EC4 at the Cheologicgy Be "ity PRINCETON, N. J. gi \ Presented by Mr. Samuel Agnew of Philadelphia, Pa. SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY; IN FOUR SERMONS, PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY, BY THE REV, EDMUND’ MORTLOCK, B.D. FELLOW OF CHRIST’S COLLEGE. WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED AT THE PITT PRESS; SOLD BY 4 JOHN W. PARKER; anp Mussrs. RIVINGTON, LONDON: DEIGHTONS ; anp STEVENSON; CAMBRIDGE. M.DCCC.XLIV. Paar . nh hyd a Be it? a ewer " ie 1jf8 e sie | va Sa DT mn Mo if wan tT £9 east pr. vit a Ay f f re | A, salt Aovpes : nee ef any wth Pate » se a ft 4 Pa . Phe x 1” HCN wilde TESS 8 totam ae des utes: \ ane NT YY KY hh aa THE following Discourses were delivered by me before the University, in the month of January 1842, having been appointed the Afternoon Preacher for that month. Some trifling changes and additions have been since made to them, to which it is not necessary to advert more particularly. So much has been written, and so ably, upon the doctrine of the Trinity, that it seems a pre- sumption, especially in one having no pretension to superior learning or ability, to enter publicly upon this field. His excuse must be found, if at all, in some novelty in his mode of dealing with the subject. It is by this plea that I would justify my at- tempt. It has always appeared to me, that the evidence the most intelligible and convincing on this ‘ question, to the general reader, lies in the multi- plicity and variety of Scriptural allusion to it, rather than in the strength and clearness of particular texts. I by no means regard this Batter testimony as weak or insufficient, even alone, But cavils may often be here raised, on critical grounds, which they who are not thoroughly skilled in the ancient languages are unable to judge of, and so are left in some doubt and perplexity. But if it be shewn that a consistent vein of evidence runs through the whole of Scripture, breaking out in every part, and in every form, it 1V PREFACE. will be readily and confidently acknowledged and felt by them, that this fact is no otherwise to be accounted for, than by the intention of the Author of revelation to hold up the truth, thus pervading his Word, to the faith of mankind, for whose instruction that Word was given. But while this accumulative evidence is the most effectual, it is by no means the easiest to present in a connected discourse. Hence the proofs commonly offered in this way, are those grounded on a selection of the more striking Scriptural assertions, or on de- tailed statements of some one branch of evidence, or on a mere outline of the whole. There are indeed works which comprise the chief portion of the texts which bear on the subject. That of Dr 8S. Clarke presents all that are found in the New Testament; but it omits all reference to the Old. And moreover it exhibits the most remarkable passages of the New, interpreted after his own particular views. Jones's ‘Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity ” embraces, though not with all this fulness, the evidence of both re- velations, and has for its aim to counteract the bias ’ of Dr Clarke. Dr James Knight’s “ Scripture Doe- trine of the Trinity” is merely in reply to the same Author, and is confined’ to a narrower range. There is also the Tract of Mr Wm. Hey, referred to by his brother. But in these works, the texts, though classed under general heads, are presented without other connexion. My aim has been to bring to- gether as many as possible, but also with enough of arrangement, and of reasoning upon them, to make them conduce to one common end and impression ; PREFACE. Vv and this in a popular style. And I have added, in the way of notes, a brief description of the origin and aim of the creeds of the Church, and an outline of the chief dissentient opinions, and such other mis- cellaneous matter illustrative of the subject, as it seems to me that every educated Christian should possess, on the doctrine which forms the very foun- dation of that religion, on his honest and intelligent adoption of which depends his well-being in a fu- ture life. I have indulged a hope, that many who are competent to entertain such matter, but who would remain ignorant of it, from want of leisure or inclination to search for it in the volumes of different authors, may be not unwilling to give it a due at- tention, when presented in one view, in a compendious form. It has been on these grounds, and not from the hope of throwing further light on the subject, that I have ventured upon my present undertaking. I am much better satisfied of the usefulness of such a work, than of my own competency for it. The third Sermon is much taken up with an argument, which, though not new, has not commonly been brought forward. One of the positions on which it is grounded, has not hitherto been universally acquiesced in. I allude to the proof of the real nature of our Lord’s pretensions, from the conduct of the unbelieving Jews, and the motives of it. I have endeavoured to establish, that in ¢hez7 view he asserted his divine nature; and that, not expecting this in their Messiah, they regarded the claim as impious, and on ¢his ground condemned him. If such is made out to be their construction of his vil PREFACE. language, and the cause of their hostility, a strong testimony is thus afforded to the nature of his pre- tensions, which is all we require to ascertain, who are satisfied of his truth. What in these premises has not been hitherto acknowledged generally, is, that the Jews, at the time of our Saviour’s advent, expected in their Messiah merely a temporal and earthly Prince. But it is, I think, certainly true; of the generality of this people, at any rate. In the notice which I have taken of Mr. Locke, in connexion with this argument, in this Sermon and in the notes upon it, I believe I have not been wholly anticipated. I have uniformly given references to authors of repute, on every point of any importance, for the convenience of those who may wish to investigate it further. I have referred to several authorities, where one might have been sufficient, because some of the works quoted, which are of weight, are not accessible to all. I shall be satisfied, if I succeed in promoting a more accurate knowledge, and a firmer faith, on this important subject, with some of the younger of the educated laity, to whom I have chiefly had regard. As many of the references are to volume and page, it may be of use to specify the particular editions referred to :— ~) -“Waterland,* Works. ..:..ctumnee siesta ieee Oxford. 1823 Cudworth; Tntellect. Sysativas yass cie.: Gis: obese 1829 Pearson. onjthe/ Creed. i. gms de J 10s. Sa 1843 Allix, Judgment of the Jewish Church. ............. 1821 Ridley’s' Lady Moyer’s Legts so....0-.:tooamenneenettce 1802 Cleaver’s Sermons. ...............0.-- Sou. RA Se 1808 PREFACE. | vii Whitby, Tract. De vera Christi Deitate. ............. 1691 Whitby’s Last Thoughts. ...................4. London. 1822 MERRIER AVC OT RG eek. s,m he) Sah! 1788 Bere yatta. 22.5... Poo) ee TRIS 1824. Mee cioOts CittGse cn cot y...., vor ee eee i Brae 1823 Stillingfleet, ditto. ZA ENE PER PUR Cereb Scene epare se te 1710 Tillotson, Sermons. ........... CASEY ae pba isc. oie 1728 Wall) Hists of: Inf. Baptism: 222.007. Re cae. 1819 Berriman, Sermons on the Trinity. ................... L725 SPmerinlcorl then PTinitye aces othe or ult in de ee 1752 Mee Clarke s SermOnaete tact c.f ese, 1731 Burgess, Tracts on the Divinity of Christ. .......... 1820 By eeley se Lracteameren, - 800% iad tanec dt hab ben 1822 Wardlaw on the Socinian Controversy. ............... 1819 Macknight, Harmony of the Gospels. ................ 1819 earlier WOLKSs ees. ee ee ee 1834 Loulmin’s)Lifefof Socinus. .4.5.00:5. Heth 1777 Beers Hacovian Catechism. <0. +5-). 0s. +. Matty. xxvit. 19. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. WHEN we read that the prophet Elijah was sus- tained many days by the widow of Zarephath, and that “the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did 1 Kings the cruse of oil fail,” “who knoweth not that the sop xii. o. hand of the Lord hath wrought this?” And when again, that “five thousand were fed with five barley- 3 John Wi loaves, and twelve baskets filled with the fragments which remained,” we discern the finger of God. But we see the herb yield the seed of harvest, the produce of oft-renewed increase from the day of creation, and bearing within its little bulk the germ of future in-gatherings till time shall be no more, without adverting to his instrumentality therein. Even the more marvellous accomplishment, in our own nature, of the divine blessing, “Be fruitful and cen. i.os. multiply,” raises not our thoughts to him. As if reason did not acquaint us, that manifold and suc- cessive production bespeaks an almighty author, as certainly as any single or novel sign from heaven. Minds thus regardless of the lessons of nature, may well stagger at those of Revelation. Whoso is not “exercised in the works of God’s hands,” must needs find difficulty in his Word. But they who ] Isai. xl. 6, 7. Wisd.ix.16. ) SERMON I. look abroad upon the world and all that therein 1s, in connexion with the Maker of all, acquire an aptitude for divine truth, through their notice of his greatness, and of the narrow bounds of their own faculties. There is not a process of nature, however simple or familiar, that we can at all see into. The grain sown to-day, becomes perhaps, after a while, a part of the very hand which strewed it. Milk is con- verted in the infant into flesh, blood, bone, hair, all the many and unlike, liquid and solid parts, which make up man’s frame: so corn and animal nourishment at a later age. All these aliments have themselves sprung in some sort from the herb of the field: so true is it, that, not only in sameness of frailty, but also of origin, “all flesh is grass, surely the people is grass.” While we know this to be, we understand not at all how it is. We can detect nothing of the internal constitution of things, or of the powers of life and growth. Neither can we discover how the soul—the principle in us of thought, will, and affection, that which weighs and ~ compares, chooses and refuses, loves and hates, suf- fers and enjoys—how this subtle and invisible, but living and busy essence, is united to our gross body, acts upon it, moves it, and in return receives im- pressions from it. If we have become fully sensible, that “hardly do we guess aright at things that are upon earth;” that we cannot surmise how ought we see is brought about; if we ponder this truth, so as to mould our feelings to it; then are we taught to own the unsearchableness of God’s ways, SERMON I. 3 by whom every thing exists as it is, and to receive with modest deference whatever instruction he hath deigned to impart to us; and more especially in what regards himself. The mind that is conscious of its incapacity to grasp the Jeast of the divine works—to “pierce into the nature of a pebble, or apprehend how a mushroom doth grow ”—expects not to “find out the Almighty unto perfection ;” is prepared to believe, that he who made us and all things, and us differing from all things, and all one from another, himself hath distinction from every creature of his hand. When we have been brought to note, how much comes to pass daily, which unseen we should have deemed impossible, as that a small dry grain yieldeth “first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear,” an acorn an oak, and an egg fluttereth “a dove that is covered with silver wings, and her fea-. thers like gold;” then, remoteness from expectation and example, in a communication from heaven touching the Divine Nature, ceases to be regarded as a just ground of doubt. We should rather be surprised not to find in it much that is unlike to our present experience, and above our present com- prehension. It is at all times useful thus to school the mind, by reflection on the weakness and shortness of its powers, and the scantiness of its knowledge, even as to the ordinary products of nature which lie within the observation of our senses, when we are about to handle the heavenly truths which reach us only by revelation of God. We learn to acquiesce in what 5n2 Barrow. Job xi. 7. Mark iv. 8. Ps, Ixviii. 3e John iv. 24. Ps.cxxxix.6. Ps. CXXXix. 14. 4 SERMON I. is above our imagination, in matters of religion, when we see nothing to be éntrinsically level to it anywhere. And of the doctrines pertaining to the Divine Being himself; there is none which calls not for this preparatory discipline. .AM involve diffi- culties, if we allow our faith to be staggered by a want of conception as to the manner of what we are taught. We read that “God is a spirit.” Yet we understand not at all the mode of spiritual ex- istence, and must therefore doubt that of God, if we believe nothing which we cannot comprehend. So the attributes and operations of his infinite and inconceivable essence—his eternity, his omnipre- sence at every instant, his foreknowledge, his creation of all things, his promised renewal of the same life in us at the resurrection—baffle all the powers of our intellect, if we would reconcile the semblance of impossibility, and even contradiction, which they present to our hood-winked view, when we endeavour to frame particular notions of them. Yet we do not on this account doubt that they are truly revealed, or we should want the very motives of our worship. We copy the reasonable faith of David, who, reflecting on some of these things, confessed, as to the manner of them, “such know- b] ledge to be too wonderful for him,” and unattain- able ; yet lived under a firm and awful conviction of their reality, which his “soul knew right well,” on the testimony of God. The doctrine which I would introduce to your consideration by such views, is that of the Trinity. Like other truths which relate to the manner of SERMON I. 3 the divine subsistence, it is necessarily! remote from our apprehension. Yet not on this account does God dispense* with our belief of what he has seen @Sce note fit to make known to us. Though the term itself is not found in scripture’, it will be my aim to shew that the propositions which we compendiously ex- press by it, are certainly disclosed therein; and, how- ever inscrutable to our fancy, are held up as matter of bounden faith. The word Trinity is employed to represent the fundamental truth of our religion; viz. that, in the language of the first article of our Church, “ There is but one living and true God, the maker and preserver of all things: and in unity of this Godhead there’ be three Persons”, of one substance, power, and , eternity.” Or, in the words of the Athanasian Creed, that “The Father is God, the Son is God, and the + “Ts it possible that any doctrine concerning the Nature of the Deity should be without its difficulties? When the infinite distance is considered between man and his Maker, it seems reasonable to presume that there must be mysteries, far above the reach of the human under- standing, both in the nature of God, and in the plan of his government ; that the fullest discovery that could be made, of God and of his ways, to the human intellect, must be imperfect ; because however perfect in itself, it would be but imperfectly apprehended. No difficulties, there- fore, short of a contradiction, can be allowed to constitute an objection to a doctrine claiming divine original. On the contrary, it should rather seem, that to involve difficulties, must be one characteristic of a divine reve- lation ; and its greatest difficulties may reasonably be expected to lie in those parts which immediately respect the nature of God, and the manner of his existence.” Bishop Horsley’s Letters to Dr Priestley, Lett. xv. “On the Province of Reason, with respect to its enquiry into Scrip- ture Truths,” See Burgh’s Confutation of Lindsay, ch. 1. 2 The Greek word corresponding to “ Trinity,” occurs first (in works ‘now extant) in the writings of Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, A.D. 180. (Waterland, iii. 413. Hey, B. iv. Art. 1.§ 4. Berriman, p. 73.) b See note >’ Se Deut. xxxiii. amie Jer. XXiii. 24. Gen. xvii. 1. Gen. i. 1. Gen. ii. 7. Gen. ii. 5. Acts xiv. 17. Ps. cxlvii. 8. Ps, cxlvii. 9- 6 SERMON I. ‘ Holy Ghost is God: and yet they are not three Gods, but one God.” Reason and Revelation conspire to establish the Unity of God. Though the heathen worshipped many deities, the harmony of design and regularity of production throughout the works of nature, sug- gested to the wiser! among them, that there could be but One Creator of all, one Supreme God; and if one Supreme, but one truly God. Scripture, whence alone we seek our creed, plainly inculcates the same lesson. One eternal, infinite, almighty Being an- nounces himself therein to man, as author of the world, and of him, and of all things. “In the begin- ning God created the heaven and the earth:” “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground :” “Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air,” “ every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.” We read also, that he who made, by his single providence sustains them: “He giveth rain from heaven and fruitful seasons :” “He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains :™ ‘He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young 1 Dr Cudworth shews that the natural idea of a God includes “oneness and singularity ;” and that “the pagan theologers all along acknowledged one sovereign and omnipotent Deity, from which all their other gods were generated or created:” and that “the pagan polytheism and idolatry consisted, not in worshipping many creators, or uncreateds, but in giving religious worship to creatures, besides the Creator.” (Intell. Syst. Pref. and c. iv. see particularly section xxvi—xxxi.) Dr Grabe, however, justly observes that such knowledge as to the divine nature, did not extend to the common people (see his notes to Bishop Bull. J. E. C. ch. v. vi. vii. n.8). See also Tillotson (Serm. “On the Unity of God,” from 1 Tim, ii. 5); Pearson (Art. “I believe in God”); and Locke (Reasonableness of Christianity. Works, vi. 135). SERMON I. 7 ravens which cry:’ and “to man, the bread which Bs. als strengtheneth his heart, and wine that maketh it *!i->. glad.” Whatsoever is done in all the earth, he doeth it alone. “I (saith he) form the light and create tsai. xv. 7. darkness: I make peace and create evil: I, the Lord, do all these things.” He moreover is proclaimed as the moral governor of the world: “God is the judge: Ps. xxv. 7. he putteth down one and setteth up another.” He it is who hath revealed himself to man: “He made Ps. ciii. 7. 39 known his ways unto Moses:’ “He spake unto the uev.i.1,2. fathers by the prophets, and in these last days hath spoken unto us by his Son.” That he is “ God alone,” is carefully ae EVEN Isai, xxii. jealously proclaimed: “Hear, O Israel; the Lord Bod oe thy God is one Lord?:” “I am the first, and I am“ “”° the last; and beside me there is no God:” “I am God, tsai. xiv. 22. and there is none else:” “ Before me there was no God Isai. xlii formed, neither shall there be any after me:” “Thou Hos. x 4 shalt know no God but me:’ “Thou shalt worship Exod, xxxiv. no other God°.” Thus peremptorily doth he deny ess the existence of any co-ordinate or rival nature, by a testimony which is renewed from the mouth of his Markxii.29. Son, after whom the Apostle beareth witness; “There x Cor. vii is none other God but one.” But comparing scripture with scripture, as becom- eth those who would gather its true purport, we soon find these declarations to be aimed against zdolatry’, sce See XXiii. 24, ahi 2 For the proper force of this and similar texts, see Waterland’s sermon ™*’- 13,14 upon it; Works, vol. ii. Serm.1v. Also Dr Knight’s Tract. ch. 1. Texts i—yv. viii. Dr Gill, ch. 1. * There is no assertion of the unity of God in the Old Testament, until mention is made of idolatry ; and in most of the texts referred to in the margin, there is express allusion to this sin. See Waterland Def. Deut. iv. 15—20 ; > xiii. 6, 7, 10; Exod. xx.5; xxiv. 14. Is. xlii. 8. Gen, i. 1. 8 SERMON I. and the union of false objects of worship in the honour due unto “the only true God;” and to have no respect to the secrets of his own nature, to what he is metaphysically, in himself. He who hath declared himself “one, and a jealous God,” who “will not give his glory to another, nor his praise to graven images;” hath yet revealed to our faith, and held up to our adoration two beings intimately united in all the fulness and perfections of his own essence; thus exhibiting the asserted mystery of a tri-unal Deity, “three Persons, and one God.” The divine unity needing no further proof, it is to this plurality of Persons in it, that we have now to present the testimony of God’s own word. Of this doctrine, though not fully made known until these sacred Beings wrought on earth in the salvation of man, various premonitory notices were vouchsafed in the Old Testament. It opens, in the original language, with a manner of expression not imitable in ours, which would be anomalous. and unaccountable, unless shaped to this truth. The title given to the Creator has a plural form’, bespeaking of Qu. 1. and Wilson, note p. 42, from Justin. Socinus admits this aim of all such language. See Racov. Cat. sect. v. ch. 1. (p. 195 of Rees’s Trans. ) * The Hebrew word here rendered “God,” is “ Elohim,” Gods: the form of the same word, in the singular, is “ Eloah,” “God.” The Hebrew language has also different terminations for verbs, in the singular and plural: and here the verb rendered by “made,” is in the singular, though the noun “ Elohim,” Gods, is plural. The Jews employed by Ptolemy to translate the Old Testament into Greek, well aware of the natural inference from this language, changed the Hebrew plural, “ Elohim,” into a Greek singular, O«ds. And their own commentators expressly assign as the reason, that they feared lest Ptolemy should take them for polytheists: which shews their conscious- SERMON I. 9 number; while the verb, which expresses the act of creation, has a singular ending, and so denotes an agent, In some sense, one. Nor does this seeming solecism occur in this place only, or with respect to one only of the divine titles: the use of it is frequent and various, and admits of but one intelligible ex- planation. It must be a fact of some importance, that the sacred writers, whose inspired lessons were intended for a safeguard from polytheism, continually employ a construction, which is accurate and signi- ficant, only if, in the one Godhead, there exists some — multiplicity. We cannot believe it to have been adopted, by an inspired writer, in a matter so grave, by chance, or through negligence. If, taken alone, this peculiarity could be thought of little weight, and attributable to a mere idiom of the Hebrew tongue; it surely claims a different estimation, when, in the same book, we meet with doctrines announced by other and clearer modes of expression, which render this startling form of speech pertinent and just. Such is the case. When it is written, that, before man was created, “God said;” it is herein implied, ,., , 5 that there were “in the beginning with God,” whom sonni.i. ness, that some plurality in the Godhead is, at least apparently, implied by this form of expression. They took a like liberty with other texts, for the same reason. This plural, “ Elohim,” is found thirty times in the writings of Moses, and five hundred times in other parts of the sacred writings, and some- times with adjectives and participles in the plural. So that Dr Allix says, “There is no way of speaking by which a plurality in God may be signified, but it is used in the Old Testament.” “The Jews have forbidden their common people the reading of the history of the creation, lest, understanding it literally, it should lead them into heresy.” Allix, ch. ix. Dr Gill, ch, ii. Ridley’s second Moyers’ Lecture. Wardlaw, Disc. 1. Gen. i 26. Gen. iii. 22. Gen. xi. 7. Isai. xl. 12—14. Comp. xliv. 24. and Rom. xi. 34. Isai. vi. 8. Tsai. xli. 22. Gen. xviii. 1, 2. Isai. vi. 3. 10 SERMON I. he might address; and the saying which he spake, “Let ws’ make man in our image,” acknowledges in them a communion in his own majesty and power. The same inference is afforded by other and similar passages: “Man is become as one of us:” “Let us go down and confound their language.” For the prophet forbids us to understand these expressions of any creature, asking, ‘‘ with whom took God coun- sel?” It is nowhere hinted of angels’, that they concurred in the production of the world, or in dis- pensing mercy or wrath to man. No mention is made of them in the history of the creation. The same manner of expression occurs in the prophetical writings.” The “three men” who stood by Abraham, when it is said, ‘‘ Jehovah appeared unto him,” were held by the ancient Jews to represent the number of sacred persons in the one Godhead®. “ Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts,” the song of the seraphims heard by Isaiah, was also understood by them to point, by the reiteration, the same way; and, regarded in the 1 This is another of the texts, which the translators of the Septuagint thought it necessary to disguise, lest it should mislead Ptolemy into a belief that they were polytheists. (Allix, p. 100. Gill, ch. m1.) It is also one of those relied upon by the early Christians, in their reasonings with the Jews, for the divinity of the Son, in which they were compelled to ground their proofs on the language of the Old Testament. Allix, ch. xx. Also the Bishop of Lincoln’s Justin Martyr, p. 70. 2 Dr Whitby tells us, that all the early Christian fathers believed the Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Colossians, to aim at the heresy of Simon Magus and the Gnostics, who held the world to have been the work of angels ; and that, for this reason, he so expressly acquaints us, that Christ was the maker of them, as of all things else. (Tract, p. 37.) ® See Allix, ch. x: as also for the texts following. ‘ Men” here signifies “ beings’ —“ persons”—without reference to their nature ; as in Dan. ix. 21, “ The man Gabriel.” Comp. Luke i. 11, 19. SERMON I. 11 same light by the Christian church, was introduced and paraphrased, as a confession of the ‘Trinity, in one of the most ancient and sublime portions of its Liturgy. 7. 7. This triple recital of the divine title is frequent with n i. the inspired writers, and is not otherwise to be ac- counted for. Thus the same Prophet says, “ The faai. xxsiii. Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord i is our king.’ With like repetition doth Daniel make his petition: “O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive 3 pan. ix.is, O Lord, hearken and do.” See noteK. © See beg. of Serm. 11. tit, John vi. 33. 