you. All things that the Father hath, are mine: there fore faid I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you," John xvi. 12, 13, 14, 15. What is this but saying, that as they are as yet unable to bear the full revelation of his nature, he will in a future time shew it to them by the Spirit, who shall speak as he shall receive of Chrift. And that it is the full declaration of the Godhead, which, he says, they are as yet unable to bear, and which he will reveal by the Spirit who shall testify of the truth, is evident from the testimony which he proceeds to say this Spirit shall bear to him; for "he shall glorify him," having received that which he is to shew from Christ, whose it is, and from the Father, whose it is, equal possessors of the glory which shall be revealed. A triumph over death, and an afcent into heaven, were first to intervene; and these, added to every miracle performed in the prefence of multitudes, were facts, which, when referred to, were fully fufficient to shew forth a power that none could doubt to be the power of God; and if the Holy Ghost, by miracles subsequent to such an act as that of rising from the darkness of the grave to the mansions of light, should testify of him who had so acted, that he was God, I fee not how a more proper line of evidence could have been adopted, or a more certain means of spreading information among men, not hardened against the receipt of it, devised: nor do I see it to be less than an impious prefumption to deny the attested fact, because we have not ourselves had the conduct of the evidence, and therefore do not find it where it is not reasonably to be expected.

The doctrine of Chrift's godhead then may be confidered as imparted to us by four different forts of revelation; first, by the prophecies and the law, or, in geheral terms, that which was called the scriptures, before fore the writing of the New Testament, to which we are referred, and told that " they are they which testify of me:" secondly, by the testimony of our blessed Saviour himself, whether by words or works, throughout the writings of the evangelists: thirdly, by the teftimony of the apostles, confirmed by the Holy Ghost, to which our Saviour usually referred enquirers into his nature, whether delivered by them in the gospels, which were written after the Holy Ghost had been given to the writers; or by their explanation of the nature and the purposes of his having come and fuffered in the flesh, in their fermons throughout the Acts, and in their epistles: and fourthly, by the teftimony of Chrift himself, after his afcenfion and reassumption of that glory wherewith he had been glorified before the world was, delivered by his having fent the comforter according to his frequent promises that he, and that the father (promiscuously named) would send him; by his compliance with the prayers of the apostles; his appearance in divers circumstances; and by the vision shewed to St. John in the revelation, in which he speaks of himself in the same terms, as God, before his incarnation, had spoken to the prophets.

This is the order in which the evidence is placed be fore us, and in which I shall therefore produce it in the following chapter. Were it to be stated according to the degree of its strength, it ought to be reversed.

There is yet another species of teftimony borne to the divinity of our gracious Redeemer, resulting from the reconcileableness of the whole of sacred writ, upon the adopting this proposition as a datum, namely, that Chrift is God. Were a subject to be treated so enig matically by a man of sense, as that it should escape the understanding of all his readers, and yet leave them

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convinced upon the credit of the author, that the book itself was worth study and labour; were there scarce an intelligible sentence contained in the book, and yet a certainty that it contained much matter; and were there at length to arife a man whose ready faculties should alight upon one propofition by which that whole book should be explained, to which every obfcure affertion should be referred, and by the reference to which they should become clear and perfpicuous; and should it therefore appear, that this proposition was the object of every sentence, the darkness of which it dispelled; could any man pretend that this was not the object of the writer; or conceive that any one point, thus borne down upon by every argument, was not the point intended to be illustrated and proved? certainly not. And if, on the other hand, the contradictory of that proposition was a point to which the process of the argument so little referred, as that it should still continue obfcure when referred to it; would any man say that this was the writer's object? certainly not. Exactly such is the state of the Bible; every position falls into sense, the tenour of it becomes a course of argument the instant that the divinity of our Saviour in union with manhood is acknowledged to be its object; whereas, upon a denial of this propofition, there is not on earth a book fo fraught with contradictions and irreconcileable abfurdities, as that which is acknowledged to be the word of the God of truth. Partial quotations therefore, and passages taken from the whole confiftent word of God, are to be confidered as of no value whatsoever in argument; they cannot afford any proof of any thing; and nothing contained in the facred writings is to be explained but as it stands in context with the whole. Nothing less therefore than the whole of the Bible is to be confidered as the gospel of Chrift; and from the whole, taken together, his almighty Godhead is to be deduced.

The Evidence of our Saviour's Divinity afforded by the Scriptures.

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S I have already faid that the Old Testament affords but a very small part of the teftimony of the Godhead of Jesus Christ, I shall produce but few separate passages from it, under the head of prophecy : such as receive their explanation from the New Testament, being better brought under that head. It is not to shew that the prophets have foretold our Lord and Saviour that I am engaged, for that were an easy office; but to shew that they have foretold his divinity; and that the expected Meffiah was, though ignorantly, by them declared to be God himself.

From the prophecies of the Old Testament I take the following proofs of the Godhead of Jefus Chrift.

I.

"Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a fign, behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel," Ifaiah vii. 14. This prophecy is referred to by St. Matthew, declared to be of our Saviour, and the name interpreted to be "God with us."

II.

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace," Ifaiah ix. 6.

III.

"Thus faith the Lord the King of Ifrael, and his Redeemer the Lord of Hosts, I am the first, and I am

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the last, and besides me there is no God," Ifai. xliv. 6. This affertion is made by God to Ifaiah, and by Jefus Chrift (verbatim) to St. John, Rev. ii. 8. God, in the subsequent verses, declares his prerogatives to the prophet; the fame are applicable to the fame first and last, " is there a God befides me? yea there is no God, I know not any." This God then is Jesus Chrift.

IV.

"Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the antient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep, that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?" Ifai. li. 9. 10. The answer to this call has the following words in it, "But I am the Lord thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared: the Lord of Hosts is his name," Ifaiah li. 15. 15 To this entire chapter, and the two following, I refer for the explanation of these texts which I have brought to evince the divinity of Jefus Chrift, and which I take to be even of themselves sufficient for that purpose. The arm of the Lord is here invoked, and in making answer, the arm of the Lord declares "I am the Lord thy God." The arm of the Lord, and the Lord God, are then with Ifaiah fynonimous terms; but he afterwards says "the Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall fee the falvation of our God," Ifaiah lii. 10: and again, "Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" Ifaiah liii. 1. To the former of these two texts St. Luke refers, and declares exprefsly that it is spoken of Jesus Chrift, for he relates that they were uttered by St. John the Baptift, whose office it was to be the forerunner of our Saviour, Luke iii. 6. To the latter St. John refers, chap. xii. verfe 38, where he quotes the verse at large concerning the unbelief in Chrift,

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