Rom. ix. 5. (f) Tit. ii. 13.

(d) Heb. i. 8.
(g) Isa. ix. 6.

(e) 1 John v. 20.

FROM THE NAMES HE BEARS.

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communicable name. He says, "I am Jehovah ;* that is my name, and my glory will I not give to another." This name, the peculiar title of the eternal God, is freely applied to Christ. “This is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord (Jehovah) our righteousness." i

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord (Jehovah), make straight in the desert a highway for our God." In each of the four gospels, it is asserted that the person here spoken of, as a voice crying in the wilderness, was John the Baptist. Since John came as a messenger, to prepare the way for Jesus Christ, he, in this celebrated prophecy, is called Jehovah. This view of the passage is further confirmed by the language of the angel Gabriel to Zacharias. "Many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God; and he shall go before him (the Lord their God) in the spirit and power of Elias."m

That Jesus is called Jehovah is further evident from observing that the glory of the Lord (Jehovah), which Isaiah saw, was the glory of Christ. "In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord (Jehovah), sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the Seraphim; and one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord (Jehovah) of hosts! the whole earth is full of his glory.' St. John refers to the 9th and 10th verses of this chapter, (John xii. 40.) and then, speaking of Christ, adds, These things said Isaiah, when he saw his glory, and spake of him. It was the glory of the Lord of hosts, and of no other person, which the prophet saw; and yet St. John says, that he then saw the glory of Christ, and spake of him. Consequently Christ is the Lord (Jehovah) of hosts.

חיי

Thus in the plain, unperverted language of Scripture, is Jesus Christ represented as God, as the true God, the great God, the mighty God, Jehovah, as God over all blessed for ever, and even as addressed as God by the Father. If, as the Unitarians assert, Christ were no more than man, how dark, confused, and unintelligible would that holy volume appear! Instead of being a sure guide, none would be more uncertain. If Christ were but man, to worship him would be idolatry,

(h) Isa. xlii. 8.

(i) Jer. xxiii. 6.

(k) Isa. xl. 3. (7) John i. 23. Matt. iii. 3. Mark i. 2. Luke iii. 4.

The English reader of the

(n) Isa. vi. 3.

(m) Luke i. 16, 17.

Scriptures may observe, that when the word Jehovah occurs, and is translated the Lord, it is printed in small capitals.

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38 CHRIST SHOWN TO BE GOD BY HIS ATTRIBUTES.

yet millions of the best and wisest of mankind have been led to worship him, by that very book, which says, "keep yourselves from idols." If Jesus Christ is not God, the sacred writers have deceived millions, who wished to know the divine will; have led them to pay divine honours to a man, or an angel; and thus drawn them into the enormous and ruinous crime of idolatry. Can you believe a system true which evidently leads to this conclusion?

§ 3. That Jesus Christ is God, is further proved from his possessing those divine excellences which dwell in no created nature. He is eternal. Of himself he says, "I am the first and the last:" "These things saith the first and the last, who was dead and is alive." These words contain " the strongest assertion that eternity past and to come belongs to himself. If he is the first none can have been before him; if he is the last, none can be after him."* Were he the eldest and the greatest of created beings, he would not be the first, for God would have been before him.

If it were possible to render these passages more decisive, it might be done by comparing them with some others, which speak of Jehovah. "Thus saith Jehovah, I am the first, and

I am the last, and besides me there is no God." "I am the first, I also am the last, mine hand also hath laid the foundations of the earth."r That existence from eternity to eternity which Jehovah claims to himself in these passages, Jesus claims in the former.

Let

§ 4. Christ is God, for he is the Creator of all things. us survey this argument a little more fully. It may be stated thus:

The Scriptures represent creation as the work of God. The same holy volume declares, that creation was the work of the Lord Jesus. In effecting this work he did not act as an agent of the Father's. Therefore, as the Creator of all things, he is God over all, blessed for ever.

The Scriptures represent the creation of the universe as the work of God: this is so generally allowed, that it may seem almost needless to refer to that sacred book in proof of the assertion. The Scriptures appropriate the work of creation to God, and exclude all others from any participation in the glory of having effected that work. He that built all things

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(0) 1 John v. 21. (p) Rev. ii.8. (q) Isa. xliv. 6.

*Dwight.

(r) Isa. xlviii. 12.

CHRIST THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS.

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is God." "O Jehovah, thou hast made heaven and earth." "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth."" "I am the Lord (Jehovah) that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself." "I have made the earth, and created man upon it; I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded." Thus plainly does Jehovah assume to himself the glory of creating the universe, and deny the claim of every inferior being, how exalted soever, to any participation in the honour of that stupendous work.

We may next observe, that that holy book which, in terms so express, declares God to be author of the whole universe, in terms as express ascribes that work to Jesus Christ. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; all things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made."* Criticism has laboured hard to wrest this passage from its obvious meaning, but after all it stands a stedfast witness to the fact, that Christ is the Creator of all things; strong as it appears in our translation, but still stronger in the original, "Without him was not made a single thing that was made." "By him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist."y The language in this passage is peculiarly powerful. The leading idea, that all things owe their existence to Christ, is repeated twice over-by him were all things created-all things were created by him. It is also asserted that he existed before them all; and that his power keeps them all in being-by him all things consist.

It may properly be observed, that the language used here is altogether opposed to the idea of Jesus Christ's having acted as the Almighty's agent in producing the world; "He is before all things-Without him was not one single thing made." Can he be a creature who existed before all creatures? Can he have been made without whom was not one single thing made?

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(u) Job xxxviii. 4, &c. (x) John i. 1, 3.

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