can and will in gratitude tell those who can LECT. acknowledge it more adequately.

He little knew what was in their hearts. Very different was the effect to what he had intended and hoped for. They inquired not to honour, but to persecute Him who went about doing good. They have now from the man the confirmation of their previous suspicions. They are inwardly rejoiced to find it even as they had hoped. They have now the most direct evidence as to the victim of their malice. They have now, they hope, grounds for a specific charge against Him, not merely of having encouraged another to break, but of having Himself broken, the Sabbath-day, that is, the tradition of the elders.

Therefore they persecuted Him, and sought to slay Him: probably consulting together if it were feasible to bring Him before the Sanhedrim on such charge; and finding this, from the disposition of the people towards Him, not yet practicable, striving to poison the people's minds against Him, (as they afterwards more successfully attempted;) following Him with their hate, and shewing their spite in those many indirect ways in which official resentment can make itself felt even where it is not able, or has not sufficient ground, directly to manifest itself. And to such a degree did they carry on this kind of persecution, that our Lord feels Himself compelled to notice it, and takes some opportunity to justify His conduct to them, and to shew them the commanding position in which He stood. He justifies Himself, by shewing them the position in which He stood with respect to the Father.

XVII.

LECT.

XVII.

His justification of Himself proceeds upon this great fact, which He incidentally discovers to them, that He is the Son of God: and the Son does nothing but what the Father does. He justifies His conduct by the example of the Father, and His relation to Him. What is right for the Father in this matter, is right for the Son also. He does not appeal here to this being a work of mercy, and to the reasonableness of doing on the Sabbath what He had done; though He might have occupied this ground, as indeed upon other occasions we know He did. But here He takes yet higher ground. He is now intent upon impressing on them a great truth regarding Himself. He justifies Himself on the ground that He is one with the Father. His argument here is, I am only doing as my Father does: He is continually working, upholding without cease the work of creation; sustaining continuously and reproducing the fabric which at first He framed, repairing ever that which is being ever impaired, causing life and growth to proceed without pause : I claim the right to do the same, to work according to the counsel of mine own will, when and where and how it pleaseth me".

Of course this implies His equality with the Father. It proceeds upon the just assumption that He is one with the Father, that He and the Father are one; and so the Jews per

Our Lord's statement here is by no means inconsistent with Genesis ii. 2. for it is the original framing of the world which is there spoken of. Bengel explains ἕως ἄρτι, "huc usque, inde a creatione, sine intervallo Sabbati." He adds, "Nam Sabbato non tenetur: perpetua quiete non caret. Si non operaretur, ubi esset ipsum Sabbatum ?"

ceived'. They cannot resist the conclusion, that LECT. if He is the Son of God, He is Lord also of XVII. the Sabbath-day; but they deny the premises, deny that He is the Son of God. Instead of inquiring if He could substantiate this claim, (when they would have found, by the undeniable evidence of His wonderful works, the exact fulfilment in Him of all the prophecies regarding the Messiah,) they are by this defence, by this claim, the more incensed against Him. Christ, it has been said, "called God His Father in a peculiar sense, and claimed the prerogative of acting as God the Father did, without being restricted by rules laid down for His creatures"." He said, "My Father," not in the sense in which that term can be used by any of the sons of God, but in that special sense in which it can be used by the only begotten Son alone, and which would be blasphemy in the case of any other. And it was evident that the Jews understood it so, understood that He claimed equality with God. And that they were right in this construction is testified by the remainder of the discourse. "Thus," as it has been said, "we obtain from the adversaries of the faith a most important statement of one of its highest and holiest doctrines ." And their sin was, that, knowing the marks of the Messiah, and seeing

"Quo sensu Jesus dixerit, Pater meus, melius intellexerunt vel ipsi Judæi quam Photiniani." Bengel.

Ariani quippe

"Ecce intelligunt Judæi quod non intelligunt Ariani. inæqualem Patri Filium dicunt, et inde hæresis pulsat Ecclesiam..... Non ipse se faciebat æqualem, sed ille illum genuerat æqualem., ... Christus autem Patri natus erat, non factus."

Aug in Jo. Tr. xvii. 16.

LECT. their accomplishment in Jesus, they refused to acknowledge Him as such.

XVII.

Let us beware of the spirit which these manifested, receiving with thankful reverence all the Articles of the Christian faith.

LECTURE XVIII.

CHRIST CLAIMS EQUAL HONOUR WITH THE FATHER.

JOHN V. 19-23.

OUR Lord commences now one of His most LECT.

weighty discourses touching Himself, and the XVIII. relation in which He stands towards the Father. This was implied in the seventeenth verse, when He said, justifying Himself to the Jews, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." And our Lord in what follows unfolds the truth, and substantiates His claim to the title, therein contained; first repeating and amplifying in these opening words the argument He had already addressed to these objectors. The Father and the Son have perfect concord. The Son can do nothing contrary to the Father"; and whatsoever things the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.

His conduct is not contrary to

....

* Οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀναιρῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐπισφίγγων τὴν ἰσότητα τοῦτο λέγει. οὐδὲ γὰρ εἶπεν ὅτι τὰ μὲν δύναται ἀφ' ἑαυτοῦ ποιεῖν, τὰ δὲ οὐ δύναται, ἀλλὰ καθόλου εἶπεν. . . . . τοῦτο λέγει, ὅτι ἀδύνατον καὶ ἀνεγχώρητον ἐστιν ἐμὲ Toiñσal ti, èvavtlov T Taтрí. Chrys. in Jo. Hom. xxxviii. Compare ch. xvi. 13-15.

"The discourse still has reference to the charge of working on the Sabbath, and the context takes in our Lord's answer both to this, ver. 17, and to the Jews' accusation, ver. 18. In this verse He states that He cannot work any but the works of God: cannot, by His very relationship to the Father, by the very nature and necessity of the case :-the à' avтoû being an impossible supposition, and purposely set here to express one." Alford.