siah, and therefore not allowing his supernatural priority of existence to Abraham, chose to consider his words in a signification merely human. 'Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? But what does our Saviour reply to this low and gross comment upon his intimation? Does he retract it by warping his language to their poor perverseness, and so waiving his pretensions to the assumed dignity? No! to have so acted, would have been derogatory to his dignity, and injurious to their interests. He actually repeats his claim to the character. He actually enforces his pretensions to a supernatural priority of existence. He even heightens both. He mounts up far beyond Abraham. He ascends beyond all the orders of creation. And he places himself with God, at the head of the universe. He thus arrogates to himself all that high pitch of dignity, which the Jews expected their Messiah to assume. This he does too in the most energetic manner, that his simplicity of language, so natural to inherent greatness, would possibly admit. He also introduces what he says with much solemnity in the form, and with more in the repetition. Verily, verily, I say unto you,' he cries, BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM.' He says not of himself, as he says of Abraham, Before he was, I was.' This, indeed, would have been sufficient to affirm his existence previous to Abraham. But it would not have been sufficient to declare what he now meant to assert, his full claim to the majesty of the Messiah. He therefore drops all forms of language that could be accommodated to the mere creatures of God. He arrests one, that was appropriate to the Godhead itself. 'Before Abraham was,' or, still more properly, Before Abraham was MADE,' he says, 'I AM.' He thus gives himself the signature of uncreated and continual existence, in direct opposition to contingent and created. He says of himself,

That an eternal Now for ever lasts

with him. He attaches to himself that very stamp of eternity, which God appropriates to his Godhead in the Old Testament; and from which an apostle afterward describes Jesus Christ' expressly, to be the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." Nor did the Jews pretend to misunderstand him now. They could not. They heard him directly and decisively vindicating the noblest rights of their Messiah, and the highest honours of their God to himself. They considered him as a mere pretender to those. They therefore looked upon him as a blasphemous arrogator of these. Then took they up stones to cast at him' as a blasphemer; as what indeed he was in his pretensions to be God, if he had not been in reality their Messiah and their God in one. But he instantly proved himself to their very senses to be both; by exerting the energetic powers of his Godhead upon them. For he hid himself; and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them; and so passed by."

The last passage which I shall quote, may properly, both from its dignity and explicitness, close the whole. John xvii. 5, "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." Whatever this glory was, it was possessed by Christ before the world was; or, as he afterward expresses it," before the foundation of the world." That question is, therefore, not to be confounded with the main point which determines the preexistence of our Lord; for if he was with the Father, and had a glory with him before the world was, and of which "he emptied himself" when he became man, then he had an existence, not only before his incarnation, but before the very "foundation of the world." The Socinian gloss is," the glory which I had with thee in thy immutable decree, before the world was; or which thou didst decree before the world was, to give me." But η είχον παρα σοι, "which I had with thee," cannot bear any such sense. The occasion was too peculiar to admit of any mystical, forced, or parabolic modes of speech. It was in the hearing of his disciples, just before he went out into the garden, that these words were spoken; and, as it has been well observed, it is remarkable that he introduces the mention of this glory, when it was not necessary to complete the sense of any proposition. And yet, as if on purpose to prevent the apostles, who heard his prayer, from supposing that he was asking that which he had not possessed in any former period, he adds, "with the glory which I had

tem.

Whatever, therefore, the true nature of our Lord Jesus Christ may be, we have at least discovered from the plainest possible testimonies,-testimonies which no criticism, and no unlicensed and paraphrastic comments have been able to shake or to obscure, that he had an existence previous to his incarnation, and previous to the very" foundation of the world." If then we find that the same titles and works which are ascribed to him in the New Testament, and ascribed to a Divine Person in the Old, who is yet represented as distinct from God the Father, and especially to one who was to come into the world to fulfil the very offices which our Lord has actually fulfilled, we shall have obtained another step in this inquiry, and shall have exhibited lofty proof, not only of the pre-existence of Christ, but also of his Divinity. This will be the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER XI.

