V. OF THE DIVINITY OP CHRIST.

. So fatal have the consequences of the sin of Adam been represented, that you have been told, that nothing but the blood of God himself could* reverse them ; and therefore you have been taught
to
Of the Divinity of Christ. ft
to believe, that Jesus Christ, whose proper title id
the Son of man, as well as the Son of God, was
not merely man, but very and eternal God him*
self; without considering that, by thus making
more Gods than one, you are guilty of a breach
of the first and most important of all the com-
mandments, which says expressly, "Thou shalt
hare no other Gods before me," Exod. xx. 3«
But whatever such divines may say, the apostle
Paul says, in direct contradiction to them, that
"To us there is but one God, the Fatheb, of
whom are all things ; and one Lord Jesus Christ,
by whom are all things, and we by him," I Cor,
viii. 0. And again, after saying that we have
€€ one Lord, one faith, one baptism/* he adds,
t€ one God and Father of all, who is above all,
and through all, and in you all," Eph. iv. 5, G.
The creed of all Christians, therefore, ought to be,
" There is one God, and one Mediator between
God and men, the man Christ Jesus," I Tim.ii. 5.
The Father is frequently styled God, even with
respect to Christ, as well as other beings. €€ The
God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
give unto you, that ye may know the exceeding
greatness of his power, which he wrought in
Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and
set him at his own right hand, &c*" Eph. i. 17,
&c. Christ himself uses the same language. " I
ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and unto-
my
19 Qf tk$ Divinity of Christ*
my God, and your God," John xx. 17. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken pie ?"
Christ, who was " the image of the invisible God/' and the " first-born {or most excellent) of all his creatures/' Col. i. 1$. and " in whom dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily/' Col. ii. S>. acknowledged that " his Father was greater than be/ 9 John xiv. 26. And indeed, upon all occasions, and in the clearest terms, he expressed his depen- dence upon God his Father, for all his power and glory ; as if he had purposely intended to guard his disciples against forming too high an opinion of the dignity of their master. " Verily I say uuto you, The Son can do nothing of himself," John v. 19. "I can of my own self do nothing. As I hear I judge, and my judgement is just, because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father who sent me," v. 30. " The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself, but the Father who dwelleth in me f he doth the works/' xiv. 10* « I live by the Father/' vi. 57. " The Father hath given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgement/' v. 26, 37. u All power is given unto me, in heaven and in earth," Matt, xxviii. 18. He even calls his Fa- ther " the only true God/' John xvii. a. €f that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent*" It appears to me not to be in the power of language to exclude
the
Qftte Divinity 0/ Christ. t»
the idea of the divinity of Chrirt more expressly than by these solemn words*
Notwithstanding the divinecominanications with which our Lord was favoured, some things are ex- pressly &aid to be. withheld from htm. For hs himself, speaking of his second coming, says, Mark xiii. 32. " But of that day and hour know* eth no man, n«» PQt the angel* which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father/' In Malt, xxir* 36. where the same observation is repeated, it is, '* but my Father only/'
. The apostles, notwithstanding their attachment to their Lord and Master, always preserve the idea of his subordination to the Father, and consider all his honour and power as derived from him* " He received from God the Father, honour and glory/' 2 Peter i. 1 7. "It pleased the Father, that in him should all fullness dwell," Col, ;, 19* " The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave? unto him," Rev. i. 1. "Ye are Chmt's, and Christ is God's," 1 Cor. iii. 23. ' " The head of Christ is God," 1 Cor. xi 3.
The reason why Christ was so much distinguish •> ed by God the Father, is frequently and fully ex- pressed in the Scriptures, viz. his obedience to the will of God, and especially in his submitting to die for the benefit of mankind. " Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life," John x. 17' "He bumbled himself, and became obedient
unto
SO Of the Divinity of Christ.
unto death, even the death of the cross. Where* fore God has highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name ; that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth ; and that every tongue should . confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father," Phil. ii. 8—11. « Who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right band of God/' Heb. xii. 2.
Our Lord says, that " be and his Father are one," John x. 30. But he sufficiently explains him- self, when he prays that all his disciples may be €C pne with him, and his Father, even as they are one,*' John xvii. 11. And he gives them the same glory which God had given to him, ver. 22. Be* sides, at the very time that our Lord says that he and his Father are one, and in the very sentence -preceding it, ver* 29* he says, that his Father is greater than all. But how could the Father be greater than all, if there was any other, who was so much one with him, as to be, in all respects, equal to him ?
