11. thesis. For how much soever the Arians might exalt him in ART. words, yet if they believed him to be a creature made in time, so that once he was not; all that they said of him can amount to no more, but that he was a creature of a spiritual nature; and this is plainly the notion which the scripture gives us of angels. Artemon, Samosatenus, Photinus, and the Socinians in our days, consider our Saviour as a great prophet and lawgiver, and into this they resolve his dignity. In opposition to both these, that Epistle begins with expressions that are the more severe, because they are negative, which are to be understood more strictly than positive words. Christ is not only preferred to angels, but is set in opposition to them, as one of another order of beings. Made so much Heb. i. 4, better than angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the 5, angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? When he bringeth in the first begotten into 6, the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him. Of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and 7, his ministers a flame of fire. But unto the Son he saith, Thy 8, throne, O God, is for ever and ever. And, Thou, Lord, in 10, the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the works of thy hands. Thou art the same, and 12, thy years shall not fail. But to which of the angels said he 13, at any time, Sit on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent 14. forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?' extensive sense. For, according to the usual manner of speaking, all are termed Socinians whose sentiments bear a certain affinity to the system of Socinus; and they are more especially ranked in that class, who either boldly deny, or artfully explain away, the doctrines that assert the Divine nature of Christ, and a Trinity of persons in the Godhead. But, in a strict and proper sense, they only are deemed the members of this sect who embrace wholly, or with a few exceptions, the form of theological doctrine which Faustus Socinus either drew up himself, or received from his uncle, and delivered to the Unitarian brethren, or Socinians, in Poland and Transylvania. 'The sum of their theology is as follows:- "God, who is infinitely more perfect than man, though of a similar nature in some respects, exerted an act of that power by which he governs all things; in consequence of which an extraordinary person was born of the Virgin Mary. That person was Jesus Christ, whom God first translated to heaven by that portion of his divine power which is called the Holy Ghost; and having instructed him fully there in the knowledge of his will, counsels, and designs, sent him again into this sublunary world, to promulgate to mankind a new rule of life, more excellent than that under which they had formerly lived, to propagate divine truth by his ministry, and to confirm it by his death. ""Those who obey the voice of this Divine Teacher (and this obedience is in the power of every one whose will and inclination leads that way), shall one day be clothed with new bodies, and inhabit eternally those blessed regions, where God himself immediately resides. Such, on the contrary, as are disobedient and rebelhous shall undergo most terrible and exquisite torments, which shall be succeeded by annihilation, or the total extinction of their being." The whole system of Socinianism, when stripped of the embellishments and commentaries with which it has been loaded and disguised by its doctors, is really reducible to the few propositions now mentioned.' Mosheim-[ED.] 16. 1. II. 6 ART. This opposition is likewise carried on through the whole second chapter; one passage in it being most express to shew both that his nature had a subsistence before his incarnation, and that it was not of an angelical order of beings, Chap. ii. since he took not on him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham.' Thus, in a great variety of expressions, the conceit of Christ's being of an angelical nature is very fully condemned. From that the writer goes next to the notion of his being to be honoured, because he was an eminent prophet; on which he enters with a very solemn preface, inviting Chap. iii. them to consider the apostle and high-priest of our profession: then he compares Moses to him, as to the point of being faithful to him who had appointed him.' But how eminent soever Moses was above all other prophets, and how harshly soever it must have sounded to the Jews to have stated the difference in terms so distant as that of a servant and a son, of one who built the house, and of the house itself; yet we see the apostle does not only prefer Christ to Moses, but puts him in another order and rank; which could not be done according to the Socinian hypothesis. From all which this conclusion naturally follows,-that if Christ is to be worshipped, and that this honour belongs to him neither as an angel, nor as a prophet, that then it is due to him because he is truly God. But The second branch of this article is, that he took man's nature upon him in the womb of the blessed Virgin, and of her substance. This will not need any long or laboured proof, since the texts of scripture are so express that nothing but wild extravagance can withstand them. Christ was in all things like unto us, except his miraculous conception by the Virgin he was the son of Abraham and of David. among the frantic humours that appeared at the Reformation, some, in opposition to the superstition of the church of Rome, studied to derogate as much from the blessed Virgin on the one hand, as she had been over-exalted on the other: so they said, that Christ had only gone through her. But this impiety sunk so soon, that it is needless to say any thing more to refute it. The third branch of the Article is, that these two natures were joined in one Person, never to be divided. What a person is that results from a close conjunction of two natures, we can only judge of 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 has another course of operations. According to this, then, to II. subsist by another is when a being is acting according to its ART. natural properties, but yet in a constant dependance upon another being; so our bodies subsist by the subsistence of our souls. This may help us to apprehend how that as the body is still a body, and operates as a body, though it subsists 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 an 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, 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 Phil. ii. 6. things, to be the brightness of the Father's glory, and the Heb. i. 3. 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 that occur in the scriptures concerning Christ. Col. i. 16. 