30 SERMON I. before; and had been made the basis of those spe- culations of the pagan philosophers, touching the na- ture of the great first cause, which came the nearest to truth. Thus by the wisdom of a far-seeing and all-controuling providence, a way had been opened * for the readier and wider circulation of his long meditated revelation, by the “Word” himself. The true purport of this language of St John cannot be overlooked by those who candidly weigh the main scope of his Gospel, of which it forms the introduction, and with which, therefore, it must be intended to tally. The earlier Evangelists having given a general” history of their master’s life and doctrines, it was the chief object of this crowning work, to set forth more distinctly and fully than had been suitable, or even prudent’, at first, the mystery of his divine nature. The evidence of it, as of all truth, was to be mainly sought in his own discourses. And this Gospel is, accordingly, much taken up with the record of such of them as bear upon his divine pre-existence in heaven, and his “ coming down thence to give life unto the world.” Hence it derives its pe- culiar character. The very frequency and variety of such allusions, proves their lofty and important meaning. Tor as intimations of a mere heavenly mission, they could not now be needed; inasmuch as he had been amply proved, and widely acknow- ledged, on other evidence, to be a “Teacher come from God,” and “the Prophet that should come into the world”’ The whole tone and manner of Christ, throughout his ministry on earth, bespake some great truth in veserve, which he saw reason SERMON I. 31 - not to develop plainly and fully at once, but only to prepare the way for. This truth—his pre-ex- istence in the full nature of the one God, and his incarnation as the promised Messiah—is the one per- vading theme of St John’s Gospel. And the intro- duction would naturally be in accordance with it. Nor need we put any force upon the language of the Evangelist, to bring it to such agreement. In its common, obvious sense, such as would immedi- ately occur to those to whom it was originally ad- dressed, it forms a solid and suitable ground-work for the lofty superstructure raised upon it. It pro- claims, on the authority of an ancient and acknow- ledged revelation, the existence of a second divine Being, answering to the lessons of the new; who had been promised, and of old expected agreeably to such promise, in the very character assumed by Christ. Such is at once the clear and consistent doctrine of the opening chapter of St John’s Gospel." ’Seenote 0. It will be sufficient to select a portion of the consentient evidence which follows in it. The doc- trine of his divine nature was, during his personal ministry, one full of danger’, if preached undisguisedly3 ¢ see note as will be shewn more fully hereafter. Hence we find ot'semnata Christ opening it by zxsinwation,' rather than by plain 1 It is perhaps scarcely necessary to point out, that the begin- ning of St John’s Gospel, being in the words of the Evangelist himself, is of later origin (though in position earlier) than the discourses fol- lowing, of his master; and were intended to be, and are, a key by which the better to interpret these. The necessity for caution, which imposed a restraint on our Lord, had now, in a great measure, ceased. And it is a strong argument of the strict fidelity and candour of St John, that he does not make Christ’s own language more plain, to John vili. 58. f See Serm. 11. note I. Exod. ili. 14, 32 SERMON I. assertion, to the minds of his enemics, and even of his disciples, who laboured under the same preju- dices. One intimation of it, which the former eagerly seized upon as evidently manifesting his “blasphemous” pretension (as they regarded it), is that which he introduces with so much solemnity, as if announcing a new and important truth; “Verdy’, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.” Not only was he perceived to teach herein his ex- istence without beginning; but the last words were an intelligible application to himself of the hallowed title of “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.” He was well understood. They waited for no further proof of his guilt, but would have at once inflicted upon him the sentence of their law against. those who preach a “strange God;” had he not, in the power of God, withdrawn himself invisibly from among them. On many’ other occasions, and by various allusions, he taught his descent from heaven, and, by consequence, his pre-existence there. To satisfy his disciples, who were far from being pre- pared to receive this doctrine, that he intended by such language its simple purport, he more than suit his own more open avowal of the truth. It shews how scru- pulously he adhered to an exact record of Christ’s very words; and also that he considered them to contain a sufficiently explicit testi- mony to the doctrine of his full divinity. We see clearly enough our Saviour’s real meaning, and what St John would have us under- stand it to be. 1 Some will be referred to. Among those omitted are, John iii. 13 ; vi. 33, 50, 51, 58; viii. 14, 28, 29, 88, 42; xii. 41; xiii. 3; xvi. 27. These are from St John only. Comp. Heb. x. v. referring to Ps. x]. 6 (as to which, see Pearson, p. 157); also Rom. viii. 3; and, generally, all passages in which Christ is spoken of as “ sent” into the world, not born : as 1 John iv. 9, 10. SERMON I. 33 once appealed to his approaching return to Heaven ; “JT came forth from the Father, and am come into Jonnxvi.s. the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the som vi.oe. Father ;’ promising it even in their view: “ What and if ye shall see the Son® of Man ascend up where he was before?” And then they understood him; convinced, that as he obviously spake of a return thither, in a literal sense, his previous descent, thus coupled with it, could not be intended in the way of figure: ‘ They said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb*: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.” The words which he addressed to the Father, are of like force; and suitable only to one referring to a past condition of living majesty with him, which he had for awhile quitted for a special end, and which he was about to resume: “ Father, I have glorified thee on earth; John xvii I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” ‘The glory to which he looked * He could only be seen to ascend in our substance, as man; and he therefore calls himself the ‘Son of Man,” though it was as the “ Son of God,” that he “was before” in heaven. As he now united both natures, he could properly speak of himself by either title, accordingly as it was suited to the immediate subject of his discourse. * “Proverb,” i. e. figure, metaphor. Such is the common meaning of this term. See Numb. xxi. 27, and Dodd’s Bible. Locke explains it by “obscure, enigmatical, figurative,” (vol. v1. 95.) There were, in the answer of the Apostles on this occasion, two distinct acknowledgments of our Lord’s divine character; one, of his omniscience, “ Now are we sure that thou knowest all things ;” and another, of his pre-existence ; “ Now we believe that thou camest forth from God.” And instead of disclaiming what they ascribed to him, he acquiesced : ‘ Do ye now believe?” See Tillotson, Serm. 1. on John i. 14. 3 John i. 1. John xvii. 24. fSee Water- land, vol.v. ch. vill. gSee note L. and Allix, ch. xvi. Xvii. h See Serm. mz. note L. Heb.i.I—10. 34 SERMON I. forward was real, and in personal communion with the Father. The glory then with which he pro- nounced it zdentical, and which he had laid aside, must have been real, and in his presence. ‘These words are a plain testimony’ to the meaning and truth of St John’s opening doctrine, that “ He was in the beginning with God, and was God.” Of like effect is Christ’s declaration, that “the Father loved him before the foundation of the world.” He must have had a real being (when no creature existed), to be the object of this divine affection ; an affection, therefore, solely grounded on their mutual relation. The apostle Paul opens his Epistle to the He- brews with matter of like tenor with that of St John, in the commencement of his gospel"; and also grounded (without explanation, as addressing those now con- versant with the truth) on ancient and approved inter- pretations of the Old Testament. 'To him who was known to their fathers as the “* Word of God,” it had been understood by them of old, that the character of “Son of God” also belonged. By this title, therefore, now "familiarized to all by the preaching of the gospel, St Paul reminds them of his pre- existence, as “the brightness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of his person.” And he illus- trates and confirms his doctrine, after the manner of St John, by ascribing to him, on scriptural au- thority, the creation of “the worlds,’—that he had “laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens were the work of his hands;” and to him moreover * So says Dr Samuel Clarke (Script. Doctr. No. 607.) SERMON I. 35 the perpetual sustentation of all nature,—that he “upholdeth all things by the word of his power.” nev. i.s. Having thus shewn, in his original and divine nature, the grounds on which “all the angels of God wor- Heb. i.«. shipped him,” the apostle teaches his incarnation, and the motive of it; that he “was made a little nev. ii». Comp. John lower than the angels for the suffering of death,” ii.14—1. that “by the grace of God he should taste death for every man.” That he might “by himself purge our nov. i.s. sins,” need was that he should bear their allotted penalty; and hence that he should assume the very nature of the transgressors: ‘“ Forasmuch as the Heb. i 14 children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also it hs took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death.” In allu- sion to this, his condescension to stoop to our nature, it is further written: “He that sanctifieth, and they nev. iin. that are sanctified, being (thus made) all of one (stock); for this cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren ;” an imputation of humility for which there could have been no ground, had he not possessed other nature than that in which “he was made like Pai unto them.” The reasoning, and the manner of ex-'*> pression throughout, imply, not an original birth in the single nature of man, and a subsequent under- taking to bear the iniquity of his fellows; but a deliberate pre-meditation, in one able to weigh the necessary method and effects of the required remedy, and a willing ¢ransition into a secondary state of existence, in which alone that remedy could be found. Moreover, had the Redeemer been merely a man, it might well have been thought needful by the apostle 5 Phil. ii. 8. iSee note P. Phil. ii. 5—7. 36 SERMON l. to inform us, from what motive God saw good to accept the trivial merit and sufferings of one, as the ransom for all; but there could have been no necessity for this elaborate assurance that he was a man, which he was seen and known to be. It was only because the apostle had first shewn him to be truly God, that he foresaw, or perhaps had already experienced’, a perplexity to the minds of some, in the doctrine, that he had humbled himself to be “ found in fashion as a man.” With this difficulty the Hvangelist, at any rate, lived to contend. Before the years of the venerable St John were brought to a close, he was called upon to rebuke the early heresy of those who, unable to digest the doctrine of God «incarnate, chose either to divide the divine nature from the human, in our blessed Saviour; or else to suppose his susception of the human, to be nothing more than a phantasm or shew’. There is much of consentient testimony to the doctrine of Christ’s pre-existence in the glory of the divine nature, in other portions of the New Testament. It makes at once the assertion and the argument of the apostle Paul, in his exhortation to the Philippians, to exhibit a self-denying spirit. He sets before them the Saviour, as a model of unex- ampled forbearance and condescension: ‘‘ Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who, being in the form of God, thought it not rob- _- * It is supposed by some that not only St Paul, but St Peter, had occasion to rebuke the opinions entertained by Cerinthus. Ittigius de Heres, evi Apostol. &c. Sect. 1. ¢c. v. Waterland, vol. 1. 158. Sermon I. 37 bery to be equal with God, but made? himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a ser- vant®, and was made in the likeness of men.” It is the clear drift of this language, that Christ had, previously to his incarnation, lived in a state of glory, which he quitted; had stood on a pinnacle, from which he stooped; had been clothed in a majesty, of which he disrobed himself. His self- humiliation consisted in shrouding his original bright- ness under the lowly garb which he assumed, when “manifested to take away our sins.” What he had 1 Jonniii.s. been, is contrasted with the condition to which he consented to abase himself, in putting on “the like- ness of men.” What was he then before? The apostle has furnished the answer: “In the form of pit iis. God;"" an expression necessarily of corresponding force with those to which it is opposed, “the form of a servant,” ‘in fashion as a man;” and _ so, not less clearly intimating the true nature of God, than these denote the reality of “sinful flesh.” But as if to prevent all doubt, it is said: “He thought it not robbery to be equal with God;”. a phrase which, whatever be the precise force of the word rendered into our language by “robbery*,” cannot properly be e Sed note 2 €avrov exevooe—literally, “emptied himself,” which expresses the sense of laying aside a previous glory, more clearly. See Bull. J. E. C. c.i.n.6; and Wall’s “ Infant Baptism,” 1.344, who quote the paraphrase of Origen: “novissimis temporibus seipsum exinaniens, homo factus. est; incarnatus est, cum Deus esset; et homo factus, mansit quod Deus erat.” * “Form of a servant,” i. e. of a creature, every creature being the servant of his Creator (Bull. D. F. N. Sect. m. ¢. ii. n.2.) For the ge- neral scope of this passage see his “Pr. et Ap. Tr.” c. vi. n. 2], and Dr J. Knight, ch. ii. No. 934. Also the references in note Q. 1 See note R John xiv.12. Acts v. 15, 163 will. 173 XIX 12, Matt. x. 25; XX. 3s XX. 34; John xxi. 18; comp. 2 i, 23— or. Xi. 28; vi. 4, 5. Acts vii. 58. Heb. xi. 37. Phil. ii. 9. m See note Ds 38 SERMON I. construed to imply less than an inherent participa- tion in the fulness of the divine glory. Such is the apostle’s assertion. And in this sense alone can it furnish the argument following, of Christ’s wondrous self-denial. It consisted in brooking, though God, the troubles and indignities which “flesh is heir to.” As man, he had descended from no high estate; he lived in that in which he was born. Could it be merely intended, as Socinians' wrest this language to their views, that as a human messenger of God, endued by him with supernatural powers (and in this sense only, “in the form of God,” and “equal to God”), he devoted them not to his own aggrandizement, but to the service of man (the end for which he received them, and for which alone, remaining subject to the divine Giver, he would exercise them), and for man laid them down with his life, “humbling himself, and becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” ? were this all his merit—such commission and such credentials had all the apostles and first teachers; so, too, they lived; and so they, for the most part, died. ‘They wrought, as he had foretold, greater miracles; they bore, as he had foretold, greater hardships: “were patiently in afflictions, in neces- sities, in stripes, in imprisonments.” Like God’s servants of old, they “‘were stoned, were sawn asun- der, were tempted, were slain.” Yet not for their willing humiliation, in contrast with their divine mission and gifts, did ‘‘ God give them a name which is above every name™.” It is never pronounced of their dignity and their condescension, that, being SERMON I. 39 in the form of God, “they took other and degrading shape, and made themselves of no reputation.” It is never proclaimed of the charity they exhibited to- wards man, as of the “love of Christ,” that it ‘ pass- Eph. iii 19. eth knowledge.” A broad distinction is ever pre- served between the apostolic martyrs and their great example, not grounded on a disparity of bodily trials, but of the natures in which they respectively sub- mitted to them. In their aim, their labours, and their fate, they bear comparison with their Master ; and hence are dignified with the name of “ fellow- 2Cor.vi.1. workers with Christ.” Yet it is never made an ar- gument of God’s unbounded mercy, that he per- mitted them to die in the service of men; as it is, that he “spared not his own Son, but delivered Rom.viii.s2. him up for us all.” There is no approach, in any language employed of them, to expressions which make them to have lived in former, much less in original glory; which bring them from heaven as its ancient scene. It is not said of Paul, the most eminent among them for his divine endowments, and his voluntary labours and sufferings, for other's good; “Ye know his grace, that though he was rich, 2Cor. viii». yet for your sakes he became poor', that ye through his poverty might be rich.” Such language could be applicable to him alone, who laid aside for a while his proper happiness, that he might bring us to par- 1 Jonn iii. 2. take of it; to him alone, who “came down from Jonn vi. 3s. heaven,” and who, agreeably to his promise, and in John vi. 62. 1 This is evidently a parallel to Phil. ii. 6,7. See note R, and Ward- law, as there referred to. Luke xxiv. 5l. Acts i. 9. Luke i. 36. Matt. iii. 3. Luke i. 13. Luke i. 15. Matt. xi. 9. John iii. 31. John 1. 27, 30. Matt. xi. 11. John i. 27. 40 SERMON I. testimony to his true descent, “while he blessed his disciples, was parted from them, and carried up into 5 heaven ;” ‘‘ while they beheld, was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight.” To the Baptist, the pre-existence of Christ had been no secret; and his knowledge of it came from other sources. He, like him of whom he bare wit- ness, had a mission from God; was born out of the course of nature; had been foretold by prophecy ; was announced at his conception by an angel; was “ filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb:” it was testified of him, that he “was a prophet, yea, and more than a prophet.” So, in every figurative sense, he, too, “came forth from God.” Hence, when he assigns as a reason of Christ’s superiority to him, “ He cometh from above;” “He that is from heaven is above all;’” he must needs intend a literal descent; for otherwise his words set forth no ground of distinction from himself. He leads us elsewhere to the same conclusion, asserting that Christ eaisted before him, though born into the world after him, and entering later upon his ministry; and that, on the ground of this pre-exist- ence, he was his superior: “He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.” On this account it is, that he, of whom Christ testi- fied, “Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John,” himself pro- nounceth of Christ, “whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.” Surely, too, it was of some pre- eminence other than that of prophet over prophet, that he gave preternatural acknowledgment, even SERMON I, Al ‘in his mother’s womb;” “leaping for joy” at the Luke i. 4, honour done unto her that bare him, “that the mo- ther of ker Lord should come unto her.” bringeth up.’ it again. No man® taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” Hence his return from the grave, agreeably to this promise, is justly represented as a sure testimony to his divinity: “he was declared to be the Son of God with power, Rom... by the resurrection™ from the dead.” And the “life” n See note which he elsewhere, as here, professed, and was thus shewn, to “have in himself,” “as the Father hath,” John v, 265 he asserted his equal power to bestow on all: “As ae a1. the Father’,” saith he, “raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.” Accordingly, he cried, ‘“ Lazarus, come Jonn xi. 43. forth:” “ Maid, arise:” and the dead obeyed. He Lake vii represents as his own work, the future resurrection ? ovdeis, “No one.’ The original expression is more general than that of our version. * What other motive can be imagined for these frequent assimilations of himself to the Father, but to lead to a belief of their equality 2 Sup- posing him to be only a man, what instruction would they convey 2 or how consist with becoming reverence towards God? with becoming humility in his servant ? John vi. 44. John x. 27, 28. Matth. xxv. 31. Luke v. 20, 21. Mark ii. 7. » See note L. Allix, 242. 58 SERMON II. of the just: “JZ will raise him up at the last day.” To his own proper bounty, he ascribes the everlasting reward to ensue; “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and J gvve unto them eternal life :” to himself the universal yudgment, when “the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him.” When in the exercise of another prerogative of the “ King of kings,” saying, “Thy sins are forgiven thee,” it was objected to him, that he “ spake’ blas- phemies, for who can forgive sins but God alone” (of whose “law sin is the transgression”); he did not deny the right to be exclusively divine, nor yet disclaim his pretension to it, by pleading a mere deputed authority; but proceeded, by conferring the desired boon, to prove, as he himself expresses, that “the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins’’—that there did reside within his human “ fa- shion,” that nature to which pardon doth properly appertain. Why but to keep” their minds alive to this his lofty and mysterious character, by a new hint of it, should he introduce this miracle with language ° which he foreknew would give offence; and, to our view at least, unsuitable, or at any rate unnecessary to it, as a mere act of compassion, or as an evidence of his mission; and hitherto, for such ends, unusual with him? Nor did he scruple to dispense with the divine laws, justifying his license by this asser- tion; “the Son of Man is Lord also of the sabbath ;” an authority which could belong to him only as having himself hallowed it: it being the promise peexixaiv. and boast of God’s servants, to “perform his sta- SERMON II. 59 tutes alway, even unto the end.” Out of the riches of his own grace he professed to impart comfort to the soul of man: “ My peace I give unto you: not sonnxiv.o7. as the world giveth, give I unto you.” In his own person, he promised to send forth the Holy Spirit? of God; “If I depart, Z will send him unto you.” John xvi. 7 Moreover, though he taught us to pray to “our Father” in all our necessities, he invited us to address our supplications to himself also; “ whatsoever ye sonnsiv.1s. shall ask in* my name, that will J do.” He who hath all blessings to bestow, for the body and the soul, which man can enjoy here, or desire hereafter, is surely God; for by what higher power do we know God ? By these manifold and clear testimonies avouching his greatness, he consistently commanded for himself the HOMAGE due unto it. While he confirmed the commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, mutt. iv..0. and him only shalt thou serve;” he thought it no contradiction to require for himself the same reverence, without distinction or reserve—‘ that all men should sonnv. 23. honour the Son’, even as they honour the Father ;” * Bull quotes the reasoning of Augustine : ‘ Quomodo Deus non est, qui dat Spiritum Sanctum? Imo quantus Deus est, qui dat Deum!” “ How is he not God, who gives the Holy Spirit? Yea, how great a God is he who gives God!” D. F.N. Sect. u. ¢. iii. n. 17. * “In my name "—i. e. calling on my name—“ ask of me.” Accordingly the Vulgate has, “Si quid petieritis me, in nomine meo, hoc faciam.” This form better corresponds with the promise “that will J do.” It is also exemplified in the prayers addressed to him by the apostles, and in the language employed by them on the occasion of any miracle per- yee formed by them. aie ry * That worship belonged to him who should come as the Messiah, had been foreshewn : Ps. ii. 12; xlv. 11; Ixviii. 32; Ixxii. 11; Isai. xlix, 23. Thus were these, and other passages, understood by the ancient Jews. Allix, 282—4: see also 287. John xiv. 9. John xvi. 15. Waterl. ii. 112. John v. 19. 60 Sermon II. with all the worship belonging to the Lord God Almighty, in his pure and spiritual essence, and in his every relation to man. ‘T’o express at once his communion in all the “ fulness of the Godhead”—in all the attributes and prerogatives that belong to the divine nature and character, thus severally claimed by him—he pronounceth; “ He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;” “all things that the Father hath are mine’;” “his power, my power; his works, my works; his spirit, my spirit: our perfections common ; our nature equal; our glory one.” The conclusion to be drawn from these branches of evidence, whether in the words of our Lord himself, or in those of his apostles, rests ou sure ground. He who “hath all things that the Father hath;” to whom the divine aétributes, operations, and worship belong; who is whatever the Father is, and “ doeth whatsoever things the Father doth,” and rightfully claims whatsoever honour to the Father is due—must be God. We know the Father by no other tokens. He is not revealed to us by a description of his essence, but only of his inherent properties and powers, his works, and his relations to us-ward. God is he, who is Eternal, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Creator, Preserver, Lawgiver, Lord, and Judge*. It is by such marks that Scripture teaches us to know the divine object of our worship: we can present him 1 Macknight (Harmony of the Gospels, ad loc.) observes of this text ; “Those who oppose the divinity of Christ, seem to be at a loss for an explication of this passage.” 2 See Waterland, vol. 1. 11. Hey’s Lect. B. rv. Art. 11. sect. 16 ; and Mr W. Hey’s Tracts, p. 18, &c. to which he refers. SERMON II. 61 no otherwise to our mind. And it is under each and all of them, that it calls upon us to honour Christ. If when he is represented under the features of man’s nature, we gather thereby that he is perfect man; how can we consistently deny that he is perfect God, when all the perfections of the Godhead are ascribed to him? By what intelligible and safe distinction, do we adopt unequal conclusions, from premises in all points matched? Can we believe such language to have been employed dy him, and of him under his instruction, to teach us that he was less than it reasonably purports? It is solemnly addressed to us, that we may learn thereby, and believe, the truth. What other truth could it be expected that we should infer from it? Can such characteristics be appropriated, under the controul of the “Spirit of wisdom,” to an infinite, independent, almighty and immutable Being ; and, at the same time, to one created, ministerial, frail and finite? How, by them, can we know the Father for God, if, the same belonging to Christ, he be not God? ? By so many, and various, and consistent lessons, Christ gradually instilled into the minds of his chosen disciples, that doctrine of his divine nature, which they “preached in all the world.” It was to be the cause of his death, through the blindness and preju- dices of the Jewish rulers. Therefore its direct assertion, which, perceiving his meaning, they eagerly watched for as necessary to give a legal sanction for * See Waterland, Ist and 2nd Def. of Qu. vi. vii.: and vol. rv. pp. 54, 58. 62 Sermon II. their violence, was reserved by him until all else “which had been written of him should have been fulfilled,” and the purpose of his life should have been carried out. Then at length, upon the solemn ad- Comp. juration of the high priest, “Art thou the Son of 70. wv, God?” he confessed and denied not, but said, “I ©. mxwiam.” This great truth, now thus openly proclaimed, 63, 64; and 3 ul 5 seeserm. was, after his resurrection, held up by him to the perpetual and necessary faith of man, in the words of my text, as the very groundwork of that final revelation, concerning the true God, which he came to make: ‘Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and ° See note of the Holy Ghost’.” Baptism was not a novel institution: it had long been familiar to the Jews, as a preparatory rite for receiving proselytes from the many gods of the heathen to the one “‘ Lord God of Israel;” in whom, before receiving it, they made profession of their new faith. Hence the brevity of our Saviour’s injunction. When he thus summarily adopted this form, as a token of admission to his better covenant, and a channel of its : grace; the Jews would at once understand him to hold up, in this indispensable, preliminary creed, the God whom he required all to acknowledge, unto his sal- vation. The God ‘thus proclaimed is not the Father alone; but, with him, the Son and the Holy Ghost, with undistinguished reverence. This formulary of belief includes the three persons of the Blessed Trinity, 1 See Wall’s “ Hist. of Infant Baptism,” Introduction, and vol. 1. 26. Also Lightfoot’s Works, vol. v1. 406, 416 ; x1. 