though turned into a throne of Grace, is still upheld in all its firmness, and in all its glory."* Here there can be no mistake as to the writer's views of the character of God; or should any one still be disposed to say of him, as some have said of Dr. Watts,-"The Doctor could not mean exactly what he says,"-let him carefully peruse the following sentences: "The path of access to Christ is open and free of every obstacle, which kept fearful and guilty man at an impracticable distance from the jealous and unpacified Lawgiver. He hath put aside the obstacle, and now stands in its place. Let us only go in the way of the Gospel, and we shall find nothing between us and God but the Author and Finisher of the Gospel,-who, on the one hand, beckons to him the approach of man, with every token of truth and tenderness; and, on the other hand, advocates our cause with God, and fills his mouth with arguments, and pleads that very atonement which was devised in love by the Father, and with the incense of which he was well pleased, and claims, as the fruit of the travail of his soul, all who put their trust in him ; and thus, laying his hand upon God, turns him altogether from the fierceness of his indignation."†

The reader will, no doubt, find some difficulty in reconciling the expressions which we have marked by italics; they are favorite expressions with all honest Calvinists, and in particular with the Doctor whose sermons we quote; he tells us of the impossibility, for instance, of man looking with any degree of complacency on his God; he can no more do so than "he can delight himself with the fair forms of a landscape, opened to his view, by the flashes of an impending volcano. He cannot draw an emotion so secret and delightful as love, from the view of that countenance, on which he beholds a purpose of vengeance against himself, as one of the children of iniquity." And why? It is because he sees the justice of God frowning upon him, and the truth of God pledged to the execution of its threatenings against him, and the holiness of God, which cannot look upon him without abhorrence, and all the sacred attributes of a nature that is jealous, and unchangeable, leagued against him for his everlasting destruction: every attribute of the Divinity gathering into a deeper frown of indignation." Under these circumstances, we are informed, the human heart remains shut, in all its receptacles against the various applications of God. But" God, who knew what was in man, seems to have known, that in his dark and guilty bosom there was but one solitary hold that he had over him." And how was this to be reached? Let the reader keep in mind, the frown, the deepening frown, the frown of heaven, the frown of that * Sermons, p. 178. † p. 182. ‡ p. 329.

countenance on which the sinner beholds a purpose of vengeance against himself; on which he sees all the attributes of a nature that is jealous, and unchangeable, leagued against him for his everlasting destruction, and let him listen to the Doctor's reply: "To reach it, he must just put on a look of graciousness, and tell us that he has no pleasure in our death, and manifest towards us the longings of a bereaved parent, and even humble himself to a suppliant in the cause of our return, and send a gospel of peace into the world, and bid his messengers to bear throughout all its habitations, the tidings of his good-will to the children of men."

staying

But we must close our remarks, and shall only further draw on the patience of the reader by quoting a sentence or two from the same author illustrative of the benefit which man reaps from this process of " the fury of the Avenger," or of "turning him altogether from the fierceness of his indignation," a process effected by the "days-man," who lays his hand upon both God and man, inducing the former "just to put on a smile of graciousness" towards the latter. "It is through the channel of this great expiation that the guilt of every believer is washed away; and it is through the imputed merits of him with whom the Father was well pleased, that every believer is admitted to the rewards of perfect obedience." "You are called farther to believe, that God is righteous, and has justified you. You have a warrant to put on the righteousness of Christ as a robe and as a diadem, and to go to the throne of grace with the petition of, Look upon me in the face of him who hath fulfilled all righteousness. You are furnished with such a measure of righteousness as God can accept without letting down a single attribute which belongs to him." "Thus much for what may be called the judicial righteousness, with which every believer is invested by having the merits of Christ imputed to him through faith."*

So teach the advocates of the Nicene doctrine of imputation, and so believe the great majority of the Christian world, notwithstanding the express declarations of Scripture, that "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All the transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live." (Ezek. xviii. 20-23.)

* p. 242, 243.

ΙΑΚΩΒΟΣ.

ON THE UNION OF THE LORD WITH THE FATHER, AND THE CORRESPONDING UNION EXISTING WITH THE MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH.*

OUR Lord uses these remarkable words in the 17th chapter of John :— (1) "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." (v. 5.) "Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." (v. 24.)

(2) "I pray for them, that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; and the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them, that they may be one even as we are One, I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." (v. 21-23.)

In the above words (2) our Lord does not pray that the Father and Himself may be One as the members of a Church in union with each other and with Him are one, and yet this is the sense commonly put upon the passage by members of the Old Church! These interpreters take the external union existing with men, as the pattern of the union between the Lord and the Father; and since the former is a union of distinct persons, it is thence unwarrantably concluded, that the union between the Father and the Son, is a union of two distinct persons also. It has not been seen, that this, in reality, is not a union, or oneness, but merely-unanimity. But our Lord, instead of proposing man's union with man, as the pattern of his own union with the Father, distinctly propounds his union with the Father, as the pattern of that union amongst men to which he refers. We have, then, in the first place, to ascertain, what is the nature of the union existing between the Father and the Son, before we can take a step towards the ascertainment of the sort of union pointed to, as desirable amongst those who are to be “made perfect in one." Our Lord's words are, "that they all may be one- -(How?) AS thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee," and how, let us then ask, are the Father and Son in each other? Again the Lord says, "that they may be One-(How?) EVEN AS we are One." Here, again, we are to possess ourselves first of the Divine pattern of the human example required; we are first to answer the question, "HOW are the Father and Son a One?"

