ment; which, being penned with that simplicity peculiar to the early ages of the world, introduce all princely characters expressing themselves invariably in their own proper number, and with the strictest grammatical propriety; nor does it distinguish, in that respect, between the most potent of sovereigns and the very lowest of the human species.* And as it regards the second opinion: That angels should act as coadvisers and coadjutors in the administration of the affairs of the world, is not only repugnant to the very meaning of the term angel, itself; which denotes a being deputed on a mission from God; but is wholly unsanctioned by any declaration to that effect, either in Moses or in the Prophets. It is, indeed, difficult to determine, whether the absurdity or the impiety with which the Creator is thus supposed to consult with created beings on such highly important matters, deserves the greater execration, for, says Scripture, "Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor." John Xeres, a Jew, converted in England some years ago, published a sensible and affectionate address to his unbelieving brethren, in which he lays before them his reasons for leaving the Jewish religion and embracing the christian. "The christians," says he, "confess Jesus to be God; and it is this that makes us look upon the gospels as books that overturn the very principles of religion." Then, he undertakes to prove that the unity of God is not such as he once understood it to be, an unity of persons, but of essence, under which more persons than one are comprehended; and the first proof he offers is that of the name Elohim. "Why else," says he, "is that frequent mention of God by nouns of the plural number? as in Gen. i: 1, where the word Elohim, which is rendered God, is of the plural number, though annexed to a verb of the singular number; which demonstrates as evidently as may be, that there are several persons partaking of the same Divine nature and essence." To what has been said, we will add the testimony of the celebrated Jewish work called Zohar,† a work esteemed by the orthodox Jews, and by all former Jews, as scarcely second in authority to the Bible, and believed by them to have been writ *See also, the exposure of this objection in Smith's Messiah, vol. 1., pp. 486-488. †See quoted in Kidder's Demonstration of the Messiah, pt. iii, p. 83, and Jameson's Reply to Priestly, vol. 1., pp. 75, 76. ten before the Talmud, if not before the time of Christ. The author of this work renders Deut. vi: 4, in this manner: "The Lord, (or Jehovah,) and our God, and the word, are one." In his exposition of the passage beginning with Jehovah, he says: "He is the beginning of all things, the ancient of ancients, the Garden of Roots, and the perfection of all things." The other, or our God, is the depth, and the Fountain of Sciences, which proceed from that Father. The other (or Lord,) is called the measure of the Voice. He is one; so that one concludes with the other, and unites them together. Neither can one be divided from the other. And, therefore, he saith, Hear, O Israel, that is, join these together and make him one substance. For whatsoever is in the one, is in the other. He hath been the whole, he is the whole, and he will be the whole. To the above exposition we would add the following, taken from the work itself. "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: Israel unites the three hypostases, the Lord, our God, one Lord, to make all, to be but one.”—(Zohar, vol. ii., fol. '160, col. 2.) The following passage is also found on the same page, viz: "The Lord, our God, Lord: this is the mystery. of the unity in three hypostases. It certainly dates from the first to the eighth Century. These words are also given by Rabbi Markante, which undoubtedly implies his approbation of_them. Such is the remarkable exposition of this passage, as given by Dr. Jameson, in his reply to Dr. Priestly. (1) From other portions of this work these expressions are quoted, (2) Jehovah, Elohenu, Jehovah, (i. e. Jehovah, our God, Jehovah.) These are the three degrees with respect to this sublime mystery; "in the beginning God (Elohim,) created the heavens and the earth," and again, "Jehovah, Elohenu, Jehovah, they are one; the three forms (modes or things) which are one." Elsewhere it is observed, "there are two and one is joined to them, and they are three, and when the three are one, he says to (or of) them these are the two names that Israel heard, Jehovah, Jchovah, and Elohenu (our God) is joined to them; and it is the seal of the ring of truth, and when they are joined, they are one in unity. This is illustrated by the three names the soul of man is called by, the soul, spirit and breath. The great Phillippes de Marnay, (3) among other ancient authors, quotes the exposition of Rabbi Ibba of this text, to this purport, that the first Jehovah, which is the incommunicable name of God, is the Father; by Elohim is meant the Son, who is the fountain of all knowledge; and by the second, Jehovah, is meant the Holy Ghost proceeding from them, and he is called Achad, one, because God is one. adds, that this mystery was not to be revealed till the coming of the Messiah. The author of the Zohar applies the word holy, which is thrice repeated in the vision of Isaiah, (4) to the three persons in the Deity, whom he elsewhere calls three suns, or lights, three sovereigns,-without beginning and without end. [1] See vol. i., p. 75, and the references. [2] See Gill's Comment. in loco, and Univ. Hist. vol. iii., 11. Ibba But it is not merely to the use of the plural term as that by which the Old Testament Scriptures usually designate the Deity, that we refer as a proof, that according to God's own revelation of what his nature is, it unites a plurality of persons in a unity of essence. Written at a time when polytheism abounded, and to a people ever prone to fall into idolatry, the use of this term by God in reference to himself, and that even when announcing his Unity, is, indeed, most powerful evidence. This conclusion is, however, confirmed by another remarkable anomaly in the language used by the Old Testament writers when speaking of God, viz: the combination of these plural appellatives with singular verbs, pronouns and adjectives. To this usage only a few exceptions are found in the Hebrew Scriptures, from among hundreds of cases in which the plural appellative is used,-a circumstance which, whilst it shows that this was the regular usage of the sacred writers, at the same time proves that it would have been equally consistent with the idiom of the language, to have followed the ordinary rule of grammar applying to such cases. "For this anomaly, the Trinitarian hypothesis suggests a natural and easy solution. Apart from this hypothesis, however, no explanation of this usage can be furnished; and it must remain as one of the most unaccountable and capricious departures from one of the fundamental laws of human speech, of which we have an instance in the literature of any nation."