"There the world, with its vain pomps, its counterfeit beauties, its bewitching pleasures, its fondly admired excellencies, did hang up all defaced and disparaged; as it appeared to St. Paul: for God forbid (saith he) that I should glory, save in the cross of Christ, by which the world is crucified to me and I unto the world. There, in a most lively representation, and most admirable pattern, was exhibited the mortification of our flesh, with its affections and lusts; and our old man was crucified that the body of sin might be destroyed.

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"There our sins, being (as St. Peter telleth us) carried up by him unto the gibbet, did hang as marks of his victorious prowess, as malefactors, by him condemned in the flesh, as objects of our horror and hatred.

"There death itself hung gasping, with its sting pulled out, and all its terrors quelled; his death having prevented ours, and induced immortality.

"There all wrath, enmity, strife (the banes of comfortable life), did hang abolished in his flesh and slain upon the cross, by the blood whereof he made peace, and reconciled all things in heaven and earth.

"This consideration is, farther, most useful to render us very humble and sensible of our weakness, our vileness, our wretchedness. For how low was that our fall, from which we could not be raised without such a depression of God's only Son? How great is that impotency, which needed such a succour to relieve it? How abominable must be that iniquity, which might not be expiated without so costly a sacrifice? How deplorable is that misery, which could not be removed without commutation of so strange a suffering? Would the Son of God have so emptied (Eavrov ÉKÉνwoɛ. Phil. ii. 7) and debased himself for nothing? Would he have endured such pains and ignominies for a trifle? No, surely; if our guilt had been slight, if our case had been tolerable, the Divine wisdom would have chosen a more cheap and easy remedy for us.

"Is it not madness for us to be conceited of any worth in ourselves, to confide in any merit of our

works, to glory in any thing belonging to us, to fancy ourselves brave, fine, happy persons, worthy of great respect and esteem; whereas our unworthiness, our demerit, our forlorn estate, did extort from the most gracious God a displeasure needing such a reconciliation, did impose upon the most glorious Son of God a necessity to undergo such a punishment in our behalf?

"Yet, while this contemplation doth breed sober humility, it also should preserve us from base abjectness of mind; for it doth evidently demonstrate that, according to God's infallible judgment, we are very considerable; that our souls are capable of high regard that it is a great pity we should be lost and abandoned to ruin. For surely, had not God much esteemed and respected us, he would not for our sakes have so debased himself, or deigned to endure so much for our recovery; Divine justice would not have exacted or accepted such a ransom for our souls, had they been of little worth. We should not therefore slight ourselves, nor demean ourselves like sorry contemptible wretches, as if we deserved no consideration, no pity from ourselves; as if we thought our souls not worth saving, which yet our Lord thought good to purchase at so dear a rate 48"

To this language of the eloquent and philosophic Dr. Barrow, allow me to add the following powerful expostulation of our Reformers. "Canst thou think of this, O sinful man, and not tremble within thyself? Canst thou hear it quietly, without remorse of conscience and sorrow of heart? Did Christ suffer his passion for thee, and wilt thou show no compassion towards him? While Christ was yet hanging on the cross, and yielding up the ghost, the Scripture witnesseth that the veil of the temple did rent in twain, and the earth did quake, that the stones clave asunder, that the graves did open, and the dead bodies rise; and shall the heart of man be nothing moved to remember how grievously and cruelly he was handled of the Jews for our sins? 48 Barrow's Sermon on the Passion,

Shall man show himself to be more hard-hearted thar. stones, to have less compassion than dead bodies? Call to mind, O sinful creature, and set before thine eyes Christ crucified: think thou seest his body stretched out in length upon the cross, his head crowned with sharp thorns, and his hands and his feet pierced with nails, his heart opened with a long spear, his flesh rent and torn with whips, his brows sweating water and blood: think thou hearest him now crying in an intolerable agony to his Father, and saying, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? Couldst thou behold this woeful sight, or hear this mournful voice, without tears, considering that he suffered all this not for any desert of his own, but only for the grievousness of thy sins? O that mankind should put the everlasting Son of God to such pains! O that we should be the occasion of his death, and the only cause of his condemnation! May we not justly cry, Woe worth the time that ever we sinned? O, my brethren, let this image of Christ crucified be always printed in our hearts; let it stir us up to the hatred of sin, and provoke our minds to the earnest love of Almighty God. For why? is not sin, think you, a grievous thing in his sight, seeing for the transgressing of God's precept he condemned all the world unto perpetual death, and would not be pacified, but only with the blood of his own Son 19?"

