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of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies (the very merciful Father), and the God of all comfort," 2 Cor. i. 3. "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory (or the glorious Father) may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him," Eph. i. 17.

It may be said that the term God the Father is used to distinguish Him from God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This might be, if God the Son and God the Holy Spirit were titles ever used in the Scriptures. The entire absence of these is as significant as the continual repetition of the term God the Father, which is evidently intended to keep before us the character in which God has especially revealed Himself to Christians.

In 1 Tim. ii. 5, the one God and the one Mediator between God and men are expressly distinguished, "There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." Apart from all metaphysical speculations respecting the divine nature, these words give the idea of a Mediator who is a separate being from the one God, and who is himself between God and men. Hence, when the coëquality of Christ with the Father became the doctrine of the Church, another Mediator was felt to be required, and St. Bernard says, "Perhaps you fear in him (the Son) the divine majesty, because, though he was made man, he was still God. Do you desire to have an advocate with him? Have recourse to Mary." (Homily, Roman Breviary).

I have already had occasion to refer to Mark xiii. 32, but I have reserved till now a more complete

consideration of its bearing on the Trinitarian controversy. Our Lord himself says, "Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in Heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." This appears to me so conclusive that I have often wondered it does not carry conviction to every mind. But Mr. Bickersteth says, "Here Jesus is speaking in his human nature."* This interpretation, however, is precluded by the words, neither the Son, but the Father. St. Matthew has "the Father only." Had the expression been, "neither the Son, but God," it might be urged that the Son as man did not know, though as God he did know. But we are told by Christ himself that the Son did not know, and that the Father alone did. Another method of meeting the difficulty is by bringing forward some text that appears to teach the contrary. An appeal is made in particular to the exclamation of the disciples at the last supper, "Now are we sure that thou knowest all things," John xvi. 30. At best this is only letting the disciples refute their master; but when two such passages appear to contradict each other, we ought not to place them in opposition, but to seek their reconciliation; and if there be difficulty in one of these, there is none in the other, for St. John writes even to those whom he was addressing in his epistle, "Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things," so that the expression, "know all things," may be used without contradicting the

*This point was not made known to him as man, by the spirit" (p. 76). Yet elsewhere (p. 73) we read, that to "empty himself of his Godhead" "were impossible."

declaration of Christ with regard to the knowledge of a certain day."* Turning to so eminent an authority as St. Augustine, I find him acknowledging, indeed, great difficulty, but warning his hearers against believing that the Father knew anything, which the Son did not know; for the Son knew in the Father. Observe, Christ himself says, "the Son knoweth not, but the Father." St. Augustine says the Son knew as well as the Father! To me this seems not an interpretation but an ignoring of the Saviour's words. "If," says Irenæus, in the second century, "any one inquires why the Father, who communicates in all things to the Son, is yet by our Lord declared to know alone that day and hour, he cannot at present find any fitter or more decent, or indeed any other safe answer to all than this— that the Father is above all; for the Father,' saith he, 'is greater than I.'

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It will be proper here to make some observations on the doctrine of Christ's two natures, according to which one being is declared to be at the same time almighty and yet limited in power; omniscient and yet ignorant of some things; though omniscience would appear to exclude limited knowledge in the same being, and omnipotence limited power. But

* Mr. Bickersteth gives two other passages here. John v. 20, "The Father sheweth the Son all things that himself doeth." The word sheweth itself indicates that the Son's knowledge is derived. The other passage, on which I have already remarked, needs only to be read with the context and Griesbach's punctuation. "I am the good Shepherd; and know my (sheep), and am known of mine, as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father," etc., John x. 14, 15.

passing over this seeming contradiction, the theory is one about which Christ and his apostles say nothing, and which was an after-thought of the church in polemical days. InA.D. 431, a general council distinguished the deity from the humanity of Christ, and in 451 another general council decreed the union of the deity and humanity in one person.* For myself, supposing the theory of the two natures to be true, I wonder any one can feel justified in applying it by alleging this Christ said in his human nature, this in his divine; the discretion left to the interpreter would seem to be of a stupendous kind. No one seems to have felt this more strongly than Dr. Newman, who says, "Take the following passages of Scripture: 'I do nothing of myself;' 'He that sent me is with me;' The Father hath not left me alone;' 'My Father worketh hitherto and I work;' 'Whatsoever I speak, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak;' 'I am in the Father and the Father in me.' Now it is true these passages may be understood of our Lord's human nature; but surely if we confine them to this interpretation, we run the risk of viewing Christ as two separate beings, not as one person; or again, of gradually forgetting and explaining away the doctrine of his divinity altogether. If we speak as if our Lord had a human personality, then if he has another personality as God, he is not one person; and if he has not, he is not God."+ Surely it is the glory of Christianity that in one and the same nature

* For a condensed account of this, vide Liverpool Controversy, 7th Lecture, p. 56.

† Newman's Sermons, vol. vi., p. 64.

our Lord unites the human and the divine, representing a human likeness in God, and a divine possibility in man. And if there were two separate natures in Christ, is it not a marvellous thing that we never read of God the Son working through his human nature, but so constantly of God the Father, working through him, with no mention of natures at all? But our most serious objection to the hypothesis of two natures is a moral one. We cannot think that Christ would have said he knew not that which he knew in any way whatever. "After the hypostatical union of two natures in one person," says Milton, "it follows, that whatever Christ says of himself, he says not as the possessor of either nature separately, but with reference to the whole of his character, and in his entire person, except where he himself makes a distinction. Those who divide this hypostatical union at their own discretion, strip the discourses and answers of Christ of all their sincerity; they represent everything as ambiguous and uncertain, as true and false at the same time; it is not Christ that speaks, but some unknown substitute, sometimes one, and sometimes another: so that the words of Horace may be justly applied to such disputants:

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Quo teneam vultus mutantem Protea nodo ?”—

Milton's Christian Doctrine, p. 102. I proceed with the passages which teach the Supremacy of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Cor. xi. 3, "I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." The

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