The mere term God is, indeed, sometimes used in a lower and inferior sense in the Scriptures, de- noting dominion only ; as when the Divine Being himself says, that " he will make Moses a god to Pharaoh," Exod. vii. 1. But, surely, there can be no danger of our mistaking the sense of such
phrases
Of the Divinity of Christ. SI
phrases as these. Or, if it were possible, our Lord himself has sufficiently guarded against any mis- construction of them when applied to himself, by the explanation he has given of them ; informing us, that, if, in the language of Scripture, *' they are called gods to whom the word of God came/'. John x. 35. (though, in fact, they were no other than mere men) he could not be guilty of blasphe- my in calling himself only the Son of God. Now,. if Christ had been conscious to himself that he was the true and very God, and that it was of the utmost consequence to mankind that they should regard him in that light, this was certainly a pro* per time for him to have declared himself, and not to have put his hearers off with such an apology as thi9.
But even this power and dominion, to which Christ i$ advanced by God his Father, t€ who gave all power into his hands/' and who " made him. head over all things to his church," Eph. i. 22. this mediatorial kingdom of Christ (as it is some- times, and with sufficient propriety, termed) is not to be perpetual. For the apostle Paul, speak* ing, no doubt, under immediate inspiration, ex* pressly says, that when " the end shall come, that God shall have subdued all things to his Son/' (in which he observes, that " he must be excepted who did subdue all things unto him,") " he must deli* ver up the kingdom to God, even the Fatueb, and
be
ft Of the Divinity of Christ.
be himself subject to him who had put all things under him, that God may be all in all/ 9 1 Cor. xv. 24, &c. Nay, he himself says expressly, that he had not the disposal of the highest offices of his kingdom, Matt. xx. 23. " To sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give ; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father."
So clear, my brethren, so full, and so express, is the uniform testimony of the Scriptures to the great doctrine of the proper unity of God, and of the subordination of Christ and all other beings to him, that the prevalence of so impious a doc- trine as the contrary must be, can be ascribed to nothing but to that mystery of iniquity , which, though it began to work in the times of the apostles themselves, was not then risen to so enormous a height as to attack the supremacy of the one living and true God, and give his peculiar glory to another. This, my brethren, among other shocking corrup- tions of genuine Christianity, grew up with the system of Popery ; and to show that nothing is im- possible to the superstition and credulity of men, when they are become vain in their imaginations, after exalting a man into a god, a creature into a creator, they made a piece of bread into one also, and then bowed down to, and worshiped, the work of their own hands.
But though it seemed fit to the unsearchable
wisdom
Of the Divinity of Christ. 13
wisdom of God, that all the errors and abuses of Popery should not be reformed at once ; and though this great error was left untouched by the first re- formers, blessed be God the Bible is as open to us as it was to them 1 and by the exertion of the same judgement and spirit, we may free Christianity from the corruptions which they left adhering to it; and then, among other excellencies of our religion, €€ Our Lord will be one, and his name one," Zech. xiv- 9.
If you ask, Who, then, is Jesus Christ, if he be not God ? I answer in the words of St. Peter, ad- dressed to the Jews, after his resurrection and as- cension, that " Jesus of Nazareth was a man ap- proved of God, by miraclefcand wonders and signs, which God did by him," Acts ii. 22. If you ask what is meant by man, in this place ; I answer, that man, if the word be used with any kind of pro* priety, must mean the same kind of being with yourselves. I say, moreover, with the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that " it became him by whom are all things, and for whom are all things, to make this great captain of our salvation in all respects like unto us his brethren, that he might be made perfect through sufferings," Heb. ii. 10. 17* " and that he might have a feeling of all our infirmities," iv. 13. For this reason it was that our Saviour and deliverer was not made of the nature of an angel, or like any super-angelic being,
but.
94 Of the Divinity of Christ.
but was of "the seed of Abraham," ii. 16. that is (exclusive of the divinity of the Father, which re- sided in him, and acted by him) a mere man, as other Jews, and as we ourselves also are.
