the idea of the divinity of Christ more expressly than by these solemn words.

Notwithstanding the divine communications with which our Lord was favoured, some things are expressly said to be withheld from him. For he himself, speaking of his second coming, says, Mark xiii. 32. "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, n not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." In Matt. xxiv. 36. where the same observation is repeated, it is, "but my Father only."

The apostles, notwithstanding their attachment to their Lord and Master, always preserve the idea of his subordination to the Father, and consider all his honour and power as derived from him. "He received from God the Father, honour and glory," 2 Peter i. 17. "It pleased the Father, that in him should all fullness dwell," Col. i. 19. "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him," Rev. i. 1. "Ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's," 1 Cor. iii. 23. "The head of Christ is God," 1 Cor. xi 3.

The reason why Christ was so much distinguished by God the Father, is frequently and fully expressed in the Scriptures, viz. his obedience to the will of God, and especially in his submitting to die for the benefit of mankind. "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life," John x. 17. "He humbled himself, and became obedient

unto

unto death, even the death of the cross.

Wherefore God has highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father," Phil. ii. 8-11. "Who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of God," Heb. xii. 2.

Our Lord says, that he and his Father are one," John x. 30. But he sufficiently explains himself, when he prays that all his disciples may be "one with him, and his Father, even as they are one," John xvii. 11. And he gives them the same glory which God had given to him, ver. 22. Besides, at the very time that our Lord says that he and his Father are one, and in the very sentence preceding it, ver. 29, he says, that his Father is greater than all. But how could the Father be greater than all, if there was any other, who was so much one with him, as to be, in all respects, equal to him?

The mere term God is, indeed, sometimes used in a lower and inferior sense in the Scriptures, denoting dominion only; as when the Divine Being himself says, that "he will make Moses a god to Pharaoh," Exod. vii. 1. But, surely, there can be no danger of our mistaking the sense of such

phrases

phrases as these. Or, if it were possible, our Lord himself has sufficiently guarded against any misconstruction of them when applied to himself, by the explanation he has given of them; informing us, that, if, in the language of Scripture, "they are called gods to whom the word of God came," John x. 35. (though, in fact, they were no other than mere men) he could not be guilty of blasphemy in calling himself only the Son of God. Now, if Christ had been conscious to himself that he was the true and very God, and that it was of the utmost consequence to mankind that they should regard him in that light, this was certainly a proper time for him to have declared himself, and not to have put his hearers off with such an apology as this.

But even this power and dominion, to which Christ is advanced by God his Father, "who gave all power into his hands," and who "made him head over all things to his church," Eph. i. 22. this mediatorial kingdom of Christ (as it is sometimes, and with sufficient propriety, termed) is not to be perpetual. For the apostle Paul, speaking, no doubt, under immediate inspiration, expressly says, that when "the end shall come, that God shall have subdued all things to his Son," (in which he observes, that "he must be excepted who did subdue all things unto him,")" he must deliver up the kingdom to God, even the FATHER, and

be

be himself subject to him who had put all things under him, that God may be all in all," 1 Cor. xv. 24, &c. Nay, he himself says expressly, that he had not the disposal of the highest offices of his kingdom, Matt. xx. 23. "To sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father."

So clear, my brethren, so full, and so express, is the uniform testimony of the Scriptures to the great doctrine of the proper unity of God, and of the subordination of Christ and all other beings to him, that the prevalence of so impious a doctrine as the contrary must be, can be ascribed to nothing but to that mystery of iniquity, which, though it began to work in the times of the apostles themselves, was not then risen to so enormous a height as to attack the supremacy of the one living and true God, and give his peculiar glory to another. This, my brethren, among other shocking corruptions of genuine Christianity, grew up with the system of Popery ; and to show that nothing is impossible to the superstition and credulity of men, when they are become vain in their imaginations, after exalting a man into a god, a creature into a creator, they made a piece of bread into one also, and then bowed down to, and worshiped, the work of their own hands.

But though it seemed fit to the unsearchable

wisdom

wisdom of God, that all the errors and abuses of Popery should not be reformed at once; and though this great error was left untouched by the first reformers, blessed be God the Bible is as open to us as it was to them! and by the exertion of the same judgement and spirit, we may free Christianity from the corruptions which they left adhenug to it; and then, among other excellencies of our religion, "Our Lord will be one, and his name one," Zech. xiv. 9.

If you ask, Who, then, is Jesus Christ, if he be not God? I answer in the words of St. Peter, addressed to the Jews, after his resurrection and ascension, that "Jesus of Nazareth was a man approved of God, by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him," Acts ii. 22. If you ask what is meant by man, in this place; I answer, that man, if the word be used with any kind of propriety, must mean the same kind of being with yourselves. I say, moreover, with the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that "it became him by whom are all things, and for whom are all things, to make this great captain of our salvation in all respects like unto us his brethren, that he might be made perfect through sufferings," Heb. ii. 10. 17. "and that he might have a feeling of all our infirmities," iv. 13. For this reason it was that our Saviour and deliverer was not made of the nature of an angel, or like any super-angelic being,

but