Father are One-that being the proper Son of God, he is, in union with his Father, the ONE true God; which he inftantly proved by a Divine Work for the Jews, enraged at what appeared to them confirmed blafphemy, fought again to take him; but, (notwithstanding their impetuous fury) he efcaped out of their hands, John x. 39.

And when at last he suffered himself to be ap prehended by them, for the establishment of our faith, and to leave the enemies of his Divinity, and the inconfiftent admirers of his humanity, without excufe,he fealed with his blood the glorious truth, for which he had been ftoned again and again; namely, that he was the very Son of God, to whom the Pfalmift fays, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: Therefore God, thy God (and thy Father) hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness, or hath appointed thee Chrift for ever, Pfalm xlv. 6. For when the High-Prieft, ftanding up in the midft, afked him, Art thou THE CHRIST? (that very Chrift, of whom the Prophet Micah faith, Out of Bethlehem fhall come forth He that fhall be Ruler in Ifrael, whofe goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting? Micah v. 2.) Art thou THE SON OF THE BLESSED? (that very Son, of whom the Prophet Ifaiah fays, Unto us the Son is given, and the government jhall be upon his fhoulders, and his name fhall be called Wonderful, Counfellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace?) To this double question, which the Jews certainly understood in the high fenfe of the well-known prophecies by which I illuftrate them, as appears from Mat. ii. 4, &c.to this awful queftion, Jefus answered, I AM; and ye fhall fee the Son of man, (whom ye now reject because his Form of God is veiled under the form of a fervant) fitting on the right hand of Power, and coming (in his Form of God) in the clouds of heaven. Then the High-Prieft rent his cloaths, and faith, Ye have heard the blafphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death, Mark xiv. 61, &c. So true it is,

that

that the open or fecret enemies of our Lord's Deity, who, when we fpeak of his pre-existence, and of the adoration due to him, as the everlasting Son of the Bleffed and everlafting Father, cry out, Abfurdity! Blafphemy, Idolatry! and, in their indignation rend the Church, as Caiaphas rent his garments, have drunk into the very fpirit of the Priests and the Pharifees, who led the van of the Jewish mob, when it cried, Away with him! He is only Jofeph and Mary's fon, and of courfe a proud blafphemer; for he fays that God is his real and proper) Father, making himfelf equal with God, John v. 18.*

The View which the Aboftles give of CHRIST, after their most perfect illumination by the SPIRIT of

TRUTH.

1. F we wifh to fee the true character of our Lord more fully atcertained, we cannot do better than attentively to confider the view which the Evangelifts and Apoftles have given us of it. The Lord Jefus had informed them (John xvi. 12.) that he had many things to fay unto them, but (adds he) ye cannot bear them now: Howbeit when the Spirit of truth is come, he fhall guide you into all the truth: He fhall glorify me; for he fhall receive of mine, and fhall fhew it unto you: All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore faid I, he fhall receive of mine, and fhall fhew it unto you. Now, it is well known, they wrote all their Epiftles and Gofpels after the accomplishment of this gracious promife-that is, after the Spirit of truth had guided them into

all

Thus far Mr. Fletcher had proceeded when he was called

to his reward.

all the truth, after he had glorified Chrift, by receiving of the things which are his, and fhewing them unto them. We may, therefore, notwithstanding Dr. Prieftley's unbelief in this matter, be fully affured of their inspiration, as writers, as well as fpeakers; and may abfolutely depend upon the certain truth of what they have delivered, especially refpecting fo important a point as the real character and dignity of their Master and Saviour, the true knowledge of whom it was the chief office of this Spirit of truth to reveal, and their chief business to teach.

2. Now in looking over their writings, we not only meet with many expreffions and fentences dropped, as it were, by the bye, when they had principally fome other end in view; which expreffions and fentences, however, give us great Tight in this matter; but we find feveral paffages, written profeffedly, and of fet purpofe, to acquaint mankind with the character of Chrift. And thefe paffages we muft efpecially attend to, if we defire to form a true judgment concerning him. Moft of them, indeed, have already been tranfiently mentioned by Mr. Fletcher in the third Chapter; in which the doctrine of the peculiar and proper Sonship of Chrift, has been ftated and explained in the language of the infpired writers: but it may be well to review and examine two or three of them more particularly, that we may be more fully informed of his true dignity and glory.

3. The firft paffage of this kind that claims our attention, is that which occurs in the beginning of St. John's Gofpel. In the beginning, (fays that greatly favoured and peculiarly enlightened Apoftic) was the WORD, and the WORD was with God, and the WORD was Goo. The fame was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men; and the light fhineth in darknefs, and the darkness comprehended it not, ver. 8. John was

F

not

not the light, but was fent to bear witness of that lightwhich was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not: He came to his own, and his own received him not: But as many as received him, to them gave he the privilege to become the Sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

4. "Thefe words (fays Bp. Burnet) feem very plain, and the place where they are put by St. John, in the front of his Gofpel, as it were an Infeription upon it, or an Introduction to it,

makes it very evident that he, who of all the writers of the New Teftament has the greatest plainnefs and fimplicity of ftyle, would not put words here, fuch as were not to be understood in a plain and literal fignification-without any key to lead us to any other fense of them. This had been to lay a ftone of ftumbling in the very threshold; particularly to the Jews, who were apt to cavil at Chriftianity, and were particularly jealous of every thing that favoured of Idolatry, or of a plurality of Gods. And upon this occafion I defire one thing to be obferved, with relation to all thofe fubtile expofitions, which those who oppofe this doctrine, put upon many of thofe places by which we prove it: That they reprefent the Apoftles as magnifying Christ, in words which, at first found, feem to import his being the true God; and yet they hold, that in all thefe, they had another fenfe, and a referve of fome other interpretation, of which their words were capable. But can this be thought fair dealing? Does it look like honeft men to write thus--not to fay men infpired in what they preached and wrote? and not rather like impoftors, to ufe fo many fublime and lofty exprefiions concerning Chrift, as God, if all thefe must be taken down to fo low a fenfe, as to

fignify

fignify only that he was miraculously formed, and endued with an extraordinary power of miracles, and an authority to deliver a new religion to the world: and that he was, in confideration of the exemplary death (which he underwent fo patiently) raifed up from the grave, and had divine honours conferred upon him? In fuch an hypothefis as this, the world falling in fo naturally with the exceffive magnifying, and even the deifying of wonderful men, it had been neceffary to have prevented any fuch mistakes, and to have guarded against the belief of them, rather than to have used a continued strain of expreffions that seem to carry men violently into them, and that can hardly, nay, very hardly, be foftened by all the fkill of Critics, to bear any other sense.

5- "It is to be obferved further, that when St. John wrote his Gospel, there were three forts of men particularly to be confidered. The Jews, who could bear nothing that favoured of Idolatry: fo no stumbling-block was to be laid in their way, to give them deeper prejudices against Christianity. Next to thefe, were the Gentiles who, having worshipped a variety of Gods, were not to be indulged in any thing that might feem to favour their Polytheifm: in fact, we find particular caution used in the New Teftament against the worshipping of Angels or Saints: how can it, therefore, be imagined, that words would have been used, that in the plain fignification, which arofe out of the first hearing of them, imported that a man was God, if this had not been trictly true? The Apoftles ought, and must have ufed a particular care to have avoided all fuch expreffions, if they had not been literally true. The third fort of men in St. John's time, were thofe, of whom intimation is frequently given, through all the Epiftles, who were then endea vouring to corrupt the purity of the Christian doctrine, and to accommodate it fo both to the Jew and to the Gentile, as to avoid the Cross

Fa

and