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gative of forgiving sins, as is asserted in COL. iii. 13: "Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any; even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye."

I must now refer to the mode by which Mr. Porter endeavoured to obviate the argument for the Deity of Christ, which I derived from JOHN xiv. 14: "If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it." He produced the declaration of Christ, in JOHN xvi. 23: Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you;" and he told us with the most perfect composure, that the latter passage explains the former, so as to bring it into consistency with his views! I should be anxious to know on what principle the latter text explains the former? Does Mr. Porter apply to the interpretation of Scripture, some principle of criticism similar to that by which positive and negative quantities in algebraic computations destroy and neutralize each other? Does he place the sign of plus before one passage, and of minus before another; and then, by an algebraic calculation, neutralize the one by the other? For my part, I believe the two declarations contained in these two portions of the word of God. I believe that the Father will give what the Christian prays for in the name of Christ; and I also believe that Christ will give what the Christian prays for: for I believe that" what things soever the Father doeth, the same doeth the Son likewise." John v. 19. And I would not wish to apply the principle which Mr. Porter has adopted, of neutralizing Scripture, by a rule similar to that by which positive and negative quantities in algebra destroy each other.

Mr. Porter has laid great stress upon the fact, that Christ_prayed to the Father only, whilst he was upon earth. I answer, Is there not a sufficiency of Scripture evidence, to demonstrate the duty of praying to Christ? did not Stephen pray to him in his dying hour? did not the Apostle Paul pray to him thrice, to be delivered from the thorn in the flesh? and were not Christians designated as those who called upon the name of Christ ?-Does Mr. Porter require of me to produce evidence of Christ's praying to himself! Surely this is manifestly one of those duties, in support of which he could not leave his own example. In many points, the example of Christ, considered as a model for our moral imitation, was defective: he did not leave the example of being a good husband or a good father; and, from the nature of the thing, he could not leave us an example of praying to himself: it were absurd to expect it. We must obviously look to the conduct of the apostles and disciples, as recorded in the rest of Scripture, for practical evidence in support of this duty.

The next passage which Mr. Porter quoted, was JOHN xi. 41: "Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me."-But this, however, is not a prayer for ability, to perform the miracle of raising Lazarus; and the words which follow in the 42d verse explain the object of the Saviour in this address: "And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by, I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me." Mr. Porter has asked the following question, upon which he seemed to lay considerable stress: "If Christ be God, why should

he have prayed at all ?"-I answer this question by simply proposing another: "If Christ was man, why should he have lived without prayer ?"

He next referred to JOHN xv. 26, in which Christ says to his disciples, "I will pray the Father, and he will send you another Comforter."-But this passage only supplies me with part of the argument, by which I prove, that the Father and the Son are oné, in the act of sending the Spirit to the church: the remainder of the argument, which attributes the exercise of the same prerogative to Christ, occurs in JOHN xv. 26, "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father."

I shall now direct your attention to the prayer of our Saviour, which is recorded in the 17th chapter of JOHN, which Mr. Porter evidently regards as supplying him with irrefragable arguments against the doctrine of the Deity of Christ. This prayer, however, was presented to the Father in "the days of his flesh," and is easily accounted for by the official station which the Redeemer occupied as the great High Priest of his people's profession. It was customary for the High Priest, immediately before the great day of atonement, to offer up a solemn prayer to God-first, for himself; secondly, for the sons of Aaron, who were joined with him in the priesthood; and, thirdly, for the entire congregation of the people. If you examine this prayer of Christ's, you will find an exact correspondence with this arrangement. From verse 1 to 5, he prays for himself; from verse 6 to 19, he prays for the Apostles, who were, in a subordinate sense, united with him in the great office of preaching the Gospel; and from verse 20 to the end, he prays for his whole church : and the time when he offered up this prayer was immediately before that solemn hour, in which he offered himself without spot to God, and it was uttered by him in his official character as our great High Priest.