TRINITY.-Jesus Christ the Jehovah of the Old
Testament.

IN reading the Scriptures of the Old Testament, it is impossible not to mark, with serious attention, the frequent visible appearances of God to the patriarchs and prophets; and, what is still more singular, his visible residence in a cloud of glory, both among the Jews in the wilderness and in their sacred tabernacle and temple.

The fact of such appearances cannot be disputed; they are allowed by all, and in order to point out the bearing of this fact upon the point at issue, the Divinity of Christ, it is necessary,

1. To show that the person who made these appearances was truly a Divine person.

The proofs of this are, that he bears the names of Jehovah, God, and other Divine appellations; and that he dwelt among the Israelites as the object of their supreme worship; the worship of a people, the first precept of whose law was, "thou shalt have no other Gods before me." The proofs are copious, but quotations shall not be needlessly multiplied.

When the angel of the Lord found Hagar in the wilderness, "she called the name of JEHOVAH that spake to her, Thou, God, seest me."-JEHOVAH appeared unto Abraham in the plains of Mamre. Abraham lifted up his eyes, and three men, three persons in human form, "stood by him." One of the three is called Jehovah. And JEHOVAH said, "Shall I hide from Abraham the thing that I do?" Two of the three depart, but he to whom this high appellation is given remains, "but Abraham stood yet before JEHOVAH." This Jehovah is called by Abraham in the conversation which followed, "the Judge of all the earth;" and the account of the solemn interview is thus closed by the historian," the Lord (Jehovah) went his way as soon as he had left off communing with Abraham." Appearances of the same personage occur to Isaac and to Jacob, under the name of "the God of Abraham, and of Isaac." After one of these manifestations, Jacob says, "I have seen God face to face;" and at another, "Surely the Lord (JEHOVAH) is in this place." The same Jehovah was made visible to Moses, and gave him his commission,

(5) Socinian Scheme.

The answer to this is, that though ambassadors speak in the name of their masters, they do not apply the names and titles of their masters to themselves, (8) that the unquestionably created Angels, mentioned in Scripture as appearing to men, declare that they were sent by God, and never personate him,-that the prophets uniformly declare their commission to be from God, that God himself declares, "Jehovah is my name and my glory will I not give to another,"-and yet that the appearing Angel calls himself, as we have seen, by this incommunicable name in almost innumerable instances, and that though the object of the Mosaic dispensation was to preserve men from idolatry, yet this Angel claims and receives the exclusive worship both of the Patriarchs to whom he occasionally appeared, and the Jews among whom he visibly resided for ages. It is therefore a proposition too monstrous to be for a moment sustained, that a created being of any kind should thus allure men into idolatry, by acting the Deity, assuming his name and attributing to himself God's peculiar and incommunicable perfections and honour. (9) The Arian hypothesis on this subject is well auswered by even a Socinian writer. "The whole transaction on Mount Sinai shows that Jehovah was present, and acted, and not another for him. It is the God that had delivered them out of Egypt, with whom they were to enter into covenant as their God, and who thereupon accepted them as his people, who was the author of their religion and laws, and who himself delivered to them those ten commands, the most sacred part. There is nothing to lead us to imagine that the person, who was their God, did not speak in his own name; not the least intimation that here was another representing him."(1)

The author of " the Essay on Spirit" attempts to meet this, by alleging that "the Hebrews were far from being explicit and accurate in their style, and that it was customary for prophets and angels to speak in the name and character of God." The reply of Dr. Randolph is able and decisive, and as this is a point of great importance, its introduction will not appear unnecessary.