364, 5; and Waterland, rule. SERMON II. 63 with exact uniformity of confession. Whatever ho- nour, therefore, is claimed by virtue of it as due to one, must, by the identity of expression, be com- manded to each. And that honour is, religious faith and adoration. T hey are taught herein to be, toge- ther, that one God, whom the Jews were to own as the ancient worship of their fathers’, and for whom PSeeSerm. the heathen were to lay aside their many idols of mere eras imaginary being. It is a final and perpetual confir- mation, by an ordinance more instructive than words, of that inherent dignity in Christ, for the right under- standing of which it had been a constant aim of his preaching to prepare the way. It is that truth concerning him which the apostle holds up, when, in opposition to the ‘“‘gods many and lords many” Of 1 Cor. viti.5, heathen mythology, he teaches; ‘‘'To us there is but one God the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him;” thus substituting the Father and Son, as the one Lord God our maker, in the room of all unreal deities; and, unless deny- ing the Lather to be Lord, proclaiming Christ to be God’, It must not be overlooked, that two of Christ’s miracles appear to want both the motives and cha- racter which distinguish the other displays of his power, and to have been exhibited as evidences of * Compare Mark xii. 29; Eph. iv. 5, where the Father is called “Lord,” as here is Christ; and John i. 1; xx. 28; Rom. ix. 5, where Christ is called “God,” as here the “ Father” is. See Waterland, 1. 7 ; m1. 31, 68—71 ; m1. 401, 2; Pearson, 162; Bull. D. F. N. Sect. rv. ¢. iv. n. 5. Wm. Hey’s Tract, p. 32. Matt. xiv. 25. Matt. xix. 27. Job ix. 8. 64 SERMON II. his divine nature, rather than as credentials of his mission. When he went privately to his disciples, “walking on the sea,” his aim surely was, to manifest to them, who already owned him for the Messiah, and, as such, had “forsaken all and followed him,” something beyond their present knowledge; viz. that beneath his human substance lay hidden another superior to its laws; that in him subsisted bodily the pure essence of that spiritual Being, who “alone (as they had learned from Job) treadeth upon the waves.” Accordingly, they at first said, “ It is a spirit ;” and when they knew who that spirit was, they ‘worshipped him, saying, of a truth thou art the Son of God”—a declaration drawn from them' by no other single miracle; though every miracle, being an attestation from heaven to his truth, proved him to be, what he openly professed to them, the Messiah. This confession, therefore, meant more ; and is suit- ably expressed by that one of his titles, which s7gnz- iSerm. wr. LES PeOTens note L. Again. When before three, selected from the aatt.xvii,o, twelve, he was ‘ transfigured, and his face did shine Luke v. 8. as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light ;” what could be the aim of this display, save to make these chosen confidents (in the language of one of 1 i.e. not collectively: otherwise there is the instance of Nathanael, Johni. 49. Bishop Horsley considers Peter’s address to our Lord, after the miraculous draft of fishes, to imply an apprehension of something more than human in his character: “ Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” He regards it as an expression of that conviction, so rooted in the minds of the Jews, that man may not “look upon God, and live.” See Gen. xxxii. 30; Exod. xxxiii. 20; Judges Vi, 22 5° Xl, 20, 22; Isaiah vi. 5. Horsley’s Tracts, pp. 239—40. SERMON II. 65 them) “‘ eye-witnesses of his majesty ?” a vision need- 2 ret.i. 16. less for other ends of his mission, and therefore to be ‘told to no man, until he should be risen AGAIN Matt. xvii.9. from the dead ;” when the doctrine of his divine nature, openly proved by both events, would also be openly See Rom. i, proclaimed. This exhibition of himself was followed by a suitable declaration, like unto that just recorded, but now proceeding from the Father himself; who, “by a voice from the excellent glory,” the bright 2ret.i.i7. symbol of his unseen majesty, proclaimed; ‘This is my beloved Son.” The evidence, full and manifold as it is thus seen to be, is not exhausted. The testimony of Scripture to the Godhead of the Saviour is not con- fined to language having a direct reference to his divine character; but breaks out also in zncidental expressions suited to it, and giving an harmonious colouring to the whole. Seeing he was on earth God, as well as man, we might expect to find in the faithful record of his life, a corresponding diver- sity of manner; at once the humbleness and lowly graces with which he would teach us, by his exam- ple, to adorn our nature; and, on becoming: occasions, a loftiness of carriage, manifesting the consciousness of his proper glory: and in such consistency we must acknowledge a strong confirmation of the truth. We have, in this anticipation, the very features of the gospel portrait of our Lord. With a meekness and gentleness and condescension, which have given to | the christian model of human excellence a tone so - different from pe most perfect draughts of any earthly school; there if combined, at times, in our Redeemer, 9) 66 SERMON II. a majesty of demeanour, suited only to divine sove- Serm.1. 22, 23. Deut. xxxiv. 10. Exod. xx. 1. Matt. xviii. 22. John xiii. 34. John xv. 12. John viii. 51. John viii. 52. Exod. viii. ix.; comp. Gen. xli. 16, from the same pen. Mark iv. 39; comp. Ps. IXxxix. 9. Ps. xcili. 4. Matt. viii. 3. 1 Kings xvii. 21 Luke viii.55; comp. Vii. 14, 15. John xxi. 22. reignty. Let us appeal to instances. It has already been noticed, that Christ never so expresses himself as to sanction the belief of his community with man in the mode of his relation to God; or of any inferiority in himself to the F ather, or of any dependance upon him, in his nature. While Moses, the highest human messenger of divine truth, like every creature of God, is confessed for his ser- vant; the Saviour never owns a like character, but claims the far other connection of “Son.” And. this distinction, thus asserted by name, is to be traced in his deportment. Moses uniformly ascribes the law which he was commissioned to deliver, to God. Christ speaks as. one himself having authority. “I say unto you,” is the sufficient sanction of his word: “A new commandment I give unto you: “This is my commandment:” “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death;” an assertion at which they who looked upon him as a man only, were astonished. Moses wrought miracles as by the finger of God; Christ, as by the fiat of his own al- ; mighty will. “Peace, be still,” to the raging ele- ments, is the voice of one knowing himself “mightier than the voice of many waters.” “I will, be thou clean,” is the language of inherent, not of delegated power. See how Elijah recalls the soul which had “returned to God,” and how Christ. One “ crieth unto the Lord ;” the other “speaketh the word only,” and “the spirit cometh again.” “If I will that he tarry till I come,” is the tone of none less than the Lord of life. Could it be in the propriety of mere man- SERMON II. 67 hood to “breathe on his disciples,” and say, ‘ Re- Jonn xx. 2. ceive ye the Holy Ghost?” intimating by his action, no less than by his word, the immediate procession from him of the “Spirit of God.” Thus also, abso- lutely, as from his own person, he imparted the powers which he had so displayed: “Heal the sick, matt. x.s. cleanse the lepers, raise the dead;’ and even the prerogative of “forgiving and retaining sin;” which, sonn xx. 23. with whatever limitations it was bestowed, bespoke divine authority in him who could confer it, as con- vincingly as had done his own repeated exercise of it, in the fullest sense. Nor does this peculiarity tute vi. 4s. of manner fail, in the instance of his prophecies. He speaks as knowing in himself. The like fore- comp. John es . , 3 A ae S V1.2, OF XI. _ 18, 19, 22; sight of his apostles is always ascribed to the inspi Lake 30 j “ae ts xi. ration of the Holy Spirit. DB 5 xx. 23. Further, he who “sought not his own glory,” sonnvii.s0. who had far other aim in his fministry, would not make a vain, still less an irreverent boast. Could he then, if less than God, say of himself; “In this matt. xi. 6. place is one greater than the temple”—holier than “the place where the honour of God dwelleth”? He ps. xvi. who is emphatically called, ‘The Amen, the faith- rev. iii... ful and true witness,” could not, unless he were truly God, exalt himself to a level with the Father, as in the following language: “ Ye believe in God; believe sonn xiv. 1. also in me ;” inviting all to equal faith in both, and elsewhere promising a like blessing to such as should exhibit it: “He that believeth on him that sent sonnv.ou. me, hath everlasting life:” “He that believeth on me som yi “ns hath everlasting life.” With like reciprocity of ex- pression doth he intimate their union: “Believe me, sonnxiv.11. 5—2 John xvil.10. John xiv. 21, 23. John xx. 21. Matt.xvi.18. Acts xx. 28. aSee noteN. Acts 1x. 15. John x. 27; eek Mae John xiv. 2, 3. Matt. xi. 29. Matt. xxiii. 8, 10. Matt. xii. 41, 42. 68 SERMON II. that I am in the Father, and the Father in me;” and so also makes known the community of their relation to us; “All mine are thine, and thine are mine :” “He that keepeth my commandment and loveth me, he shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him: We will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” Surely, apart from the particular purport of each phrase, none could truly assume such an identity in every respect with God, but he who is God. It were blasphemy too, in any save him who, as God, is the object of all true religion, to represent himself as the joint author and aim, with the Father, of the Gospel dispensation, in such terms as these: “ As my Father hath sent me, so send J you:” “Upon this rock will I build my church”—that church which is elsewhere called the church of God (and once also “the church of God which he purchased with his own blood”*): or when proclaiming from heaven his new apostle; “‘He is a chosen: vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings :” or thus; “I know my sheep:” “feed my lambs.” Who but the Lord of heaven could thus boast to dispense its glories: “I go to prepare a place for you;” “I will come again, and receive you unto myself?” Is it in the character of him who, as a man, was “meek and lowly in heart,” to assume the pre-eminence which he forbade his disciples to arrogate among them- selves, calling himself their ‘‘master;” and to pro- claim his superiority over all former servants of God; “A greater than Jonas,” “A greater than Solomon, is here?” Is this the language of a holy man, comparing himself with his fellows? especially SERMON II. 69 of one whose imperative instruction it is, that “each Puit. iis. should esteem other better than themselves.” St Paul caught the true spirit of his master, when he called himself ‘the least of the apostles.” Had 100r.xv.9. Christ been, as the apostle was, a man only, thus too had he exemplified his own precept. It is only as an intimation of a hidden excellence in him, which he was desirous to make known to them (and touch- ing which his meekness tended to second their pre- judices and confirm their blindness), that this oc-. casional adoption of a lofty style is consistent and intelligible. Hither the language is vain and as- suming, or his being is divine. There is no other way of reconciling this majestic tone with his self- denying character, than by the doctrine, otherwise clearly inculeated, of his complex nature, with the separate elements of which these opposite manners severally agree; unless as he was both the “Son of God” and the “Son of Man,” titles concurrently assumed, as we must believe, with an express view to this mystery. Nor did he, on any occasion, dis- courage the high conceptions which his disciples were thus led to entertain of him, or the corresponding reverence with which they regarded and treated him. He allowed in them, as in his enemies, the opinion of his pretension to the divine nature to go uncon- tradicted; which, if unfounded in truth, would have been disparaging to God, and pernicious to them- selves. Surely, ‘He who had a right to utter such Hey, ii. 26. things, and was humble while he uttered them, can have nothing too great conceived of him.” The creed, which regards Christ as both God and Man, is John i. 14. 1 Johni. 1. Ps. xlv. 4. Mark v. 30. 70 SERMON II. alone consistent with the whole of scripture; conse- quently, is alone scriptural. There is a similar corroboration of the truth which we are seeking to establish, in the manner of the apostles. If they came at length to know in Christ “the Word made flesh”—the invisible nature of God in union with that human fashion which they had “seen and handled”—their language would be sure to take a tincture from their creed, even where not treating of this doctrine. They would speak of him in terms too lofty to suit a created being, however elevated his rank in this scale, or however sacred his mission. And we discover abundant traces of such a reverence. Nothing, generally, can be more strongly marked in them, than their deep sense of awe towards God; the jealousy with which they vin- dicate from every creature “the honour due unto his name.” To them, all are as dust in the balance in com- parison with the great Maker of all. Only in magnify- ing the name of Christ, is no such distinction observed, no fear evinced of encroaching upon the majesty of God. They speak of their master, as one whom, on earth, “his own right hand did teach ;” who possessed in himself’ the divine energies he displayed. “He knew in himself (says one of them) that virtue had gone out of him”—thathis inherent power had been ex- ercised. And thus they regarded his help to them- selves from heaven. ‘They saw it to be sufficient to 1 See also Luke iv. 30; John x. 39; and compare Acts v. 19; xii. 7. There must have been some motive for preserving this marked distinc- tion. Why is Christ never represented as delivered by the interposition of the Father ? Sermon II. 71 rely on him. How differently do they refer to like effects wrought by themselves! And why, if there was no real distinction, but both exercised a vicarious power? ‘They confess, like Moses, to work in ano- ther’s strength, ascribing the glory to the giver. And that giver, who to Moses was God, to them was Christ. It is written by one of them, that during his ministry on earth “he gave them their power Matt.x.1. to heal:’ and, after his ascension, he is “the Lord Mark xvi. who worked with them, and confirmed the word with signs following.’ “The Lord, even Jesus, sctsix. 17. hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight,’ was the effectual word of Ananias to Paul: “In actsiii.«. the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk,” was the successful bidding of Peter to the lame. And when “the people ran together unto them, greatly actsiii.u. wondering,” he said; “ Why look ye so earnestly on Acts iii.12. us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?” “ Hs name, through Actsiii. 16. faith in his name, hath made this man strong.” The ‘“ Holy One” and “the Just,” the “Prince of Life,” himself’, in his own proper mercy and might, “hath given him this perfect soundness in the pre- sence of you all.” Such is the natural force of all this language. It ascribes miracles immediately to Christ, just as on other occasions to God; and with- out any reservation, or hint of distinction. From him the apostles professed to have derived the gift of the divine “Comforter ;” “Being by the right- Acts ii.ss. hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath * Such is the real meaning of “his name.” 1 Cor. iii. 16; Gal. iv. 6; Rom. viii. 9. Gal.i.1, 12. Col. i. 13; Rev. xii. 10; Rom. i. TeX VetL Oe Lite deus Phila. 1s Eph. vi. 6. abet. ts 2 Pet. i. 2. Col. ii. 2. Rom. x. 123 comp. Rom. Xa. Exod. Xxxiv. lt. 72, SERMON II. shed forth this, which ye now see and_ hear.” Accordingly, the Spirit is represented by them indifferently, as the Spirit “of God,” and “ of Christ.” St Paul imputes his mission alike to both; and claims to have received the gospel, “not of man, but by revelation of Jesus Christ.” Could Jesus Christ then be man only, in his estimation ? The kingdom of heaven is called alike “the king- dom of God,” and “of Christ:” The Gospel is said to be of both: its preachers and disciples, the “servants” of both. The scheme of salvation re- vealed in it, is called “the righteousness of God, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ.” Supplication is made for “grace and peace through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord;” and “for comfort, from the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, (even)’ the Father, and of Christ.” They invite all, as we have seen, to “call on the name” of Christ, in every need; not apprehending herein any violation of the commandment, which forbiddeth to lift up the hand to other than the Lord God. To him they applied for mercy and grace, for guidance in doubt, and for help unto holiness; as exercising, with the Father, a supreme controul over the course of natural events, and over the thoughts, and wills, and affections of men. ,He is appealed to in those solemn adjurations*, by which the Apostle, after the manner * For “even” instead of “and” (xa}), see Dodd's Bible, and Mac- knight, ad loc. * This is admitted by the Socinians to be the force of the passages about to be referred to, though they do not draw the same conclusion, of the divine nature of Christ, but only of his divine providence and autho- rity. See Rees’s Racoy. Cat. p. 213—216. SERMON II. "3 of men, calls to witness the all-secing eye; ‘‘I charge 2tim.iv.1; 2 Cor. xi. thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ :” ‘* We 193,comp.. speak before God in Christ.” Equal boast is made” of “fellowship with the Father, and with his Son 1 Jomi.s. Jesus Christ;”’ and like exhortation made, to ‘“ con-1Jonnii.24. tinue in the Son, and in the Father.” Warning is given of the “‘ glorious appearing of the great God? nit ii.13. and our Saviour Jesus Christ,” as of equal import: and the ‘day of Christ,” and “of God,” is held up Phil. i, 10, alike to apprehension. The recompence which men shall receive of their works, is ascribed to both. For thus the prophet had forewarned of the Father; “ Be- hold, the Lord God will come, and his reward is with tsai. x1. 10. him :” and, “Behold, I come quickly, and my reward Rev.xxii.12. is with me,” is, in the vision of the beloved Apostle, the parallel prediction and promise of the Lamb. The joys laid up for the righteous are represented, in a figure, now as “the supper of the great God,” Rev.xix.17, and now “‘of the Lamb.” Christ is frequently spoken of under that title of ‘‘ Lord‘,’” which corresponds ¢Sce note P. with the “Jehovah” of the Hebrew tongue; and by which, though the peculiar honour of the divine nature, and incommunicable to any created being, the Messiah had, as we have seen, been predicted. In what full and lofty sense the Evangelist under- stood it of him, may be gathered from that other “name which, he tells us, was written on his ves- Rev. xix. 16; Xvii. 14; : ; Sel 13 : ; ture, and on his thigh”—<“‘ King of kings, and Lord comp. of lords.” The Psalmist having pronounced, “The 17) po" * CXXXvi. 3. Lord of hosts, he is the king of glory,” the Evange- Ps. xxiv. 10. list ascribes the former of these distinctions, in the mouth of the prophet, to Christ; and the Apostle s I ohn xii. 41 ; sal. vi. 3. 74, Sermon II. i Cor.ii.s, hesitates not to affirm, that he was the “ Lord of glory, whom they crucified.” It almost seems that, with the express view to leave those without excuse who see not in the Father and Son a common majesty, no form of speech appropri- ated to the former has been left unapplied to the other. rev. iii.7. Christ is called the ‘‘ Holy One',” and the “ ‘True Acts lii. 14 ; 4.58 ae Rev. One ;” and these are characteristics of the Father. He 1 John il *°s ig called “Lord over all,” the ‘“ Light of men,” the Rom. x. Acts “Shepherd of his people,” the “ Husband” of his Vill. 12; vii 5 church. It is written of the “ most Highest,” that 1 John i.5; Rev. xxi, 33. he will “render vengeance to his enemies ;” and so hep xxi 131, that “the Lord Jesus shall be revealed, taking ven- uh geance on them that obey not his gospel.” It is Bp v2 said of that loving-kindness, by which the Almighty Devi sta schooleth, through affliction, the souls of men, “ to a'ihess. 7% do them good at the latter end;” “Whom the Lord Heb. xi 6 loveth he chasteneth:’ so are we taught, that the same benevolent discipline is administered by the 9) Rev. iii19. present providence of the Lamb; “As many as I love I chasten.” ‘The same all-seeing, judicial scrutiny of the secret thoughts and affections of men, is ascribed ~ jer. xvii.1o. to both: “I the Lord search the heart; I try the reins,” is pronounced in the person of the Father: Rev.ii.23. **L am he which searcheth the reins and hearts,” in that of the Son. ,The apostle exhorteth to forbear- ance, after the example of both, as exhibiting like mercy to man, who hath rebelled against their equal 1 Thus Dr Doddridge renders 6 @ytos, 6 aAnOivds. And he expresses his surprise, that “no greater stress should have been laid upon this text, in proof of the deity of our blessed Redeemer,” seeing these titles are “so peculiarly the prerogative of God.” Fam. Exp. ad loc. Sermon II. es, authority; “As God hath forgiven,” and “as Christ Eph. iv. 32: forgave you,” “so also do ye.” And the “long-suffer- omits” ing” of both to us-ward, is magnified alike. If some of these expressions do not of themselves imply a divine nature, still it is to be borne in mind, that they have been employed under inspiration as hints to us either of the attributes of the most high God, or of his real relations, or purposes, or affec- tions towards man. And it has seemed good to him that his Son should be held up to us under adl the same images. So that not only the stronger delinea- tions of the divine character have been introduced in the portraiture of his “only-begotten,’ but every subordinate grace carefully preserved to him; thus presenting him, with a minute exactness, as “the ex- Heb.i.3. press image of his Father’s person.” It must then be the aim of all this instruction, to fill us with like conceptions of these sacred persons, and with equal reverence towards them. If the nature of Christ be in ought inferior to that of the Father, the language of scripture would seem to have been studiously se- lected, to disguise, not display the truth. The book of Revelation, obscure, as might be expected, where it deals in prophecy; and. necessarily figurative in the representation of “things* unspeak- 2 Cor. xii.4. able,” through their want of any resemblance to what hath yet “entered into the heart of man,” after ! Cor.ii.». 2 «'Things’—pyuata. See Macknight ad loc. <“ Necessarily”—See what Mr Locke says as to the impossibility of St Paul’s describing what he saw, when “caught up into Paradise,” from the want of any corre- sponding notions in ws. Hum. Und. B. 1v. ch. 18. sect. 3. 76 SERMON II. whose thoughts language is framed—is yet intelligible enough, in the notices it gives of the Redeemer’s glory. Besides the direct titles, and attributes, and honour of God, therein ascribed to him, there are striking testimonies to his divine character, in the way of clear inference. Of whom are angels ministers, Rev. xx. but of God only? Yet it is written therein; “I comp. Mark Jesus, have sent my angel to testify unto you.” ‘To whom do priests do service, save to the Lord? Yet Rev. xx.6. 1¢ is spoken of the blessed hereafter; “They shall be priests of God and of Christ.” And already is the holy symphony recorded, in which they shall “make oblation” to both, of praise and thanksgiving for the Rey. vii.10. mercies of redemption; “Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” The Rev. xi.18. kingdoms of the world are sung of, as “the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ,” over which “he shall reign for ever.” When the angel shewed unto St John the city of the “ Holy Jerusalem,” in which he Rev. xxi.22, saw “no temple, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it;” and which had “no need of the sun neither of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof;” (strange union, unless the Lamb also be Lord God!) in sudden awe and Rev aa; astonishment, he ‘fell down to worship before the wu. feet of the angel which shewed him these things.” But he, knowing to what nature alone adoration belongeth, hastily prevented him, saying; “See thou do it not; worship God.” Yet it is elsewhere written, on the same divine authority, that he, who now forbad to bow down save to God, he and all SERMON II. we his peers, by command of God, did worship' Christ. Doubtless, they needed not this injunction®. It is written, as other things familiar in heaven, “for our learning ;” that we also may come “to know who takex.2. the Son is.” Who, moreover, save he who himself partakes in the fulness of the divine nature, can be exempt from the homage due unto it? No crea- ture of God’s power, however exalted by nature or office, however pure and undefiled, can have immu- nity from this tribute; or, if holy, can fail to delight in it. All created things are bid to chaunt their Maker’s glory: “Praise him, sun and moon; praise Ps. extvii, him, all ye stars and light;” “praise him, all his j angels; praise ye him, all his hosts:” “let every thing that hath breath, praise the Lord!” Yet of Christ is it not once hinted, that ought* of homage is ten- « ce note dered of him in heaven to the Father: but to him, with the Father, is honour there given. “ There Rev. xxii. 3; is one throne of God and of the Lamb”—one majesty sail and power; for of such attributes is a throne the emblem. “And I heard (saith the beloved Apostle) rev. v.17; the voice of many angels, and the number of them iw. oe was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice; Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and wisdom, and riches, and strength, and honour, and glory, and * At his birth. Luke ii. 18, 14. See Heb. i. 6; comp. Phil. ii. 10, and Rev. v. 11—13. * Waterland supposes it to have been given, on account of the novelty of the occasion, the incarnation of “the Word,’—his appearing in the “form of a servant”—of a creature. On this account, the special direc- tion of the Father to the angels might be necessary. Vol. v. 349. eSee Serm. rv. note L. 78 SERMON II. blessing: and every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying; Blessing, and honour, and glory, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever!” What end (I must again ask) could the inspired teachers of saving truth propose to themselves, in the employment of all this language, other than to hold up Christ as God? To what other view could it correspond in their minds? to what other, could they expect it to lead in ours? What doctrine, other than this, called for such language, to set it forth intelligibly; or could be intelligibly and aptly represented by it? To the disclosure of what other lesson was such language so indispensable, as to lead them to adopt it at the risk of being misunderstood, on a question where error would be so pernicious? It is impossible that such lofty expressions could be regarded by them as at once suitable to the Al- mighty Creator, and to any creature of his hand. There is no hint of their being employed of Christ ~ in any modified, or secondary signification : nor is any one characteristic of the Father left unapplied to the Son, by which to mark in the Father superiority, or distinction of nafure®. Suppose Christ to be less than perfect God, and we are utterly at a loss to reconcile such terms with his condition: believe him to be of one majesty with the Father, and all is consistent, accountable, and just. This manifold instruction of Scripture, on which we ground our belief in the divinity of our Lord, . Sermon II. 79 is not the flash and outbreak of human enthusiasm, delighting to honour the object of its admiration with exaggerated praise; but the deliberate lesson of an all-wise God, for an end which he deemed worthy of his especial interposition from heaven. ‘The “Son of God came to give us an understanding, that we may know him that is true.” A principal motive 1John v.20. of his advent on earth was, to make a final, and therefore, we may be sure, an accurate revelation of him, to whom, as Creator and Preserver of all, the worship of all is due: to “turn men from vanities ” Acts xiv. 15. —from them “which by nature are no gods ”—“ unto Gat iv. s. the living God;” to bring back the knowledge of him who “made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that Exoa.xx.1; a i : ) comp. Jer. 29 66 - 11, in them is,” and “giveth to all life and breath x)... 