I shall now refer to some parts of this prayer, in order to show that the language it contains is totally inconsistent with the condi.. tion of a creature. In the first verse, he prays in these remarkable words: "Father, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee." Now, imagine a creature presenting such a prayer as thisasking his Creator to glorify him, in order that he might glorify his Creator! Imagine, for instance, Gabriel himself, who stands upon a lofty elevation within the sunshine of the eternal throne, adopting such language in prayer to that Being who imparts to him all that seraphic intelligence which gives emphasis and vigour to the anthem in which he celebrates the matchless glory of his Creator! Nor is the language which occurs in the fifth verse more consistent with the character and condition of a creature: "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." In this passage, Christ takes a retrospective view of the glory which he had with the Father before the creation of the world, in terms which prove that his glory was precisely the same as the glory of the Father; and he takes a prospective view of the glory which he should resume when the period of his official subordination had expired. Now, I ask, does this verse contain

the language of a creature? Could a creature pray to his Creator to glorify him in this way? Alas! alas! Surely, if we calculate the distance which exists between the lowest and the highest created being, that distance is but a speck when contrasted with the unmeasured interval which there is between the highest created being and the Lord of hosts!-and surely an humbler style of address would suit the dependence and inferiority of any created intelligence, no matter how exalted!

I now direct your attention to the 10th verse: "And all mine are thine, and thine are mine."-Mark the emphasis of this declaration: all that belongs to the Father, belongs also to the Son; and all which belongs to the Son, belongs also to the Father. Now, again, imagine a created being adopting such an assertion as this, in prayer to Jehovah-" All mine are thine, and thine are mine ;"- an assertion which implies that there is a reciprocity of interest, and a mutual possession of property, between the Father and the Son; and this necessarily results from the fact, that the Father and the Son are one God, in consequence of which there is this mutual proprietorship between them. And here I lay down this general position, that although the New Testament contains abundant proofs of the official subordination of Christ to the Father; yet these proofs are intermixed with statements which leads us up to a recognition of his Deity, like so many bright and lucid spots emanating from the eclipsed splendour of his Divinity, and bursting through the opposing vail of that humanity in which he tabernacled amongst men. This chapter contains several of these lucid points, which serve as indices to conduct us to a contemplation of a higher glory than the Saviour manifested here below. Look, for further example, to the 24th verse, in which he does not say, "Father, I pray," or "Father, I entreat;" but he says, in language which simply contains a declaration of his purpose and intention: "Father, I WILL that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold the glory which thou hast given me." Surely such a style of address as this would be blasphemy and presumption of the blackest dye, in the mouth of a merely created being, and such as would excite the astonishment of even Satan himself! And how could Christ have adopted this language, if he did not possess an authority and a power which was one with the Father's, and independent of all superior control? This allusion of Mr. Porter's to the 17th of JOHN was most unfortunate for his cause. I admit that Christ did pray, and I admit that this proves his inferiority, so far as his humanity is concerned; yet, even in this prayer, there are several intimations interspersed, which, as I have already shown, leads us up to a contemplation of a higher glory.

But, in connexion with this chapter which I have been considering, Mr. Porter has asked, Why did Christ pray to the Father to give him glory, since, if he was God, he could not acquire more glory than he already possessed? I ask, in reply, What does the Psalmist mean, when he says, in PSALM xix. "The heavens declare the glory of God ?" I ask, If the Father is God, possessing an immense and immeasurable expanse of glory-a glory commensurate with

infinity and everlasting as eternity, how could creation add to the glory of the supreme and everlasting God? And yet creation does give glory to God. The glory, therefore, for which the Saviour prayed was this-that the glory of being the Saviour and Redeemer might be superadded to his previous glory of being the Creator and Preserver of men; so that now all glory, moral and natural, might be concentrated into one great mass, so as to form an amplitude of splendour, which would command the homage of the intelligent creation of God!

Mr. Porter next referred to JOHN xii. 27: "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause, came I unto this hour."-I see no difficulty whatever in this text, when I recollect what ISAIAH said, that Christ should make his soul an offering for sin; for when we speak of the atonement of the Saviour, we should not restrict our views to the offering of his body upon Calvary, but should take into account the agonies of his soul, which he endured in the garden of Gethsemane. But does it militate against his Deity, to say that his soul was troubled? Do we not read in Scripture, that God is grieved and angry with the wicked every day? and is it not as difficult to reconcile these statements with the Deity of the Father, as to reconcile the passage under consideration with the Deity of the Son? But if Christ be the highest superangelic being, I ask, How could his soul be troubled? And whatever answer Mr. Porter will give to this, will supply me with a solution of whatever difficulty he thinks is connected with the Deity of Christ by this text.

