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." "Without controversy," says St. Paul, "great is the mystery of Godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory (m)." All these six propositions, of which God is the subject, are true of Christ, and of no other person: he "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: was "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 (m) 1 Tim. c. 3. v. 16. 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 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 (n) expressed in the (n) It cannot be strictly said, that the word so 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 05: after mentioning a very few MSS. which have ós or ó, instead of esos, he says, Reliqui codices nostri (quibus J. Berriman addit ultra quinquaginta alios) magno consensu habent eros. With this preponderance of testimony, admitted by a professed 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 (o);" 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, and yet have believed." It cannot, I think, be said that this declaration of our Lord referred only to the belief in his resurrection, when we consider the words of Thomas, and the circumstances which passed after Christ's resurrection. The incredulity of Thomas could not proceed from doubting the possibility of restoration to life, because he had seen 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. (0) John, c. 20. v. 28. seen the dead raised by the power of Jesus; but he had been expressly told, that "as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given the Son to have life in himself (p);" and he might have considered this and similar declarations to be so inconsistent with the death of Christ, as to doubt whether he and the other disciples had not been deceived in their confidence in him. Certain it is that they were not prepared for the event of his crucifixion, although our Lord had repeatedly foretold it. When he was taken before Pilate, " they all forsook him and fled;" and after his death we hear them expressing their firm belief that "Jesus of Nazareth was a mighty prophet in deed and word before God and all the people;" but adding, with evident marks of the disappointment occasioned by his death, "But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel (q)." Thomas therefore, who seems to have determined (r), after having received so severe a disappointment, as he thought, of the expectations he had formed concerning the Son of God, not to yield his faith again but to the most positive evidence, is no sooner convinced of the actual existence of his master Jesus Christ, than all his former confidence in his assertions (p) John, c. 5. v. 26. (q) Luke, c. 24. v. 19 and 21. |