4. ? and all things”—among the heathen, who had come to “serve the creature, besides' the Creator ;” to put Rom. i. 25. an end for ever to the idolatrous union of inferior, or imaginary beings, “in the glory due unto his Ps. xcvi.s. name.” Yet the obvious and natural tendency, and the sure, immediate, and constant effect of this lan- guage (which could not but be foreseen by him, who well “knew what is in man ”—how his mind Jonnii1s. would interpret and be affected by such instruction) —was, to cause himself to “be honoured of all men, even as they honour the Father.” If then he was Jonny. 2s. not God—absolute and perfect God; if, however exalted, he was inferior in nature, and consequently of a created substance, he took away the very dis- 1 “besides” —(mapa,) our version has “more than the Creator.” For this substitution see Cudworth, iii. 200. Tillotson, Serm. n. on John i. 14. Waterland, i. 164. Gal. iv. 8. fSeenoteR. 1 John v. 20. sSeencteS. 2 Tim. iii. 15, 16. 2 Thess. ii. iS. Tsai. xlv. 23. Phil. ii. 9— LT. 80 SERMON II, tinction which it was his aim to establish, between the Creator and the creature; he laid anew the foundation of idolatry; he perpetuated a secondary worship, in defiance of all the prohibitions of scrip- ture; he knowingly sanctioned the mixed service which he came to abolish. They who, in obedience to his lessons and precepts, do worship him, if he “by nature is no God’’—is not in all things one 39 with the Father—do yet “serve the creature:” and the abhorred and damning sin of the Gentile, is constituted by him the duty and merit of the Chris- tian." We cannot believe Christ at all, and so believe. We cannot be his true disciples, and make him the “minister of sin.” Seeing he hath thus clearly and variously taught us to regard him as God, and to worship him as God; we are bound, after his authentic revelation, to acknowledge, with the beloved apostle, that “This is the true® God, and eternal life.” If he came to instruct, and not to beguile; to enlighten with truth, and not to confound in error; we cannot with reason doubt that the title of “Son of God,” thus interpreted throughout his Word in full abund- ance, and harmonious variety, is intended to set forth his sameness of nature, and equality of glory, with the Father. When it is taught, throughout those holy Scriptures, which are given us “by inspiration of God” to “make us wise unto salvation,” ‘“‘ through belief of the truth’; that he, who in assertion of his divine sovereignty “sware by himself, that unto him every knee should bow and every tongue swear,” hath “given unto his Son a name, that at the name of Jesus every SERMON II. 81 knee should bow, and every tongue confess that he is Lord;” we cannot err in “ honouring him, even as we honour the Father ;” in worshipping him, as did the holy angels when he came from heaven, and his Luke ii. 18, disciples, after he had ascended thither again. When a i 6. he who in mercy warneth, not to “move him to jea- Dent, x lousy with that which is not God ;” who, for our TOO would save us from the sin and mischief of a false re- ligion; hath yet caused all this language to be written of “his Son,” and hath permitted no like praise of any created being—hath ascribed to man no excellence above his fellows, save superiority of faith and holi- hess; we are bound to yield a ready assent to his clear lesson. It becomes our strict duty and wisdom, to adopt the inspired confession of Peter; “We believe Paina, and are sure, that thou art that Christ, the Son” of®SeenoteC. the living God.” We may not hesitate to receive the object of all this agreeing testimony, as, in the lan- guage of St Paul, “ Christ over all, God‘ blessed for Rom. ix. 5. ever.” We are called upon to hail him, not with the reluctant homage, with which even the fallen angels bowed to his remembered greatness, familiar in their days of happiness, saying, “ We know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God,” “the Son of God Lake iv. 34 most high ;” but with the glad and accepted adoration Mark iii.11 of the “ faithless,” but at length “believing” Thomas; John xx. 28. “My Lord and my God*!” eeatth Coo a See note A. Gal. iv. 4. SERMON ITI. Matru. xxvii. 19. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them im the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. I souGHT in my two former discourses to establish, that the language of the Old Testament, while jea- lously inculeating the unity of God, in opposition to the vain idols of Gentilism, is so framed as, though not plainly to reveal, yet by many hints studiously to prepare the way for, the doctrine of a qualification of that unity, in his own nature. Sundry passages were adduced implying a plurality, and that a Zvinity, m the one divine essence; and many others, which assign to him who was to come as the Messiah the peculiar titles and properties of the Most High. Although these intimations partook of the vagueness and ob- scurity which are always, more or less, the character of prophecy; they sufficed, as I stated, to convey a par- tial knowledge of the truth to the Jews* of old (gene- rally, indeed, lost sight of, especially as regarded the divine character of the Messiah, ere “ God sent forth his Son”): and they serve to confirm its clearer reve- lation, subsequently vouchsafed ; for which end they were, doubtless, chiefly provided. I shewed that, in agreement with these notices, when the Messiah came, he in many ways professed Se Sermon III. 83 to be the “Son of God” after a strict and proper relation; asserting for himself a participation in the entire glory and majesty of the Father—an inherent fellowship with him in all that enters into our notion of God—substance, attributes, and operations: more- over requiring for himself the honour belonging to God only; and bearing himself, on occasion, in a man- ner befitting such pretensions, and foreign to every inferior nature. I proved that such were the views respecting him of those his personal disciples, who were admitted to the more frequent and explicit expositions of his doc- trines, which they were to “preach in all the world,” and to the perfect memory and right apprehension Johnxiv. 26. of which they were guided by the Holy Ghost; that his revelation might, through their faithful record, avail to after ages, even unto us. That they at length thus understood him, and regarded him as God, was made appear by references, not only to his words handed down by them, but also to their correspond- ing convictions expressed in ¢heir own language; and to the less direct, but not less convincing testimony, of their suitable reverence and worship of him. It should be borne in mind that the apostles, and the first disciples generally, were not, any more than the unbelieving Jews of those or later times, prepared lightly to acknowledge in the Messiah a higher nature than that of man. They had been educated in the same views as to the divine unity. And inasmuch as they had a genuine zeal of God, as they proved by a ready abandonment of the world for his service, their religious feelings, as well as their national hope, 6—2 John i. 41, 45. Matt. iv. 20, 22. Luke xviii. 28. John xiv. 1, de b See note N. John xvi. 12. John iv. 26—42, 84. SERMON III. would make them very jealous for his honour. Hence, they long shewed themselves slow to believe, or even to understand, any lesson of their adopted master, which seemed to encroach upon it. After they were 15292 well persuaded that “Jesus was the Christ’,” and in that belief had “left all and followed him;’’ when they heard him challenge their further confidence, saying; “ye believe in God, believe also in me ;” ‘if ye had known me (known me, as they must have per- ceived him to mean, for something more than ye as yet acknowledge in me—for something besides the Christ) —ye should have known my Father” also ;” they, sus- pecting his intention to insinuate by this language a real, natural relation to God, required a szgn, in proof of its truth; “ Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us;” a request which at once bespeaks their view of his meaning, and their difficulty to re- ceive it. Hence, even to them, Jesus saw it needful to unfold this mystery warily and gradually, as they were able to “bear it.” Nothing but the long and patient instruction of one whom, day by day, they were convinced more and more by “many infallible ~ proofs” to ‘‘be true,” and to “teach the way of God in truth,” could have brought them to believe, and to preach, a doctrine opposed to all their early pre- possessions; and which they well knew would prove 1 Jesus made no secret of this character to the woman of Samaria, who went and proclaimed it to the inhabitants of her city; and the inhabitants came out, and in the presence of the apostles, after hearing him, acknowledged him as such, openly. To the apostles, then, the truth must have been familiar. Hence, it could not be the confession of him, merely in this light, that drew forth, at a later period, his pointed commendation of Peter. (See Serm. 1. note C.) a = SERMON ITI. 85 a stumblingblock in the way of their mission, and bring upon them persecution, and danger, and death. To evidence thus complete nothing is wanting. If God would, after his customary method of dealing with man, instruct us in the truth through the honest exercise of our natural faculties; he has here afforded ample foundation of a reasonable faith, to all who acknowledge the authority of his Gospel. But there is still a testimony, scarcely noticed ; needless indeed, yet strong and convincing. We have seen how Christ’s disciples understood his doctrine: it remains to be considered, in what light his enemies regarded it. However blind to its. truth, they may be satisfactory witnesses to its purport. If they were convinced of his claiming the divine nature, they must have had good ground for their opinion: for a pretension so novel, and so remote from expectation, would not easily be suspected. And if they fiercely reproached him with it, and he made no disavowal; his meaning must have been such as they imputed to him. Else he, who “to this end was born and for this cause John xviti came into the world, that he should bear witness to— the truth,” would have cleared up‘ a misapprehension © See Serm, which created a reasonable prejudice against him, and obstructed the reception of his Gospel. Now that the unbelieving Jews, upon many oc- casions, suspected him of arrogating to himself the true nature* of God, is made evident by their treat- ? Dr Whitby (even after he had adopted Arian views) admits that the unbelieving Jews understood Christ to claim to be God; and that this was the offence which they openly objected to him, on many occasions, as the motive of their displeasure and violence. (* Last Thoughts,” pp. 61, 62. See Serm. 1. note G.) 86 SERMON III. ment of him; for they, in consequence, sought to kill him. And this, not altogether through malice and wrath; but also judicially, as “guilty of death” Deut xiii, after their law, for introducing “a God whom (as they imagined) their fathers had not known.” ‘The passages in the Old Testament which intimate this lofty character of the Messiah, though once better @ See Serm. Understood (as has been already noticed“), had become nate L. obscure, through the general disuse of the original language of scripture, and the ignorance of its pro- fessed interpreters. The great body of this people eSee note expected a mere man* in their Messiah: otherwise, a they who at once acknowledged Jesus in this character, would have felt neither displeasure nor surprise at his assuming to be more. The reply of the Pharisees Matt. xxii. to his question, ‘“‘ What think ye of Christ, whose son is he?” and his unanswered disproof of the mere human origin they assigned to him from David, Matt, xx ‘““Tf David call him Lord, how is he his son! ?” shew, both that the scriptures, to which he thus appealed, did properly contain the doctrine of his deity, and that the Jews in general had lost the knowledge of it. Thus this people had come to fasten their whole mind + When he asks of them, “ Whose son is he?” they answer, “The son of David.” He then refers them to a passage of scripture, which shews that this could not be the whole truth, as to the parentage of the Messiah; for that David speaks of him who was to be his son, in language which ascribes to him a divine nature. He must, then, be the Son of God, as well as of David; and in the one case, as in the other, in a proper, not a metaphorical sense. Such is evidently the inference to which he sought to lead them from this text of scripture. Had they previously expected in the Messiah the true Son of God, they would have been at no loss for a reply. But they were ignorant of such a doctrine of scrip- ture (though he was not), and were silenced. SERMON III. 87 upon the simple unity of God, against the true sense in which it had been taught, and partly at least un- derstood of old, and was now revealed by Christ; as perversely as their fathers had swerved from it in every sense, to follow idols. The dread of forfeiting their expected deliverance, by ‘‘moving the Lord to peut. xxii. jealousy with that which is not God,” exasperated even those who cleaved not to him in their hearts, against one who seemed to preach “a new God.” In Deut. xxx such a teacher, miracles were no proof, to their minds, of a divine mission. For they applied to him the warning given through Moses; ‘If there arise among Deut. xii you a prophet, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods whom thou hast not known, and serve them; thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet; for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul: and that prophet shall be put to death, because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God’. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee’.” Peg te Herein have we a key to the inconsistent behaviour of the Jews towards Christ; herein the cause, why 2 Mr Locke says; “ We find no other law but that against false vol. vr. 0. prophets, Deut. xviii. 20, whereby making himself the Son of God deserved death.” Surely, considering the point at issue with him, can- dour required some notice of this remarkable and pertinent passage, Deut. xiii. 1—3. How had Christ been proved to “deserve death,” under the law referred to by Mr Locke? What “thing had he spoken, in the name of the Lord, that had not followed, nor come to pass?” Deut. xviii. What prediction or miracle of his had failed? His miracles were un- questioned, even of the Pharisees. (See note L.) Matt. xii. 24, 28, Luke iy. 22. John vii. 46. John iii. 2. John vii. 40, 41. See Luke vii. 16. John vi. 14, &c. John xii. 19 > 42; 11.23; comp. ix. 22. John vii. 41 Mic. v 2. John vii. 42. Matt. ii. 5. Matt. ix. 27; XXi. 9, 11. Matt. xxi. 16 Luke Xx1X, 40 88 SERMON III. they could believe the reality of his mighty works, and yet doubt the truth of his pretensions; could acknowledge that he “cast out devils,” and yet re- proach him, that he “cast them out, not by the Spirit of God,” “but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.” So long as he, aware of their ignorance and prejudices touching the true nature of the Messiah, and willing to avoid their violence until he should have fulfilled the purposes of his ministry, withheld, or but ob- scurely put forth the assertion of his divinity, the feeling of the many was of “wonder at his gracious words;” the confession even of the officers of the chief priests, “ Never man spake like this man ;” their rulers could reason, “Thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him:” many of the people said, “Of a truth this is the prophet;” others said, “This is the Christ ;” they owned him, without fear or scruple', for the promised “Son of David:” they * The Jews were ready, upon every occasion of his miracles (one of the expected tests of the Messiah), to acknowledge him as such; so that the Pharisees complained that “the world was gone after him.” All such expressions as, “believing on him,” or “in his name,” or “confessing him,” imply, at the least, the owning him for the Messiah. This is admitted by Mr Locke, (Works, vi. 51, 52). Some who hesitated to receive him for the Messiah, did not ground their reluctance on any impropriety, or illegality, of so regarding him ; but on the supposed absence in him of some predicted characteristic of . this personage ; as, “Shall Christ come out of Galilee?” From his having resided so long there, some supposed it to be the place of his birth, contrary to the prophecy of Micah, that Christ should be born at “ Beth- lehem,” with which they were well acquainted. “ Jesus, thou Son of David,” was a frequent and unrebuked confession of him in this character. Nor did he disclaim it. When the Pharisees at length rebuked him for allowing it, he did not think it necessary to use any reserve, but reproached them for withholding it. — SERMON ITI. 89 would have “taken him by force to make him a John vi king”—to place him on the throne of David, of ” which the Messiah was destined, as they hoped, to renew the temporal glory. It was no blasphemy® «See note in their law, to claim to be “sent from God;” for the multitude, as they “counted John,” so they Matt, xiv. 53 “took Jesus, for a prophet;” none, to claim to be | “that prophet;” for they expected him to be of their brethren, and believed, first John, and then soni 19, Jesus, to be him. Six times, in one address, and to Like iii. 15, captious hearers, did he assert his divine office, un- sony. rebuked. During his whole ministry it was never objected to him as an offence, that he made himself the Christ. While he was understood simply to assume this character, he met with no interruption": the t See note proof of his mission was complete in bis miracles, so — that ‘‘ of the chief rulers many believed? on him.” John xii. 42. Thus his claim to be the Messiah was for awhile favourably received. It must, then, have been some other which gave offence, and brought this glad per- suasion into doubt. It was when he taught that he sonnvi.3s, “came down from heaven,” that many of the very same people, perceiving him to intend a real, personal descent, and hence a pre-existence in heaven, and so a divine nature, “murmured,” and shortly after son yj ae “sought to All him.” Even of his habitual dis- 14; vitt. ciples—of those who had long followed him as the Christ—some, when they heard this, “went back, 5... y; seeing in the impiety °’”” >] and walked no more with him;’ of this further pretension, as they saw it to be (or ? i.e. owned him for the Messiah. See p. 88, note 1. 90 SERMON III. why before pleased, and now only offended), an ap- Deut. xis pointed proof that he was not of God. And though John vi. 42. i See Serm. 11. note I. John viii. 58, 59. Mark ii. 5. MSthIX 2. John v. 17; x. 36. John x. 30, 38. Matt. ix. 3. Mark ii. 7. he well knew the cause of their desertion of him, and of their consequent loss of salvation, he neither recalled his saying, nor pleaded a meaning other than that at which they stumbled. That they thus con- strued his language, is shewn not only by their murmurs, but by the argument with which they met his assertion; “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven ?” An earthly parentage might seem to disprove a heavenly orzgzn, but could not be thought an objection to a mere mission from above. Whenever, at intervals suited to his wise purpose of unfolding gradually an unexpected, and, as he well knew, an offensive doctrine, he by intelligible hints gave notice of his divine nature; as when he announced his existence “before Abraham'’;” when he “forgave sins;” when he justified his healing on the sabbath-day by the example of God, saying, “ My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (claiming a ° like authority); when he said, “I am the Son of God;” “I and my Father are one;” “The Father is in me, and I in him”—intimating an equality with God by the mere reciprocity ;—on such occasions, they who had tranquilly listened to him as the Messtah, straightway taxed him with “blasphemy,” because that, “being a man’, he made himself God:” they 1 It is impossible that “making himself God,” can here intend any thing else than claiming the divine nature. Any metaphorical sense of the word “God,” such as that, “ being a man, he made himself a prophet, SERMON III. 91 “sought to take him, that they might put him to jsonn vii. death:” then “took they up stones to stone him ;” 33,99. all in supposed obedience to their law, as ‘“ speaking peut. xiii.5; in the name of another God.” And this different treatment of him, according to the character he was understood to affect, was not exhibited once only*s «sce note - or by one body, or one class, of persons; but at sundry ' times, and by divers companies and ranks. Men of different views, capacities, and degrees of knowledge— the unlettered and the scribe, the Sadducee and the Pharisee—took umbrage at him on the same ground. Yet they looked for, and ardently desired, one who should expel their hateful oppressors, and restore their national glory. They could not, and did not, expect him to be born a king. Many of their deliverers had been of mean origin, and prophecy spake of lowly circumstances in their promised deliverer. Our Lord’s humble birth, therefore, was no obstacle to their belief in him; as is further proved by their momentary hope in John, who was of like* parentage and con- tute iii. 15. dition. And his works evinced a power mightier than the mightiest of men, qualifying him for any earthly triumph. There must, then, have been some strong ground for rejecting one, marked out by so many signs for the “expectation of Israel.” It could not be found in his claim to be so; for this fell in with their hope and eager desire. He had given no or a servant of God,” would render the charge absurd ; there being no proper inconsistency between the characters of “man,” and “ prophet,” or “ servant of God.” » Yet Mr Locke says, that “none of the Jews could have borne to hear of such a pretension in the son of a carpenter.” Vol. v1. p. 82. 92 SERMON III. sufficient reason for doubt on this head, and still less for destroying him; save in the pretension to be God. There is no appearance of any other offence, by which to account for their conduct. They might not, perhaps, have been unwilling to allow him, in a metaphorical sense not altogether 1 See Serm. unknown! in their Scriptures, the mere 7i¢/le of “Son iad of God.” Remembered prophecies which warned of Psi ae something extraordinary touching the birth of the Li 8 ,;, Messiah, and the voice from heaven at his baptism, vom S* and “the record that John bare of him,” might seem to them to justify its adoption, in any purport con- sistent with the mere nature of man. If then, when he, whom they gladly hailed as the object of these Matt. xxi. 9 inspired notices with ‘‘Hosannah to the Son of | David,” intimated in other language his alliance to God as his Father, they broke out into indignation, and cried out for his death; it is clear that they must have interpreted his pretension, not in this figurative and harmless meaning, but in one new and loftier, strict and most offensive. They “ sought to kill him,” because they well understood him to jonny.is. Say “God was his Father,” in such a sense as to “make himself equal with God;” as the Evangelist Actsxvii.18. expressly tells us. They regarded him as a “ setter- forth of strange gods,” as was afterwards said of his m See note apostle, because “he preached Jesus”; Jesus, then, as an object of divine worship, after this his own doctrine. Wilson, ch. For this cause, of arrogating to himself the divine Siilling#l. nature, was he at length ‘by wicked hands crucified vol. 111. 350. and slain.” It was touching ¢hzs offence that, before SERMON III. 93 Caiaphas and their own tribunal, the Pharisees in vain sought legal evidence against him (for they could have been at no loss for witnesses of his assuming to be the Christ*, which he had often done, even before = see note themselves, and with the assent of many of them). John ee It was touching ¢his claim, that, in default of suffi- 2 25; cient® proof, they solemnly appealed to himself, ‘the a a high priest adjuring him by the living God to tell 2Y.. note r, them whether he were the Christ, the Son of God.” ¢3°" *™ ‘ ke XXil. is ike Xix. And now, “knowing that his hour was come that 7 he should depart out of this world unto the Father,” having filled up the appointed measure of his minis- J ohn Xiii. 1. try, he “witnessed a good confession,” for which he irim.vi.1s. had been preparing the way, and which he thought worthy to be sealed with his blood. He answered, ‘““’Phou hast said;” or, as St Mark more explicitly yratt. xxvi. renders this customary form of assent, ‘‘I am;” plainly int ae avowing the doctrine imputed to him: and in further a and more circumstantial assertion of his divine nature, bidding them expect open evidence of it, when they should “see him sitting on the right hand of power, Matt xvi and coming in the clouds of heaven’—in the proper Tike xxii. majesty of him who “sitteth upon the water-floods,” Mark xiv, and “in his excellency rideth on the sky.” Then, en as when Stephen saw and proclaimed this glory; as on every occasion which could be regarded as bringing in question the absolute unity of God; they gave way, and outward expression, to religious horror, as hearing what it was not lawful to utter, or to listen to. Then did the “high priest rend’ his clothes;” then cried 1 Why? This had never been done on any occasion of his professing to be the Messiah, or of his being proclaimed so by others. There See Deut. XTi os qSeenoteD. Deut. xviii. 21, 22. @ Deut. xili. 2. Luke xxiii.2; comp. John XVill. 33, 37. 04 SERMON III. they, ‘“ What further need have we of witnesses ? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy :” then appealed they unto the council, “What think ye?” Then did the council judicrally pronounce, “ He is guilty of death.’ In one sense only could this con- fession be “ blasphemy‘; in one sense only could the words be thought a crime needing no proof, but carry- ing their sin with them. If in them he claimed to be simply the Christ, his offence could only be re- garded as wmposture: and the law, to whose forms they were scrupulously’ adhering, had appointed a test of the truth. It was to be proved by the failure of some promised token, that “the Lord had not spoken by him.” Only, if by them he did avouch his divine nature, and so speak in the name of “other God” than the Lord, was his iniquity to their view already manifest; his pretension itself, his ascertained and sufficient guilt. This distinction is further observable in the pro- ceedings before Pilate. While in their first accusa- tion of “saying that he is Christ, a king,” it had been thought necessary to appeal to facts; “We found this was no sin in such a pretension, still less in merely hearkening to it. It must have been some other doctrine, which provoked this unusual and significant action. We may judge what that doctrine was, from a similar outbreak of feeling recorded in Acts xiv. 14, when Paul and Barnabas were about to be treated as “ gods,” by the ignorant barbarians. In Acts vii. 57, the occasion was similar to the present; and the outward action intended to testify a like horror. 