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49 Second Homily on the Passion, p. 359, Oxford edit. 1810. I beg leave to remark here, once for all, that the frequency of my quoting from the Homilies, and other discourses of great men amongst the Episcopalians, does not arise from my supposing they are of superior authority, or that they have clearer views of Scriptural truth, than Baxter, Howe, Watts, Doddridge, and some other eminent Dissenting authors; but from the circumstance that these Letters were originally written for the benefit of a professed member of the Church of England; and because a large portion of those who are adverse to the doctrines I am bere defending, and which are so forcibly stated in the "Articles and "Homilies," fancy themselves to be very "sound Churchmen" notwithstanding.

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LETTER XV.

On the Divinity of Jesus Christ.

FOUR things," said the great and judicious Hooker, concur to make complete the whole state of our Lord Jesus Christ: his Deity, his manhood, the conjunction of both, and the distinction of the one from the other, being joined in one. Four principal heresies there are which have in those things withstood the truth. Arians, by bending themselves against the Deity of Christ; Apollinarians, by maiming and misinterpreting that which belongeth to his human nature; Nestorians, by rending Christ asunder, and dividing him into two persons: the followers of Eutiches, by confounding in his person those natures which they should distinguish. Against these there have been four ancient general councils : the council of Nice, to define against Arians, A. D. 325; the council of Constantinople, against Apollinarians, A. D. 381; that of Ephesus, against Nestorians, A. D. 431; against Eutichians, that of Chalcedon, A. D. 451 : the decisions of which may be comprised in four words: αληθως truly, τελεως perfectly, αδιαιρέτως indivisibly, and aovyxvros distinctly. The first applied to his being God; and the second to his being Man; the third to his being of both one; and the fourth to his still continuin that one both. We may fully, by way of abridgment, comprise whatsoever antiquity hath at large handled, either in declaration of Christian belief, or in refutation of the aforesaid heresies, within the compass of these four heads1."

This view of the Messiah's person agrees with the opinion that has most universally prevailed, among Christians, from the first introduction of Christianity into the world down to the present period. Nor does the mere existence of other opinions by any means militate against the truth of this: for, since evidence, though it be clear, forcible, and satisfactory, does not 1 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, book v. sect. 54.

necessarily convince, the human mind being free either to receive evidence with its due weight, or to reject it as defective; it follows that a doctrine, as well as a fact, may be disbelieved by minds of a peculiar structure, however preponderating and decisive may be the evidence in its favour. This is undoubted, and an apostle referring to matters of faith, accounts for it in language which I tremble while I quote:- "If our Gospel be veiled, it is veiled to those that destroy themselves, whose minds the god of this world hath blinded.”

Many learned and ingenious men disbelieve the Divinity of Christ; but neither the process by which they have arrived at their disbelief, nor that by which they endeavour to prove that we are in error, seems calculated to operate strongly upon the minds of those who have been previously persuaded that the Scripture is the production of inspired writers, who were so inspired that they might teach doctrines infallibly true (many of which could be known no other way), and whose instructions, therefore, are to be implicitly received. Having ascertained that the Bible is the Word of God,—that none of the discrepances between the various existing copies in the original languages affect any doctrine, or any important precept,-and that the translation we adopt is correct, we have nothing to do but to determine its plain and obvious meaning, and receive it as true?. But this is not the plan pursued

24 It hath been the custom of late to lay too much stress upon Jewish idioms, in the exposition of the didactic parts of the New Testament. The Gospel is a general revelation. If it is delivered in a style which is not perspicuous to the illiterate of any nation except the Jewish, it is as much locked up from general apprehension, as if the sacred books had been written in the vernacular gibberish of the Jews of that age. The Holy Spirit, which directed the apostles and the evangelists to the use of the tongue, which in their day was the most generally understood-the Greek--would, for the same reason, it may be presumed, suggest to them a style which might be generally perspicuous. It is therefore a principle with me, that the true sense of any phrase in the New Testament is, for the most part, what may be called a standing sense: that which will be the first to occur to common people of every country, and in every age; and I am apt