"Some, to evade these strong proofs of our Lord's Divinity, have asserted that this was only a created angel appearing in the name or person of the Father; it being customary in Scripture for one person to sustain the character, and act and speak in the name of another. But these assertions want proof. I find no instances of one person acting and speaking in the name of another, without first declaring in whose name he acts and speaks. The instances usually alleged are nothing to the purpose. If we sometimes find an angel in the book of Revelations speaking in the name of God, yet from the context it will be easy to show that this angel was the great angel, the angel of the covenant. But if there should be some instances in the poetical or prophetical parts of Scripture of an abrupt change of persons, where the person speaking is not particularly specified, this will by no means come up to the case before us. Here is a person sustaining the name and character of the most high God, from one end of the Bible to the other; bearing his glorious and fearful name, the incommunicable name Jehovah, expressive of his necessary existence; sitting in the throne of God; dwelling and presiding in his temple; delivering laws in his name; giving out oracles; hearing prayers; forgiving sins. And yet these writers would persuade us that this was only a tutelary angel; that a creature was the God of Israel, and that to this creature all their service and worship was directed; that the great God, whose name is jealous,' was pleased to give his glory, his worship, his throne, to a creature. What is this but to make the law of God him

(8) "An earthly ambassador indeed represents the person of his prince, is supposed to be clothed with his authority, and speaks and acts in his name. But who ever heard of an ambassador assuming the very name of his sovereign, or being honoured with it by others? Would one in this character be permitted to say, I George, I Louis, I Frederick? As the idea is ridiculous, the action would justly be accounted high-treason." -Jamieson's Vindication.

(9) histrioniam exercuisse, in qua Dei nomen assumat, et omnia, quæ Dei sunt, sibi attribuat.-Bishop BULL.

(1) LINDSEY'S Apol.

self introductory of the same idolatry that was practised by all the nations of the heathen? But we are told, that bold figures of speech are common in the Hebrew language, which is not to be tied down in its interpretation to the severer rules of modern criticism. We may be assured that these opinions are indefensible, which cannot be supported without charging the word of God with want of propriety or perspicuity. Such pretences might be borne with, if the question were about a phrase or two in the poetical or prophetical parts of Scripture. But this, if it be a figure, is a figure which runs through the whole Scripture. And a bold interpreter must he be, who supposes that such figures are perpetually and uniformly made use of in a point of such importance, without any meaning at all. This is to confound the use of language, to make the Holy Scripture a mysterious, unintelligible book, sufficient to prove nothing, or rather to prove any thing which a wild imagination shall suggest."(2) If the Arian account of the angel of Jehovah be untenable, the Socinian notion will be found equally unsupported, and indeed ridiculous. Dr. Priestley assumes the marvellous doctrine of "occasional personality," and thinks that "in some cases angels were nothing more than temporary appearances, and no permanent beings; the mere organs of the Deity, assumed for the purpose of making himself known." He speaks, therefore, of "a power occasionally emitted, and then taken back again into its source;" of this power being vested with a temporary personality, and thinks this possible! Little cause had the doctor and his adherents to talk of the mystery and absurdity of the doctrine of three persons in one Godhead, who can make a person out of a power, emitted, and then drawn back again to its source; a temporary person, without individual subsistence! The wildness of this fiction is its own refutation; but that the angel of Jehovah was not this temporary occasional person, produced or "emitted" for the occasion of these appearances, is made certain by Abraham's "walking before this angel of the Lord," that is, ordering his life and conversation in his sight all the days of his life; by Jacob calling him the angel of the Lord, who had "fed him all his life long ;" and by this also, that the same person, who was called by himself and by the Jews "the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob," was the God of the chosen people in all their generations. Mr. Lindsey says, "that the outward token of the presence of God is what is generally meant by the angel of God, when not particularly specified and appropriated otherwise; that which manifested his appearance, whatever it was ;" and this opinion commonly obtains among the Socinians. "The angel of the Lord was the visible symbol of the Divine presence."(3) This notion, however, involves a whole train of absurdities. The term "the Angel of Jehovah" is not at all accounted for by a visible symbol of clouds, light, fire, &c., unless that symbol be considered as distinct from Jehovah. We have then the name Jehovah given to a cloud, a light, a fire, &c.; the fire is the Angel of the Lord, and yet the Angel of the Lord calls to Moses out of the fire. This visible symbol says to Abraham, "By MYSELF I have sworn," for these are said to be the words of the Angel of Jehovah; and this Angel, the visible symbol, spake to Moses Mount Sinai: such are the absurdities which flov om error! Most clearly, therefore, is it determined on the testimony of several Scriptures, and by necessary induction from the circumstances attending the numerous appearances of the Angel of Jehovah in the Old Testament, that the person thus manifesting himself, and thus receiving supreme worship, was not a created angel, as the Arians would have it, nor a meteor, an atmospheric appearance, the worthy theory of modern Socinians, but that he was a DIVINE PERSON.