1 See how careful they were, just before, not to go beyond the law, when they, in this apprehension, rejected the evidence of the witnesses, though there was thus a risk of Jesus’s escape, whom they were so eager to condemn ; being well satisfied in their own minds of the real nature of his pretensions. SS ee ee SERMON ITI. 95 fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Cesar,” and ‘stirring up the people’— offences against the Roman supremacy; it was deemed enough in the second arraignment (which was sub- stituted when, upon Christ’s explanation that “his John xvii kingdom was not of this world,” Pilate made light — of the first), simply to allege what he had spoken, and to refer to the penalty of their own divine code, of which his words were a breach; “ We have a law, sonnxix.7. and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself (no longer ‘Christ a king,’ but) the Son of God.” If the Jews had regarded these pretensions as identical, there could have been no motive for de- parting from their first language; especially before a Roman judge, whom they could not expect to under- stand in the same light words so differing in their direct and obvious purport. They would not have risked to perplex Pilate and give him a handle against them, by changing the form of accusation, the offence imputed remaining the same. They altered the terms of their indictment, because they would vary its tenor. The crime now objected to him was (as it bore upon the face of it) blasphemy; not, as before, imposture and sedition. Pilate at once perceived the different character of the allegation, and hence, it is expressly said, “ was the more afraid ;” fearing on the one hand Jonnxix. :. fatt. Xxvii. lena lest, as haply his wife’s message helped to suggest, Jesus might be, what he was zow charged with assum- ing (no strange notion to a heathen); and, on the other, dreading the violence of the Jews, on a question affect- ing the honour of their God. Therefore, having in the former instance interrogated him as to his political pre- Luke xxii. 67, 70. r See note K, Acts 1. 6. Luke xxiv. 21. 96 SERMON III. tensions, asking, ‘‘ Art thou a king?” agreeably to the nature of the original impeachment, which concerned his claim to be the Christ; he now formally “returned to the judgment hall,” as for a new investigation, and straightway questioned him of his parentage ; “ Whence! art thou?” 1. e. of what origin and lineage ? Who is thy Father? shewing clearly his view of the far other grievance objected to him in the charge, that he “made himself the Son of God.” That the question of the high priest, ‘‘ Art thou the Son of God?” differs in meaning from that other, ‘‘ Art thou the Christ?” is to be further gathered, not only from our Lord’s unlike reception of them, dis- regarding the one, and replying frankly to the other’; but from the fact, that the description of his future condition, which they clamorously condemned, con- tained no acknowledgment to ¢heir minds of being the Christ. To their view, this title denoted a human conqueror, who should “at this time re- store again the kingdom to Israe].” A promise of present earthly triumph, would have been an in- telligible avowal of this character. But the prediction of distant and heavenly glory was beside their ques- tion, if by the “Son of God” they intended nothing * “Whence art thou?” (7é6ev ef ov ;) Compare John vii. 27. “No one knoweth whence he is.” These words could not relate to the place of his birth, which everybody knew to be Bethichem. (Compare Matt. ii. 5. John vii. 42.) They refer to his extraction, about which there was a mystery. (See Isaiah liii. 8: “Who shall declare his generation?” and Isaiah vii.14; where it is promised that he should be “born of a virgin.”) The same expression is found in 2 Sam. i. 13, where the answer is ; “T am the son of a stranger.” See Dodd’s Bible, on John xix. 8. and vii. 27; and Wilson, p. 58. SERMON III. 07 further than the Messiah. It had no relation to - earthly sovereignty; it was a reference to a divine existence. Hence their reception of it, as a confession of the very guilt of which they were seeking proof, shews (as well as the horror which they expressed) what the suspected guilt was, and what the drift of their interrogatory. Nor could the chief priests and Pharisees have Matt. xxvii. so readily “persuaded the people” (whose tumultuary Matt. xvi. Opposition to his arrest they had so recently appre- hended, through the general persuasion of his being the Christ) “to destroy Jesus,” merely because he had owned himself to be so. These could not con- sider it criminal to avouch what it had been innocent for them to believe, and they still ardently desired to find true. It was only through a supposed disproof of this claim by his admission of a far other preten- sion, which, in common with his accusers, they ab- horred as “blasphemy,” that they could so suddenly be brought to clamour for his crucifixion. F ickle as the multitude is wont to be, some appeal to their passions or prejudices was needed, to effect this sudden revolution in their feelings. And there is no trace of any other ground of such an appeal than this, of his “making himself God.” John x. 33, It is a clear consequence, from all these considera- tions, that the pretensions of Jesus were well under- stood by his enemies to be two; viz. that he was “ the _ Messiah,” and also, and in a strict and proper sense, the “Son of God.” They were continually treated by them as two; as two, when he taught, and was in the one character patiently borne with, and of 7 Mark xii. 37. Luke xxii. 7, 70. Jobn xviii. 33; xix. 7- Matt. xxi. 9; XXVii. 22. Matt. xxvii. 42, 43. John x. 30. s See note iB}. John x. 33. Ps. Ixxxii. 6. Exod. xxii. 28; vii. 1, 2. John x. 34— 36. 98 SERMON III. many “heard gladly,’ and in the other murderously assaulted; as two, when questioned by the high priest; as two, when accused before Pilate; as two, when the people now hailed him with loud hosannahs, and shortly after cried out for his death; and, we may add, as two, when cast in his teeth on the cross’. That this is a just view of the construction put by the unbelieving Jews. on these titles, and on the pretensions of our Lord intimated by them, may be further ascertained from a passage which also deserves notice, as seeming, at first sight, to purport his dis- avowal of the loftier claim. When he had said, “I and my Father are one,” they charged him with “blasphemy’,” because that by these words, as they urged, and consequently as they understood him, “being a man, he made himself God:” and so justified to him out of their law their attempt to put him to death. He referred them to that law, in which the rulers of God’s people are figuratively called gods, as his vice-gerents; and thus exposed their rash injustice in condemning him, to whom they were not prepared to deny even a higher 3 mission, without first making sure that his language implied more: ‘Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he call them gods to whom the 1 The different manner of taunting him with these two pretensions, marks a distinction between them, in the minds of the “chief priests, and scribes, and elders.” In allusion to the first, they said; “If thou be the king of Israel”—a well known title of the Messiah, and requiring no explanation. Then they added ; “ He trusted in God ; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.” This remark shews that they were not familiar with the latter phrase; that it was one assumed by him, and thus only known to them. SERMON ITI. 99 word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken (its authority be set aside); say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God ?” The drift of this remonstrance evidently is, that as the “sanctified of the Father” (i. e. the anointed— “the Christ,’) he might boast to be the Son of God, in a sense to which they could not object, be- cause the like had been applied to others with a less sacred character; whereas they had condemned him for so representing himself, on a mere presumption that he intended more by it. They did not reply, that to “make himself the Christ” was the offence charged to him; they did not dispute that they had supposed him to mean more—viz. to “make himself God.” They were abashed and silent, thus admitting for true the whole ground of his expostulation’. But his intention had been to reprove their headi- ness, not to disclaim the meaning imputed to him. Having shewn that they had accused him of “ making himself God,” without sufficient evidence, he then taxed them with resisting the sufficient evidence he had given them, of his bemng truly so: “IfI do not John x. 37, * His reasoning is simply this: ‘They who held a commission from God, are on this ground called “gods,” in Scripture. Therefore it can be no sin in me, whom you do not deny to be “the Messiah,” to call myself “the Son of God,” in a like sense: and you have not had the candour to enquire whether I mean more.’ It is clear that their charge of “ making himself God,” implied his claiming the divine nature: for it would have been nothing strange or inconsistent, that, “being a man, he should make himself a prophet,” or a servant of God: for such were necessarily men; and so also “ the Messiah,” in. their view. This has already been remarked, p. 90, note. 7—2 100 SERMON III. the works of my Father, believe me not; but if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works, that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him.” His argument is, that, doing what the Father does, they should own him, after his pro- fession, for what the Father is. It is an appeal to his there, see Vill. 59. that he assumed to be God, “escaping out of their hand” by an exercise of that divine power, to which he had referred them. His being the Christ is obviously the plea which our Lord puts forward as sufficient, in their sight, to justify his making himself the ‘‘Son of God,” in a sense which, as far as they had yet ascertained, might be all that he intended by this relation. Since he urged this character as his vindication, it could not be the assumption of it which constituted the offence from which he was to clear himself. It must have been for making himself something other than the Christ, and more than this, at which they had taken umbrage. What could this higher pretension be, in- timated in the words, ‘‘ making himself God,” except that which is properly expressed by them? The metaphorical sense, of “a mission from God” as the Messiah, is shewn to be harmless and undisputed, and not that objected to him by the Jews. It is, then, a just inference from this transaction, SERMON III. 101 that the Jews would have permitted Jesus to go unrebuked, in the character of the Messiah, had he pretended to no more; that they understood him, by his manner of professing to be the Son of God, and his language generally, to insinuate in addition his divine nature; and that, not expecting a Messiah in such nature, they concluded him to be an impostor for affecting it; and so would have put him to death as a blasphemer against the majesty of God, for arro- gating that majesty to himself. Mr Locke‘, indeed, dissents from the conclusion ‘See note at which we thus arrive on such various grounds, as to the views of the unbelieving Jews touching the pretensions of our Lord, intimated in the character of the “Son of God.” In the hope of smoothing the way for the reception of Christianity by Deists, he would reduce the creed necessary for a first ad- mission to its privileges, to a mere belief in Jesus as the promised Messiah. Hence he must needs make appear, that Jesus himself imposed no larger confession for this end, and was so understood of all. And seeing he continually gave himself out also for the Son of God, and was acknowledged as such by some, and persecuted on this score by others; Mr Locke, to obviate this fact seemingly so fatal to his scheme, contends, that to be the “Son of God,” and to be the “Messiah,” were but different expressions for the same thing. His theory absolutely depend- ing on the truth of this identity, it is the aim of a great portion of his ‘“‘ Reasonableness of Christianity,” to establish, that at the time of our Lord’s advent, “the Son of God-was the known title of the Mes- yo. vi... 102 SERMON III. siah amongst the Jews—a common signification” — “so familiar a compellation of the Messiah, who was then so much expected and talked of, that the Romans, who lived amongst them, had learned it.” He labours to make good this assertion by many references to Scripture. Yet, strange to say, of all the examples he adduces, not one is strictly in point. Not one in- stance does he bring of the application of this title of “Son of God” to their “ much talked of Messiah,” by any individual of that whole people, in whose mouths he proposes to prove it, in that sense and application, trite as a “household word.” For it answers neither the assertion nor the aim of Mr Locke, to shew that this character was assumed by Jesus concurrently with that of the Messiah, and that, on this account, the title was addressed to him personally. For this would throw us upon him for its interpretation, and make the confession of him in this character the confession of what he taught by vt. That Jesus claimed, and was acknow- ledged by this title, is the very fact which stands in Mr Locke’s way, and for which he professes to ac- count. And the explanation he alleges, is, the pre- vious familiarity of the Jews with it, as a character- istic of the Messiah of their hope—a mere synonyme” —gso that whoever should take it to himself would be at once regarded as giving himself out for the Messiah, as they expected him, and nothing more. No example of the use of this title, save with respect to the Messiah, as distinct from Jesus, can properly avail to Mr Locke’s argument. Now Scripture supplies not one solitary case of ~ SERMON III. 103 such application of this title; insomuch that Mr Locke, after culling out the most favourable instances to confirm his position, that “the Son of God was a form of speech then used among the Jews to signify the Messiah,” viz. “the Baptist, Nathanael, Peter, Martha, the Sanhedrim, the Centurion ?”—is compelled Vol. Vie 370, to rest satisfied with this conclusion : “Here are Jews, heathens, friends, enemies, men, women, believers, un- believers, all indifferently use this phrase of the Son of God, and ‘apply it to JEsus;” not to the Mes- siah, as they were required to exemplify, but to Jesus personally; which is the very admitted usage to be explained. I say nothing of the rhetorical exaggeration, little suited, in an enquiry of such grave importance, to the general candour of the writer, by which six in- dividuals (if for “the sanhedrim,” we substitute the ‘high priest”) are exhibited under the guise and muster of a mixed host. I am content with the re- mark, that, few or many, not one of them, in truth, speaks to the question at issue. They are witnesses, every one of them, to the pretensions of Jesus,— not to the previous employment of this title by the Jews, to designate the object of their hope. How these persons, and others, came to speak of Jesus, and some to receive him, in this character, has already been explained. In agreement with ancient revelation, which had hinted, in many ways, a divine Messiah (a fact not to have been left unnoticed by 1 There is also the example of his disciples, when he came to them “ walking on the sea.” See Sermon 11 p. 64. 104 SERMON III. Mr Locke), the Almighty Father, by a voice from Matt ii 2, heaven at his baptism, proclaimed Jesus for his “ be- Join i.32— loved Son;” designating his person by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon him, under such a material symbol as to be evident to human vision. John heard and saw; and, thus instructed, as well as by internal inspiration, “bare record that this is the Son of God.” Jesus, from the beginning of his ministry, pointedly professed this character, and con- tinually and variously illustrated its lofty signification, as his disciples were able to bear the unexpected and difficult truth. Knowing God for true, and convinced by his miracles and holiness and wisdom, that Jesus was so, many acknowledged him by this description, because it was thus applied to him, and claimed by him, perhaps before they understood tts full import ; expecting his instruction, and waiting on his ministry that they might receive it: just as they owned him Locke, vi.s7, for the Messiah, long before they knew the true 58, 66, 67. Horsley,238, scope of this name, and sought light upon it from his preaching. From him also, many who were blinded by early prejudice, learned the title and its meaning in his use, not believing, but condemning and persecuting him as a blasphemer, for assuming it; as we have amply shewn. ‘To such origin we wee note May reasonably ascribe the knowledge of it, in every" 7 person brought forward by Mr Locke. And none, who could thus derive acquaintance with it, can be competent to make good his assertion of its previous currency, or to give validity to his conclusion. Not only is Mr Locke thus shewn to be destitute of one effectual support to his oft-repeated propo- SERMON III. 105 sition, that the Son of God was a phrase that among wot. vi.172. the Jews, in our Saviour’s time, was used for the Messiah ;” Scripture supplies a strong presumptive proof of the general ignorance of it, in this light. The evangelists record many occasions, in which this people make mention of their expected deliverer, and by every variety of description, save and except this alone. When John was enquired of, “Who art John i. 19, thou? he confessed, I am not the Christ.” The sur- mise, touching our Lord, caused by his mighty works, was repeatedly expressed under the same title. The John iv, 29; question of John’s disciples to Jesus was, “Art thou Luke vii he that should come?” The persuasion of the mul- titude is said to have been, that he was “that prophet son vi. that should come into the world.” In other places, the periphrase employed is, the “king,” or the “consolation ae xii.13. of Israel;” the “ Lord’s Christ ;” “he of whom Moses ae ae did write ;” the “day-spring from on high ;” “he who Laake i, 78 should redeem Israel ;” “Christ, the Saviour of the cpeyt: world;” the “King that cometh in the name of the Lake xix Lord.” The cry of the afflicted suppliants was ad-— dressed to the “Son of David; though the power matt. ix. 97, to which they looked for relief might well have suggested that of “Son of God,’ had it been known to them. The hosannahs of the multitude owned Matt. xxi. 9, him for the Messiah, by the same title. There are other examples, too many for enumeration here: Joh i 295 but the appellation represented to be so popular, vi vii 2, 2; has nowhere place among them. And there is a2 sai xi 23 ; XV. more direct proof of its being absolutely unknown, 9 295 xx. 30} rk 47, in its application to the Messiah, even to the Pha- mi 5 Laker XVili. 38, risees. When Jesus referred them back to the 9. Wilson, 59, 60. John x. 33. Vol. vi. 18. 106 SeRMON III. Scriptures, for some other descent of this personage, besides that of “David,” which they had assigned in answer to the question, “ What think ye of Christ, whose son is he?” the title of “Son of God” afforded so apposite a reply, that it is impossible to believe they would have failed to put it forward, had they been aware of its being appropriated to him, 7 any sense; to avoid the mortifying imputation of ignorance of the law, to which their silence openly subjected them. The truth then is, that, so far from being “a familiar compellation of the Messiah,” the Son of God was not his expected title, even to those few who might look for him in an exalted zature. Both the disciples of Jesus and his enemies learned it from himself (after the voice from heaven, and the record of John), and from himself, its meaning. Moreover, they agreed entirely in the interpretation of it, derived from him.; but in a sense far other than that which Mr Locke supposes. Both came to understand by it, that he “ made himself God.” This we have seen to be at length the creed and the doctrine of the evangelists r and apostles. And the former expressly ascribe the same view of his pretensions to his enemies, as the motive of their hostility, in these very words, that he “made himself God;” which Mr Locke unaccount- ably passes over, when alleging other portions of the angry colloquy of which they form a part, in support of his own contrary theory, which they so manifestly overthrow. The disciples of Jesus received and worshipped him in the character intimated by the title of “Son of God;” his enemies rejected him _—a 3 Fhe eel il SERMON III. 107 and crucified him for affecting it, as “ blasphemously” pretending to the divine nature. These conclusions Mr Locke in vain seeks to invalidate. To return to our general argument. The sin of the Jews was, that they listened to their prejudices and passions, rather than, in an honest heart, search the Scriptures for the truth concerning the Messiah; rather than weigh the evidence of our Lord’s miracles, of his piety, and blameless life. They desired one great on earth, trusting to share his greatness: and they were deaf to every truth that falsified this hope. And without “loving the Lord their God” in their hearts, they dreaded to forfeit his promised deliver- — ance, after the example of their forefathers ill under- stood, by “running after another god.” Hence they rs. xvi.4. had eyes and saw not, ears and heard not, and hearts that would not understand. “The god of this world 2 cor. iv. 4. blinded the minds of them which did not believe, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the zmage of God, should shine unto them.” Hay- ing “their affections set on things on the earth,” they gave no heed to those heavenly and spiritual things, which he came to reveal unto them. Hence they obstinately persisted, in despite of all witness, to regard him as falsely assuming a divine character, and to look . upon it as at once their duty and their interest, to put him to death. In this persuasion, they “ rejected tue vii. 30, the counsel of God against themselves:” they “killed Acts iii. 15. the Prince of life.” While he justly condemned the perverseness of their error, he yet acknowledged the sincerity of it. He, as his apostle after him, “ wot that through tgxvorance Acts iii, 17, Luke xxiii. 34. Acts vii. 60, Luke x. 22. See note N. Rom. x. 2. Rom. x. 1. Acts xxii. 3. Acts xXxvi. 9. Acts xxii. 4. Matt. x. 25. John xvi. 2. 1 Tim. i. 13. 108 SERMON III. they did it.” Accordingly, he prayed for them in these remarkable words, “ Father, forgive them; they know not what' they do.” He was not herein inter- ceding for them in a mere spirit of clemency, as Stephen under a like violence, “ Lord, lay not this sin to their charge;” but also alleging a real ground in extenuation of their guilt. It was the applica- tion to them of his general assertion, ‘‘ No man know- eth who the Son is. but the Father,” i. e. fully com- prehendeth his true nature and divine jiliation ; for of his divine misszon as “ the Christ,” many were con- vinced. His plea was something akin to that of Paul, in reference to unbelieving Israel, in his day; ‘“‘I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.” Hence his ‘‘ heart’s desire and prayer to God for them was, that they might be saved;” as, after him, that of his apostle. Paul himself had once ranked with the perverse, and thus he describes his discarded error; ‘‘I was zealous towards God, as ye are all this day:” ‘I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth,” and : “T persecuted this way unto the death.” ‘These pre- judices illustrate those of Christ’s judges, and more- over helped to fulfil his prediction, that “It should be with the disciple as with the master:” “The time cometh, that whosoever ‘vd/eth you will think that he doeth God service.” Of all which blind hostility he assigns beforehand one common cause; “ These things will they do, because they have not known ‘ St Paul ascribes his own pardon to this very consideration. SERMON III. 109 the Father* nor me.” What he imputes to them John xvi, 3 throughout, is, ignorance of his true relation of Son X. to the Father; and that on this account they put him to death, in supposed obedience to their law, as falsely professing in himself the nature of God; and would so treat his disciples’, preaching this doctrine, on the same ground. His charge against them is, of per- verse error touching his true Deity; and so is a further testimony to this truth which they overlooked. Thus it appears from the whole conduct of the unbelieving Jews—from the nature of their objections to our Lord’s doctrine, and of their treatment of him on many occasions, especially that of his trial, as well as from the tenour of his replies—that to their view, he did unquestionably teach that he _ was truly God. And he knew their thoughts, he heard their accusations, he foresaw the consequences: yet he denied no part of their charge; he retracted nothing of the claim which gave offence. Such, then, as they regarded it, must have been the real purport of his language. Had they mistaken his meaning, truth and compassion, the distinguishing graces of his character, would have moved him to set them right. He would have undeceived’ them, and declared germ. :. his mere manhood, out of reverence to God, who pers would have been dishonoured by his imputed preten- sion, if untrue; and that he might remove a stumbling- block out of their way, whom he ardently desired to bring into his fold; and hold up to them, as well as Lake xiii. * This was the offence of Stephen, and the cause of his martyrdom. Acts vii, 56 See Horsley’s 12th Letter to Priestley. 99: Matt. xxvii. 54. 110 Sermon III. to his disciples in all times, a right faith and worship. But he in nought explained away, or qualified, the various expressions, by which he was understood to assert for himself the fulness of the divine majesty. He was aware of, and acquiesced in, the construction put upon them. For thus teaching, he was content to be put to death. He suffered in attestation of this doctrine, that “truly he was the Son of God.” As God, then, he must have intended to be received; as God, to be worshipped in all ages throughout all the world, whithersoever “the everlasting Gospel” should come. God, therefore, he assuredly is. So HE PREACHED, AND SO WE BELIEVE. Having proposed to lay before you the testimony of the Scriptures only, to the divinity of Christ, as being alone of authority to establish the truth; it may be thought that my subject is here brought to a close, by a statement, from them, of the original prophecies relating to his nature, and of his own doctrine; as well as of the consentient construction put upon his language by all who heard it, whether friends or foes. : But it may be allowed, and not unuseful, to add a brief notice of the views of those, who were con- temporaneous with the apostles, or followed quickly upon their time. ‘Zaz is the real doctrine of Scrip- ture, which was the meaning of its authors. And some light is undoubtedly to be thrown upon that meaning, if we can ascertain how their language was understood by those to whom it was at first addressed; who, in any doubt, had opportunity of appealing for further instruction to them, or to those who had SERMON III. 111 conversed familiarly with them.. And, for some time, the traditional opinions of the great body of the disciples, of different nations and languages, recorded by successive teachers, or otherwise ascertained, cannot be without value’. However weak the reasoning of individual writers, left to their natural gifts, or how- ever fanciful their inferences or illustrations; the knowledge of the real sense of Scripture, as received throughout the universal Church, at least upon all its leading doctrines, and in a broad and general view, was sure to be accurately preserved, seeing how much all men’s minds were intent upon them. As it would have detracted something from our confidence in our own interpretation of the Gospel, could it be shewn to be at variance with that of the generality of those, who received the Word from its first preachers, or with only a short intermediate transmission; so it must tend to confirm our faith, to find it in agreement with that of the great body of the disciples of the evangelists and apostles, and of those who were, in succession, duly commissioned to hand down their doctrines. If we possessed no such testimony, our creed would rest secure on the clear, natural sense of God’s word. But it is no disparagement to this supreme authority, to derive some satisfaction from the uniform opinions, grounded upon wt, of the Church of Christ in the earliest times, and in the various communities and tongues in which the Gospel was rapidly circulated. * See Waterland, vol. v. ch. viii., upon the “Use and value of ec- clesiastical antiquity with respect to controversies of faith.” 