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therefore add the sentiments of some eminent writers of the christian church, who lived in its first and purest ages:-Justin Martyr, who lived in the year 140, and was born about the close of the first century, says, "The Son proceedeth from the Father, as the light of the sun in the firmament from its own body, without any division or separation from it." Dial. with Trypho, p. 358. In another place he declares-" More than one Divine Person are denoted by the phrase, 'the man is become as one of us,' and that one of these was Christ." Tertullian affirms, "It was the Son, who judged men from the beginning, destroyed that lofty tower, and confounded their languages, punishing the world with a flood of water, and raining fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah, for he always descended to hold converse with men, from Adam even to the patriarchs and prophets, in visions and dreams; neither was it possible, that the God who conversed with men upon earth, could be any other than that Word, which was to be made flesh." Adv. Prux. Cap. 16. Anthenagorus who flourished in the year 178, says, " By Christ all things were created, since the Father and

the Son are one." Ireneus states, that "John preaching the one Almighty God, and the only begotten Son Jesus Christ, by whom all things were made, saith that this Person is the true light who lighteth every man, that this Person is the maker of the world, that this Person was made flesh and dwelt among us." Lib. I. Cap. 1. Thus does this learned and pious martyr, who was the disciple of Polycarp, the scholar of St. John, apply all the leading points of doctrine contained in the introductory verses in the gospel of St. John to our blessed Saviour, in the fullest and most satisfactory manner.

To the testimony of the Christian church, I add that of the Jewish church.

Philo, the celebrated Jew of Alexandria, who lived before the birth of our Saviour, calls the logos (the Word that was made flesh) the eternal logos, and says "that he is the image of the invisible God."

Jonathan says "God will atone by his Word, for his land, and for his people, even a people saved by the Word of the Lord.”

The following remarkable sentence is from Rabbi Judah Hakkadosh, or Judah the Holy, who lived in the second century :"God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, they are all one, and cannot be separated."

These testimonies to the preexistence and divinity of Christ, are complete and irresistible, and in a serious mind it cannot, I think, fail to produce not only conviction, but astonishment and delight, to see the wonderful manner in which the Almighty hath diffused and propagated the evidence of this doctrine, from the earliest period, to the present time.

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CHAPTER III.

INCARNATION OF CHRIST.

"God was manifest in the Flesh." 1 Tim. iii. 16.

IT is revealed in the holy scriptures, that the Mediator between God and man must partake of human nature, not the nature of a particular nation, tribe, family, or individual, but the nature of the whole human race. This was typified in the Mosaic law, which required that the redeemer of a forfeited inheritance, or of a slave who had sold his birthright and civil liberty, should be near of kin to those who were to be redeemed. Therefore, to recover the gift of immortality, which man had lost by his original apostacy, or sold for the pleasures and glory of the world, it behoved Christ by a preternatural conception, to be born of a woman, and to be made like unto his brethren, "Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself took part of the same," that all might

be redeemed with one blood, for he is the kinsman of the whole. As born of a woman Christ was like unto us in all things, but sin was excepted, as he was conceived by the Holy Ghost. This sanctification of human nature was first necessary to fit it for the personal union with the word, that as the first Adam was the fountain of impurity, the second Adam might be the fountain of righteousness, "God sending his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin in the flesh," which he could not have condemned if Christ had not been an unerring pattern of religious excellence.

That image of God, in which Adam was created, in our Lord appeared perfect and entire; in the unspotted innocence of his life, the sanctity of his manners, and his perfect obedience to the law of God; in the vast powers of his mind, intellectual and moral, intellectual in his comprehension of all knowledge, moral in his power of resisting all the allurements of vice.

That Christ was a man, in the absolute sense, is evident from many passages of scrip

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