2. It will be necessary to show that this Divine person was not God the Father.

The following argument has been adopted in proof of this. "No man hath seen God at any time. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. Not that any man hath seen the Father. It is, however, said in the Old Testament, that God frequently appeared under the Patriarchal and Levitical dispensa

governs and the nature which serves,-the union of the Divine and human nature in the person of the Christ ?"(6)

Now, this prophecy is expressly applied to Christ by St. Mark. "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee." It follows from this, that Jesus is the Lord, the Lord of the Temple, the Messenger of the Covenant mentioned in the prophecy; and bearing these exact characters of the appearing Angel Jehovah of the Old Testament, who was the King of the Jews; whose temple was HIS, because he resided in it, and so was called "the house of the Lord;" and who was "the Messenger" of their Covenant; the identity of the persons cannot be mistaken. One coincidence is singularly striking. It has been proved, that the Angel Jehovah had his residence in the Jewish tabernacle and temple, and that he took possession, or came suddenly to both, at their dedication, and filled them with his glory. On one occasion Jesus himself, though in his state of humiliation, comes in public procession to the temple at Jerusalem, and calls it "his own," thus at once declaring that he was the ancient and rightful Lord of the Temple, and appropriating to himself this eminent prophecy. Bishop Horsley has introduced this circumstance in his usual striking and convincing

manner.

"A third time Jesus came still more remarkably as the Lord to his temple, when he came up from Galilee to celebrate the last passover, and made that public entry at Jerusalem which is described by all the Evangelists. It will be necessary to enlarge upon the particulars of this interesting story: for the right understanding of our Saviour's conduct upon this occasion depends so much upon seeing certain leading circumstances in a proper light,-upon a recollection of ancient prophecies, and an attention to the customs of the Jewish people,-that I am apt to suspect, few now-adays discern in this extraordinary transaction what was clearly seen in it at the time by our Lord's disciples, and in some measure understood by his enemies. I shall present you with an ordinary detail of the story, and comment upon the particulars as they arise and I doubt not but that by God's assistance I shall teach you to perceive in this public entry of Jesus of Nazareth (if you have not perceived it before), a conspicuous advent of the great Jehovah to his temple. Jesus, on his last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, stops at the foot of Mount Olivet, and sends two of his disciples to a neighbouring village to provide an ass's colt to convey him from that place to the city, distant not more than half a mile. The colt is brought, and Jesus is seated upon it. This first circumstance must be well considered; it is the key to the whole mystery of the story. What could be his meaning in choosing this singular conveyance? It could not be that the fatigue of the short journey which remained was likely to be too much for him a-foot; and that no better animal was to be procured. Nor was the ass in these days (though it had been in earlier ages) an animal in high esteem in the East, used for travelling or for state by persons of the first condition-that this conveyance should be chosen for the grandeur or propriety of the appearance. Strange as it may seem, the coming to Jerusalem upon an ass's colt was one of the prophetical characters of the Messiah; and the great singularity of it had perhaps been the reason that this character had been more generally attended to than any other; so that there was no Jew who was not apprized that the Messiah was to come to the holy city in that manner. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! saith Zechariah; 'Behold thy King cometh unto thee! He is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, even a colt, the foal of an ass! And this prophecy the Jews never understood of any other person than the Messiah. Jesus, therefore, by seating himself upon the ass's colt in order to go to Jerusalem, without any possible inducement either of grandeur or convenience, openly declared himself to be that King who was to come, and at whose coming in that manner Zion was to rejoice. And so the disciples, if we may judge from what immediately followed, understood this proceeding; for no sooner did they see their master seated on the colt, than (6) HORSLEY's Sermons.