Christ being made by the immediate hand of God, and not born in the usual course of generation, is no reason for his not* being considered as a man. For then Adam must not have been a man. But in the ideas of St. Paul, both the first and second Adam (as Christ, on this account, is sometimes called) were equally men : "By man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead," 1 Cor. xv. SI. And certainly, in the resurrection of a man y that is, of a person in all respects like ourselves, we have a more lively hope of our own resurrection ; that of Christ being both a proof and a pattern of ours. We can there- fore more firmly believe, that because he lives, we, who are the same that he was, and who shall un- dergo the same change by death that he did, "shall live also," John xiv. 19.
Till this great corruption of Christianity be re- moved, it will be in vain to preach the Gospel to Jews, or Mahometans, or, indeed, to any people who retain the use of the reason and understanding that God hath given them. For how is it possible that three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, should be separately, each of them, possessed of all divine perfections, so as to be true, very, and
eternal
Of the Divinity of Chritf. 25
eternal God, and yet that there should be but one God; a truth whichis so clearly and fully revealed, that it is not possible for men to refuse their assent to it; or else it would, no doubt, have been long ago expunged ffom our creed, as utterly irreconcileable with the more favourite doctrine of a Trinity, a term which is not to be found in the Scriptures. Things above our reason may, for any thing that we know to the contrary, be true ; but things expressly contrary to our reason, as that three should be one, and one three, can never appear to us to be so.
With the Jews, the doctrine of the Divine Unity is, and indeed justly, considered as the most fun- damental principle of all religion. (( Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord/' Deut- vi. 4. Mark xii. 29- To preach the doctrine of the Trinity to the Jews, can appear to them in no other light than an attempt to seduce them into idolatry, a thing which they dare not entertain tbe most di- stant thought of.
The great creed of the Mahometans is, that there is one God, and Mahomet is his prophet. Now that Mahomet is not the prophet of God, it is to be hoped, they may, in time, be made \o believe ; but we must not expect that they will so easily give up their faith in the unity of God. To make the Gospel what it was originally, glad tidings of great joy m , and as at last it certainly will be to all the nations
» of
fakmtH
96 Of the Divinity of Christ.
of the world, we must free it from this most ab- surd and impious doctrine, and also from many other corruptions which have been introduced into it. It can no otherwise appear worthy of God, and favourable to the virtue and happiness of man- Tcind.
Lest some common objections should hinder the reception of the great truth here contencfed for, I shall briefly consider and reply to the principal of them. It is often said that Christ speaks of his humanity only, whenever he represents himself as inferior to the Father, and dependent upon him. But the Scriptures themselves are far from furnish- ing the least hint of any such method of interpre- tation, though, according to the Trinitarians, it is absolutely necessary to the true understanding of them.
Besides, when it is applied to the passages in question, it is far from making them either true in themselves, or agreeable to the obvious purport and design of the places in which they are introduced. I, shall just mention a few. Could our Lord say with truth, and without an unwohhy prevarication, that " the Father is the only true-God," John xvii. 3. if any other person, not implied in the term Father, was as much the true God as himself? Now the term Father being appropriated to what is called the first person in- the godhead, cannot comprehend the Son, who is called the second*
This
Of the Divinity of Christ. S7
This key, therefore, is of no service in this case ; and our Lord, by expressing himself as he has done, could not but lead his hearers into what is called a dangerous mistake.
When our Lord 3aid that his Father was greater than he, did he make any* reserve, and secretly mean, -not his whole self, but only part, and the inferior part of himself, the other part being equal in power and glory with the Father ? How mean ihe prevarication, and how unworthy of our Lord !
When our Lord said that " the time of the day of judgement was not known to himself, the Son, but to the Father onlv," could he mean that hi* humanity only did not know it, but that his divi~ nity (which is supposed to be intimately united with his humanity) was as well acquainted with it as the Father himself ? If the human nature of Christ had been incapable of having that knowledge communicated to it, the declaration would have been needless ; but as that was not the case, his hear- ers must necessarily understand him as speaking of himself in his highest capacity; as he certainly must do, if at all, when he speaks of himself as the Son, corresponding to the Father.
Jf Christ had not satisfied the Jews that he did
. not mean to make himself equal with God, would
they not have produced it against him at his trial,
when he was condemned as a blasphemer because
he confessed that he was the Christ only ? And yet
b 2 no
L ..
« QT Atonement for Sm
no Jew expected any thing more than a man for .their Messiah, and our Saviour no where intimates •that they were mistaken in that expectation. It is plain that Martha considered our Lord as a differ- ent person from God, and dependent upon God, when she said to him, John xi. 22. " I know that even now, whatsoever thou wiltiisk of God, God will give it thee."