and displayed in him the wonderful effects of its extraordinary presence; or if you understand the words in the sense in which Peter employs them (2 Peter i. 4), when he asserts that "we are partakers of a divine nature," that is, endued by the favour of God with divinity, or divine properties,-I certainly do so far acknowledge such a nature in Christ as to believe that next after God it belonged to no one in a higher degree. Show me how the first mentioned opinion is repugnant to right reason?

First, on this account, That two substances endued with opposite and discordant properties, such as are God and man, cannot be ascribed to one and the same individual, much less be predicated the one of the other. For you cannot call one and the same thing first fire, and then water, and afterwards say that the fire is water, and the water fire. And such is the way in which it is usually affirmed ;-first, that Christ is God, and afterwards that he is a man; and then that God is man, and that man is God.

But what ought to be replied, when it is alleged that Christ is constituted of a divine and human nature, in the same way as man is composed of a soul and body?

The cases are essentially different :-for it is stated of his work on the Christian Religion, as also in several places in his Commentaries. The Chaldee Paraphrast on Isaiah xlii.1, may likewise be consulted.

These agree with the words of the apostle Paul, Coloss. ii. 3 and 9; "In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." "In him dwelleth all the fullness of the godhead bodily:" and 1 Cor. i. 24, "Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." B. WISSOWATIUS.

that

that the two natures are so united in Christ, that he is both God and man: whereas the union between the soul and body is of such a kind that the man is neither the soul nor the body. Again, neither the soul nor the body, separately, constitutes a person: but as the divine nature, by itself, constitutes a person, so also must the human nature, by itself, constitute a person; since it is a primary or single intelligent substance.

Show me, in the next place, how it appears to be repugnant to the Scriptures, that Christ possesses the divine nature which is claimed for him?

First, because the Scriptures propose to us but one only God; whom I have already proved to be the Father of Christ. And this reason is rendered the more evident from Christ's being in several passages of Scripture not only distinguished from God absolutely so called, but often also expressly from the one or only God. Thus 1 Cor. viii. 6, "There is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him." And John xvii. 3, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Secondly, because the sanie Scriptures assert, as I have already shown, that Jesus Christ is a man; which itself deprives him of the divine nature that would render him the supreme God. Thirdly, because the Scriptures explicitly declare that whatever of a divine nature Christ possessed, he had received as a gift from the Father; and refer it to the Holy Spirit, with which he had by the Father been anointed and filled. Thus Phil. ii. 9, "God hath

highly exalted him, and GIVEN him a name which is above every name." 1 Cor. xv. 27," When he saith all things ARE PUT UNDER HIM, it is manifest that HE is excepted which DID PUT ALL THINGS UNDER HIM." Luke iv. 14 and 18," Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee." "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor." Matt. xxviii. 18, "All power is GIVEN unto me in heaven and in earth." Acts x. 38, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power." Isaiah xi. 2, "And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord." John v. 19 and 36, "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do : for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the son likewise." "The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me." John vii. 16, " My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me." John viii. 26, "He that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him." John x. 25, "The works that I do in iny Father's name, they bear witness of me." And, moreover, because the same Scriptures plainly show that Jesus Christ was accustomed to ascribe all his divine words and works, not to himself, nor to any divine nature which he possessed distinct from the Holy Spirit, but to his Father; which renders it evident that the divine nature which some would claim for Christ must have

been

been wholly inactive and useless. Fourthly, because Christ repeatedly prayed to the Father: whence it is evident that he had not in himself a nature of that kind which would have made him the supreme God. For why should he have recourse to another person, and supplicate of him, what he might have obtained from himself? Fifthly, because Christ explicitly declares, that he is not himself the ultimate object of our Faith; for he thus speaks, John xii. 44, "He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me." On this account Peter (1st Epist. i. 21) states that it is "by Christ we do believe in God." Sixthly, because Christ frequently asserts that he came not of himself, but was sent by the Father (John viii. 42). That he spoke not of himself, but that the Father which sent him gave him a commandment, what he should say, and what he should speak (John xii. 49). That he came not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him (John vi. 38). Neither of which could have happened in respect to the supreme God. Seventhly, because Christ while he was yet living on earth affirmed of himself, that he was ignorant of the day of judgement; and stated that the knowledge of it was confined to the Father alone. "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, NEITHER THE SON, but the Father" (Mark xiii. 32. See also Matt. xxiv. 36). But the supreme God could not have been wholly ignorant of any thing. Eighthly, to omit other reasons, be-, cause Christ distinctly affirms (John xiv. 28), that his

Father

Father was greater than he-by which he intimates that he is not equal to his Father. He also, on several occasions, calls the Father his God. Matt. xxvii. 46; Mark xv. 34, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" John xx. 17," I ascend unto my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." Revel. iii. 12, "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God." The Father is called the God of Christ by other sacred writers, particularly by Paul : thus Ephes. i. 17, "The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory," &c. And the same apostle observes (1 Cor. xi. 3), that God is the head of Christ; (1 Cor. iii. 23), that as we are Christ's, so in like manner, "Christ is God's." And (1 Cor. xv. 28), that at a certain period "the Son himself would be subject unto him, that had put all things under him :"-things which could not have been predicated of Christ, had he possessed a divine

nature.

But to these arguments, and others of a similar kind, it is replied, that such things are spoken of Christ in reference to his human, and not his divine nature?

But this is done without reason: partly because those who so assert, take for granted the very point in dispute; namely, that Christ is possessed of a divine nature; and partly because there is no room for such