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 Mosaical degree of prophecy was in many respects superior to that of all the subsequent prophets: yet the difference is stated between Christ and Moses, in terms that import things quite of another nature; the one being mentioned as a 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 John i. 14. made flesh,' yet still his glory was as the glory of the only- Isai. vi. 1, begotten Son of God.' The glory that Isaiah saw, was called 3, 9, 10, & his glory; and on the other hand, God is said to have pur- 41. chased his church with his own blood. If Nestorius, in Acts xx.28. * Actsxx.28. * Nestorius, a man of some learning and much eloquence, but of a very arrogant and overbearing disposition, was a native of Germany, and a Presbyter of Antioch. On the death of Sisinius, bishop of Constantinople, he was sent for by the emperor Theodosius, and appointed to that see. He so persecuted the Arians, that they destroyed by fire their own churches, rather than suffer them to fall into his hands. But although so zealous against heresy and heretics, yet he does not appear to have been much influenced by the truth which he professed to uphold. He brought with him from Antioch a certain Presbyter, named Anastasius, who declaimed much against the use of the term oroxos as applied to the Virgin Mary, and contended that she ought to be called the Mother of Christ, and not the Mother of God. Nestorius warmly espoused the cause of Anastasius; and was accused of maintaining that in Christ the divine was superadded to the human John xii. II. ART. 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 in 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 visions, as offered to Rev. v. 13. the Lamb for ever and ever.' It is true, St. Paul speaks as if Christ's mediatory office and kingdom were to cease after the day of judgment, and that then he was to deliver up to the Father. For though, when the full number of the elect 24-28. shall be gathered, the full end of his death will be attained; and when these saints shall be glorified with him and by him, his office as Mediator will naturally come to an end; yet his own personal glory shall never cease: and if every saint shall inherit an everlasting kingdom, much more shall he who has merited all that to them, and has conferred it on them, be for ever possessed of his glory. 1 Cor. xv. all The fourth branch of the Article is concerning the truth of Christ's crucifixion, his death and burial. The matter of fact concerning the death of Christ is denied by no Christian; the Jews do all acknowledge it; the first enemies to Christianity did all believe this, and reproached his followers with it. This was that which all Christians gloried in and avowed; so that no question was made of his death, except by a small number called Docete, who were not esteemed Christians, till Mahomet denied it in his Alcoran, who pretends that he was withdrawn, and that a Jew was crucified in his stead. But this corruption of the history of the gospel came too late afterwards, to have any shadow of credit due to it; nor was So this there any sort of proof offered to support it. nature. He was cited before the third general Council held at Ephesus, a.d. 431, doctrine concerning the death of Christ is to be received as an unquestionable truth. There is no part of the gospel writ with so copious a particularity, as the history of his sufferings and death; as there was indeed no part of the gospel so important as this is. ART. The fifth branch of the Article is, that he was a true sacrifice to reconcile the Father to us, and that not only for original, but for actual sins. The notion of an expiatory sacrifice, which was then, when the New Testament was writ, well understood all the world over, both by Jew and Gentile, was this, that the sin of one person was transferred on a man or beast, who was upon that devoted and offered up to God, and suffered in the room of the offending person; and by this oblation, the punishment of the sin being laid on the sacrifice, an expiation was made for sin, and the sinner was believed to be reconciled to God.* This, as appears through the whole book of Leviticus, was the design and effect of the sin and tresspass offerings among the Jews, and more particularly of the goat that was offered up for the sins of the whole people on the day of Levit. xvi atonement. This was a piece of religion well known both to Jew and Gentile, that had a great many phrases belonging to it, such as the sacrifices being offered for, or instead of, sin, and in the name, or on the account, of the sinner; its bearing of sin, and becoming sin, or the sin-offering; its being the reconciliation, the atonement, and the redemption, of the sinner, by which the sin was no more imputed, but forgiven, and for * Of the several sacrifices under the law, that one, which seems most exactly to illustrate the sacrifice of Christ, and which is expressly compared with it by the writer to the Hebrews, is that which was offered for the whole assembly on the solemn anniversary of expiation. The circumstances of this ceremony, whereby atonement was to be made for the sins of the whole Jewish people, seem so strikingly significant, that they deserve a particular detail. On the day appointed for this general expiation, the priest is commanded to offer a bullock and a goat, as sin-offerings, the one for himself, and the other for the people: and, having sprinkled the blood of these in due form before the mercy-seat, to lead forth a second goat, denominated the scape-goat: and, after laying both his hands upon the head of the scape-goat, and confessing over him all the iniquities of the people, to put them upon the head of the goat, and to send the animal thus bearing the sins of the people away into the wilderness in this manner expressing, by an action which cannot be misunderstood, that the atonement, which it is directly affirmed was to be effected by the sacrifice of the sin-offering, consisted in removing from the people their iniquities by a symbolical translation to the animal. For it is to be remarked, that the ceremony of the scape-goat is not a distinct one; it is the continuation of the process, and is evidently the concluding part, and symbolical consummation, of the sin-offering. So that the transfer of the iniquities of the people upon the head of the scape-goat, and the bearing them away to the wilderness, manifestly imply, that the atonement effected by the sacrifice of the sin-offering consisted in the transfer and consequent removal of those iniquities. What, then, are we taught to infer from this ceremony?-That, as the atonement under the law, or expiation of the legal transgressions, was represented as a translation of those transgressions, in the act of sacrifice in which the animal was slain, and the people thereby cleansed from their legal impurities, and released from the penalties which had been incurred; so, the great atonement for the sins of mankind was to be effected by the sacrifice of Christ, undergoing, for the restoration of men to the favour of God, that death, which had been denounced against sin; and which he suffered in like manner as if the sins of men had been actually transferred to him, as those of the congregation had been symbolically transferred to the sin-offering of the people.' Magee.-ED.] F |