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so weighty a matter. It was, no doubt, with an earnest desire to know who it is that gave you being, and all the comforts of that being, that you might love him, and by your services attach his love to you. This was a wise end, and well becoming the faculties God hath bestowed on you. But if you have at length attained to it, your wisdom can now no otherwise be justified, but by reducing this attainment to practice; that you may feel in your own heart the conscious pleasures arising from a life spent in the love and fear of God; and that all who know you may see your light;' and being edified by it, may glorify your Father which is in heaven.'

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May God of his infinite goodness, so enlighten your mind, and so work on your heart, as to produce this happy effect, through Christ Jesus our Saviour. Amen.

DISCOURSE V.

OBJECTIONS TO THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST
ANSWERED.

ST. JOHN V. 22, 23.

The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. HAVING, in the former Discourse, proved, that there is but one God, I intend, with his assistance, to prove in this, and the following, that Jesus Christ is that only one God. In this, I shall endeavour to remove the most material objections to his divinity, wherewith its opposers arm themselves from holy Scripture, that, in the next, the proofs thereof drawn from thence, being freed from these obstructions, may come with their full force.

The Son, or Christ, as my text assures us, is to judge the whole moral world at the last day. Now, none but the all-knowing Being, who searcheth the heart,' is able to judge the actions, the words, the very thoughts, of all intel

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ligent creatures. None but he, whose judgments are true and righteous altogether, whose righteousness is like the great mountains, and whose judgments are a great deep,' is qualified to perform this work of justice, on which depend so necessarily the virtue and goodness both of angels and men. None but the Almighty hath power sufficient to decide the fate, and fix the eternal rewards or punishments, of all God's accountable creatures. None, therefore, but the Divine Being, is fit to execute this high commission. 'Doubtless there is a God that judgeth the earth;' for no other is able to do it.

Let it not offend the ears of one who believes in the unity of God, that he should receive a commission; since we acknowledge, that he, to whom this trust is committed, receives the authority, whereby he acts as our judge, from the appointment of the Father, as he does also his essence from the eternal generation; the Father being the fountain of the Godhead, and therefore of the divine authority; and since we likewise acknowledge, that the judge is man as well as God. Whatsoever reference this commission may have to his previous nature, it is declaratively founded on that which he assumed in the womb of the blessed virgin; for, at ver. 17, he expressly assigns this as the reason of that commission, asserting, that the Father hath given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man.' By thus affixing the idea of his delegation to his human nature, he seems to have pointed out this passage as a key to all other expressions of the like import. He is sent, he is commissioned, he is commanded, to do, not his own will, but the will of his Father, because he is a Son; peculiarly, indeed, because he is the Son of man.

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As he is commissioned to judge, so, in the same manner, was he commissioned to preach, and work miracles. He, being man, had a distinct will of his own; it was, however, not that will, but the will of his Father, which he was appointed to execute in all he did: neither was it his human wisdom, by which he taught the world; nor his human power by which he wrought his works; but the divine wisdom and power communicated to him by his Father along with his essence. Therefore, he saith, 'I (as a man) can of myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because

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I seek not my own will, but the will of my Father which hath sent me;' John v. 30. 'The Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doth ;' ver. 20. I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment what I should say, and what I should speak;' chap. xii. 49. The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doth the works;' chap. xiv. 10. In all this, it is evident he speaks as the Son of man; for the Father, he tells us, 'gave him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of man.' As such, he proves his mission by miracles: as such, he gives us a law, and a covenant: and, as such, he will judge us at the last day by that law and coveAll these privileges and powers accrue to him as the Son of man; because by his blood, as such, he bought us; and acquired a right to rule over us, and judge us; to the execution, however, of which high office, the divine wisdom and power are absolutely necessary.

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But you ought to observe for what end and purpose the Father hath thus committed all judgment to the Son. You see, it is, that all men may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father;' and you heard, in the former Discourse, the express declaration of God by Isaiah, that he would not give his glory, or honour to another,' that is, to any but himself. As sure, therefore, as the word of God is true, so surely is Christ that God, and no other; for the honour here appointed to be given is, both in degree and kind, that very honour which is due to the Father, which is due to God alone, and which God will neither give himself, nor suffer to be given by us, to any but God. And good reason there is why we should be ordered to do this, since all the angels of God are commanded to worship Christ; Heb. i. 6; and since, in the presence of his Father, the whole host of heaven, together with every other creature,' ascribe this glory to him, as to the Father, saying, with a loud voice, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever ;' Rev. v. 11-13.

