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This sublime and mysterious truth is expressly delivered in the bible as a rule of faith; and if the reader (who is obligated to attend to what his maker reveals), will search the scriptures, he will find that there is neither name, act, nor attribute, (of the Godhead, which is not ascribed, in common, to all the Persons of the Trinity.

The prophets and apostles have in a variety of places called Christ God, the true God, the great God, the mighty God, Jehovah, and I am.* They have declared Him to be eternal, incomprehensible, Almighty, omnipresent, omniscient, and immutable. They have attributed to Him the creation, preservation, and government of all things. Atoms were called into existence by His word; and angels owe to Him their exalted being.

*The word Jehovah, as Bishop Horsley observes, being descriptive of the Divine Essence, is equally the Name of every one of the Three Persons in that Essence. The compound Jehovah Sabaoth belongs properly to the Second Person, describing not merely the lord of such armies as military leaders bring into the field, but the unmade self-existent Maker and sustainer of the whole array and order of the Universe.

In the first chapter of Genesis God is said to have created all things. St. John says Christ created all things. The same unerring Spirit inspired both Moses and the evangelist. In the beginning (of the creation) was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God, that is, the Divine Person of whom St. John speaks, neither began to be when He was born into the world, nor when the world and all things in it were made, for He was God from eternity, though as to Personality distinguished from the Father. In the next verse, it is declared that Christ was the creator of the universe. "All things were made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made." That St. John actually speaks of Christ, we cannot entertain any reasonable doubt, for he states in the 14th verse of the same chapter, "the Word was made flesh,. and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."*

* Philo fequently stiles the logos (the word) God, and by the Targumist, he is often stiled God, as when

Another of those leading passages which speaks unanswerably for the preexistence and divinity of our blessed Saviour, appears in the Epistle of St. Paul, Col. i. 16. where the apostle calls Christ the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature, and says" by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, principalities or powers, all things were created by Him, and for Him, and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist." In Hebrews i. 12. the declaration of the same apostle is equally unquestionable, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds." These texts speak for themselves, no less than the attributes of Deity can be

Jacob says in the Chaldee of Onkelos Gen. xxviii. 21. The Word of Jehovah shall be my God; again in Lev. xxvi. 12. My Word shall be to you for God the Redeemer.

adequate to the creation of the worlds; and as bishop Bull observes, "if these words of St. Paul are not to be understood of a creation, (according to the usual meaning of the term) I must think the scriptures inexplicable, and that nothing certain can be concluded from the most express passages of them." Vid. Defensio Fidei Nicenæ Cap. i. Sec. 15.

Let us next consider the wonderful events which attended the divine mission of Moses, to whom the Lord appeared at the bush, as the incommunicable I am, and by whose benevolent interposition and outstretched arm, the posterity of Abraham were delivered from Egyptian bondage. That the Jewish nation were the chosen people of God, appears from the whole tenor of scripture. St. John speaking of Christ says, "he came unto his own but his own received him not." It is reasonable to suppose that the words "his own" relate to the Jews entirely, and that the evangelist here considers Christ as the King of Israel, and the Jews as his peculiar people. The truth of this position will be illustrated by the following

quotations-Ps. lxxviii. 56, "They tempted and provoked the most high God." 1 Cor. x. 9," Neither let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted."

These texts both relate to the same rebellious acts of the Israelites, in the wilderness. The person, whom they tempted, is called by the Psalmist, the most high God, by St. Paul, he is called Christ, therefore Christ is the most high God, the Jehovah of the old testament. "In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw" says the prophet Isaiah, "the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts. Isaiah vi. 1. "These things said Esaias when he saw his (Christ's) glory, and spake of him." John xii. 41. As Christ is here declared by the Evangelist to be the person, whose glory Esaias saw, therefore Christ is the Lord of Hosts.

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