112 SERMON ITI. Now that our Lord was immediately, generally, and uninterruptedly, regarded and worshipped by Christians, as God, on the strength of the very evi- dence which has been adduced, is clearly established’ in many ways. This was the faith imputed to the Church at large, by writers following close upon the times of the apostles, Pagan’ as well as Christian, and uncontradicted by any credible contemporary authority. The reproach cast upon the followers of the new religion, by its Jewish enemies, was of tdolatry, for worshipping a man as God. ‘The reply of the apologists was not a denial of the worship, 1 For proof of this assertion, see Bull’s three treatises on the Trinity, so often referred to; Berriman’s “ Historical Account of the Contro- versies of the Church, concerning the Doctrine of the Trinity ;’ Bing- ham’s Orig. Eccles. B. xm. ch. ii.; Stillingfleet, Disc. on the Trinity, ch. ix. ; Mr Wilson’s book, already often mentioned, which contains a clear and succinct account; Waterland, vol. u., Serm. vu. and vol. v. ch. vi.; Dr Whitby’s Tract; and Wall’s Hist. of Inf. Bapt. v. 1. ch. ix. Athanasius openly challenged the Arians to produce a single ancient writer of credit, in support of their opinions. And, to shew that this was not an idle boast, the Emperor Theodosius, wishing to put an end to the controversy with them, proposed a conference of the leaders on both sides, and that they should abide by what could be shewn to have been the ° doctrine of the early Fathers. But the Arians declined to abide by this test. Bull, D. F. N. Epil. Op. Univ. Socinus seems to have admitted that the sentiments of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church were on the side of the received doc- trine, and to have piqued himself upon being the first to discover the true sense of Scripture, at the end of more than 1500 years! (See Tillot- son, Serm. 1. on John i. 14; and Whitby’s Preface to his Tract.) 2 See Wilson, ch. vi.—xiii. ; xv.—xviii. ; xxi.—xxiii.; Bull, D. F. N. Sect. u. c. iv. n. 11; and Pr. et Ap. Tr. c. iv. ; Berriman, (pp. 80—82.) The Emperor Julian, an avowed, virulent, and learned enemy, felt himself compelled to admit the general prevalence of this doctrine among Christians, even prior to the publication of St John’s Gospel; so as to have been, as he takes the liberty of supposing, St John’s motive for adopting the doctrine! See Berriman, p. 58, and Waterland, vol. y. 179—80. SERMON III. 113 but an assertion that he, whom they so honoured, never, even on earth, had been man only, but also’ God*. In consequence of their well-known creed, Christians were charged with inconsistency by the heathen (whom they called upon to renounce their many gods), for themselves deifying one laid in the grave; and were regarded as polytheists* on account of their own worship, though as atheists, for their con- tempt of that of the pagans. As polytheists, too, they were reviled by the Jews’, who justified their rejection of Christianity (as their descendants® do to this day) mainly on the ground of its supposed infringement of the unity of God, through the acknowledgment of the deity of his Son. To both the answer of the Christian advocates was the same; the confession of a belief in the divine nature of Christ, with an as- sertion of the unity of God: “We? worship one God, the Father and Son.” They were represented as tritheists* by heretics, who assuredly knew, and by this title meant to impute, their real worship of both * Bishop of Lincoln’s Justin, ch. ii. Bingham’s Orig. Eccles. B. xm. ch. ii. * Bingham’s Orig. Eccl. B. xi. c. ii. Lardner, rv. 281, from Athana- sius. Waterland, u1. 69, 70. ° Bull, J. E. C.c1n. 8. ° See Allix, p. 346, who says; “A learned Jew would laugh in the face of a Socinian, who would go about to persuade him that Jesus is not represented in the Gospel as God.” It is the exhibition of this doctrine which is the ground of his enmity to the Gospel. Even Ma- hometans seem to have admitted that the Gospel ascribes a divine nature to Christ; but assert that Christ’s own doctrine was corrupted herein by his historians. (Stillingfleet’s Pref. to his Disc. on the Trinity, near the end.) ” The words of Origen. See Waterland, vol. m1. 70. Berriman. 5 See Waterland, 1. 271—2. 8 a See Serm. iv. note K. Eph. v. 19. b See note O. ¢ See Serm. 1. note K. 114 SERMON III. the Son and the Holy Spirit, as God. Further, the doctrine of the Trinity was at first the so/e*, and ever the chief matter of the creeds’, used as preliminary tests of a right and necessary faith, in the baptism of converts, in every quarter of the Christian world; after the commandment of our Lord in the text, and the pattern and instruction of the apostles, in obe- dience thereto. Moreover, it is witnessed in early doxologies and liturgies’. Hymns’, too, were from the very first sung to Christ, “as God,” after the written precept of one apostle: and prayers‘ uni- versally offered to him, as such, after the example and lessons of all of them. Not only the creed of the infant and grow- ing Church, as thus manifested by various proofs, but the very errors of early heresy’, tend to es- tablish the original, and general reception of this doctrine, of Christ’s divinity. Long before the death of the last of the apostles (as has been already noticed‘), a remnant of Gentilism, imperfectly discarded, introduced dissent. Some ill-instructed _ converts, attaching themselves exclusively to the many and clear assertions in Scripture, of the divine glory of the Redeemer; and not knowing how to reconcile, or else unwilling to believe, the union of 1 See Waterland, v. ii. Serm. vim. vol. v. ch. vi. Bull, J. E. C. ¢. iv. v. vi. with Grabe’s annotations. Stillingfleet’s Disc. on the Trinity, ch. ix. Wall’s Inf. Bapt. vol. 1. ch. ix. 2 Bingham, Orig. Eceles. B. xm. ch. ii. Stillingfleet, Disc. on the Trin. ch. ix. Bull. D. F. N. Sect. u. c. iii. n. 6. 3 Bull, D. F. N. Sect. u1.¢. ii. n. 5. J. E. C. cc. vii. Appendix, n. 3. Wilson, 270—274. Bingham, Orig. Eccles. B. xu. ch. * Bingham, as before. Whitby’s Tract, ch. i. sect. SERMON III. 115 his heavenly nature with that of man; presumed to deny his real assumption of our flesh, and to pronounce his human body to have been a semblance only, a mere phantom. Against these pestilent he- retics St John wrote. And had the fact been, that Christ possessed the nature of man only, it had assuredly been now distinctly declared; as at once the best contradiction of the error, which in ¢hat case they entertained, of his detty; and the best assertion of the truth which in any case they re- pudiated, of his manhood. But in no part of St John’s writings, or elsewhere in Scripture, is there a single sentence, which, in its true purport, holds up Christ as merely a human prophet. On the contrary, while the evangelist, with clear and ad- mitted reference to this heresy, severely condemns those who “confess not that Jesus Christ is comet Jommiv.s. in the flesh ;”’ (i.e. who deny the true incarnation of his divine nature“); he assiduously guards against a iagit the opposite error, of supposing him to have come so only, and to have been a mere man—by proclaiming, with distinct and manifold witness, that he was “in John ist. the beginning with God, and was God;” as has been abundantly shewn. | Another and early, though somewhat later sect, equally impressed with the true and perfect Godhead of him who was “made flesh”—(who assumed the Jonni. 14. nature of man to that of the deity, in Christ Jesus)— sought to reconcile this clear doctrine of Scripture with the unity of God, by putting aside the many warrants of his personality, as distinct from the Fa- see ser. ther’. ‘Thus they allowed themselves to look upon “Sabet S—2 f See Serm. Iv. note K. 116 SERMON III. the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as but three names, or notions, belonging to the one Person of God, according to the different offices which he condescended to perform in the scheme of man’s salvation; that, with merely a variety of déle and operation, he who came from heaven was also he who sent; he who required a ransom for man, was he who paid it; he who ewacted an atonement and. satisfaction for sin, himself offered it to himself, by dying on the cross. They who could put up with so strange a notion, in order to account for the as- serted deity of the Saviour, must have been strongly convinced of the truth and importance of this doc- trine. Both of these sects agreed with the great body of Christians, in the interpretation of those passages of Scripture which magnify the nature of Christ; and were deemed heretics, only for rejecting other doctrines as clearly inculeated therein, and substi- tuting their own unauthorised inventions. This is made clear, not only by the express testimony of those fathers of the primitive Church who confuted , and condemned these errors, and by the successive additions made in consequence to the baptismal creed‘, in order to preserve the truth; but also by the very names given ‘to them in reproach, descriptive of what was peculiar’ in their tenets. Had their dissent from Christians at large consisted in asserting the di- vinity of Christ, this so important distinction would ‘ For other instances of sects named after their peculiar opinions, see Berriman, 314—318. SERMON III. 117 have been made the foundation of their character- istic title. But both of them holding this doctrine in common with all Christians, the one sect were called “ Docetz,” after their unwarranted belief of Christ’s mere spectral and phantastic body ; the other were stigmatized with the name of “ Patri-passians,” because, teaching the Father and the Son to be but nominally distinct, and virtually the same Person, it followed, as a consequence’, that the Mather was in- ¢ serm.«. carnate, and the Father crucified. wane The Church was constantly watchful to maintain in all its purity that truth, on the belief of which salvation is declared to depend. All who, as time multiplied error, in any way brought into question the perfect divinity* of Christ, were at once autho- ritatively condemned, and at the same time pro- nounced to have forfeited the privileges and_bless- ings of the gospel; as denying that faith which he solemnly made the condition of his mercy, in the injunction which closed his ministry on earth". This b See Serm. is abundantly manifest from the whole tenor of ec- clesiastical history’. With such a multiplicity and he. of consistent evidence, the candid and teachable student of divine truth, willing to receive it on the authority of him who revealed it, cannot but be satisfied. Cavils may be raised against a few texts. But the consent * The first heretics (especially of Gentile origin) were those who denied the human nature of Christ. Their opinions have been already stated. See also Wilson, ch. xiii. and Berriman, ch. i. ° See Waterland, vol. v. ch. iv. v. vi. Bull, J. E. C. Stillingfleet, Disc. on the Trinity, ch. iv. Berriman. ; 118 Sermon III. of so many and different forms of assertion, through- out the gospel, admits of no explanation, but in the purpose of its great Author to teach us the doctrine, which is thus carefully, and copiously, and harmont- ously presented. And when it is further borne in mind, that the Jews of old had notions conform- able to it, grounded on the dimmer light of their earlier and preparatory revelation; and that all who jon xiv.6. heard the words of him who is the emphatic “ Truth,” whether believers or infidels, put upon them a like construction; and transmitted their agreeing inter- pretation, by an uninterrupted tradition, as a test of discipleship, and the basis of worship in the Church ; and in the ranks of infidelity, as matter of scoff, and the very motive of disbelief; even heresy add- ing its witness, by its very perversions of the truth; we cannot but be satisfied that we have every evidence that reason requires, or could expect, from the known method of God’s dealings with us. They who on such grounds acknowledge in their John i. 1— 3 Redeemer their Creator; and in the “ Prince of Bi Peace” the “ Mighty God;” rest in safe reliance, that — 2thess.i- he who came to save “through belief of the truth,” would not so reveal himself as necessarily to mislead into fatal error; and that, “trusting in him, they iSeenote shall never be ashamed i The Scriptures, while proclaiming the unity of God, represent both the Father and the Son to be God, ascribing to them severally the same divine titles, attributes, and operations, and commanding for both the same divine worship. We, satisfied with their authority, and acknowledging none other, SERMON III. 119 assent to each of these propositions; reconciling them in the manner pointed out by, or most con- sistent with, the language in which they are deli- vered to us. We own the Father to be God, and the Son to be alike God, making no difference or inequality, where Scripture has made none. And while we regard them as personally distinct, as their very relation” implies, and the divine Word abundantly intimates; we believe them also to be one, by sub- sisting in one and the same infinite, immutable, and indivisible substance *. Thus our faith is, that the Father and the Son, co-equal, co-eternal, con-sub- stantial, are TWO PERSONS, BUT ONE Gob. * A relation necessarily implies two subjects. Bull thus renders the reasoning of Origen, for the distinction of the Father and Son, intimated by their titles: “Ad hos dicendum primd, alium esse Filium a Patre . et quod necessario Filius sit Patris Filius; et Pater, Filii sit Pater.” D. F.N. Sect. ii. c. ix. n, 11. kSee Serm. I. note B. Heb. v. 9. SERMON IV. Marru. xxvin. 19. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Ir is a strange inconsistency of the human mind, that, after it has come to acknowledge, as revealed by God, that man was made by him, and received from him a law which might not be broken; that he did trans- gress, and so forfeited the hope held out to obedience; that God had pity on him, and provided a method of recovery from the evil; that he sent into the world the appointed “author of salvation” long foretold, authenticating his mission by the further evidence of miracles, and guiding his disciples, the hearers of his doctrines and eye-witnesses of his mighty works, to record both for our perpetual instruction ;—it is a strange inconsistency, that any one should believe this chain of wonders to be unquestionably real, as vouched by the Word of God; and then find a difficulty in receiving what is taught, on the same divine autho- rity, touching the rank of him who wrought this great redemption. It is irreconcileable with sound reason, that a man should stop here, and set up opinion against faith; his measure of possibility against the decree of inspiration: should abide by the conceits of his own understanding, exactly on the point upon which it is the most ignorant and insufficient; viz. SERMON IV. 121 the properties of the divine essence*. To my humble asce note view, to accept all these facts and doctrines for true, as asserted in writings confessedly stamped with the seal of the Holy Spirit, and then to reject what is thus unfolded as to the nature of the Saviour, is, “to strain Matt. xxii out a gnat, and swallow a camel;” to master the greater difficulty, and stagger at the less; to toil up a steep ascent on whose summit stands the temple of salvation, and refuse the last easy step, by which we may enter in and be at rest. The lesson of re- velation to me seems in agreement with the natural apprehension, when it saith; “None can by any ps.x1ix.7. means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him;” the vastness of the effect calls for a divine instrument. Still more, when it is taken into the account that the whole race stood in need of deli- verance, the extent of the evil to be remedied, and the amount of sin to be expiated, shut out hope in any human merit or mediator; warn to “cease from qsai.ii.2, man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he 1 Sam-ii-25. to be accounted of?” carry our hearts along with the prophet, when he exclaims to those who bring these good tidings; “ Lift up your voice with strength, teai. x1. 9. lift it up, be not afraid: say (of your Redeemer), Be- Bible ana hold your God!” No. 534. They who presume to question the doctrine of Christ’s divine and uncreated nature, do not perhaps avowedly” thus set up the prejudices of a feeble and > Note B, narrow reason against the word of God; but pro- fessing to acknowledge the authority of Scripture, allege that they read, or understand it differently. But if they allow themselves, because of the difficulty ¢See noteC. Eccles. vii. 29. 1 Cor. 4.°21. Rom. xi. 33. 2 Tim. i, 12. 122 SERMON IV. of conceiving the manner in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are severally and equally divine, yet together one God, to seek for other than the true text, and the natural and grammatical inter- pretation of Scripture; and, rather than receive it in its plain and obvious purport, to prefer a forced and improbable construction of some passages which they let® stand; and to alter or disallow others, which by no ingenuity of perversion can be wrested to a sense consonant with their preconceived views; then is it true, that they have departed from “the uprightness in which God made the mind of man, and have sought out many inventions.” They trust to them- selves in a matter where reason, honestly consulted, would tell them of their incompetence, for that ““man by wisdom knows not God;” his nature is, still more than his “judgments,” “ unsearchable” by it, and than “his ways, past finding out.” They abide too, by their reason, in one only of its faculties— imagination: they reject, only because their concep- tion is at fault. We, who in this, as in all that he has revealed, give implicit credence unto God, set , not reason aside, but walk herein by its true light. ‘We know whom we have believed;” we have in- telligible and convincing grounds of affiance in God, and in the authenticity of his word; and so, of the doctrines therein delivered to us’. If the notions 1 “The veracity of God is as capable of making me know a pro- position to be true, as any other way of proof can be: and therefore I do not in such a case barely believe, but know such a proposition to be true, and attain certainty.” Locke, Second reply to the Bishop of Worcester. (vol. 111, 281.) SERMON IV. 123 comprised in the word “Trinity” presented no dif- ficulty to the fancy, as to the manner how, no one would deny the clear lesson of Scripture to be, that “the Father is God, the Son God, and the Holy atn. creea. Ghost God; and yet that they are not three Gods, but one God.” Such, then, is its real purport, which, relying on the divine truth, we reverently receive. We acknowledge on this sure authority, that to be in personal properties three, and in substance one, though unlike owr mode of subsistence, or that of any pattern we are conversant with in this material world (and therefore inconceivable to us, whose ideas are bounded by our experience), is yet a real condition of the unparalleled and spiritual essence of the Godhead ; which doubtless possesses other distinctions from bodily and finite natures, yet unrevealed. We deem this acquiescence in an admitted communication from our Maker, to be more conformable to reason, than to judge and decide, in ignorance, against the instruc- tion of him that “knoweth,” and “is true.” 1 Cor. ii. 11. We have already seen, that whatever the difficulty pe so to the imagination, as to the manner, the evidence of revelation to the strict, essential Deity of our Lord, is clear, copious, and consistent. This doctrine has been proved not to rest on a few texts, or on one only form of assertion; but to be grounded on a manifold abundance of witness, which, if the lan- guage of inspiration be intended by its great Author to instruct men in necessary truth, and to lead them to a right worship, make it impossible for us to err, — in acknowledging Jesus Christ to be “both God and ath. creed. Lord.” Ath. Creed. Gen. i. 2. Hey, B. Iv. Art. V. Gill, 52, 165. Allix. Pye Smith. See Serm. 1. p. 26, note. John iii. 8. See Hey, B. 1v. Art. v. Gill. ch. ix. Ridley, Lect. J. Pye Smith. 124 SERMON IV. To complete our statement of the Scriptural testi- mony to the doctrine of the Trinity, it will be my present aim to make appear, by a like reference to the divine word, that “such as the Father is, and such as the Son, such also is the Holy Ghost; “ the Godhead all one, the glory equal, and the majesty co-eternal.” In the Old Testament, wherein, though it was not proposed to give a perfect knowledge touching the nature of the Holy Ghost, yet assuredly nothing was set down without motive and meaning, many things are written, which now give confirmation to doctrines relating to him, subsequently revealed. A third divine Person is there shadowed forth, and represented as taking part in the dealings of God with man. He is called the “ Spirit’ of God,” and is associated in the operations of almighty power, with no hint of inferiority, or dependance of nature. We read that when the earth was made, the “Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’—brooded, as it were, upon the yet moist and unshapen mass, and eave to it form and fertility. ‘To him, therefore, with the Son, whose ample share in the creation of all things has been fully shewn, we must consider the Fa- ther as addressing himself, when he would produce his 1 When the second person of the Trinity was to be made known, in distinction from the first, seeing all the divine attributes are common to both, a name was given him, which represented what was peculiar in his relation to us. As the immediate channel of the divine will to man, he was called “the Word of God.” So the third person is called the Holy Spirit, perhaps from his unseen efhicacy in imparting holiness and life to the soul of man: as seems intimated in the comparison made by our Lord himself. Or this title may, like that of Son, represent the mode of his deriving the divine essence. SERMON IV. 125 last and greatest work; “Let us make man in our cen. i.26. A 4 4 ‘ 4 . See hee image:” as if herein teaching, why he (with the Son) D.F.N. should conspire in the mercy of our redemption. It ¥i2s%m, Or. Eccl. could not be, that God condescended thus to hold 8.x. counsel with any created nature. Of him he spake, Theophis when, angry at the disregard of man to the warning voice of his holy prophets, he pronounced ; “My Spirit cen. vi.s. shall not always strive with man.” Afterwards it is said of his chosen people, that “he gave his good Nehem. ix. Spirit to instruct them.” And when they “hardened their neck, and would not hear,” that he “testified Nehem. ix. against them by his Spirit in the prophets,” and nee that “they vexed his Holy Spirit.” That by this Isai. Ii. title it is intended to denote a living Agent, distinct com, from the Father, is suggested by the forms of speech employed. ‘They who were in old times taught from above, were said to be “filled with the Spirit of God,” Bxod. xx. in a sense in which we, at least, who have the light of the Gospel, can find no difficulty to interpret. And we read alike, that through “the Spirit” by whom Moses wrought his miracles, were the seventy v. 30. elders empowered to “bear the burden of the people yum». xi with him.” -When Isaiah was taught to foretell the coming of “him who should redeem Israel,” the Holy Ghost is set forth as being, jointly with the Father, the author of his errand of mercy: “The Lord God tai. xii. and his Spirit hath sent me*;” thus early intimating * The ancient Jews understood these words to have reference to the coming of the Messiah. Allix, 326. Origen remarked upon the ambi- guity of the expression, and thought it should be rendered ; “The Lord God hath sent me and his Spirit ;” as proclaiming the mission of both, in the work of man’s salvation. Either way, it is an evidence of the separate personality of the Holy Spirit. See Lowth ad loc. Dr Pye Smith, a Matt. i. 20. Joelii. 28. Eph. i. 13. Acts ii. 33. Acts il. 37. Hag. ii. 4, 5. Eph. ii. 22. 1 Cor. li. 7. John xvi. 7. 126 SERMON IV. : the wonder which was cleared up to Joseph, by the assurance touching his betrothed wife; “That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.” The prophet Joel foretold, that in after times God would “pour out his Spirit upon all flesh”—impart unto them the gifts of this divine ally, who was here called “the Spirit of promise ;” whose personal descent, in fulfilment of this word, the apostles did both “see and hear;” and whose presence and grace are still vouchsafed “to us, and to our children.” The prophet Haggai, when inspired to encourage those who were commissioned to rebuild the temple, gave them as- surance in God’s person, “I am with you;” and then adds, almost in the language of the Gospel; “ So my Spirit remaineth with you’:” thus holding up the new sanctuary for ‘‘an habitation of God through the Spirit.” These and like notices, scattered through the Old Testament, shewed “the wisdom of God in a mys- tery ;” i. e. wrapped in some obscurity, so as to serve perhaps for conjecture, rather than for knowledge; because it was reserved to the Son himself fully to reveal, as well as freely to “send, unto us the Com- forter””. The meaning of prophetical lessons (it may learned dissenting writer, though cautious as to the texts which he admits as authority, on this subject, says: “1 cannot but think that the unbiassed, grammatical reading of the words in this passage sets before us the Spirit of the Lord, under the notion of a personal subsistence.” (Serm. on the Pers. and Div. of the Holy Spirit, p. 21.) 1 Allix (p. 287) thus renders the Chaldee paraphrase of the passage : “T am with you, saith the Lord of Hosts,” with the Word which cove- nanted with you when you came out of Egypt, and my Spirit which abideth “in the midst of you ;” an ancient and intelligible allusion to the second and third persons of the Trinity. SERMON IV. 127 be allowed to repeat) is always more or less shrouded. It is as a “light that shineth in a dark place, until 2ret.i.ts. the day dawn and the day-star arise:” it emits but a glimmering of divine truth. Still it is « light, 2 Pet. i. 2. whereunto ye do well that ye take heed ;” knowing this, that none of this instruction “came by the will 2 Pet. i. 22. of man, but that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost’—by him of whom it is thus written. By it the Jews’ of old were *See note taught to entertain some notion of the existence of a third person in the one nature of God. However vague and uncertain their speculations, touching the precise manner of his being, and of his relation to the Father; their very surmise of his distinct personal subsistence and of his divine character, grounded on the authorities referred to, and on other texts®, shews «Seenote D. that the language, to their view, contained some in- timation of our doctrine; and so is of value to us, as a testimony to its purport; though we have the fuller and clearer light of the Gospel, by which to ascertain its true meaning. In the New Testament’, the passages which teach the divine nature of the Holy Spirit, though many and adequate, are fewer than those which affirm the like majesty of the Son. The first difficulty raised to his disciples by Christ, was in the doctrine of Ais own divinity. As the first, perhaps, it was known by him for the greatest, and hence the more freely provided for. If he was satisfactorily shewn to be * See Pearson. (Art. “I believe in the Holy Ghost”). Ridley’s first Moyer’s Lecture. Wardlaw, Disc. rx. Dr Gill, ch. rx. Dr Pye Smith, Serm. on the Holy Spirit. 1 Cor. tii. 16. Phil. ii. 8. 