signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow":" this passage, therefore, proves both the pre-existence and divinity of Christ. The same Apostle, in his other Epistle, attributes these prophecies to the influence of the Holy Ghost: "Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” b And thus the power of prophesying is ascribed indifferently to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which denotes the incomprehensible union of the three persons of the Godhead, asserted in the former article.

The beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews will furnish another strong argument in favour of the divinity of Christ. We shall there find that Christ is not only preferred to the angels, but is described as a Being of a totally different order. "Who being the brightness of God's glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? or, Sit on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? And again when he bringeth in the first

a 1 Pet. i. 10, 11.

b 2 Pet. i. 21.

saith, And let all the And of the angels he

begotten into the world, he angels of God worship him. saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire; but unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever. And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands." It may be observed that St. Paul, in thus contrasting the nature of Christ with the nature of angels, calls Christ the Son of God, which, as we have already seen, was making him equal with God, according to the interpretation of the Jews, to whom this Epistle was addressed. He also attributes to him the creation and preservation of the world, which is a clear assertion of his divinity; and indeed he represents God the Father addressing Christ as the creator of the universe, and, moreover, as expressly calling him God. This opposition is carried on through the whole second chapter, one passage of which plainly declares Christ's existence previous to his incarnation, and that he was not of the order of angels: "He took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham." Lest, however, this assertion of Christ's being of the seed of Abraham should lead the Hebrews to think him a mere man, the Apostle immediately proceeds to point out, in the third chapter, the marked difference between him and Moses the legislator of the Jews, who was always considered by them as the greatest of their prophets; he says, that Moses was faithful as a servant,

Christ as a Son; and that Christ was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as "he who has builded the house hath more honour than the house;" that is, the difference between Christ and Moses is that, which is between him who creates, and the thing created; and then having before ascribed the creation of the world to Christ, he adds, "he that built all things is God."

a

"Without controversy," says St. Paul, "great is the mystery of Godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, p:eached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." All these six propositions, of which God is the subject, are true of Christ, and of no other person: he was "manifest in the flesh;' Christ appeared upon earth in a human form, with the flesh and all other properties of a man, sin only excepted:"Justified in the Spirit;" the visible descent of the Holy Ghost upon Christ at the time of his baptism; the extraordinary powers which he then received and afterwards exercised; and the performance of his promise by sending the Holy Ghost to his apostles, and enabling them to work miracles, proved him to be the true Messiah, and justified those high pretensions which he asserted during his ministry:-"Seen of angels ;" angels worshipped Christ at his first appearance upon earth, announced his birth to the shepherds, ministered to him in the desert, and strengthened him in his last agony in the garden :-"Preached unto

a 1 Tim. iii. 16.

the Gentiles;" the doctrines taught by Christ to the Jews only, were by his command afterwards preached by his apostles to the Gentiles also, who were invited to embrace the Gospel, thus declared to be the universal religion of all mankind :-"Believed on in the world;" that many believed Jesus to be the true Messiah is a fact admitted by all, and indeed the rapid propagation of the Gospel is always urged by Christians as one of the many evidences by which its divine origin is established:"Received up into glory;" Christ having completed his ministry, and continued upon earth forty days after his resurrection, was received up into glory by visibly ascending into heaven in the presence of his apostles. Since then these six propositions are applicable to Christ, and to Christ alone, and since St. Paul affirms them to be true of God, it follows that Christ is God. "All these propositions," says Bishop Pearson, "cannot be understood of any other, which either is, or is called, God; for though we grant the divine perfections and attributes to be the same with the divine essence, yet are they never in the Scriptures called God, nor can any of them, with the least show of probability, be pretended as the subject of these propositions, or afford any tolerable interpretation. When they tell us that God, that is, the Will of God, was manifested in the flesh, that is, was revealed by frail and mortal men, and received up into glory, that is, was received gloriously on earth, they teach us a language which the Scriptures know not, and the

Holy Ghost never used; and as no attribute, so no person but the Son can be here understood under the name of God; not the Holy Ghost, for he is distinguished from him, as being justified in the Spirit; not the Father, who was not manifested in the flesh, nor received up into glory. It remaineth, therefore, that whereas the Son is the only person to whom all these clearly and undoubtedly belong, which are here jointly attributed unto God, as sure as the name of God is universally expressed in the copies of the original language, so thus absolutely and subjectively taken must it be understood of Christ."

Our Saviour did not censure Thomas, when, upon being convinced of his resurrection, he exclaimed, "My Lord and my God";" and therefore by allowing himself to be called God, he admitted that the name was justly applied to him; and it may be observed, that the answer of our Saviour seems to annex a blessing to this belief of his divinity: "Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen,

a It cannot be strictly said that the word ecoç is found in all the MSS. Dr. Whitby says, that there are only two which want it; and even Wetstein, whose Socinian principles made him very anxious to controvert this reading, acknowledges that the authority of MSS. is greatly in favour of the word Oog after mentioning a very few MSS. which have åg or ¿, instead of Osos, he says, Reliqui codices nostri (quibus J. Berriman addit ultra quinquaginta alios) magno consensu habent Oɛoç. With this

preponderance of testimony, admitted by a professed enemy so well versed in MSS. I cannot consider this as a doubtful text: and whoever will take the trouble of reading Wetstein's long and laboured note upon this verse, will, I think, be convinced both of its purity, as it now stands in our Greek Testaments, and of its force in proving the divinity of our Saviour. Vide Mill and Whitby in loc. and Pearson, Art. 2. b John, xx. 28.