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Now, though this power and glory are given to Christ the Son of man, as a purchase made by his precious blood; yet, since the power and glory are divine, they could not have have been given unto him, were he not truly and properly a

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divine person; because they cannot be given to another;' and because the Scripture every where restrains them to God alone.

Accordingly, our blessed Saviour speaks of himself as possessed of that glory, not only before he became man, but before the creation of the world. Now, O Father, glorify me, with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was;' John xvii. 5. To this glory Christ, as God, was entitled from all eternity; but did not acquire a right to it as man, till he had paid the purchase by his blood.

If, in holy Scripture, there are other expressions that intimate some inferiority in the Son, it is not to be wondered at; since it is plain this must be accounted for, as it very easily and rationally may, by the human nature of the Son, whereof I have given a sample sufficient to guide us in all such cases; and by the economy or distribution of offices, whereby the three Divine Persons are distinguished, in the word of God, as concurring respectively to the scheme of our redemption. There are several passages of Scripture, indeed, that seem to intimate the obedience and subjection of the Son to the Father, as prior to the assumption of the human nature. But these may also be naturally interpreted with an eye to that assumption; or, allowing they may not, they are proper to the relation between father and son; and may be so understood, without the least necessity for supposing an inequality of nature between the Divine Father and Son, any more than between a human father and his son, where we know there is none. In the Divine nature, which is one, and simple, there can be no degrees. Now the equality, or rather identity, of Christ with the Father, and his subjection to him, are both revealed to us in holy Scripture; and therefore it lies on those professors of Christianity who deny, as much as oǹ us who maintain, the true and proper divinity of Christ, to reconcile this seeming opposition. The former attempt it by sinking the sense of such passages as speak for his divinity, to the standard of such as intimate a lower character of him. We, on the contrary, do not endeavour to raise the sense of those Scriptures which convey the lowest notions of him, in order to bring them up to the level of those that speak highest; but interpret them, either

of that honour which every son owes to his father, though of the same nature, and consequently of equal dignity as to nature; or of the economy of offices, one superior to another, already mentioned; or of the Son's humanity. Whether of the two do most justice to the sense of Scripture, may possibly appear in this and some following Discourses.

If Christ, in one place, John xiv. 28, says, 'My Father is greater than I,' he must be understood of his relation to the Father as his Son, born of a woman; because he says in the same verse, 'I go unto my Father, I go away, and come again unto you,' speaking of his bodily ascension, and of his bodily return at the end of the world. Accordingly, after his resurrection, being now about to ascend into hea ven in the fulness of his human nature, he saith, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God;' John xx. 17. Now, this migration from and to his church on earth can be understood only of his human nature, wherein he was ready to ascend or depart; for, in respect to his superior nature, he was never to depart from that church, which was then united to him as his spiritual body, and to which he said, speaking of futurity in the present tense, 'Lo, I am with you alway unto the end of the world;' Matt. xxviii. 20. When, therefore, Christ saith, My Father is greater than I,' he speaks of himself, no doubt, as a man. As such, he calls the Father his God in the passage now cited; and when he hung on the cross, where it is as certain the human nature of Christ spoke, as that it suffered. As he applies the twenty-second Psalm to himself by these words, taken from thence, and repeated at the approach of death, we see the royal prophet must have furnished that exclamation for him in the character of a man; and therefore ought to be understood as speaking to him in the same character, when he saith, Psal. xlv. 7, quoted by St. Paul, Heb. i. 9, God, thy God, hath anointed thee.' But this did not hinder either the psalmist or the apostle, from addressing him in the verse immediately preceding, under an infinitely higher character; for they say to him, 'Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.' And here it is worth observing, that the word God, applied to Christ in the sixth verse, and to the Father immediately after in the seventh, is the very same, namely, Elohim. And did the psalmist, who

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