‡ We are thus brought to the conclusion, that in this first and great commandment, God makes known the unity of his Godhead, and yet, at the same time, the trinity of his persons, and that such was the interpretation given of it by the most ancient, the wisest, and the most authoritative Jewish Rabbis. And it is no small confirmation of this that when the Jews, long before the christian era,* ceased to use the word Jehovah which they never utter, they employed instead of it, the word Adonai, which is another plural title for the Deity. When, therefore, in this, and some four or five other passages in the Old Testament, God declares that "he is one God and there is none else," the question arises, who is the being Smith's Messiah. *Our evidences are found in the Septuagent. †Exod. xx: 2, 3, Is. xliv: 8, and xlvi: 9, and xlv: 21, 22. These remarks apply to the first and second commandment, in which the same combination of Jehovah and Elohim takes place, and we are required to have no other Gods but this one, who unites in his one Godhead three persons. 9-Vol. IX. who is thus expressly declared to be the only true God? He is called the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But who, we again ask, is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Jacob and the prophet Hosea concur in declaring that he is a certain angel or messenger before whom they walked; who fed Jacob all his life long, who redeemed him from all evil, with whom he had power and prevailed, and who yet is Jehovah the God of hosts. But to be an angel or messenger he must be sent. Who then, is the SENDER of this MESSENGER? This question is resolved by the prophets Zechariah and Malachi. They teach us that the messenger of the covenant, though himself Jehovah and the God of Israel, is nevertheless, SENT, in his quality of a messenger, by Jehovah.§ Here, most unequivocally, we have two distinct persons, a SENDER and a SENT; each of whom is declared to be Jehovah; and the latter of whom, or Jehovah the messenger, is declared by Jacob and Hosea to be the God of Israel. But further, according to Malachi and Haggai, he is a being who is characterized, as the desire of all nations, who is announced as about to come suddenly to his temple; and whose act of coming to his temple is chronologically limited to the days of the second temple, which is thence to exceed the first temple in glory, and which was finally destroyed by Titus and the Romans. But to such characteristics Christ alone will be found to answer. Whence, christians have, in all ages, most logically and Scripturally concluded that Christ, or the second person of the blessed Trinity, or in other words, that God the Son is that messenger Jehovah, who is declared to have been sent by Jehovah, and who is yet Jehovah, and who is also, equally declared to be the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. But still further. In many passages of the Old Testament the phrase "The Spirit of God," or "Jehovah," occurs in conjunction with certain attributes, qualities and acts, which lead to the conclusion that by that phrase is designated a Divine person. These would seem to conduct to the inference, that by this "Spirit of Jehovah" was intended as by the phrase already examined, "Angel of Jehovah," a Divine person, in some sense distinct from, and yet in another sense, one with the invisible Jehovah. Exod. iii: 15, Gen. xlviii: 15, 16, and xxxii: 24, 30, Hos. xii: 2, 15. §Zechariah ii: 6, 11, Malachi iii: 1. In other passages again, these three persons are introduced together. Thus, in Isaiah, lxiii: 9, 10, it is said, "In all their afflictions he was afflicted, but the Angel of his presence saved them; in his love and grace he redeemed them, and bare them, and carried them from the beginning. But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit, so that he was turned to be their enemy, and himself fought against them." Another passage to the same effect occurs in Isaiah xlviii: 16. "Approach unto me, hear this; from the beginning have I not spoken occultly, from the time when it was I was there, and now THE LORD hath sent ME and his SPIRIT." The speaker here is the same who, in verse 12, calls himself "The First and the Last," and who, in verse 13, claims to himself the work of creation. The speaker therefore, must be regarded as Divine. But in the verse before us, this divine being speaks of HIMSELF as distinct from THE LORD GOD, and as sent by HIM. He describes himself also, as the author of communications to men from the first. Now, such a being can be none other than the second person in the Trinity, the revealer of God to man, at once the equal and the messenger of the Father; and so the passage has been viewed by the great body of interpreters, ancient and modern. What then, was the design of God in all these revelations of himself, of which, we have only given an illustration? To use the language of Bishop Hinds, "It surely must have been designed to suggest to the minds of his people, and to habituate their minds to contemplate God as Three. Three different divine Persons appear as the agents and rulers, in a threefold dispensation; so different indeed, that if left to form our conjectures of the divine nature, from the facts of this progressive economy, all view of one God must have been discarded. The facts of Revelation represent God as a Trinity; and it is only by express and perpetual qualifications of a view so suggested, that we are assured of his Unity. The doctrine of the Trinity in short, rests primarily on historical facts; the doctrine of the Unity on a series of declarations and other provisions made in reference to those facts. If we suppose the Bible stript of all those provisions which it contains for qualifying its historical representations of the Divine nature, it would exhibit three Gods; but with those provisions, that representation becomes a Trinity in Unity.* *See The Three Temples of the One True God Contrasted.-Oxf. 1850. |