they broke out into transports of the highest joy, as if in this great sight they had the full contentment of their utmost wishes; conceiving, as it should seem, the sanguine hope that the kingdom was this instant to be restored to Israel. They strewed the way which Jesus was to pass with the green branches of the trees which grew beside it; a mark of honour, in the East, never paid but to the greatest emperors on occasions of the highest pomp. They proclaimed him the long-expected heir of David's throne,-the Blessed One coming in the name of the Lord; that is, in the language of Malachi, the Messenger of the Covenant: and they rent the skies with the exulting acclamation of 'Hosanna in the highest! On their way to Jerusalem, they are met by a great multitude from the city, whom the tidings had no sooner reached than they ran out in eager joy to join his triumph. When they reached Jerusalem, the whole city,' says the blessed evangelist, was moved.' Here recollect, that it was now the season of the passover. The passover was the highest festival of the Jewish nation, the anniversary of that memorable night when Jehovah led his armies out of Egypt with a high hand and an extended arm,-' a night much to be remembered to the Lord of the children of Israel in their generations; and much indeed it was remembered. The devout Jews flocked at this season to Jerusalem, not only from every corner of Judea, but from the remotest countries whither God had scattered them; and the numbers of the strangers that were annually collected in Jerusalem during this festival are beyond imagination. These strangers, who living at a distance knew little of what had been passing in Judea since their last visit, were they who were moved (as well they might be) with wonder and astonishment, when Jesus, so humble in his equipage, so honoured in his numerous attendants, appeared within the city gates; and every one asks his neighbour, "Who is this? It was replied by some of the natives of Judea, but, as I conceive, by none of the disciples for any of them at this time would have given another answer,-it was replied, 'This is the Nazarene, the great prophet from Galilee.' Through the throng of these astonished spectators the procession passed by the public streets of Jerusalem to the temple, where immediately the sacred porticoes resound with the continued hosannas of the multitudes. The chief priests and scribes are astonished and alarmed; they request Jesus himself to silence his followers. Jesus, in the early part of his ministry, had always been cautious of any public display of personal consequence; lest the malice of his enemies should be too soon provoked, or the unadvised zeal of his friends should raise civil commotions. But now that his work on earth was finished in all but the last painful part of it,-now that he had firmly laid the foundations of God's kingdom in the hearts of his disciples,-now that the apostles were prepared and instructed for their office,-now that the days of vengeance on the Jewish nation were at hand, and it mattered not how soon they should incur the displeasure of the Romans their masters,-Jesus lays aside a reserve which could be no longer useful; and, instead of checking the zeal of his followers, he gives a new alarm to the chief priests and scribes, by a direct and firm assertion of his right to the honours that were so largely shown to him. If these,' says he, 'were silent, the stones of this building would be endued with a voice to proclaim my titles:' and then, as on a former occasion, he drove out the traders; but with a higher tone of authority, calling it his own house, and saying, 'My house is the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves. You have now the story, in all its circumstances, faithfully collected from the four evangelists; nothing exaggerated, but set in order, and perhaps somewhat illustrated by an application of old prophecies, and a recollection of Jewish customs. Judge for yourselves whether this was not an advent of the Lord Jehovah taking personal possession of his tem ple."(7)

But it is not only in these passages that the name Jehovah, the appellation of the appearing Angel of the Old Testament, and other titles of divinity, are given to Messiah; and if Jesus be Messiah, then are they his titles and as truly mark his Divinity.

"The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord (JEHOVAL), make straight

(7) Horsley.

M