I.

ART. the course of nature, so another act of the same Mind can either suspend, stop, or change that course at pleasure, as he who throws a bowl may stop it in its course, or throw it back if he will; this being only the altering that impulse which himself gave: so, if one act of the infinite Mind puts things in a regular course, another act interposed may change that at pleasure. And thus with relation to God, miracles are no more difficult than any other act of Providence: they are only more amazing to us, because they are less ordinary, and go out of the common and regular course of things. By all this it appears how far the observation of what we perceive concerning ourselves may carry us to form livelier and clearer thoughts of God.

ARTICLE II.

Of the Word or Son of God, which was made

very Man.

The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from Everlasting of the Father; the very and eternal God, of one Substance with the Father, took Man's Nature in the Womb of the Blessed Virgin of her Substance; so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person; never to be divided: whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man: who truly suffered, was dead and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a Sacrifice not only for Original Guilt, but also for actual Sins of Men.

THERE are in this article five heads to be explained.

I. That the Son or Word is of the same substance with the Father, begotten of him from all eternity.

II. That he took man's nature upon him in the womb of the blessed virgin, and of her substance.

III. That the two natures of the Godhead and manhood, both still perfect, were in him joined in one person never to be divided.

IV. That Christ truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried.

V. That he was our sacrifice to reconcile the Father to us, and that not only for original guilt, but for actual sins.

The first of these leads me to prosecute what was begun in the former article: and to prove, that the Son or Word, was from all eternity begotten of the same substance with the Father. It is here to be noted, that Christ is, in two respects, the Son, and the only-begotten Son of God. The one is, as he was man; the miraculous overshadowing of the blessed Virgin by the Holy Ghost having, without the ordinary course of nature, formed the first beginnings of Christ's human body in the womb of the Virgin. Thus, that miracle being instead of a natural begetting, he may, in that respect, be called the begotten, and the only-begotten Son of God. The other sense is, that the Word, or the divine Person, was in, and of, the substance of the Father, and so was truly God. It is also to be considered, that by the word one substance is to be understood that this second Person is not a creature of a pure and excellent nature, like God, holy and perfect, as we are called to be; but is truly God, as the Father is. Begetting is a term that naturally signifies the relation between the Father and the Son; but, what it strictly signifies here is not possible for us to understand, till we

ART.
II.

II.

ART. comprehend this whole matter: nor can we be able to assign a reason why the emanation of the Son, and not that of the Holy Ghost likewise, is called begetting. In this we use the scripture terms, but must confess we cannot frame a distinct apprehension of that which is so far above us. This begetting was from all eternity: if it had been in time, the Son and Holy Ghost must have been creatures; but, if they are truly God, they must be eternal, and not produced by having a being given them, but educed of a substance that was eternal, and from which they did eternally spring. All these are the natural consequences of the main article that is now to be proved; and, when it is once proved clearly from scripture, these do follow by a natural and necessary deduction.

Johni. 1, 2, 3.

6

The first and great proof of this is taken from the words with which St. John begins his Gospel.* In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.' Here it is to be observed, that these words are set down here, before St. John comes to speak of Christ's being made in our nature: this passage belongs to another precedent being that he had. The beginning also here is set to import, that it was before creation or time: now a duration before time is eternal. So this beginning can be no other than that duration which was before all things that were made. It is also plainly said, over and over again, that all things were made by this Word. A power to create must be infinite; for, it is certain, that a power which can give being is without bounds. And, although the word make may seem capable of a larger sense, yet, as in other places of the New Testament, the stricter word create is used and applied to Christ, as the 'Maker of all things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible;' so the word make is used through the Old Testament for create; so that God's making the heaven and the earth is the character frequently given of him to distinguish him from idols and false gods. And of this Word it is likewise said, xlv. 5, &c. xlviii. 12, that he was with God, and was God. These words seem very 13. l. 12, plain, and the place where they are put by St. John, in the 13. Jer. x. front of his Gospel, as it were an inscription upon it, or an iv. 24, 25. introduction to it, makes it very evident, that he, who of all

Colos. i.

16.

Isai. xl. 26, 28. xliv. 24.

1.-16. Acts

the writers of the New Testament has the greatest plainness and simplicity of style, would not have put words here, such as were not to be understood in a plain and literal signification, without any key to lead us to any other sense of them. This had been to lay a stone of stumbling in the very threshold; particularly to the Jews, who were apt to cavil at Christianity, and were particularly jealous of every thing that savoured of idolatry, or of the plurality of gods. And upon this occasion

For a full and critical examination of this passage, see Pearson on the Creed, page 177, Dobson's Edition.

II.

