of the Father, Col. i. 15. Heb. i. 3. John i. 14; x. 38; xiv. 10. Would theologians keep these ideas in view, I cannot help thinking they might be able to understand each other better, and to reason more conclusively. MOSES STUART: Letters to Channing; in Miscellanies, pp. 158–9, 164–5.

The writer, however, says that the apostles sometimes use the term Son of God as a proper name, and as designating a distinction in the Godhead which he believes to be eternal; but, judging from Heb. i. 1-3, the only passage he refers to in proof of his opinion, we may without hesitation affirm, that the meaning which he himself attaches to the title in the above extract, as implying Christ's "resemblance to the Father," is far more probable, and that the apostles had no belief whatever in eternal distinctions in the essence of God.

There is a very large class of texts, which, either directly or by implication, make the Son of God inferior to the Father, and dependent from him. 1. The Son prays to the Father, John xvii. 1; xi. 41. He prays as the Son; prays that he may be glorified or honored by the Father as the Son. This certainly implies that as the Son he is dependent. 2. He avows his inferiority to the Father, and his dependence from him: John xiv. 28. Mark xiii. 32. John v. 19. Matt. xx. 23. 3. When the Son claims authority and power, he always represents them as received by donation from the Father, and, consequently, not originally and essentially his own: Matt. xi. 27; xxviii. 18. John v. 26, 27; vi. 57; viii. 54; x. 18; xvii. 2, 3, 6. 4. The Son is subordinate and subject to the Father: John vi. 38–40; xii. 49, 50; xvii. 4; iii. 16. 5. It was the Son of God that was given; the Son that was sent; the Son that was born, that agonized in Gethsemane, that died upon the cross, that was raised from the dead by the Father, was exalted to the right hand of God, was constituted the head of the church, &c. Nothing of all this can be predicated of Divinity; and it consequently shows, that, as the Son of God, Jesus is a man. The apostles have given the same view of his Sonship. One or two texts only must suffice here: Heb. v. 5-9. All this [all that is expressed in this passage] is said of Jesus as the Son of God. He did not glorify himself, but was glorified by the Father; he did not constitute himself a priest, but was made such: both his Sonship and his priesthood were derived from the Father's good pleasure. As the Son, he desired to be delivered from death; as the Son, he prayed to the Father, who alone could save him from it; as the Son, he suffered, and learned obedience by his sufferings; as the Son, he was made

perfect, and was constituted the Author of salvation, by the will of the Father. Is it possible that the inspired author who wrote these things could have thought, that, as the Son, Jesus is God? Certainly not. Every sentence in this passage shows, that, with regard to his Sonship, he considered him a man. 1 Cor. xv. 24-28: Here the apostle describes the glory of the Son of God, in his universal reign over the creatures of God, as one which God the Father had given him; for it is He that put all things under his feet; and, in his highest glory, he, as the Son, is still subject to the Father, and the Father is all in all, all in the Son, as well as in every creature in the universe. Can it be, that, when St. Paul gave this account of the Son of God, he considered him, as the Son, divine and equal with the Father? Certainly not. . . . We are told, indeed, that, inasmuch as Jesus Christ is not called a Son, but the Son, the use of the definite article, when the application of the title is made to him, shows that he is the Son of God in a sense peculiar to himself, and in which there can be no other Son of God, and, consequently, in a sense in which he is equal with the Father. But how can this consequence follow? A son is not necessarily equal with his father. In some respects, he never can be equal with him: he must necessarily be younger than his father; neither does the father derive his existence from the son, but the son from the father. But, passing over this ground of objection, we call Homer the poet, and Demosthenes the orator, and the first William of the kings of England the conqueror. Does this phraseology imply that there have been no other poets or orators or conquerors? The use of the definite article with the title Son of God, when it is applied to Christ, does indeed designate him as sustaining the relation of Sonship in a sense peculiar to himself; but the difference which it marks between him and other sons is not a difference of nature, but a difference of measure. Abridged from DR. LEWIS MAYER, in the Biblical Repository for January, 1840; second series, vol. iii. pp. 150-4.

Amid all the influences favorable to a belief in the essential Deity of Christ, there is perhaps none so paramount in the orthodox mind as the unscriptural sense which is attached to the title "Son of God," and similar expressions, applied in the New Testament to our Lord. Forgetting that God is an infinite Spirit and a universal Parent, the Father of all who have been created in his moral image, and especially of those who devote their faculties and their lives to his service, Christians in general have been prone to form material conceptions respecting his nature, and to regard him in the

the mightiest, indeed, of

character of an Omnipotent and Supreme Man, Potentates, but still with human passions and feelings; not as infinitely blessed in his single and glorious being, but as producing other existences with an essence and with attributes identical with his own, rejoicing in the company of his fellows, of whom he is the Origin and Head, and holding with them converse and counsel of an ineffable kind. One of these divine persons was the Son of God, and another the Holy Ghost; each of them equal in nature, power, and glory with the Father, from whom they derived their being and their qualities. This, as has already been at some length shown, is Trinitarianism; at least, one of its forms, the Athanasian,- that which has been most commonly defended by divines, professed by the laity, but, because contradictory in its language, not steadily and fully believed by any one.

But the idea of Christ's having been in essence the Son of God, either from all eternity or for an indefinite and inconceivable time before the creation of the world, has been so deeply stamped into the heart of Christendom by the creed and the catechism, that, whatever doubts may be entertained as to the absolute equality of the Son with the Father, there is little or no difficulty felt in supposing Jesus to have the same nature as God; as little, indeed, as in regarding Isaac to possess the same nature as his father, Abraham. With views of the Divinity so low and so human do men take the Bible into their hands, and despoil the titles "Son of God," "the onlybegotten or well-beloved of the Father," of all their moral and celestial beauty, by investing them with significations earthly and unspiritual.

