صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

this denial is made " by the spirit of Antichrist," which denieth the Father and the Son.

[ocr errors]

When in the former editions of this work I professed an opinion that the 7th verse of the 5th chapter of St. John's ist epistle was at the best a very dubious text, and confequently refigned all advantage that might accrue tomy cause, from its having come from his inspired pen, I did not however confider myself precluded by the conceffion from an enquiry into the grounds upon which many men of extensive learning, upon which indeed the entire established church of England, had retained the passage. This I have fince entered upon, and having changed my opinion, refer the reader for those reasons on which I now believe the text to be authentic, to an Inquiry into the belief of the Christians of the first three Centuries, p. 195. Though I have there assigned an interpretation different from the received sense, yet I shall still beg leave to express myself in the words of it, which very well comprize the conclufion following from the whole of facred writ, and which I hope I have rendered obvious by this time. In my own person then I say that I believe in "the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and that these three are one."

CXIV.

If words could be found more directly enjoining prayer to Jesus Christ than those which follow, I should endeavour to enlarge on the subject; but as the beloved disciple of our Redeemer has given us the precept, I shall.leave it with Mr. Lindsey to draw the conclufion, for which he stands engaged, and to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is one with the Father, God. things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. And this is the confidence that we have in him, that

"These

that if we ask any thing according to his will, he hear eth us. And if we know that he hear us, whatfoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we defired of him," 1 John v 13, 14, 15. "Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God. And whatsoever we afk, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments," r John iii. 21, 22. Here exactly the fame precept is repeated; but the one Godhead is named in the latter, instead of the second perfon of the Trinity specified in the former passage. CXV

" And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true: and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life," 1 John v. 20. It is remarkable that this decla ration is followed by a defire to "keep from idols," to the overthrow of whose worship he preaches the Godhead of Jefus Christ, the Son. But left it should be faid that the elder was inattentive to the consequence of speaking in ambiguous language to idolaters, concerning the God whom he preached to them, I will produce proofs from the context to teftify that Christ is here spoken of, and pointed out for adoration. "He that hath the Son, hath life," and "God hath given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son," and "these things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life," I John v. 11, 12, 13. These words explain who is the true God in whom we have this eternal life; befides, the gift of understanding is an act of Godhead, and is here made to us by the Son. See Inquiry into the belief, &c. p. 130.-Suppose for a moment with Mr. Lindsey that the prophetic eyes of the apostles were blinded to the opinion afterwards to be entertained by mankind, who have fince their day believed Jesus Chrift

to

to be God, notwithstanding that they had seen him a man born and living amongst men, even this abfurd supposition would not extend to St. John, nor indeed to St. Paul, who were themselves witnesses of that early heresy by which the manhood of Jesus Christ was denied, and had heard that body which he had come in, declared only to have been an appearance; fo that their own living experience might have given them a hint, that accuracy in the application of the terms Lord, and Saviour, and the like, was necessary, if they had not been the most stupid as well as wicked men that ever lived on the earth. They were accurate men, they were honest men; and by the application of those terms to both the Father and the Son, they have left us an irrefragable proof that the Father and the Son are one God.

* The goodness of God, and that gracious indulgence with which he has confulted the infirmities of our state, is, in this respect also, very strongly displayed, that he took manhood on him, in order to give a sensible object of worship to mankind, incapable of forming any ade

Y

quate

* This passage has occasioned much curious criticifm, and has been treated not as an acknowledgment of the merciful condescension of our Creator to the weakness of our faculties, but as an absolute act of my own, by which as "a Pagan and a Papist" I myself have clothed our Lord in the flesh, and conferred manhood on the Godhead, for the purpose of forming an object of idolatrous worship for my own use; for in opposition to what I have written here, the author of remarks on this volume, p. 28, has placed Deut. iv. 12, 16, 17, 18, which is only a repetition of the second commandment, and infers from the comparison that I am hereby guilty of paganism and popery. Now I profess, that so far from finding the common term taken in the fame sense in both propositions, in order to deduce a valid consequence, I am not able to find any term whatsoever common to them both, unless we shall fay that my act in cafting a molten idol, and the act of the Deity in taking upon himself the fashion of a man be one and the same thing, and thence indeed infer the following most logical consequence, that because God has forbidden to man the making and worshipping of graven images, he is therefore pre cluded himself from the assumption and confequent glorification of our in

carnate nature.

[ocr errors]

quate idea of the abstract God, whose qualities are of a nature incomprehensible by our minds; and not only our natural incapacity to conceive a God purely spiritual was confidered, but the world, merged in idolatry at the time of his incarnation, was mercifully indulged with an object of sense, to which men could look according to habit also, and to whom, even by the exertion of the fame faculties by which they had adopted and adored idols, they could prefer worship without the imputation of idolatry. A resting-place is hereby given to the mind, instead of its being continued under the neceffity of launching out into vast infinity and eternity, and vainly endeavouring to engage itself in the contemplation of matters, of which it can form no idea at all.

CXVI.

The name of God is the only antecedent in the third chapter of St. John's Ist epistle to which the pronoun HE, in the following verse, can possibly be referred. " And ye know that He was manifested to take away sins, and in him is no fin," I John iii. 5. " Jesus Chrift, who was made flesh, and dwelt among us, John i. 14, that "eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us," I John i. 2, is therefore one with the Father, "God, who was manifest in the flesh," 1 Tim. iii. 16.

CXVII.

وز

"Whosoever tranfgreffeth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God: he that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son," 2 John 9. After having shewed who had not God, the elder goes on to shew of the direct contrary character, that he hath the Father and the Son, who are therefore that God which abideth in him. "Whosoever denieth the Son, the fame hath not the Father," I John ii. 23; but "whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of

God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God," I John iv. 15. « If we love one another, God dwelleth in us," I John iv. 12. Who now is the Father and the Son, who dwelleth in us if we abide in the doctrine of Christ?

CXVIII.

"Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father," Jude 1. Paul, who has frequently called himself both the servant of God and of Jesus Chrift, (fee Philip. i. 1, and Titus i. 1.) has in like manner addressed the Corinthians, " to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus," 1 Cor. i. 1.

The agreement between these two passages is more strongly marked in the original than in the tranflation of the Bible. There seems to be a difference between being sanctified by God the Father, and in Jesus Christ: but this does not subsist in the Greek. “ Τοῖς ἘΝ θεῷ παλρὶ ἡγιασμένοις,” says St. Jude, and St. Paul addresses the Corinthians ἡγιασμένοις ἘΝ Χρισῷ Ἰησᾶ.

CXIX.

Speaking of the judgment that awaits "ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Chrift," " who speak evil of those things which they know not," Jude says, that "Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophefied of these, saying, Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his faints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them, of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly finners have spoken against him." Now we know very well that Jesus Christ is to come to judgment, with the holy angels; that to those who work iniquity he shall give everlasting punishment, but unto the righteous, eternal life. We must therefore conclude him to have been the object of Enoch's prophecy; and the

Y 2

« السابقةمتابعة »