128 SERMON IV. perfect God, without impeachment of the divine unity, a less frequent assertion would suffice to esta- blish the equal rank of the Spirit; that he who is spoken of as “the Highest” is spoken of, and none other, can be nothing less than the Highest; that he who proceeded from the Father and the Son, and wrought with them in the salvation of men, dwelling in them, and creating them anew, and by his in- habitation constituting them “temples of the living God,” is himself God. Moreover, there was here no prejudice of the senses to overcome, from his being “found in fashion as a man.” It could not be ob- som vi.42. jected to the claim of the Holy Ghost; “His father John xiv, 24. John i. 9. Heb. xii. 2. John vi. 62. John xiv.16, li. and mother we know.” He was in communion with man, only as a Spirit; and “God is a Spirit.” It would therefore be of more easy belief, that he is God. The testimony is commensurate with the need. And it is in the method of God, never, if we may so speak, to put forth superfluous strength. His way of dealing with us is not to oer-master our faculties, but to call upon us for their diligent use, and in- struct us through them; to leave room for the exer- ; cise of a reasonable faith and integrity of heart, in interpreting his revelations. He who isthe “true Light,” the “author and finisher of our faith,” gave this notice to his disciples before he “ascended up where he was before ;” ‘I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth.” A third agent in the redemption of man—one other than the Father and the Son—is here held up to our faith and hope. ‘The name by which he is elsewhere SERMON IV. _ 129 announced to us by Christ, is, the Holy Ghost, or Spirit; “The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, John xiv.26. whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things.” Before we seek the evidence of his rank, the perverseness of scepticism, rather than any want of distinctness in the language of Scripture, makes it necessary to establish the truth of his personality’ ; 7.€. that a real being, not a mere energy, or quality, or operation of the Father or of the Son, is the source of all the blessings we are taught to expect under this sacred name. The mere forms of speech under which he is fre- quently mentioned, when fairly weighed, absolutely forbid any other supposition, as is allowed by all sound critics; especially by one’, whose learning and candour ‘See noteF. are commended by those who take low views of the divine mysteries. ‘‘ When he (saith Christ), the Spirit John xvi.1s. of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth :” where the word rendered by “he,” necessarily implies, according to the force of the original language, a real, independent, living agent; as do many other passages of a like grammatical construction. Nor could any different meaning be properly so expressed. And in these words, together with the immediate context, are sundry personal operations assigned to him, such as cannot be construed of any attribute of the Father, as their author; or of the apostles, as those affected by them. “When he, the Spirit of truth, shall come, John xvi.13, he will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that * See Pearson, 394—373 ; Ridley’s first Moyer’s Lect. ; Dr Gill, ch. ix. 9 130 SERMON IV. shall he speak ; and he shall shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.” There is clearly required, as the instrument of these several effects, one distinct Pearson,369, hoth from the Father and from the apostles. No mere attribute of the Father, could, in any propriety of language, be said to be come from him; to hear and receive of another, and to glorify him from whom he receiveth, by skewing it: for the Father heareth and receiveth of none, nor so glorifieth any. Neither Hey, B.zv. could any faculty of the apostles, by any figure of a speech intended to announce intelligible and useful truth, be held up as coming anew from the Father, to speak to them, to guide them, and to skew them the truth. The actions spoken of all necessarily re- quire a mediate agent. Jonnaiv.265 Again: He whom “ the Father sends,” and whom ‘Christ sends,” must be one having a subsistence and character independent of both: for neither could be said to send some mere operation of the other. He Rom.viii26. who “maketh intercession for us” with the Father, must be other than that being, before whom he is } Jomn xiv.s. Mediator. Christ promises “ another Comforter’—one iJonnii.1. Other than himself, who is elsewhere so called'; a tacit comparison, which necessarily implies one such as himself, a real and living source of consolation, to supply his presence now about to be withdrawn. And he foretold men’s rejection of him in terms which lead John xiv.17. to the same conclusion; ‘‘ Whom the world cannot ‘In the original language, the word rendered by “ Comforter” in one place, and “ Advocate” in the other, is the same (mapakAnros): SERMON IV. 131 receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.” To “receive,” is to acknowledge as a personal $eeJom. object of faith ; such, therefore, must he be, whom the world ought to “receive.” And to be disregarded, be- cause of not being seen, implies a real being in him, whom it is sinful to slight on this ground; for there could be no question of seeing a mere attribute. He is introduced in a plain narrative, as directing the apostles, and as in person addressing them ; “ Separate acts xiii. 2 me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.’ “'The Spirit said unto Peter, Behold, Acts x. 19, three men seek thee; go with them, for I have sent them.” In such instances, the proper force and pur- port of the personal pronoun cannot be mistaken. It could not be thus employed, save of a living being. He is moreover expressly distinguished from the graces which are ascribed to him, by being represented, in one and the same sentence, as the source of all; “There Cor, xift4) are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.” The"? *” Spirit cannot, then, be a gift, but one from whom gifts proceed. In dispensing to the preachers of Gospel truth the qualifications required for the several offices of their ministry, he is described as exercising the per- sonal attributes of discrimination, and purpose, and action grounded upon them; “All these worketh 1 Cor. xi that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.” He is frequently named absolutely as the Spirit—a form of speech applicable only to an independent subsistence; “ They assayed a xvi. to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not.” 2. By this title he is said to “search the deep things 1 cor. ii. 10. of God’”—his hidden counsels; a trifling and strange 9—2 132 SerMon IV. assertion, if the Spirit could be regarded merely as a faculty of the Father ; informing us only, that the divine mind is conscious of its own thoughts. ‘The general tenour of the language of Seripture, touching the Spirit, is in perfect accordance with these views. Jonnxvi.12, He is continually said either to “ hear,” to “ teach,” to 17; xiv. 28 ; xv. 80... «© sneak,” to “love,” to “dwell with us, and in us ;” to Rom.viii. 9 ; V.680XV.16 viii 16. A ‘‘shed abroad in our hearts the love of God,” to ny. oO. Hebe 1A ieanotty, 1 £077 bear witness,” to “ help,” to ‘‘reprove,” Rom.viii.26. John xvi. 8. tpt iv. 30. to * seal unto the day of redemption,” to be “ grieved” at our perverseness in refusing his succour, and resist- ing his suggestions; operations and affections properly requiring a personal subject; and in most of which the substitution of an impersonal attribute would render the meaning perplexed and irrational, and give to Scripture the character of a fanciful allegory, rather than of the sobriety of divine instruction in needful truth. Actions and sentiments belonging to a person, when ascribed in language not otherwise stamped as figurative, must be intended to refer to a person. And it is no objection to this conclusion, to point out occa-_ sional texts where “the Spirit” is, after an ordinary | figure, put for his own gifts; as where it is written, Acts x45; the Holy Ghost was poured out,” or “was not yet.” comp. Acts Sych passages bear their own interpretation with them. And the explanation which gives them a ra- tional meaning, takes nothing from the proper force and testimony of those others, to which it is totally Hey, Baw. inapplicable. It is enough that he is the subject of . many and clear assertions, which can only be under- stood of a real, living, intelligent agent. atim.iiiis. “ All Scripture is given by inspiration of God,” SERMON IV. 133 for our learning: and his wisdom would not permit therein the combination of plain and figurative titles, so as necessarily to perplex, or mislead. All the in- stances, therefore, in which the Holy Spirit is coupled with Christ, or with him and the Father, are certain intimations of his independent existence. When it is said, that “through Christ, we both (Jews and ¥pb-ii-1s. Gentiles) have access, by one Spirit, unto the Fa- ther;” this ascription of a joint mediation to the Son and Spirit, makes both to be agents, with a like reality. So the distinction drawn between sin against the Father and Son, and sin against the Holy mattn. xii Ghost, shews the latter to possess some peculiar title to our reverence—some relation to us affording a separate ground of offence, and hence a real being. Many' other examples of such united mention might See Rom.xv. be adduced. But it is sufficient to have thus di- 1 Gor, v.11. rected attention to them. As if to leave those without excuse, who, in fulfilment of Christ’s anticipating reproach, will not “receive him because they see him not,” a sensible token was on one occasion afforded of his presence, simultaneously with the other persons of the blessed Trinity.. We read that at the baptism of Christ, “the Holy Ghost descended upon him in take iii. 2. a bodily shape,” while a voice came from heaven, which said, “Thou art my beloved Son.2” Though * The Holy Ghost is introduced forty-eight times with the Father and the Son together, besides the passages in which he is named with Christ alone. See Dr S. Clarke, Script. Doctr. Pt. ii. sect. 55. * Allix tells us (p. 288) : “The three persons of the Trinity did then so visibly manifest themselves, that the ancients took from thence occasion to bid the Arians, “go to the river Jordan, and you shal} see the Trinity.” See g SeenoteF. 134 SERMON IV. the evidence of this apparition was vouchsafed in condescension! to man, who is incapable, in his present state, of discerning a purely spiritual nature ; and the outward symbol bore no resemblance to the real substance of the Holy Ghost, any more than the voice corresponded to any material organs in the Father; yet it is enough to signify to us, that he who was clothed with a visible form, was a living being, and not a mere attribute or energy. It is ever the aim of God to instruct ‘us in the truth. And he would not exhibit a token, which, after man’s experience and natural apprehension, would suggest the belief of a real subsistence’, unless such were the property of the Spirit, whom the symbol was made known to represent. ‘The form of baptism prescribed by our Lord will be more fully referred to, as an evidence of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, with other passages bearing this double testimony. It suffices, therefore, to observe here, that its witness to his distinct personality® is conclusive. Belief commanded “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” holds up all in the , same light; teaches them to be real, independent, and equal, by requiring for each of them a like ac- knowledgment and reverence. And the same une- See also Bull, D. F. N. sect. ii. c. v. n. 9, who shews Ireneus to have considered this as a witness, to the senses, of a Trinity of persons in the Godhead. 1 A spirit can only be made evident to man, by means of some effect upon his senses. All the notices of the divine presence have been made either by unusual appearances, or by some extraordinary sound. See — again Acts ii. 3. of the Holy Spirit. 2 «The scripture doth not liken substances to things that be no sub- stances.” Hutchinson, “Image of God,” p. 136. SERMON IV. 135 quivocal inference is to be drawn from the apostolic blessing. If “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ” proceed from a person, and the “love of God” from a person ; then “the communion of the Holy Ghost” must needs be a gift imparted by a person also. These words are, in fact, a prayer. And “no man prayeth hutchinson, “Tmage of unto an inspiration: no man crieth to an affection.” &4”p-136. Having thus shewn that the Holy Spirit is a living agent, we are next to seek his rank in the scale of being. It may at once be asserted, that none can be assigned to him, consistently with Scrip- ture, save that of God*. There is no expression which tends to class him with the host of heaven: and no nature is intimated to us, between the an- gelic, and the divine. His very title, ‘“‘Spirit of God,” implies a community in the Godhead. And what- ever is recorded as his work, is represented as of God. When the Son of God was about “to be made flesh,” a “body was prepared him,” not after neb.x.s. the ordinary birth of men, but in fulfilment of the Is. vie prediction; “A virgin* shall conceive.” This modifi- Matth. * The first heresy, touching the Holy Spirit, disputed his personality, 7. and admitted his divinity. The Sabellians* saw the language of Scrip- ao note ture to be so high, both as to the Son and the Holy Ghost, that, unable to deny either of them to be God, they, in order to preserve the doctrine of the divine unity, supposed the one person of the Father to be intended under each of these titles. They stated their difference with the Church at large in this question; va Oedv exopev 7) tpeis Oeods ; “ Are we to have one God, or three Gods?” a clear proof, that they knew the doctrine of the Church to be, that the Holy Ghost is God. See Berriman, p. 125. * Bishop Pearson (p. 211 and note 1.) understands the miraculous conception to have been intimated in the original promise of a Saviour, as . Serm. 1. the “ seed of the woman” alone. He interprets, after a like sense, Jer. Gen. iii. 15. xxxi. 22; “A woman shall compass a man ;” 7. e. a woman alone. 136 Sermon IV. cation of a law of nature, could only proceed from that authority which appointed the law; and it was the work of the Holy Ghost. Accordingly, when the angel explained to the perplexed and incredulous Mary, the preternatural event which he had an- nounced to her, proclaiming its author; “ The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee;” he made known also the exalted condition of him who had not yet been Lukei.3s. familiarly revealed, by adding; “The power of the Pearson, 373. John iii. 2. 1 Cor. ii. 4, 5. » Eph. iv. 30. Matt. ix. 38. Highest shall overshadow thee.” And he proceeded ; “Therefore also (as Ais work) that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God,” even as to that human nature which he re- ceiveth of thee, through this divine instrument. Miracles, which, it is truly said, “no man can do except God be with him,” are called “his gifts; ” and the ‘demonstration of the Spirit” is said to be the “ power of God.” All those energies in men of which he has ever been the merciful source, whe- ther ordinary graces, by which we are “ sanctified,” and “sealed unto the day of redemption ;” or those marvellous powers, needed only for the setting up of the religion of the Gospel, and therefore since withheld; are declared, as being of him, to be of God: ‘ There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit ; diversities of operations, but it is the same God, which worketh all, in all.” Again: Prayer was commanded to the “Lord of the harvest,” that “he would send forth labourers into his harvest ;” and the ‘‘ Lord,” who answered this prayer, was, according to the distribution of offices in the Gospel economy, the Holy Ghost, who did set the SERMON LV. 137 apostles over the Church, and who abode perpetually acts xx. 28. with them, guiding them in their selection and con- secration of others to the work; “separating” each unto acts xiii. 2 his appointed labour, and “ giving him utterance for Acts ii. 4. it.” They who, after the promise of the prophet, were to be “taught of God,” received the Promise 11 Isai. liv. 13. the teaching of the Holy Ghost. Accordingly it is 1" written of their doctrine suggested by him; “ He that 1Thess.ivs. despiseth, despiseth not man, but God.” A temple is, in the language of Scripture, the “ habitation’ of Ps. xwi.6. the Deity—the “ place where his honour dwelleth.” Hence it is written; “ Ye are the temple of the living 20. vi.1. God: as God hath said, I will dwell in them.” Yet the same apostle thus remonstrates: “ Know ye not that 1 Cor. vi. 16. your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?” And again: “Know ye not that ye are 1Cor ii 19 the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwell- Eph i, 2, eth in you?” It had been a prophetic promise, that when Christ should have “ascended up on high, he ps. ixviii.is. should receive gifts for men, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” In reference to this prediction, while as yet unfulfilled, it was remarked by John, in explanation of words just uttered by our Lord, that the “Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that soun vii 0. Jesus was not yet glorified ;” and afterwards by St Luke, that “being by the right hand of God exalted, acts ii.33. and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he had shed it forth.” Thus, then, is it, that the “ Lord God doth dwell among us:” we are ppn. ii, 22 ‘an habitation of God through the Spirit.” In exact agreement with this doctrine and language of the prophets and apostles, Christ, after that he had an- 138 SERMON IV. John xiv.15, nounced. ‘‘another Comforter,” who should ‘“ dwell in those who love him,” straightway, in repetition of the promise, bids them look for the inhabitation of the Jonnxiv.23. Father and of himself, saying; “ We will come unto him, and make our abode with him;” thus intimating the inseparable union of three persons in one God- head—a sacred Trinity inhabiting in every pure heart. Again: It has been already observed, that we learn to know God by the attributes, the operations, and the honour ascribed to him in his Word. And hence we safely conclude, that he, to whom the like are as- signed on the same authority, must partake in the divine nature. To this conclusion it must be the aim of the author of revelation to lead us; for it is the just and obvious conclusion of reason, from such pre- mises. -And by all these tokens we are called upon Geni, to acknowledge the Holy Ghost as God. He who a, 8, took part (as we have seen) in the counsel and work witl Makwise; of creation, and has at all times been the inspirer Acts XXxviii. He aa of holy men commissioned to speak in the divine il ey: name, must have been “ before all things;” nor hath he any beginning’ or origin anywhere attributed to — Hed. ix.4. him. Agreeably to this view, he is called the ‘‘ efer- nal® Spirit.” His power was shewn to be almighty, 1 Dr S. Clarke states, that “ The Scripture, speaking of the Spirit of God, never mentions any limitation of time, when he derived his being or essence from the Father; but supposes him to have existed with the Father from the beginning.” Script. Doctr. Pt. 11. § 20. 2 There is some difference of opinion, whether these words apply to the Holy Ghost, or to the divine nature in Christ. See Ridley’s Moyer’s Lect. p. 12; Dodd’s Bible, and Macknight, ad. loc. Dr S. Clarke refers the words to the Holy Ghost. Script. Doctr. No. 1132.* So Hey, B. 1v. Art. v. Sect. 11. Bull rather inclines the other way. D. F. N, Sect. 1. ¢. i. n. 5. SERMON IV. 139 by his share in the creation; and, in these latter times, by all the “miracles and gifts’ by which the apostles He. ii. +. were enabled to allege “the witness of God.” His omniscience is set forth by the promise of the Saviour, that he should “guide us into all truth,’ Jom xias. and by the declaration of the apostle, that “he search- 1 Cor. ii.10. eth all things, yea, even the deep things of God.” Hence, as it had been foretold of him, he did “ shew Jom xvi.s. things to come; looked forward into the abyss of time, and did both literally and figuratively see which seed Acts xi, 285 should prosper, and which come to nought; a foresight which God claimeth to belong exclusively to the divine nature, saying; “Shew the things that are to come Isai. xii. 2. hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods.” Nor can he be less than omnipresent, who heareth and ministereth to every spiritual need of “every one that asketh,” and giveth power to be “a witness unto Actsis. Christ, unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Such are the properties and operations which, we are incidentally taught, belong to the Holy Spirit. And we discover in the same Word consistent tokens of a reverence suited to a divine being, and unsuit- able to any created nature. To “lie to the Holy Acts. 3. Pearson, Ghost” is, in the case of Ananias, pronounced to be si: ®: Iv. Art. v. DrJ.Knight, to “lie unto God.” To him, together with Christ, No 66. the Apostle appealeth, as unto God, when he would give to his assertion the solemnity of an oath: “J Konto say the truth in Christ, I lie not; my conscience also is" bearing me witness in the Holy? Ghost.” All sin igs * See in Berriman, p. 42, an oath preserved by St Basil from the writings of St Clement, after the Jewish form, “The Lord liveth.” That of 1 Johu iii. 4. Matt. xii. 31, 32. John xvi. &. 2 Cor. vii. 10. Eph. iv. 23; Pitcalieibs itAis lo. Eph. ii. 12. 140 SERMON IV. against divine authority, whence cometh “the law,” of which “sin is the transgression.” Yet sin is spoken of as against the Holy Ghost, and is held up as in- expiable; “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men: and who- soever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come.” It is im- possible that such language, employed under the sanc- tion of divine authority to instruct us in the truth, could be expected to convey to our minds any lower estimate of his nature whom it regards, than that it is Jevel with that of the Highest. And what of pe- cular import and sanctity seems attached to his name, has regard, perhaps, to the part which he bears in the Gospel economy. His is the datest work in our redemption. He “abideth for ever with us,” to ‘convince of sin,” to turn us from our evil way, to “sanctify.” By zs aid, humbly sought in the prayer of faith, other guilt may be washed away, through the blood of the Lamb, and “repentance come, to sal- vation.” But while he is ‘‘ grieved,” the very author of “godly sorrow,” and of “renewal in the spirit of our mind,” is rejected ; and we must needs remain “unto every good work reprobate,” “ having no hope.” It is perhaps ¢hus that sin against the Holy Ghost is the most deadly. He is held up to our faith and rever- of Clement is; ‘God liveth, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit ;’ shewing them to be all alike adjured, as the principle of life. Sermon IV. 141 ence by another token, of no less significance; the same harbinger being selected of his approach, as had before announced the divine presence. He who is emphatically said to “walk upon the wings of the wind,” by “a great and strong wind,” made known to Elijah that he did “pass by.” And when the Holy Ghost would give sensible witness to the apostles of his descent, he controuled this same element to give the warning; “ A sound came from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind.”” Such a co-incidence did not happen by chance, nor is recorded without motive. And what lesson can it have been intended to convey, but of an equal majesty in those, whom the powers of nature are thus made to herald alike? But the most unequivocal marks of divine honour required or paid to the Holy Ghost, are, the appoint- ment by our Lord of baptism in his name, equally with that of the Father and himself; and the apos- tolic invocation from him, jointly with the Father and the Son, of those blessings which Scripture teaches us to seek from God only, and which none but he who is God can bestow. It has been stated in a former" discourse, that bap- tism being in familiar use among the Jews as a pre- liminary rite for the reception of a proselyte to their religion, previously to which a renunciation of his idolatry and a profession of his new faith in the ‘“Lord God of Israel” were required; it could be no matter of surprise to them, that Christ should select it as a mode of introduction to his Church; or that he should appoint, as an essential prelude, a confession of God, as he had finally and more fully revealed him. Ps. civ. 3. 1 Kings xix. l. Acts il. 2. hp, 62, and references. John x. 16. Eph. iv. 5, 6. 1 Thess. i. 9. 1 Cor. xii. 2. Rom. i. 25. Acts xiv. 15. 142 Sermon IV. In this light, of an indispensable creed, would they readily regard the formulary which he now ordained ; and in this light must we regard it. It was the aim of this, his latest commission to his apostles, to hold up the truth to Jews and Gentiles; to bring all into “one fold under one shepherd;” to the acknowledgment of “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God.” And the one God, in whose name all men, then and in all after ages, were to be baptized, in token of their faith, and asa pledge and channel of the blessings to follow to them; “The living and true God,” to whom the Gentiles were to turn from “dumb idols;” “The Crea- tor whom they were to serve,” with no mixture of any “ creature’—was “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost’,” with one equal, and indiscriminate honour. Had there been no other testimony to the divine nature of the Spirit, this had sufficed. For we cannot believe that in a formulary clearly pre- scribed with a view to set forth the true object of religious faith and worship, the supreme Lord of all power and wisdom would permit the association with himself of any created being, or of any mere quality 1 See Waterland, Vol. 1. Serm. vit. (on our text) ; Stillingfleet, Disc. on the Trin. ch. ix.; Pearson, pp. 43, 390; Mr Wm. Hey’s Tract, pp. 57—59. The Socinians, sensible of the witness which these words seem, at least, to bear to the doctrine of the Trinity, would exclude them from the text of Scripture, or even abolish baptism. See Wall, Inf. Bapt. Vol. 1. 257. Lightfoot, in a Serm. on Matt. xxviii. 19, says: “Lay Rom. i. 25. to this text; Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator. The casting off the Gentiles was, because they worshipped the creature. What was their recovery in the text? Was it to bring the worship of the creature among them again, as the Arian and Socinian gloss? No; but to bring the know- ledge and worship of the Creator among them, of the true God: and that was Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” Works, Vol. v1. 410. Sermon IV. 143 or attribute. There is no distinction of homage herein required to the objects of faith; there can, then, be in them no dissimilitude, or disparity of nature. That such was the view of the apostles, is ascer- tained not only from the course of instruction given by them to the disciples previously to baptism (which as it rests less on Scripture history than on subsequent testimony, I shall not yet insist upon), but by the See, how. habitual combination of these names in forms and **}—- on occasions implying divine honour, after this com- mandment of their master, confirmed to them by the subsequent illumination and guidance of the Holy Spirit himself. They are found thus associated forty- eight times in the New Testament, after the enume- ration of a learned writer? already referred to.. This can be no casualty, but the result of a settled con- viction in the minds of the authorized preachers of the truth, that these divine persons are of one and the same nature, and in equal relation to man. And a further evidence of this their persuasion, is afforded in the fact, that on some of these occasions prayer is made to each of them, for the particular? efficacy which he contributes in the work of man’s salvation. Of such a nature is the supplication for “grace, and 2 Cor. xitie love, and communion, from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” of the Apostle Paul, commissioned to bless effectually in the divine name. Similar also ae Numb, vi. 22—27. * Dr 8. Clarke, Script. Doctr. Pt. 1. § 55. * This variety of office in the Gospel economy, in the three persons of the blessed Trinity, is thought to be intimated in another passage ; “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit ; differences of ad- 2 Cor. xii. 5, ministrations, but the same Lord; diversities of operations, but the B same God.” See Dr S. Clarke's Serm. on this text, Vol. vr. Rev. i. 4, 5. iSeenoteG Is. Xi..2) comp. 1 Cor. xi. &. Rev. y. 6. 