" for thy fake, &c." Rom. viii. 35. For whose fake? certainly Christ's, one with the Father, God.

The prophecies afforded by the New Testament, I have already stated in the preceding chapter, and shall not trouble my reader with a repetition of them.

The following proofs are taken from the teftimony borne to our blessed Lord's divinity in the writings of the four evangelifts.

IX.

"Thy kingdom come," Matth. vi. 1o. "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen." Matth. vi. 13. That our Saviour's command to the disciples, is to address these words, and the prayer in which they occur, directly to God, is not only granted but contended for: but let us fee now who is this God, who is this king of glory. "Then (in the last day) shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall fee the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he shall fend his angels, &c." Matth. xxiv. 30, 31. "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he fit upor the throne of his glory. And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, come, ye blessed of my Father, &c." Mat. xxv. 31, 32, 33, 34. Here we fee the coming of the kingdom, and we fee alfo whose is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. Wherefore then should we say that Jesus Christ, in prescribing this form of prayer, forbad worship and application to be made to him, whom we find to be the very being described

described and pointed out as the proper object of our adoration? It is manifestly his command that we should worship him; and hence it follows, that he is one with the Father, God Almighty. He says in another place, "whofoever shall be ashamed of me, and of my words, in this adulterous and finful generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father, with the holy angels," Mark viii. 38. On which I remark, that the glory of the Father, and of the Son, is but one glory, one Godhead; for we see our blessed Lord coming in his own glory, and in the parallel passage, in the glory of his Father. The following texts evince this, and also ascribe the kingdom and the glory to Jesus Chrift. "The Son of man shall fend forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity," Mat. xiii. 41. "The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works," Mat. xvi. 27. "Whofoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father's, and all the holy angels," Luke ix. 26. "No whoremonger, &c. hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ, and of God," Ephef. v. 5. "Jesus Chrift, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing, and his kingdom," 2 Tim. iv. 1. "The evelafting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," 2 Pet i. 11. Our Saviour, in answer to the demand of the Pharifees, (Luke xvii. 20 to 30) " when the kingdom of God should come," tells them, "the kingdom of God cometh not with observation;" or as it is translated in the margin of the Bible, "with outward show;" and then, addressing himself to his disciples, continues to declare, that no prognosticks shall foreshew his day; but that,

as

as the flood was not preceded by any figris that it was at hand, but found men eating and drinking, and altogether unprepared, so should it be " in the day when the Son of man is revealed." From the continuance of the discourse, and applying still the coming without observation, to the coming of the kingdom of God, and to his own day, which is often spoken of as synonimous with the day in which the Son of man shall come in power and glory, fitting on the throne of his glory to judge the world, we may, without in the least straining for an inference, say, that the day of which he speaks to the disciples as coming unobserved, and the kingdom of God, of which he asserts the same thing to the Pharisees in the same conversation, are one and the same thing; and if the day of Christ be the same as the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God is here declared to be the kingdom of Chrift; therefore one with the Father, on that day, on the coming of that kingdom to be fully revealed to be God.

Χ.

The incomprehenfibility of the Father and the Son, except to each other, is a mark of equality of God head, which alone can be the fubject of the following: words of our Saviour himself. "No man knoweth the Son but the Father: neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him," Matth. xi. 27. Many a man had known Jesus Christ as Man; but as God, he was known then to the Father only, with whom he was one God. The parallel passage says, "No man knoweth who the Sor is, but the Father, &c." Luke x. 22. Mr. Lindsey fays he does, but I cannot think it. How shall he, who is known by all his disciples to be a man, say he is unknown to all but the Father, if he speak not of a nature not human, and of so high a rank as to be comprehensible to the Father only, even his Godhead? When

XI.

When our bleffed Lord, just before he afcended into heaven, was sending forth his disciples to baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and to teach them to observe all things which he had commanded them, he gives them a promise of his own assistance in the performance of their miffion, saying, "And, lo! I am with you alway even unto the end of the world," Matth. xxviii. 20. We accordingly find that, upon his ascent, "they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following," Mark xvi. 20. "How then shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?" Heb. ii. 3, 4. Here we find that the teffiinony of figns and miracles wrought to confirm what is preached by the apostles, is borne by God, and by the Lord Chrift, therefore one, with the Father, God.

XII.

It is evident what was the faith of the father of the fick child, who "cried out, and faid with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief," Mark ix. 24. So strong was his faith already, that he looked upon our Lord as poffeffed of power to assist his spirit, and fupply whatsoever was defective in his belief. This application was approved and confirmed to be right by our blessed Saviour himself, who granted the distressed father's prayer, and healed his fick child.

XIII.

Upon hearing Jesus Christ say to the fick of the palsy, "Man, thy fins are forgiven thee," I cannot won der at the remark of the Scribes, who said, "Who can forgive

H

forgive fins but God alone? For their law had shewed them that God had made an exclufive claim to the forgiveness of fins, saying, " I, even I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own fake, and will not remember thy fins," Ifai. xliii. 25. But our Saviour perceived their thoughts, and healed the fick man, in order to shew "that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins," Luke v. 20, 25. But God, whom Nehemiah, ix. 17, beautifully, calls "a God of pardons," has an exclusive right in the forgiveness of fins; the Son of man who exercises that right, even Jefus Christ, is therefore one with the Father, God.

XIV.

"Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's fake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for behold your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets," Luke vi. 22, 23. If the happiness of the disciples, to whom our Saviour addresses the words above, be not to proceed from the reproach, but from the cause wherefore they are to undergo it, there is no familitude between their cafe and that of the prophets, unless the prophets also suffered for the sake of the Son of man, and for the teftimony which they bore to him; and that this was really the intention of our Lord's words, the following text, spoken by St. Stephen, will evince, "Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the just one; of whom ye have now been the betrayers and murderers," Acts vii. 52. Stephen was, at the time when he uttered these words, under the perfecution which our Saviour had foretold to his disciples that they should sustain for his sake; he therefore reflected on the circumstance pointed out by him,