unto death, even the death of the cross.

Wherefore God has highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father," Phil. ii. 8-11. "Who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of God," Heb. xii. 2.

Our Lord says, that "he and his Father are one," John x. 30. But he sufficiently explains himself, when he prays that all his disciples may be 66 one with him, and his Father, even as they are one," John xvii. 11. And he gives them the same glory which God had given to him, ver. 22. Be

sides, at the very time that our Lord says that he and his Father are one, and in the very sentence preceding it, ver. 29, he says, that his Father is greater than all. But how could the Father be greater than all, if there was any other, who was so much one with him, as to be, in all respects, equal to him?

The mere term God is, indeed, sometimes used in a lower and inferior sense in the Scriptures, denoting dominion only; as when the Divine Being himself says, that "he will make Moses a god to Pharaoh," Exod. vii. 1. But, surely, there can be no danger of our inistaking the sense of such

phrases

phrases as these. Or, if it were possible, our Lord himself has sufficiently guarded against any misconstruction of them when applied to himself, by the explanation he has given of them; informing us, that, if, in the language of Scripture, "they are called gods to whom the word of God came," John x. 35. (though, in fact, they were no other than mere men) he could not be guilty of blasphemy in calling himself only the Son of God. Now, if Christ had been conscious to himself that he was the true and very God, and that it was of the utmost consequence to mankind that they should regard him in that light, this was certainly a proper time for him to have declared himself, and not to have put his hearers off with such an apology as this.

But even this power and dominion, to which Christ is advanced by God his Father, "who gave all power into his hands," and who "made him head over all things to his church," Eph. i. 22. this mediatorial kingdom of Christ (as it is sometimes, and with sufficient propriety, termed) is not to be perpetual. For the apostle Paul, speaking, no doubt, under immediate inspiration, expressly says, that when "the end shall come, that God shall have subdued all things to his Son," (in which he observes, that "he must be excepted who did subdue all things unto him,") "he must deliver up the kingdom to God, even the FATHER, and

be

be himself subject to him who had put all things under him, that God may be all in all," 1 Cor. xv. 24, &c. Nay, he himself says expressly, that he had not the disposal of the highest offices of his kingdom, Matt. xx. 23. "To sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father."

So clear, my brethren, so full, and so express, is the uniform testimony of the Scriptures to the great doctrine of the proper unity of God, and of the subordination of Christ and all other beings to him, that the prevalence of so impious a doctrine as the contrary must be, can be ascribed to nothing but to that mystery of iniquity, which, though it began to work in the times of the apostles themselves, was not then risen to so enormous a height as to attack the supremacy of the one living and true God, and give his peculiar glory to another. This, my brethren, among other shocking corruptions of genuine Christianity, grew up with the system of Popery; and to show that nothing is impossible to the superstition and credulity of men, when they are become vain in their imaginations, after exalting a man into a god, a creature into a creator, they made a piece of bread into one also, and then bowed down to, and worshiped, the work of their own hands.

But though it seemed fit to the unsearchable

wisdom

wisdom of God, that all the errors and abuses of Popery should not be reformed at once; and though this great error was left untouched by the first reformers, blessed be God the Bible is as open to us as it was to them! and by the exertion of the same judgement and spirit, we may free Christianity from the corruptions which they left adhering to it; and then, among other excellencies of our religion, “Our Lord will be one, and his name one," Zech. xiv. 9.

If you ask, Who, then, is Jesus Christ, if he be not God? I answer in the words of St. Peter, addressed to the Jews, after his resurrection and ascension, that "Jesus of Nazareth was a man ap-' proved of God, by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him," Acts ii. 22. If you ask what is meant by man, in this place; I answer, that man, if the word be used with any kind of propriety, must mean the same kind of being with yourselves. I say, moreover, with the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that "it became him by whom are all things, and for whom are all things, to make this great captain of our salvation. in all respects like unto us his brethren, that he might be made perfect through sufferings," Heb. ii. 10. 17. “and that he might have a feeling of all our infirmities," iv. 13. For this reason it was that our Saviour and deliverer was not made of the nature of an angel, or like any super-angelic being, but was

of

of "the seed of Abraham," ii. 16. that is (exclusive of the divinity of the Father, which resided in him, and acted by him) a mere man, as other Jews, and as we ourselves also are.

But

Christ being made by the immediate hand of God, and not born in the usual course of generation, is no reason for his not being considered as a man. For then Adam must not have been a man. in the ideas of St. Paul, both the first and second Adam (as Christ, on this account, is sometimes called) were equally men : "By man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead,” 1 Cor. xv. 21. And certainly, in the resurrection of a man, that is, of a person in all respects like ourselves, we have a more lively hope of our own resurrection; that of Christ being both a proof and a pattern of ours. We can therefore more firmly believe, that because he lives, we, who are the same that he was, and who shall undergo the same change by death that he did, "shall live also," John xiv. 19.

Till this great corruption of Christianity be removed, it will be in vain to preach the Gospel to Jews, or Mahometans, or, indeed, to any people who retain the use of the reason and understanding * that God hath given them. For how is it possible that three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, should be separately, each of them, possessed of all divine perfections, so as to be true, very, and eternal