of justice; whose victory of faith being foreknown and accepted, a seat is allotted them according to it." And the two passages being laid together, supply us with this principal. As if our Saviour, who is the speaker in both places, had said-" Though it be not mine to give; yet to him that overcometh, will I (even I myself) grant to sit with me in my throne; because for him this seat is prepared." It is not owing to a defect of power in the trinity, or in any person of it, that the divine purpose cannot be changed; but because it is impossible for the power of God to break in upon the order of his distributive justice. And it is upon this account only, that we read of Christ, Mark. vi. 5. "He COULD there do NO mighty work." For the power of doing a miracle was always present with him; but the place being improper, because of their unbelief, made the thing impossible. In the same manner, that declaration of the Lord in Gen. xvii. 22. is to be accounted for,-Haste thee, escape thither, for I CANNOT do any thing till thou be come thither. No man would hence conclude that the hand of God is straightened, or his power limited; but only that he does, and by his own nature must act agreeable to the dispositions of things and persons, known to himself.

XXXIII.

† 1 Cor. viii. 6. To us there is but ONE GOD, THE FATHER.

It we compare this with that expression of St. Thomas-John xx. 28-MY LORD. and MY GOD, we have the following argument:

To us there is but one GOD, the FATHER. But To US JESUS CHRIST IS GOD: there fore, the gospel has either preached two Gods to us, one distinct from the other: or that one God the Father is here the name of a nature, under which Christ himself, as God, is also comprehended. And the same may be proved of it in several other places.

XXXIV.

† Matth. xxiii. 9. Call no man your Father upon earth, for ONE IS YOUR FATHER, which is in heaven.

Ibid. v. 10. Neither be ye called masters, for ONE is YOUR MASTER, EVEN CHRIST. John iii. 13. which is in heaven.

Dr. Clarke has a particular section,a wherein he pretends to have set down the passages that ascribe the highest titles, perfections, and powers, to the second person of the trinity. Yet he has wholly omitted the latter of these verses; though by a rule of his own making, it allows to Christ an higher title than any

a Chap. ii. § 3.

other in the whole scripture. It is this same author who has laid so great a stress upon the word as one, which he has insisted upon it can signify nothing else but one person; and the criticism is thought to be of such use and importance to his scheme, that his book begins with it; and in the course of his work it is repeated three times, nearly in the same words. But the passage now before us, if he had produced it; would have turned his own weapon against himself. For the word as is here an attribute of Christ; and if we argue from it in this place, as he has done in the other, it must prove that one person only is our master, and that this person is Christ: which excludes the persons of the Father and the Spirit from the honor of that title; and so reduces that learned author's reasoning to a manifest absurdity.

We are to conclude then, that as the phrase, one master cannot be meant to exclude the Father; so neither does that other-one is good (supposing that were the sense of the Greek) or, one is your Father, exclude the person of Christ. And if the reason of the thing teaches us that it cannot, so the scripture assures us in fact that it does not: the title of Father, being also ascribed to the second person of the trinity. For Christ, the alpha and omega, says of himself-He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will

be HIS GOD, and he shall be MY SON.a Isaiah calls him-The everlasting FATHER. And again it is written-They are the CHILDREN of GOD, being the children of the RESURRECTION :c but, says Christ -I am the RESSURRECTION :d therefore he is God, and hath us for his children. If this be the case, the word Father cannot always he a name that distinguishes God from another person of God: but is often to be understood as a term of relation between God and man : or as a modern divine of our church has well expressed it—" A word not intended for God the Father only, the first person of the trinity; but as it is referred unto the creature made and conserved by God; in which sense it appertains to the whole trinity."

XXXV.

John xiv. 28. MY FATHER IS
GREATER than I.

The two preceding articles will sufficiently justify what the church has asserted with a view to this passage-That Christ is "inferior to the Father as touching his manhood." And the stream of the whole scripture is against that use the Arians generally make of it; who stand in need to be reminded at eve

a Rev. xxi. 7. ix. 6. c Luke xx. 36. d John xi. 25,

ry turn, that in the person of Christ, there is a human soul and body, the nature of a man, which as it cannot lay claim to what is spoken of Christ in unity with the Father, so must it receive to its own account whatever seems to degrade and disjoin him from the Father. It is indeed hard to say, which of the two heresies is the most unreasonable and unscriptural; that of the Socinians, which never considers Christ as any thing but a mere man; or that of the Arians, who never look upon him as any thing but a suppostitious God. Between these two gross errors, lies the true catholic faith; which as it allows him to be perfect God and perfect man, is never offend- ed, or put to its shifts, by any thing the scripture may have said about him in either capacity.

XXXVI.

Cor. xi. 3. The HEAD of Christ is GOD.

The name Christ does here stand, as in other places out of number, for the man Christ; otherwise it must follow, that as Christ is God, God is the head of himself; which is a contradiction; or that one God is the head of another God; which also is a contradiction. This Text is capable of a good illustration

H