some such terms as the following: "by man, indeed, came death, but by a person of a more exalted nature, by an angel, by a GOD-MAN, by JEHOVAH himself, came the resurrection of the dead." If any of the latter appellations convey the true meaning of the apostle, he is chargeable with great inaccuracy, to say the least of it, in suffering his readers to fall into so fatal an error as the genuine passage is capable of occasioning.

Among the texts adduced to substantiate a belief of the proper Deity or Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ, that of Psalm ii, 7, is much relied on: "Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee." If the Messiah be truly and properly God, equal in the dignity of his person to Jehovah, he must be eternal; " without beginning of days or end of years." The two creeds already quoted declare him to have been begotten before all worlds, and to be coeternal with the Father. But the person of whom the psalmist speaks was begotten on some particular day; "This day have I begotten thee:" it cannot therefore be Jesus of whom he speaks, or Jesus cannot have existed from all eternity. But all doubt concerning the proper understanding of this text is done away by St. Paul (Acts, xiii, 33), who, in the most unequivocal manner, interprets this passage, not of the generation of Jesus, as the coeternal Son of God, but of his resurrection from the dead. "God," says

he, "hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath RAISED UP Jesus again: as it is also written in the second Psalm, Thou art my son, this

day (namely, from the day of the resurrection) have I begotten thee." " So, also, he is called the first born (Col., i, 18), and first begotten from the dead (Rev., i, 5), as being the first raised up, and the living voucher for the future resurrection of all men.

Another argument for the Deity of our Lord is found in Matth., xxviii, 9. Jesus is here represented as risen from the dead, and meeting the women, who were hastening to inform the disciples of the event they had just learned from a divine messenger; namely, that their crucified Master was indeed risen, agreeably to his own predictions. "All hail," said the Lord;" and they came, and held him by the feet, and worshipped him." Before we can safely admit this text to be a satisfactory evidence, that Jesus was of the same nature with God, the equal of Jehovah in honour, power, and eternal duration, it should be proved, that the adoration of these women was such as was usually paid to the Supreme Being alone; for, if it was only one of those forms of respect, which men are accustomed to pay to each other, it cannot prove that the being, to whom it was offered in this instance, was known to be God. The Greek word, which is here rendered worshipped, means simply to crouch, or fawn, like a dog at his master's feet; and thence came to be used for prostration, or bending after the Eastern manner; a custom that is very ancient, and is still used as a mark of respect to rank and consequence in Eastern countries. It was the posture of civil reverence as well as of religious homage*.

* See Parkhurst's Greek Lexicon, on the word; and Harmer's Observations, No. 12, ch. x.

The limits to which this Letter must necessarily be confined, will only allow me to go into the examination of one or two more Scripture passages. I therefore select an argument or two, which require a different mode of treatment. The instances in which errors have arisen from corruptions of the original text of Scripture, which the industry of learned commentators has brought to light, and of mistranslations, which an increased knowledge of the ancient languages has rectified, would be more than sufficient to exhaust both your patience and mine. But one example, which combines both these cases, and which, at the same time, offers another elucidation of the sense in which the term mystery is to be understood, I cannot refrain from bringing under your notice. It is 1 Timothy, iii, 15, 16. By an alteration of the Greek word, which stands for he who, for that which stands for God, a sense has been put upon this passage, which could never be contemplated by the writer, and which has procured it the honour of being, ever since the sixth century, one of the pillars of the doctrine of the Deity of Jesus. The alteration requiring an entirely new translation of the whole passage, I subjoin it, and recommend a comparison of it with the received "These things I write unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly; but if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God (which is the church of the living God) as a pillar and support of the truth. And, without controversy, great is the mystery of. godliness; HE WHO was manifested in the flesh was

text.

justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached among the heathen, believed on in the world, raised up in glory*." In the passage, as it thus stands, there is the same want of foundation on which to build the Godhead of our Lord, that cannot but be remarked throughout the writings of St. Paul; nor is there any thing here said of him but what might, without any offence, be said of a prophet of the Most High, bearing a commission to instruct the world in the principles of true religion. The term mystery, also, deprived of a property, which this passage has long allotted to it, of expressing a mysterious union of the divine and human nature in the person of Christ, must be understood merely of the gospel, as a dispensation, whose power to promote godliness had already been found, beyond all controversy, to be very great.

But, it ought not to be wondered at, if texts and detached portions of Scripture are found, upon close examination, to be defective of proof, or to have been generally misunderstood, considering how many centuries the sacred volumes have been exposed to the chance of error from the carelessness or ignorance of copyists; how many doctrines have, upon their pretended authority, risen and chased each other like the waves of the ocean, but, being destitute of truth, have sunk into oblivion; and to how great fluctuations of meaning the modern languages are subject; so that books written but a few years before the

*See Note D.

completion of the present authorized version of the Scriptures, are now scarcely intelligible to ordinary readers. There is, however, one branch of criticism, one faculty of discriminating between truth and falsehood, which is to a certain degree in the power of every one, and to the results of which every Christian who has full possession of his reasoning faculties is bound to submit; I mean the comparing of the Scriptures with themselves, in order as well to ascertain the meaning of their own expressions, as to ascertain the degree of credit due to them as consistent narratives. No revelation given from heaven can possibly lose by such an examination: without it, mankind must be in perpetual danger of receiving, as the dictates of inspiration, compositions of designing men; or the sacred records themselves so altered and disfigured as no longer to bear the resemblance of the originals; or, of having their faith and reason grossly abused, as they have been in times of popery, by a multitude of spurious works now universally rejected by the Protestant world. Our Lord did not scruple to submit his high pretensions to a fair and reasonable scrutiny. "Search the Scriptures," said he, "they are they which testify of me" (John, v. 39): "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me" (x, 25.): "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not." (x, 37.)

What shall we say then, my friends, when we find that portions of those very writings, of which modern orthodoxy seems determined to respect the corrup