Ghost, according to his promise, might also lead the apostles to confider, and preach him as fomething more than an ordinary man; nay, that very birth which Mr. Lindsey thinks a proof that he was a meer man, the apostles, who have related it to us, knew to have been of a Virgin found with child of the Holy Ghost, and overshadowed by the power of the Highest, and that the Holy Thing, which was born of that Virgin, was declared to be the Son of God. They also knew that life, which he past amongst men, to have been spent in daily miracles, to have been so interrupted, and fo refumed, that it is aftonishing to hear the birth and life of our Saviour made use of as a reason why we should doubt the veracity of the apostles, when they declare him to be God, and why they should not have conceived it necessary to mark such a diftinction as should preclude the possibility of so momentous an errour, if an errour it be to ascribe divinity to him, instead of using an inaccurate expreffion, whereby we should be led into an opinion that he is God. From that very birth and life, testifying whence, and with what endowments he came, I am led to interpret even ambiguous expreffions as attestations of his Godhead, much more to yield my afsent to such as are perfectly explicit, and declare it without any ambiguity at all; of the latter fort there are multitudes, from which the former derive their explanation; for if it be in one instance declared exprefsly, that "Christ is over all, God blessed for ever," it will be no difficulty to redeem the names of the disciples of our Lord from the cruel charge of having lied to the Holy Ghoft, or neglectingly rejected the conduct of this "guide to all truth;" and when they have used the words, Lord, and Saviour, and the like, and indifferently given them both to God, and to Chrift, to declare that they have intentionally done it, in order to inculcate the doctrine of

our

our blessed Redeemer's divinity, instead of imputing to these inspired men a criminal inaccuracy, the confequence of which could not escape the forefight of the meanest human understanding. "Ye know that ye were Gentiles carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led. Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the spirit of God, calleth Jefus accursed, and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghoft," I Cor. xii. 2, 3. "God is not the author of confufion," I Cor. xiv. 33. I shall therefore rely upon the identity of expreffion used in speaking of God and of Christ, as evidence of the identity of the Godhead of the Father and of the Son; and as the passages occur, in which such language is used, I shall quote them as teftimonies of it.

LXV.

Speaking of the facrifices of the Gentiles, which he says were offered not to God but to devils, St. Paul fays, "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils," 1 Cor. x. 20, 21. Here is manifestly a declaration made, that the taking the cup of blessing, and the bread which we break, as the communion of the blood and body of Chrift, is an act of worship to him, adequate to that of the Gentiles' facrifices to their idols. He does not indeed call it a facrifice, nor intimate that it is one, but says, that it is an afcribing of honour to him, inconsistent with honour being paid to devils. In the same manner as our Saviour himself has said, "Ye cannot ferve God and mammon," St. Paul shews, that they cannot, confiftently with the worship of the true God, afcribe honour to idols. "What concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth, with an infidel? and what agreement hath the temple of God

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with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God, &c." 2 Cor. vi. 15, 16.

LXVI.

"We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord," 2 Cor. iv. 5. These words I produce only to shew the object of the apostle's preaching, a circumstance to which I am frequently obliged to refer. Paul has also defined the gospel to be "the teftimony of our Lord Jesus Christ," 2 Tim. i. 8. The preaching of the gospel is therefore the bearing teftimony to him, which I wish to have remembered and carried on in the mind of my reader,

LXVII.

Were I to quote every passage in the second epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians that affords a proof of our Saviour's Godhead, I should be under a neceffity of tranfcribing the whole epistle, to which I therefore choose to refer my reader. One passage however I must select, and shew its weight in the argument, because Mr. Lindsey has taken some pains to extricate himself from the neceffity of bending under it. It is indeed surprizing, that a man who has shewed so evidently his attachment to what he believes the truth, should not be more circumspect in the pursuit of her, but allow himself to be deceived by every painted fallacy that shall appear ever so little like the original. I am at a loss to conceive how the following daubed mask should be taken for the native and unadorned fimplicity of truth, by one who professes himself enamoured of that simplicity. But upon the 12th chap. and 8, 9 ver. of 2 Cor. a Mr. Beaufobre has afforded the following comment, to which Mr. Lindsey accedes with the most supine facility. "For this thing I befought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me," 2 Cor. xii. 8, 9. " Paul appears here to have directed his prayer to God, the Father, and to have had in his thoughts thoughts and to have imitated our Lord's prayer in the garden, the night before his fuffering, when he prayed to God, that, if it pleased him, the cup of affliction might pass away from him without his drinking it." Beaufobre on the place. Apology, p. 132. Let us take the whole passage together, and examine it with the context, and then see whether the apostle had any such stuff in his thoughts as the dreams of Mr. Beaufobre are made of. St. Paul having faid, " of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities," proceeds to give an account of those infirmities, and to affign the reason why they are an object of glory to him, saying, "left I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, left I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, my grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weaknefs. Moft gladly 'therefore will I rather glory in mine infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Chrift's fake: for when I am weak, then am I strong," 2 Cor. xii. 5, 7, 8, 9, 10. Wherefore does St. Paul glory? wherefore take pleasure in his infirmities? that the power of Christ may rest upon him; for, by fuffering fuch infirmities as contribute to perfect the strength of the Lord, (to whom he prayed) in weakness, he is then strong when he is weak: but he glories in his infirmities for Christ's fake; it is the strength of Chrift then that is perfected in his weakness: but it is the Lord who said, my strength is made perfect in weakness; the Lord therefore who so spoke, is Chrift: but of the Lord who so spoke, Paul thrice befought the departure of " this thing." The Lord then being Chrift, Christ, and Paul having thrice preferred his fupplications to him, it necessarily follows, that the Lord Jefus Christ is a proper object of prayer and religious worship, and therefore that he is one with the Father, God. Such is the conclufion from the context; whereas a delusive assertion is inferred by a Mr. Beaufobre, from a partial quotation of but one small part of the passage, in itself proving nothing, but made the fubject of the weakest comment that ever obtained the acquiefcence of a man of virtue; a man, whose errours afflict me, as I honour his worth. I cannot see him turn aside from the study of the word of God itself, to the study of the manner in which partial visionaries have interpreted it, without sensible regret. I do not defire that even my comment should supplant a fingle inference drawn by a sensible and candid man, from a perusal of the fcriptures themselves; it cannot therefore be expected that I shall indulge Mr. Lindsey in laying aside the use of his own better understanding, that he may adopt the doctrines of a multitude of designing or filly men and women upon whom he places such implicit reliance, I only ask of him, and every other reader, that they will take the uncorrupted word of God itself into their own confideration, and with diligence search the fcriptures only, and thence infer, for their own use, fuch tenets as the Holy Spirit shall be found to have testified.

LXVIII.

St. Paul, in his epiftle to the Galatians, commences with a declaration that he is " an apostle (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father,") Gal. i. 1. Here the Father and the Son are put into opposition to man, and declared to be the Being from whom the apostle had his authority; and he declares farther, that "the gospel which was preached of me, is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither

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