Happily, however, all Christians will not be bound with the bands, or be compelled to read with the glasses, of an Athanasius. Some will cast aside the swaddling-clothes of a childish and semipagan age, and, with a clearer and more heavenly vision, discern the truth as it is in Jesus, instead of groping amid the dim dogmas and unrealities that issued from the councils and the schools. Fraught with this free and more simple spirit are the sentiments we have just quoted, sentiments the truth and excellence of which, in the main, must, we think, be perceived by every dispassionate reader of the Bible.

The Christ of the Holy Scriptures was no natural or essential Son of God; no physical or metaphysical emanation from the Father; no eternally begotten person or being; no second person of the Godhead, or of a Triune Deity; no God-man, possessed of properties destructive of each other; but a man the most highly chosen and approved of God; the divinest of God's messengers and prophets, raised up and appointed by God to be the Redeemer of the world; filled with all the exuberance of God's spirit, blessed by all the tenderness of the Father's love; more than a son of God, because more devoted than others to his heavenly Father; THE Son of God, the only-begotten and best beloved of God, because distinguished above all God's children whether prophets or philosophers by a deeper insight into God's designs, by a holier love for his character, by a more devout and reverent submission to his will.

SECT. IV.

CHRIST NOT CALLED "GOD," IN THE HIGHEST SENSE

OF THE TERM.

A god on earth thou art. SHAKSPEARE.

In a figurative sense, vɛòç ["God"] signifies "he who acts by the authority and command of God; he who on the earth represents the Deity." Thus magistrates and judges are called "gods," John x. 34, 35, comp. Ps. lxxxii. 6. Exod. xxii. 28. Ps. xcvii. 9; as also angels and princes, 1 Cor. viii. 5. Exod. vii. 1. — J. F. SCHLEUSNER: Lexicon in Novum Testamentum, art. Oɛòs, 4.

These [the passages which apply to Christ the unqualified appellation "God"] are not decisive in the present inquiry; for although they imply divine honor in some sense, yet, as it is possible the term may be employed in a secondary or figurative sense, they cannot be appealed to as necessarily denoting full and supreme Divinity. JOSEPH HAVEN, Jun., in the New Englander for February, 1850; - vol. viii. (new series, vol. ii.) p. 9.

To prevent mistake, it is but right to state that the author of this extract notices John i. 1, 3; Rom. ix. 5; 1 John v. 20; Tit. ii. 13, as texts which speak of Christ as God in the highest sense. He says that Heb. iii. 4 is "perhaps justly regarded as somewhat obscure."

PSALM xlv. 6, AND HEB. i. 8.

The Hebrew word, in the text, designates the rank of a judge and sovereign; as if the Psalmist, in connecting it with that of the "throne" of the Messiah, meant to say that Jesus should be appointed by his Father the Judge of the living and the dead, possess the throne of David his ancestor, and reign over the true Israel ... during all eternity. AUGUSTIN CALMET on Ps. xlv. 6.

It will be proper to lay aside from this discussion the consideration of Christ's divine nature, not because we deny that doctrine, or think that no regard should be paid to it in treating of the regal power of Christ, but because, wherever they speak of him in the character of a sovereign, the sacred writers apply that imagery to him as man.... We have no hesitation in referring Heb. i. 8, 9, particularly to the human nature of Christ, and, with the distinguished interpreters who follow the great GROTIUS, to render ¿ póvos σov å veòs, "God is thy

δ

throne; " that is, God has conferred on thee regal authority; the word "throne" being used by the metonymy of the sign for the thing signified, and of the effect for the efficient cause. Thus "throne" is substituted for Him who set Christ on the throne, just as our Lord is often called "life," instead of him who imparts life; and as the Philippians, chap. iv. 1, are termed "the joy and crown " of Paul, because they refreshed his mind, and held him in honor. In the forty-fifth Psalm, from which the quotation is taken, there are no traces of the Deity of Christ; and since the words as they occur in this chapter of Paul's, together with the context, speak clearly of Christ's human nature, they cannot form an address to him as God. JOHN AUGUSTUS NÖSSELT: Opuscula, fasc. ii. pp. 355–6, 358–9.

Isa. vii. 14, and Matt. i. 23.

Here Christ is not manifestly called "God;" but the name "Emmanuel" is given to that son to intimate that God would be merciful to the human race. For God is said to be with those whom he favors. ERASMUS: Apologia ad J. Stunicam; Op., tom. ix. p. 310.

The name "Immanuel" denotes the certain aid of God against the Syrians and Israelites, and his preservation of the city in opposition to Sennacherib. GROTIUS on Isa. vii. 14.

There is a presence of favor and distinction whereby God is said to be, in a peculiar manner, with those whom he loves and blesses above others. In this regard, the child here spoken of is justly called "Emmanuel," because, as St. Paul speaks, "God was in him reconciling the world to himself; "... and again, by him they "who were sometimes afar off are made nigh, have access to the Father, are accepted in the Beloved," 2 Cor. v. 19. Eph. ii. 13, 18, 19; i. 6. DR. GEORGE STANHOPE: Comment on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv. p. 198.

But the dean afterwards explains the title as indicative of the Saviour's divine nature.

What you say respecting the argument in favor of Christ's divine nature, from the name given him in Matt. i. 23, accords in the main with my own views. To maintain, as some have done, that the name "Immanuel" proves the doctrine in question, is a fallacious argument. Is not Jerusalem called "Jehovah our righteousness"? And is Jerusalem divine, because such a name is given to it? MOSES STUART : Letters to Channing, in Miscellanies, p. 148.