Page images
PDF
EPUB

name of Jefus every knee should bow, of things in hea ven and things in earth; and that every tongue should confefs that Jefus Chrift is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Phil. ii. 8-11. Who for the joy that was fet before him, endured the cross, defpifing the shame, and is now fitten down at the right hand of God. Heb. xii. 2.

Our Lord fays, that he and his Father are one, John x. 30, but he sufficiently explains himself, when he prays that all his difciples may be one with him, and his Father, even as they are one, John xvii. 11. and he gives them the fame glory which God had given to him, ver. 22. Besides, at the very time that our Lord fays, that he and his Father are one, and in the very fentence preceding it, ver. 29, he fays, that his Father is greater than all. But how could the Father be greater than all, if there was any other, who was fo much one with him, as to be, in all refpects, equal to him?

The mere term God is, indeed, fometimes ufed in a lower and inferior fenfe in the scriptures, denoting dominion only; as when the Divine Being himself says, that he will make Mofes a god to Pharaoh, Exod. vii.. I. but, furely, there can be no danger of our mistaking the fenfe of fuch phrafes as thefe; or if it were poffible, our Lord himself has fufficiently guarded against any misconstruction of them when applied to himself, by the explanation he has given of them; informning us, that, if, in the language of fcripture, they are called gods to whom the word of God came, John x. 35.

B 3

(though,

(though, in fact, they were no other than mere men) he could not be guilty of blafphemy in calling himself only the fon of God. Now if Chrift had been confcious to himself that he was the true and very God, and that it was of the utmoft confequence to mankind that they fhould regard him in that light, this was certainly a proper time for him to have declared himself, and not to have put his hearers off with fuch an apology as this.

But even this power and dominion, to which Chrift is advanced by God his Father, who gave all power into his hands, and who made him head over all things to his church, Eph. i. 22. this mediatorial kingdom of Chrift (as it is fometimes, and with fufficient propriety, termed) is not to be perpetual. For the apoftle Paul, fpeaking, no doubt, under immediate infpiration, expressly fays, that when the end shall come,. that God fhall have fubdued all things to his Son (in which he obferves, that he must be excepted who did fubdue all things unto him) he must deliver up the kingdom to God, even the FATHER, and be himself fubject to him who had put all things under him, that God may be all in all. 1 Cor. xv. 24, &c. Nay, he himself fays exprefsly, that he had not the difpofal of the highest offices of his kingdom, Matt. xx. 23. To fit on my right hand and on my. left is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father.

So clear, my brethren, fo full, and fo exprefs, is the uniform teftimony of the fcriptures to the great

doctrine

[ocr errors]

doctrine of the proper unity of God, and of the subordination of Chrift, and all other beings to him, that the prevalence of fo impious a doctrine, as the contrary must be, can be afcribed to nothing but to that mystery of iniquity, which, though it began to work in the times of the apoftles themselves, was not then rifen to fo enormous a height as to attack the fupremacy of the one living and true God, and give his pecular glory to another. This, my brethren, among other shocking corruptions of genuine christianity, grew up with the fyftem of popery; and to fhew that nothing is impoffible to the superstition and credulity of men, when they are become vain in their imaginations, after exalting a man into a god, a creature into a creator, they made a piece of bread into one alfo, and then bowed down to, and worfhipped, the work of their own hands.

But though it seemed fit to the unfearchable wifdom of God, that all the errors and abufes of popery fhould not be reformed at once; and though this great error was left untouched by the firft reformers, bleffed be God the bible is as open to us as it was to them; and by the exertion of the fame judgment and fpirit, we may free christianity from the corruptions which they left adhering to it; and then, among other excellencies of our religion, our Lord will be one and his name one. Zech. xiv. 9.

If you ask who, then, is Jefus Chrift, if he be not God; I anfwer, in the words of Peter, addreffed to

the

the Jews, after his refurrection and ascension, that Jefus of Nazareth was a man approved of God by mira-, cles and wonders and figns, which God did by him. Acts ii. 22. If you afk what is meant by man, in this place; I answer, that man, if the word be used with any kind of propriety, muft mean the fame kind of being with yourselves. I fay, moreover, with the author of the epifle to the Hebrews, that it became him by whom are all things, and for whom are all things, to make this great captain of our falvation in all refpects,. like unto us his brethren, that he might be made perfect through fufferings, Heb. ii. 10. 17. and that he might have a feeling of all our infirmities, iv. 13. For this reafon it was that our Saviour and deliverer was not made of the nature of an angel, or like any fuper-angelic being, but was of the feed of Abraham. ii. 16. that is (exclufive of the divinity of the Father, which refided in him, and acted by him) a mere man, as other jews, and as we ourselves also are.

Christ being made by the immediate hand of God, and not born in the ufual course of generation, is no reafon for his not being confidered as a man. For then Adam muft not have been a man. But in the ideas of Paul, both the first and fecond Adam (as Chrift, on this account, is fometimes called) were equally men: By man came death, by man came also the refurrection of the dead, I Cor. xv. 21. And, certainly, in the refurrection of a man, that is, of a perfon in all refpects like ourselves, we have a more

We can,

lively hope of our own refurrection; that of Christ being both a proof and a pattern of ours. therefore, more firmly believe, that because he lives, we who are the fame that he was, and who fhall undergo the fame change by death that he did, fhall live allo. John xiv. 19.

'Till this great corruption of christianity be removed, it will be in vain to preach the gospel to jews, or mahometans, or, indeed, to any people who retain the use of the reafon and understanding thatGod has given them. For how is it poffible that. three perfons, Father, Son, and holy ghost, should be separately, each of them, poffeffed of all divine perfections, fo as to be true, very, and eternal God, and yet that there fhould be but one God; a truth which is fo clearly and fully revealed, that it is not poffible for men to refuse their affent to it; or else it would, no doubt, have been long ago expunged from our creed, as utterly irreconcileable with the more favourite doctrine of a triny, a term which is not ta be found in the fcriptures. Things above our reafon. may, for any thing that we know to the contrary, be true; but things exprefsly contrary to our reason, as that three fhould be one, and one three, can never appear to us to be fo.

With the jews, the doctrine of the divine unity is, and indeed justly, confidered as the most fundamental principle of all religion. Hear, O Ifrael, the Lord our God is one Lord Deut. vi. 4. Mark xii. 29. To preach

« PreviousContinue »