I desire one thing to be observed, with relation to all those ART. subtile expositions which those who oppose this doctrine put upon many of those places by which we prove it; that they represent the apostles as magnifying Christ in words that at first sound seem to import his being the true God; and yet they hold that in all these they had another sense, and a reserve of some other interpretation, of which their words were capable. But can this be thought fair dealing? Does it look like honest men to write thus; not to say, men inspired in what they preached and writ? and not rather like impostors, to use so many sublime and lofty expressions concerning Christ as God, if all these must be taken down to so low a sense, as to signify only that he was miraculously formed, and endued with an extraordinary power of miracles, and an authority to deliver a new religion to the world; and that he was, in consideration of his exemplary death which he underwent so patiently, raised up from the grave, and had divine honours conferred upon him. In such an hypothesis as this, the world going in so naturally to the excessive magnifying, and even the deifying of wonderful men, it had been necessary to have prevented any such mistakes, and to have guarded against the belief of them rather than to have used a continued strain of expressions, that seem to carry men violently into them, and that can hardly, nay very hardly, be softened by all the skill of critics, to bear It is to be conother sense. any sidered farther, that, when St. John writ his Gospel, there were three sorts of men particularly to be considered. The Jews, who could bear nothing that savoured of idolatry; so no stumbling-block was to be laid in their way, to give them deeper prejudices against Christianity. Next to these were the Gentiles; who, having worshipped a variety of gods, were not to be indulged in any thing that might seem to favour their polytheism. In fact, we find particular caution used, in the New Testament, against the worshipping angels or saints. Matt. iv. How can it therefore be imagined, that words would have been 10. Colos. used, that, in the plain signification that did arise out of the Acts x. 25, first hearing of them, imported that a man was God, if this 26. xiv. 14, had not been strictly true? The apostles ought, and must, xix. 10, & have used a particular care to have avoided all such expres- xxii. 8, 9. sions, if they had not been literally true. The third sort of men in St. John's time were those, of whom intimation is frequently given through all the Epistles, who were then endeavouring to corrupt the purity of the Christian doctrine, and to accommodate it so, both to the Jew and to the Gentile, as to avoid the cross and persecution upon the account of it. Church-history, and the earliest writers after St. John, assure us, that Ebion* and Cerinthus* denied the divinity of Whence the Ebionites derived their name is uncertain. According to some they were so called from the founder of their sect, Ebion. Eusebius states that they were "called Ebionites, i. e. poor men, for they were poor and abject, in

ii. 18.

15. Rev.

ART. Christ, and asserted that he was a mere man. Controversy naturally carries men to speak exactly; and, among human writers, those who let things fall more carelessly from their pens, when they apprehend no danger or difficulty, are more correct both in their thoughts and in their expressions, when things are disputed; therefore, if we should have no other regard to St. John, but as an ordinary, cautious, and careful man, we must believe that he weighed all his words in that point, which was then the matter in question; and to clear which, we have good ground to believe, both from the testimony of ancient writers, and from the method that he pursues quite through it all, that he writ his Gospel; and that, therefore, every part of it, but this beginning of it more signally, was writ, and is to be understood, in the sense which the words naturally import; that the Word which took flesh, and assumed the human nature, had a being before the worlds were made, and that this Word was God, and made the world.

Phil. ii. 6-11.

Another eminent proof of this is in St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians; in which, when he is exhorting Christians to humility, he gives an argument for it from our Saviour's example. He begins with the dignity of his person, expressed thus; that he was in the form of God, and that he thought it no robbery to be equal with God:' then his humi

delivering the doctrine concerning Christ.' They judged him 'a simple and a common man; and for his forwardness of manners found justified only as man, and born of Mary and her husband.' They thought that the observance of the law was necessary, as though salvation were not by faith alone in Christ, and corresponding conversation of life.' Others of the same name, according to Eusebius, avoided the absurdity of their speeches; not denying the Lord to have been born of the Virgin, and the Holy Ghost; yet, when called on to confess him to be God, the Word and Wisdom before his incarnation, they fell into the same sin with their companions. They contended for the corporal observation of the law;' rejected the epistles of the apostle Paul, and accused him of having fallen from the law. They used a gospel of their own, indiscriminately called the gospel of the Nazarines or Hebrews, about which there have been many disputes amongst the learned. They observed the Jewish Sabbaths and other ceremonies, only they observed Sunday, in like manner as the Christians, in remembrance of the resurrection of Christ. They are generally placed among the heretics of the apostolic age; yet (remarks Dr. Mosheim) they really belong to the second century, which was the earliest period of their existence as a sect.'

Cerinthus was a Jew, who attempted to form a new system, by a combination of the doctrines of Christ with the opinions and errors of the Jews and Gnostics. He taught the necessity of circumcision, and that the Prophets and law were given by angels, and that the world was made by them. He maintained that Jesus was not born of a virgin, which he affirmed to be impossible, but of Mary and Joseph-that Jesus was not Christ, but that Christ came upon him in the form of a dove-that Jesus suffered and rose again, but not Christ; for Christ, he said, fled away from him before his passion. He taught that the kingdom of Christ should become earthly that after the resurrection, Christ should reign over us on earth one thousand years. He lusted, saith Eusebius, after the satisfying of the belly with meat, drink, and marriage; to which he added, holy days, oblations, and slaughter for sacrifices. Such was the millenium which he held out to his followers. Irenæus relates, on the authority of Poly carp, that St. John having gone to a public bath, and hearing that Cerinthus was there, returned hastily, saying, 'Let us speedily go hence, lest the bath come to ruin, wherein Cerinthus, the eneiny of the truth, batheth himself.' So zealous (remarks Eusebius) were the apostles and their disciples, that they communicated not even in word with the corrupters of the truth.'-[ED.]