144 SerRMON IV. is the blessing of the ‘‘ beloved disciple ;” ‘‘ Grace be unto you, and peace from him which is, and which was, and which is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, which is the faithful witness.” It is evidently a merely formal variation of the preceding prayers, in language adapted to the immediate style of the writer. The place assigned, between the Father and the Son, shews -who! alone can be intended by the “seven Spirits ;” and the number denotes his manifold gifts, after the figurative manner of this prophetical book, and in special allusion to the enumeration of the prophet Isaiah. If this frequent and solemn introduction of these sacred persons together, with no mark of in- equality or distinction, with like reverence and in allu- sion to like exalted ends, be intended to impress upon us their communion in the Godhead, it is apt and accountable. On any other supposition, it conveys no clear instruction; every other explanation is foreed— the device of man, not the lesson of revelation. When much language and many signs and tokens _ are presented to us, in the inspired record from which we are to seek the truth which “makes wise unto salvation,” all tending to invest the Holy Ghost with the fulness of the divine majesty and nature; what must be the aim of its merciful author? He who forbids worship save to God, would he thus hold up one as clothed in the attributes of God, if he would not teach us to regard him as God? What motive, other than this, can we suppose, for approximating to such a description, on a point where error is so hateful to him—so ruinous to us? It should not be omitted to i tii SERMON IV. 145 notice, that while we have such various evidence in assertion of the deity of the Holy Ghost, there is not a word which can be properly construed to assign to him any other rank—to lower him to the con- dition of a creature. And between God and creature there can be no middle’ nature. Whatever being is not created, is uncreated: whatever is uncreated, is God. Seeing it must have been the aim of divine wisdom, in revealing to our knowledge the existence of the Holy Spirit and his concurrence in the great scheme of our salvation, to invite from us suitable reverence and affections, which must necessarily be commen- surate with our apprehension of his dignity; we can- not but conclude it to have been the purpose of all this language, to lead us to form some judgment as to his true nature: nor can we doubt what that judgment was intended to be, no nature but one being hinted at. We can have no fear to err from the divine scope, or to transgress the divine will, in regarding and worshipping the Holy Ghost, as God. I must here briefly allude to the argument de- rived from the ancient belief of the Church, already adduced in confirmation of the divine nature of the Son of God. Faith is assent to the testimony of God, and is therefore to be grounded on his revelation only. But that alone is his revelation, which is received after the meaning intended by him. And it must justly confirm our confidence in the accuracy of our interpretation, if we can allege in its support * Bull, D. F. N. Sect. rv. c. iv. n, 8; Waterland’s Def. of Qu. xu. 10 Rom. vi. 17. Luke i. 2, 4. 2 Tim. i. 13. Stillingf, 111. 660. 146 SERMON IV. the agreeing construction of the primitive Church; in which the authorised preachers, having received to- gether with their commission “ the form of doctrine” which they were to teach, either from the apostles themselves or from teachers instructed by them, could not mistake the truth, in any point of material import. Now that the first Christians entertained the views which we have presented, is witnessed in many ways’. There is the indirect testimony of hostile sneers or reproaches; and other, and direct evidence of various Christian writers, whose works, or fragments of them, have been preserved. Original creeds, ancient hymns and forms of doxology and early liturgies, the scoffs of unbelievers, the vindications of apologists, the ever prompt and authoritative censures against heretical dissenters from this catholic faith—all shew that the Church acknowledged the deity of the Spirit of God, as well as of the Son of God. ‘The charge of polytheism objected to it, is an indication of its belief; though misunderstood, or misrepresented by the authors of the reproach. And it was repelled, — not by denying the equal worship of the three divine persons, but by asserting their union in one divine nature and essence, so as to be but one God. Surely “that may justly be looked on as the sense of the Church, which is owned both by the friends and the enemies of it.” In every quarter of the world, to which the Gospel rapidly penetrated, and in every tongue, one common faith was founded upon this language of 1 For the creed of the early Church, and the assertions here, ge- nerally, see the authorities referred to, Serm. m1. pp- 112—114. SERMON IV. 147 Scripture, and such as we profess. No cause can be assigned for this wide and general agreement, but the derivation of the universal doctrine from one common source of apostolical authority. And that which was the original, has been also the permanent creed of the Church. The faith of the great body of Christians, on this point, has been ever the same. In spite of all the sophistries by which its enemies have, from time to time, sought to inva- lidate it, God has permitted to this construction of his Word a constant and universal reception. He whose object it was, in the ministry of his Son, to en- lighten mankind with the knowledge of the truth, and who had ever the understandings both of teachers and disciples under his control, has kept both stedfast in this doctrine. No account can be given for the im- mediate and uninterrupted prevalence of this creed, but that it represents the true purport of the divine instruction, and has been preserved under the divine providence. In a matter, the chief aim of his reve- lation, God would not, from its first publication, allow those who have “desired the sincere milk of the 1ret.ii» Word”—have coveted earnestly the -pure nourishment of its heavenly wisdom—wholly to err; and “send them (as unto those who have no “love of the 9 Thess ii. truth”) strong delusion, that they should believe a’ lie.” In the interpretation of his Word, the per- petual sense of his Church is the voice of God. Nor with a concurrence of such testimonies in support of this doctrine, can any thing short of a further reve- lation, justify a deviation from it. For there is no opening, in any existing means, for fresh light, to 10—2 See p. 135, note 3. 148 SERMON IV. give a new sense to Scripture; no room for a coun- tervailing prescription. Moreover, the heresy of the Sabellians bears a clear and persuasive witness, as to the original faith of the Church. They acknowledged, in common with those from whom they separated, the unanswerable evidence of Scripture to the perfect divinity of the Holy Ghost; insomuch that, not understanding how to reconcile this doctrine with the unity of God, they supposed the one God, the Father, to be intended by this language, as well as by that applied to the Son. They made these three characters to centre in one and the same divine agent. And they reproached the church with Tritheism'—with setting up three Gods —on account of the worship they paid to the Son and the Holy Ghost, as personally distinct from the Father. Hence while, by their creed, they affirm the divinity of the Holy Ghost; by the article of their dissent and the tenour of their reproach, they shew the catholic faith to have recognised, together with this doctrine, his separate and independent character. Thus it is, I trust, made appear, by manifold ) proof, to be the doctrine of the Word of God, that the Holy Spirit is not a mere impersonal attribute of the Father, or of the Son, but that he has a real subsistence, and is a true person’, as they are; 1 See Bingham’s Orig. Eccles. B. xu. ch. ii., who gives Tertullian’s explanation of the Church doctrine, in refutation of the charge. 2 “Tf the holy Scripture teacheth us plainly, and frequently doth inculeate upon us (that which the uniform course of nature and the peaceable goverment of the world doth also speak), that there is but one true God; if it as manifestly doth ascribe to the three persons of the blessed Trinity, the same august names, the same peculiar characters, SERMON LV. 149 that neither is he a creature, inferior and subordinate in his nature to them; but, together with them, Creator; partaking fully and equally in whatever belongs to the Godhead—its substance, attributes and honour; ‘‘that as the Father is God, and the Son is God, so also the Holy Ghost is God.” If, then, we combine with this conclusion that to which we had previously arrived respecting the nature of the Son of God, we find the whole in- struction of revelation respecting the Deity to be, first, that there is one only God; and secondly, that there are three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to whom the same divine character is fully as- cribed. That both these doctrines are taught in Scrip- ture, is as clear and certain as any other truth therein. Hence we may be satisfied, that though they may set bounds to each other, they cannot be in real contradiction. There must be some manner after which they can consist together, though our under- standing may not be able to discern it, with any clearness or satisfaction. Our proper duty is, to receive both doctrines, because both are found in the Word of God. Faith in the God of revelation is faith in a Trinity. When the Lord speaketh, it becometh “all flesh to be silent before him ;” to hold their vain reasonings, and submit. “Let God be true, though every man the same divine attributes (essential to the Deity), the same superlatively admirable operations of creation and providence ; if it also doth prescribe to them the same supreme honours, services, praises, and acknowledge- ments to be paid unto them all; this may be abundantly enough to satisfy our minds, to stop our mouths, to smother all doubt and dispute about this high and holy mystery.” Barrow, Serm. “A Def. of the BI. fy ets See note L. Ath. Creed. Zech, ii. 13, Rom. iii. 4. Macknight. 150 SERMON IV. be a liar:” let his Word be received, though it falsify all the conclusions of human wit. He reveals many things partially—affords only faint outlines of heaven- ly mysteries; but sufficient for our need, to which alone, in his present dealings with us, he has regard. He discloses enough to enlarge our thoughts of him, and exalt our feelings; but not wherewith to satisfy curiosity, or, by a full display, to dispense with the exercise of our faith. It is clearly consistent with the wisdom of the Supreme Being, to hold up lofty truths to his reasonable creatures, in a temporary condition of trial; though he withhold the manner or the motives of them, until a more suitable season. It may, obviously, further the ends proposed here for man, that God should teach the divinity of an atoning Saviour, and the operation of a like sacred Sanctifier; though he keep back the knowledge of | the mode of their subsistence in his own unity, and the considerations which recommended to him the interposition of such exalted instruments in the concerns of so humble a race. We can understand how such a revelation may be suited to our capacities and present wants. And if God exhibits to us many things, in our present brief and preparatory existence, thus under a veil; we may rest assured, that so far as they are shewn, they are shewn accurately; that what he makes known, certainly is, just as it is made known; must be true, in the way, and to the extent, that he imparts. He may, for wise ends, hold up a dim, but never a false light. He never speaks, but to instruct us in the truth. He knows the force and effect of human language, the vehicle SERMON IV. _ 151 of his communications; ‘and will not lead those who trust in his Word into error. Our wisdom, therefore, as well as our proper obligation, is, to receive, in simplicity of faith, whatever it has pleased him to lay before our minds; however it may vary from our experience, or surpass our fancy, which are conversant only with objects so dissimilar, in their whole nature, to those about which our difficulty arises. That the divine nature and essence belong equally to the Fa- ther, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and yet that they are together but one God, however difficult to our imaginations to conceive, will be believed by all who consult the Word of God, in undoubting reliance on the veracity of its author. I have said that there must be some manner after which these truths are reconciled: the unity and plurality cannot really be in opposition to each other. Hence they must relate to different elements of the divine nature. The only method which the human mind has been able to suggest, by which these doctrines may be preserved entire, is, by regarding the unity as appertaining to the substance of the Godhead; the plurality, to the mode of subsistence“ in it—to what constitutes person; that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are three, so far as to be separate in ‘their relations, their consciousness, will, and agency ; but ove, inasmuch as they exist in the community of the same undivided substance, of which k See Serm. I. note B, and refer- ences. all the properties belong to each of them; “are three pir. Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity'.” It is true, that man’s understanding, while able to apprehend the maéter thus expressed, is wholly Article. 1 See note Luke xxiv. 39. 152 SERMON IV. unable to conceive the manner of it: the mode in which three distinct persons participate in one sub- stance. But then we are wholly ignorant in the matter of substance: we cannot conceive our own; still less, that of the infinite and transcendent Deity. So complete is our, incapacity to attain to any idea of spiritual substance, that our Lord himself at- tempted not to convey to us a notion of what it 2s, but only of what it is not: “A spirit hath not flesh and bones.” Doubtless the substance of God differs from all others, spiritual as well as material; and, consequently, may admit of many modes and relations, of which none that we are acquainted with is sus- ceptible. Dissimilarity of subsistence, in substances wholly unlike, cannot be a just ground of doubt, or even of surprise. Accordingly this has been the mode of reconciling these doctrines, as far as they can be reconciled by our narrow faculties, ever! since the expounders of christian faith began, in treating of this mysterious theme, to ven- ture beyond the terms of Scripture ; although it was not till disputes compelled more of method and exactness, that the explanation was developed with dialectic pre- cision, or was introduced into the creeds of the Church. This has been the method, by which it has been sought to combine and explain more fully the Scrip- tural truths, that there is but one living and true God; and that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are that one God. And if the ancient for- * See Berriman ; Bull ; Potter, pp. 107—110. See also Augustine’s Confession, in Stillingfleet, Vol. 111. 450—451. SERMON LV. 153 mularies in which this explanation is embodied, are drawn up with a minuteness and subtlety of definition unknown to Scripture; this departure from simplicity has been called for by the perverseness and temerity of heresy. Men would speculate and dogmatize against the true tenour of Holy Writ. Hence it became neces- sary, in order to preserve the truth, to follow them, and expose their errors by extending” the canon of ?Seenotes orthodoxy. What is thus taught, if obscure to our conception, is intelligible in its aim; and if not directly expressed in Scripture, is a just inference from it. While the difficulty of our description of the divine Trinity, as contained in the Nicene and Athanasian creeds, is not denied; it may yet be truly asserted, that he who should reject these formularies, and take up with any other, seemingly more level to his under- standing, would soon find himself at variance with some clear doctrine of the divine Word: and the far- ther he should wander from these ancient and well- considered expositions of “the truth as it is in Jesus,” in reliance on other guides, the wider would be his disagreement with the inspired, and only safe authority, of his Gospel. It may by some be thought needless to insist on this difficult doctrine, of the Trinity. But it cannot be so. As we receive or reject it, we have different objects of faith and worship, and so a different religion. It cannot be unimportant whether or no we adore the Son of God, and the Spirit of God, if they be truly God, and are so revealed to us. “ Whom we know Rom. i.21, for God, we are bound to glorify as God,” lest “ pro- fessing ourselves to be wise we become foolish.” The 154 SERMON IV. great author of revelation would not speak to us from heaven what it is useless for us to hear, especially in what regards his own nature, and his relations towards us. By imparting the knowledge of these divine persons, he has sufficiently declared the obligation of believing in them, and reverencing them, as such. Moreover, by limiting the baptismal creed to the ac- knowledgment of their equal majesty with himself, he proclaimed this to be the foundation of Gospel faith; and by requiring this profession of it in bap- tism, he has made the denial of the Trinity to be the renunciation of the christian character. But the necessity of embracing this creed, in order to our effectual admission to the privileges of his covenant, is not left to mere inference. Christ added to the commission which he gave to the apostles to prosely- tize to the faith and hopes of the Gospel, this express Mark xvi. (declaration; ‘He that believeth and is baptized, shall i enete be saved: but he that believeth not shall be damned*.” This is no vague or trifling announcement. It conveys a distinct and solemn restriction of Gospel mercy to such as shall truly adopt in baptism the God of the Gospel; that God whom he, to this end, now held up as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And it is only by enlarging this creed by a fuller expression, in order to preserve its true meaning’ and put down errors as they sprung up, and not by * The necessity of a right faith is frequently inculcated in Scripture. The denunciations in the first and second Epistles of St John, are not against wnbelievers—those who reject the Gospel of Jesus—but against those who hold perverse opinions touching his nature, contrary to what is taught therein. (See note P. Serm. 1.) See also Gal. i. 8; 2 Tim. i. 13, SERMON IV. 155 adding to it mew articles, or increased severity of menace against unbelievers, that the Catholic Church exceeds his divine warning, when, in one of its ancient expositions of his doctrine, it announces; “ He that will be saved, must thus think of the Trinity’.” atu. creca. From the very time of the apostles, and of those who followed them, none were admitted to baptism, or, consequently, to the profession of Christianity, who had not been thus instructed, and thus made confession of their faith. It is no new thing with the Almighty, in his . dispensations with men, to impart “things hard to 2 et.iii... be understood ;” as an exercise of that just confidence which becometh creatures towards him who made them, and would eternally bless them; and which we learn from him everywhere in his Word, is pleasing in his sight, and also the only fruitful source Jom xv. 4. of moral obedience. This method of dealing with us is instanced in his prophetical communications, whether such as regarded individuals, or such as af- fected his whole people. In the promise to Abraham, his trust in God was both proved and strengthened, when, in his old age and that of his wife, it was pre- dicted that he should “become a great and mighty Gen. xviii nation;” contrary to all credibility, grounded on na- tural energies and human experience, so that ‘‘ Sarah Gen. xviii laughed at the prediction.” So the manner of the future Saviour’s birth, “A virgin shall conceive and Isai.vii.1s. bear a son,” was a stumbling block, and an inexpli- 2 See Bp. Cleaver’s Sermon on “the Origin and utility of Creeds,” and Waterland on the “ Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity.” (Works, vol. v.) Luke i. 34. Luke xviii. aie 2 Tim. ii. 19. John i. 18. 1 Corti: 2 Tim. iii, 15. 156 SERMON IV. cable contradiction, to the view of mere reason; until its literal completion, by the agency of the Holy Ghost, made known that “what is impossible with men, is possible with God.” In these, and like revelations, surpassing man’s apprehension as to the manner, though intelligible as to the matter, faith was tried. And so the Lord ow tries the faith of his people, by their mode of treating difficulties propounded on his authority; thus “knoweth them that are his.” He has seen good to lift in part the veil of the flesh, and to exhibit to our spiritual discernment some glimpses of his nature. And what he has seen it fitting for him, and useful for us, to display, it can- not become us to turn away from, or lightly regard. To remain ignorant where we have means of know- ledge, bespeaks indifference or infidelity. The con- viction and feeling of the pious and rational christian will be; “I am persuaded that God is ¢rue, and that what he says, is; I am persuaded that God is wise and good, and that what he deigns to teach, it must be profitable for me to know, and prudent to lay to heart.” These doctrines, be it remembered, form a pro- minent portion of those truths, which “the only- begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father” (in the intimate fellowship of his nature and counsels) ‘‘hath declared,” and ‘‘ the Spirit, who alone knoweth the things of God,” hath inspired, with the express aim of “making us wise unto salvation ”—of preparing us for life eternal in their presence. And though it becometh man, when searching the knowledge of the Most High, to be content with what God hath thought fit to disclose, and not to aim at being wise SERMON IV. 157 above that which is written; yet it must be a proper and salutary occupation for a being who has so noble a destiny in prospect, to raise his thoughts to the divine persons with whom he may come to converse “face to face;” and looking to the offices which they 1 Cor. xii severally vouchsafe towards him here, to nourish within himself a deep sense of the obligations! which are thus derived to him. Nothing has been revealed for mere speculation, but everything for some practical end; and the loftiest truths, for the noblest issues. I am persuaded that a chief cause why Christianity has so little hold upon the hearts of men and fails of its richest fruits, is, that they do not properly me- ditate upon these deep mysteries of the Gospel, and thereby invigorate and exalt in themselves both faith and love. “The secret things belong unto the Lord Deut. xxix. our God;’ into such as he has reserved, it is not our business to pry. But “those things which are revealed belong unto us and unto our children for ever,” that we may study them and form our hearts thereto. The great purpose of God’s dispensations has ever been, to recover man to holiness. And with only a little reflection, we cannot fail to discover how the contemplation of these sublime mysteries tends to weaken our attachment to the things of the world, and to advance the growth of moral excellence, and religious affections. Pride and_ self-sufficiency are humbled, under a sense of our immeasurable distance 1 For the practical uses of this doctrine, see Waterland, vol. y, ch. ii.; Pearson, pp. 179—183, and 390—3892; . Barrow, end of Serm. “A Defence of the Blessed Trinity ;” Stillingfleet, vol. m1. 358—360, 1 John iii. 2. Eph. iv. 30. 158 SERMON IV. from the Deity, the simplest properties of whose nature (and doubtless such alone are hinted to us) so much surpass the utmost grasp of our intelligence. And while the high thoughts of the proud are cast down, the lowly and dejected are raised to a more consolatory estimate of their own worth, unto whom a divine Trinity stoops to have respect, and whose welfare it deigns to regard. The low pleasures, the petty interests, the mean rivalries of the world, come to be viewed with a just contempt, under a glimpse of that light by which man discovers the elevated satisfactions of which his soul may become capable, through the indwelling of God. The degradation brought upon us by every sin, and the unfitness which it entails for our real good, are more fully felt, in proportion as the wonders of the Godhead, with which we are in relation and may hold communion even here, and to the open perception of which we may raise our hope in a future life, are made familiar to our minds. The folly as well as guilt of “ griev- ing the Holy Spirit”—of preferring to his favour the grovelling delights and paltry ends by which the evil Spirit lures men to his service and their ruin— must strike remorsefully one occupied with the soul- stirring thought, of a heavenly Being dwelling in him, and seeking to purify his heart, that he may be meet for celestial glory. When the mind is deeply imbued with the knowledge, that as God the Son died to atone for us, God the Holy Ghost abideth with us for that other work of sanctification, without which the former will be unavailing; all vain imaginations of the harmlessness of sin, and of SERMON IV. 159 indiscriminate, universal salvation, die away; and it — is confessed, that the required renewal of the soul to righteousness cannot be a trifling change, since God descendeth from heaven to aid in it. Hence he who discovers in himself no sign that he is a “new creature ;” no sentiments, manners, tempers, in- clinations, affections, which he can ascribe to a divine influence, or deem consistent with the divine in- habitation in him; must come to regard his position as full of danger, and hasten to fall down and pray urgently, that he may receive “the promise of the cat ii. u. Spirit,” and “ sanctification through him.” While 2 Thess. ii to those who, measuring the vast distance of man’s corrupt heart from the pure nature of God, might, though panting and labouring after, yet despair of attaining unto his likeness; confidence will spring up from the reflection, that “greater is he that is ini sonniv. 4. them, than he that is in the world;” and they will “abound in hope, through the power of the Holy rom.xw.1s. Ghost.” When so much has been done for us, and by such exalted authors; when God created, God re- deemed, and God doth inhabit that he may sanctify us; can the soul, for which the Almighty Father, Son, and Spirit, thus condescend to concern them- selves, be a light thing?—the holiness to which they would retrieve us, a trifling excellence ?—the wretch- edness of hell, from which they would rescue us, an easy burden ?—the blessedness of heaven, to which they would exalt us, a pearl of small account? Let us, prizing redemption by the dignity of its instru- ments, labour diligently, in all that is left dependent 160 SERMON IV. on us, to attain unto it. Let us be brought to “ work phil ii. Out our own salvation with fear and trembling,” by the very consideration which the apostle urges, that “it is God which worketh in us.” And imploring con- tinually from the Father, pardon through his Son, and through the Holy Spirit, those “rivers of living John vi. 88 water’’—those perennial graces—by which we may une “go from strength to strength,” and finally “in Zion appear before God;” let our hearts, in admiring and grateful adoration, break forth in the voice of praise and thanksgiving, in the ancient doxology which holds up the faith we now preach, as the belief of all ages; “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end!” Amen! ll NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, * weet : ie = = <8 a £ — ~ it aa AG on Rc: ete, ree At Nay ald “a eae Gab 1 pani Bae hike wae * ON Si iF Re Ao , 5 j ¢ ' ; te Mien 4 ol) hoe eS i ite) CMe Ao Ny at ia by e y M , i ei ‘ ; B a cied FS ea Ph ahr * ytd wr Data | \ mavta hs liad ee ed BY sha fan ’ Wp ha 4 r Wi) , ; i } fat \ a F f ! : \ a, ‘hint Tad PAD ‘ { ree dior 1 r LAD | ke t te 3 ' ' Psvieie ep \ hh aired ut ay eh et nh ROR ign a Bee avin iy." 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