Mr. Porter referred to the fact of an angel's having strengthened Christ in the garden. I reply, that, if he argues that this circumstance proves him to be inferior to the Father, it also proves him to be inferior to the angel who strengthened him; for how could a superangelic being be strengthened by a being inferior to himself?

Mr. Porter informed us yesterday, that he did not believe in the mere humanity of Christ; and he also argued against the Deity of Christ, on the ground that MATTHEW, who was associated with him during his public ministry, never once mentioned his Deity. I beg to remark, in reply to this, that MATTHEW never once asserted, or gave the slightest intimation of Christ's having been a superangelic being; so that, if MATTHEW's asserting one thing or the other be of consequence to the argument, we must admit that he taught the lowest Humanitarianism; for, even after the most remarkable of all the miracles which Christ performed, the exclamation of the dis ciples was, "What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?" And, in short, if we admit that any of the Evangelists are silent in reference to the Deity of Christ, and deduce an argument from their silence, it must be in favour of that doctrine which teaches that Christ was a mere man.

Mr. Porter has adduced the prayers which Christ offered up to his Father on the cross, as evidences of the Deity of the Father exclusively. These prayers are recorded in LUKE xxiii. 34: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do;" and in ver. 46: "Father, into.thy hands I commend my spirit." But I beg to refer

him to two similar prayers, offered up by Stephen to the Saviour himself; in ACTS vii. 59: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;" and ver. 60: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." And I argue, that Christ must have possessed the same ability to forgive sins, and to receive the soul of Stephen, as he himself attributed to the Father. We should consider also that Stephen was full of the Holy Ghost, when he ascribed to Christ the very same prerogatives, offered up the very same prayers, in the very same language, as Christ ascribed and addressed to his Father on the cross. Let Mr. Porter now take his choice, whether to believe that Stephen or Christ was the idolater on these occasions.

Mr. Porter has presented before our view a beautiful description of the Saviour's conduct whilst on earth, and has asked, whether it was such as the eternal and blessed God would adopt? To this question I reply, that the line of conduct which the Saviour pursued, the phraseology which he employed, and the manner in which he appeared before the view of men, were such as a man should adopt, and as a human creature would naturally assume. I believe that, when God was manifest in the flesh, and assumed the body of a man, he naturally acted so far according to the faculties of a man. It is wretched to be obliged to advert to such arguments as these, which prove nothing; unless that they give me an opportunity to illustrate my positive and affirmative sentiments, in reference to the humanity and mediatorial character of Christ.

Mr. Porter has asserted in argument, that Christ taught his disciples to confine their worship to the Father. This I deny; because he taught no such thing. He taught them to pray to the Father; but he did not teach them to direct their worship to the Father only. If worship should be confined to the Father, to the exclusion of the Son, Stephen must have died in an act of idolatry; the angels in heaven are guilty of the same sin; and also the Apostle Paul; for he prayed, not only once, but three times, to Christ; and, if he had not been well persuaded of his Divinity, surely, when he had received no answer to the first or second petition, he would not have prayed a second or a third time; but would have had recourse to a higher power. But Paul prayed to Christ three times, and at length received this gracious reply: "My grace is sufficient for thee, my strength is perfected in weakness." From all this I infer, that Christ did not direct his disciples to pray to the Father only. But it is not my object to prove, that Christians should not worship or pray to the Father: my doctrine is, "that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father." In heaven, as we are told in Rev. v. 12 to 14, the saints and angels worship the Saviour. And I would say to Mr. Porter, in conclusion, If you do not acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ now, as the object of worship and adoration,—and if you do not make him the object of your prayers now, you will be constrained to acknowledge the glory and Deity of his person in the world of spirits hereafter. And, oh! what an intense gratification would it be to my mind, were I permitted to look forward, with prophetic eye, to that great and joyful day, when Christ shall have lifted up his elect to blessedness and immortality, and to contemplate

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