of the opening verses of St. John's Gospel; for even if the words, "there are three that bear record in heaven, &c." were to be given up as spurious, they convey no information but what is abundantly found in numerous other passages of the New Testament. Fraud might interpolate a solitary text; but if the doctrine which it enforces appear every where dispersed, and be placed in various points of view, such proofs are of themselves sufficiently conclusive.

When our Lord enjoins his Apostles to go and baptize all nations, in the name (not the names) of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, it is obvious to remark, that as baptism is the seal of a covenant between God and man, God alone should be named by man in that sacrament as the party with whom he engages. Here, however, three names occur, and consequently these three Persons unite in one Godhead.

In another view, baptism is the act of receiving of men from a state of sin into a state of divine favour; a recovery and blessing, of which they can be assured only in the name of the great and one God. But, as here, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are brought forward, God is united in the three: for the Scripture prohibiting the multiplication of Gods, they cannot be three Gods but a triune Deity. We may apply the same reasoning to

the blessing communicated in the Gospel: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with you all:" for who can confer grace and divine love, and spiritual fellowship, saving God only? It cannot here, or in other places, be pretended that the Son and the Holy Ghost are influences emanating from the Father, or simply his attributes or operations. Christ speaks of a glory which he had WITH the Father before the world began; an expression denoting him to be something more than a mere mode in which the Father operates. The one is mediator, the other intercessor, according to evangelical representation; and these terms imply distinctness of person; for a mediator and an intercessor are not of one but of two; the one bent on a particular purpose, the other seeking to divert him from that purpose. Besides, when our Saviour left the world and ascended to the Father, he told the Apostles that he should send the Holy Ghost to supply his place. A positive intimation of distinctness of persons. He calls the Spirit another Comforter, one who shall not speak of HIMSELF; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak. These words would be inexplicable if the Spirit were not a person, but merely an attribute or influence.

A variety of passages evince, that by the phrase "Son of God" the Scriptures declare our Saviour to be equal with the paternal Deity,

"The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore, also the holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." Such was the address of the angel to the mother of our blessed Lord. This quotation at once establishes the divinity of the Holy Ghost, from whose overshadowing, our Lord is called: the Son of GOD, and evinces him to be the Son of God in a sense wholly different from that in which all men are said vaguely to be his children, or, as in Acts, xvii. 28, his offspring. To pretend to be the Messiah, according to the Jewish ideas of that personage, amounted not to the crime of blasphemy any more than pretending to prophetic inspiration, nor was death inflicted as the punishment of such imposition. When, therefore, the Jews sought to kill Jesus: for arrogating the title of the Son of God, they must have conceived him to have pretended to be more than even their Messiah, however highly they might pitch their estimate of that great character. That they considered him as assuming divinity, and consequently (since such was the received import of the phrase) that He did fully assume it, is evident from the assigned reason of their hatred; namely, " because he said that God was his father, making himself equal with God." This is further proved by his reply to the high priest's demand;

"I adjure thee by the living God, art thou Christ the Son of God?" Such was the Jewish mode of administering an oath; and Jesus, thus solemnly charged, made answer, "Thou hast said." This response is an oriental manner of speaking in the affirmative; and so in fact the high priest understood him, for he immediately rent his clothes and said, "He hath spoken blasphemy." But could the words of our Lord be truly pronounced blasphemy, if they meant any thing less than an assumption of divinity, and of entire equality with the Father?

To admit, indeed, the union of the divine and human natures in Christ, seems the only method of harmonizing various passages in Scripture, some of which represent him as man and others as God. Thus, our Lord is sometimes exhibited as praying to the Father; as not knowing when the day of judgment should take place; as not wisting that he addressed the Jewish high priest; as clothed with human infirmities; as subject to human wants; as abjuring the title of good, and referring it to God alone, Matt. xix. 17; as unable to dispose of honours in the kingdom of Heaven; xx. 28; xvi. 13: and, finally, as asking, with reference to himself, "Whom do men say that I, the son of MAN, am?" At other times he is held forth as the Son of God; as the Word

46

1

which was in the beginning with God, and which WAS GOD; as one with the Father, John, x. 30; as superior to all the angels, Hebrews, i. ; as the Son to whom the one true God hath said, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever," Hebrews, i.; and as Christ who is over all, God, blessed for ever, Rom. ix. 5*; as the Christ in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the. Godhead bodily, Coloss. ii. 9; he is Jesus Christ, the true God, and eternal life, 1 John, v. 20; he is God in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, 2 Cor. v. 19; as God made manifest in the flesh; as replying to the ques-, tion, "Lord, show us the Father," "Have I been so long time with thee, and hast thou not known me, Philip?" Now, these opposite representations can only be reconciled by adopting the belief in the hypostatic union. An exclusive confinement of attention to one class of the passages, is the fatal stumbling-block of the Socinian heretics. But if, when Christ is spoken of as man, we refer the expression to his human nature, and when as God, to his divine character; on this plan every thing becomes clear and harmonious. Here we have obtained an hypothesis which embraces all the facts, and the only one which CAN embrace them.

This union is in truth so intimate, that attri

*See Isaiah, xliv; and Revelations, xxii.