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he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him, he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hands, He shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied. I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death; and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

"The Spirit of Jehovah Elohim is upon me, because Jehovah hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. Thus saith the Lord God, I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall be their shepherd. I Jehovah will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them. I Jehovah have spoken it. He shall give them up until the time that she that travaileth hath brought forth-and he shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of his God."

11. Our Lord and his apostles, in a great variety of passages in the New Testament, illustrate and confirm these declarations of Moses and the prophets, concerning the real and proper humanity of the Messiah. A few of these I shall quote.

"The child grew and waxed strong in Spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man. Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. Ye seek to kill me, a man that have told you the truth which I have heard of God. Labour for the meat which endureth unto eternal life, which the Son of man will give you; for him hath God the Father sealed. I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which sent me. The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me. And the Father himself that hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me. I seek not mine own glory. I have not spoken of myself, but the Father which sent me gave me a commandment what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting. Whatsoever I speak, therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.

"To sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I say, I go to my Father, for my Father is greater than I. My Father who gave them me, is greater than all, and none is able to pluck them out of my Father's hands. Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father which is in heaven: but whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but my Father only. All power is given unto me in heaven

and on earth. I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. As my Father hath sent me, so send I you.

"God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power, who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed with the devil; for God was with him: whom they slew and hanged upon a tree, whom God raised up the third day, and showed him openly, and who is ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you; him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and with wicked hands have crucified and slain, whom God hath raised up, having loosed the bands of death. There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all. God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained, of which he hath given assurance to all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. He was verily fore-ordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifested in these last times for you, who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God."

12. Now, as in these, and such like passages, which occur in a great abundance throughout the Scriptures, the name Jehovah, God, or Father, includes the whole Godhead, (not the Father as distinguished from his Word and Spirit only as in 1 John v, 7, and Matt. xxviii, 19, but the Word and Spirit also,) so, in them, the purely human nature of Christ is chiefly spoken of, and held up to our view as a complete and proper person, as truly dependent upon the Deity for knowledge and power, holiness and happiness, as the human nature of any man. And, doubtless, this is a just representation of things: for this human nature of our Lord, this body and soul of the holy Jesus, was properly a creature, derived from, and dependent upon God, as all other creatures are. Whatever knowledge he had, therefore, as man-whatever power, purity, or comfort, it was communicated. And, it is probable these communications were made, especially while he was yet a child, in a gradual manner, viz. as his faculties opened and he was susceptible of them, which accounts for his "increasing in wisdom," as well as in stature, and "in favour with God and man," and "waxing strong in Spirit." Nay, and it is manifest, that throughout his life his manhood could be no farther conscious to or acquainted with the ideas of the divinity than they were imparted, it being absolutely impossible that any creature should know the ideas of the Deity by immediate intuition as a man is conscious of the thoughts of his own heart.

With the same propriety, therefore, wherewith Christ could speak of himself things that referred to his body or animal nature only, and say, "I am weary with my journey, I am hungry, I thirst," he might also affirm things which belonged only to his soul or rational nature, as, " My soul is exceeding sorrowful, I rejoice in Spirit, I increase in wisdom, I know not the day of judgment, I can do nothing of myself." For these things were as precisely and perfectly true as the other, and it was the manhood alone, without any reference to the Godhead, that spoke them, VOL. III.

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even as it was the Godhead alone, without any reference to the manhood, (though by its lips,) which said, "Before Abraham was, I am. I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last."

13. Such proofs as these, of his true and proper humanity, we might expect to meet with, and meeting with them accordingly, why should we be staggered or surprised? The Godhead, as we have seen, was not converted into flesh, but only dwelt in it, and manifested himself to mankind by it as far as he saw fit; and the manhood, while on earth at least, was not so taken up into God, as to be quite absorbed and lost therein. Nay, this is not the case, now he is in heaven, but the "Lamb in the midst of the throne" is still of a nature distinct from pure and proper Deity, and knows not the secrets of the Divine counsels any farther than they are communicated to him. Hence he is represented as receiving the book containing these counsels from the right hand of Him that sitteth on the throne, and hence we meet with that expression, "The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him."

14. And yet, to signify that these two natures, though preserved complete and distinct, were nevertheless most closely united in the person of the Redeemer, we frequently, in the Scriptures, meet with what is termed a communication of properties: viz. the one nature speaks things, or has things spoken of it, which are only proper to the other nature. As for instance, Acts xx, 28, we read, "The Church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood;" and 1 John iii, 16, "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us ;" which is speaking of the Divine nature things proper only of the human. And, John iii, 13, we read, "No man hath ascended up into heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven" —which is affirming of the human nature, the Son of man, things that could only be true of the Divine. For as God cannot die, and has no blood to shed; so the Son of man, the human nature, had not then been in heaven, and much more, could not be there while on earth. Nay, and our Lord, at one and the same time, and with one breath, often said things proper to both his natures, as in the passage above quoted: "I am the root and offspring of David," the root as God, and the offspring as man. Again: "I lay down my life for the sheep. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." I lay down my life as man: I have power to take it again as God.