The union of the Father with the Son, is either such a union as exists between distinct persons; or it is such as exists between the essentials of one person. We admit that it must be either of the one

* The remarks in this paper we trust will afford a satisfactory reply to the Queries received from a correspondent who signs himself "AN INQUIRER AFTER TRUTH;" we only regret that our space does not allow us to insert it entire.-ED.

character, or the other. The Old Church affirms the former; the New Church affirms the latter. If in the passage above (2) the Lord means that his union with the Father is the union of two Persons, he also means the union of his disciples as persons united in one church, to be understood in the parallel which he draws; but if he means his union with the Father to be understood as a union of principles in one Person, he must then mean a similar union to be understood in each of his disciples, otherwise his parallel would be no parallel at all.

The New Church denies the asserted union of Father and Son to be a union as of persons, because such a union disagrees with all the predicates which the Lord presents to us of the union between the Father and the Son. Let us take up and examine the assumption, that they are two Persons,-two Divine Persons, and, consequently, each possessing all things, and that independently of each other, as a personal or individual possession; and here we are met, at the outset, by a contradiction in terms. Two Divine Persons must each be independent, or neither of them can be Divine. Two Divine Persons must each possess power over all things, otherwise they are not Divine; and they must each possess a distinct will, or they are in no proper sense Persons. Distinctness of person implies some kind of difference; but a difference between infinitely perfect Persons implies, that the One is, in some respect, less perfect than the other, and therefore cannot be divine. Two persons, both infinitely perfect, must be identical-in will-in thought-in action, so identical that they cannot possibly be perceptibly distinct in any thing; they must merge in each other, so that no finite being could possibly perceive the existence of more than One perfectly Divine Person. This would be the case whether we suppose the existence of two or two millions of Divine Persons. No finite mind could perceive a distinction between two co-equal Divine or equally perfect Persons or Deities, because there could be no difference between them. The perception of distinctness between two existences, entirely depends on a perception of some points of difference in them; thus, place two sensible objects in comparison which are so perfectly alike that, in comparing them, no difference whatever can be seen, and even then they will be found to differ in this, that they occupy different portions of space. But such a difference as this could not possibly be present to the mind while thinking of two really Divine, that is, of two Omnipresent Persons, who are perfectly alike, because alike perfect. Such Divine Persons cannot be thought of as occupying different portions of space, and therefore, for want of some point of difference between them, the two will merge into an idea of one. Let any reader attempt to think

of two Divine Persons perfectly alike because alike perfect, and so long as he thinks of them as occupying different portions of space, (for instance, as the Son is commonly thought of as literally and locally sitting at the right hand of the Father,) he will be able to think of them as two Persons; but only let him reflect that such limited occupancy of space is altogether inconsistent with any proper idea of Divinity, and then try to think of them as two Omnipresent Persons, and he will then instantly find, that the idea of them as two, unavoidably merges into an idea of One Omnipresent Person only! Indeed, it appears utterly impossible to think of two Omnipresent Persons as co-existing.

Our Lord always presents Himself to our view, in the Gospels, as the Receiver, and the Father as the Giver to Him of "all things." But One Divine Person could not give "all things" to another without ceasing to be Divine through the want of them Himself! He could not give them, and yet still possess them; but the Father, after giving, is always represented as still possessing. On the other hand, the Divine Receiver of them, if a Person, being by virtue of his own Divinity already the possessor of "all things," (for this is the inalienable attribute of Divinity,) and thus being infinitely full, could not possibly receive any thing in addition! But what still more clearly shews the impossibility of the giving and receiving being such as exists between Persons is this, that such giving and receiving presupposes either the possibility of a Divine Person existing without possessing "all things," which is a contradiction in terms; or the existence of as many sets of "all things," as there are Divine Persons whose co-existence is supposed! But if instead of a giving and receiving as between Persons, which is evidently impossible, we understand the giving of the interiors to the exteriors of the same Person, then all difficulty vanishes, and no allegation of contradiction can apply.

And in respect to the Lord's praying "that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee," how is it possible that the Father and Son, as two Persons, (according to the generally accepted sense of the word Person,) could thus permeate each other, as they must do, according to the tripersonal understanding of the expressions? Principles-the interiors and exteriors-the soul and the body-the will and the understanding, may thus permeate each other, but persons

cannot.

Thus are we compelled by our respect for the Lord's sayings, and by our convictions of their superlative excellence, to abstain from giving them the common tripersonal acceptation, inasmuch as that acceptation