15. Bishop Burnet speaks well on this subject. "What a person is that results from a close conjunction of two natures, we can only judge by considering man, in whom there is a material and a spiritual nature joined together. They are two natures as different as any we can apprehend among all created beings; yet these make but one man. The matter of which the body is composed, does not subsist by itself-is not under all those laws of motion to which it would be subject, if it were mere inanimated matter. But by the indwelling and actuation of the soul, it has another spring within it, and another course of operations. According to this, then, to subsist by another, is when a being is acting according to its natural properties, but yet in a constant dependence upon another being; so our bodies subsist by the subsistence of our souls.

16. "This may help us to apprehend, how as the body is still a body, and operates as a body, though it subsist by the indwelling and actuation

of the soul; so in the person of Jesus Christ, the human nature was entire, and still acted according to its own character. Yet there was such a union and inhabitation of the eternal Word in it, that there did arise out of that a communication of names and characters, as we find in the Scriptures. A man is called tall, fair, and healthy, from the state of his body; and learned, and wise, and good, from the qualities of his mind. So Christ is called holy, harmless, and undefiled; is said to have died, risen, and ascended up into heaven, with relation to his human nature. He is also said to be in the form of God,' to have created all things,' to be the brightness of the Father's glory,' and 'the express image of his person,' with relation to his Divine nature. The ideas that we have of what is material, and what is spiritual, lead us to distinguish in a man those descriptions that belong to his body, from those that belong to his mind; so the different apprehensions that we have of what is created and uncreated, must be our thread to guide us into the resolution of those various expressions which occur in the Scriptures concerning Christ.

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17. "The design of the definition that was made by the Church, concerning Christ's having one person, was chiefly to distinguish the nature of the indwelling of the Godhead in him from all prophetical inspirations. The Mosaic degree of prophecy was, in many respects, superior to that of the subsequent prophets; yet the difference is stated between Christ and Moses, in terms that import things of quite another nature : the one being mentioned as the servant, the other as the Son that built the house. It is not said that God appeared to Christ, or that he spoke to him; but God was ever with him, and in him; and while the Word was made flesh,' yet still his glory was as the glory of the only begotten Son of God.' The glory that Isaiah saw, was his glory; and, on the other hand, God is said to have purchased the Church with his own blood. If Nestorius, in opposing this, meant only (as some think it appears by many citations out of him) that the blessed virgin was not to be called simply the mother of God,' but the mother of him that was God;' and if that of making two persons in Christ was only fastened on him as a consequence, we are not at all concerned in the matter of fact, whether Nestorius was misunderstood and hardly used or not; but the doctrine here asserted is plain in the Scriptures; that though the human nature of Christ acted still according to its proper character, and had a peculiar will, yet there was such a constant presence, indwelling, and actuation on it from the eternal Word, as did constitute both human and Divine nature one person. As these are thus so entirely united, so they are never to be separated. Christ is now exalted to the highest degrees of glory and honour; and the characters of blessing, honour, and glory,' are represented in St. John's vision, as offered unto the Lamb for ever and ever."" (Burnet on the Articles.)

CHAPTER XIII.

Some objections answered.

1. WHAT has been advanced in the last chapter upon the humanity of Christ, will, I presume, if thoroughly considered, be found to contain a sufficient answer to most of the arguments brought to disprove his

divinity. For they seem, in general, to be built on a supposition, that those who believe him to be God, either deny him to be man, or imagine his manhood to have been absorbed by, or converted into his Godhead, so as no longer to retain its proper nature, and possess an understanding and will distinct from those of the Deity. Nay, some speak as if they thought we believed the man, strictly speaking, to be God-the creature to be the Creator. But none of these things is, in the least, supposed or intended. We only believe and wish to establish such a union be. tween this humanity of our Saviour and the Divine essence, through the indwelling of the eternal Word of the Father, as will justify the conduct of the apostles, in applying to Christ so many passages of the Old Tes tament, manifestly intended of the true God, will account for his bearing Divine names and titles, and having Divine perfections and works ascribed to him, and will lay a proper foundation for that dependence upon him as a Mediator and Redeemer, without which there is no salvation; and for that honour and worship, which, according to the Scriptures, are his due.

2. But it will be objected by those who admit the pre-existence of Christ, and yet deny his Godhead, that "what has been said concerning his humanity does not come up to the point: that he uses a variety of expressions concerning himself, even before his incarnation, which seem incompatible with true and proper Deity; such as-'I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me: I proceeded forth, and came from God, neither came I of myself, but he sent me: I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world, and go to the Father."

3. In answer to this, I observe, first, we find expressions, similar to these, used even of the Holy Ghost, whom the Unitarians themselves allow, though not to be a proper person, yet to be truly Divine. Of him Jesus uses the following language. "The Comforter, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things," John xiv, 26. Again: "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me," John xv, 26. And again: "I tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you: but if I depart, I will send him unto you, and when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. When the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that he shall speak; and he will show you things to come. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and show it unto you: all things that the Father hath are mine; therefore said I, that he shall receive of mine, and show it unto you,' John xvi, 7-13, 15. Now if these, and such like expressions, when used of the Holy Spirit, do not imply that he is a created being, separate from, and of a nature inferior to the Father, and even to the Son; neither do similar expressions, when used of the Word, necessarily imply that he is a created being separate from, and of a nature inferior to the Father. They may, indeed, imply that the Father is the principle both of the Word and Spirit, the fountain (so to speak) from whence they flow-their source and original. And this is undoubtedly implied in the

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