be glorified "with the glory which I had with the Father before the world was?" 1 If this testimony of our Saviour, which he thus bears to himself, be true, and if the testimony, borne by the Holy Ghost, to which he refers enquirers into his nature, be credible, and if these testimonies unite with that of David 2, in declaring Jesus Christ to be God from everlasting, I see not how a doubt can be entertained either of his divinity or his equality with the Father; but if his having appeared clothed with flesh among men, as a man; if his sympathetic tears; if his apprehensive agonies and prayers to have the cup of evil put away from him; if his having fallen under the severest afflictions, and even having suffered an ignominious death, added to his own testimony and that of the Holy Ghost, be admitted as evidence that he was man, I see not how a doubt can be entertained that he was man inferior to God, as we are inferior to him; and if these both be admitted, it must necessarily follow that Jesus Christ is both God and man: But if both God and man, I do not see the force of the objection to his Godhead, that he has acted and suffered as man, particularly as he was, what

1 John xvii. 5.

2 "Thy throne is established of old, thou art from everlasting;" this and other parts of the ninety-third Psalm are universally acknowledged, and even by the Jews themselves, to relate to Christ, the Messiah, the Eternal King.

man never was and God ever is, free from ̄ sin. It is no objection to his Godhead, that he refers the preservation of his human nature to the power which is alone equal to preserve it, that he prays, as a man, in behalf of the world with which he sympathises, that he declares his human nature and the man Jesus to be a messenger to man, and acting with power derived from God. For as I believe that men, who made a difficulty of believing any union between two natures being possible, will hardly insist upon their own capacity to explain the manner of it, or to show that, upon such a union, so much of the divinity is derived to the manhood of Christ, as to render it independent of God, and able to act for its own purposes without further application than the exertion of this derived power; so I will not admit of their explanations of our Saviour's prayers and declarations that he was sent: for these prayers were breathed by the man Jesus; and this commission: to die for and to adopt a world, was given to the human nature by God, and not to the divine nature of Christ, which was itself the power, one with the Father, God Almighty, which had so sent forth this "man without sin" to atone for us. I am far from saying, that I am myself able to explain this union; God forbid: but that I am not able to explore the ways of an Almighty God, whose mere creature I am, is not a reason why I should doubt his word, when

ie is pleased to reveal any part of his ways to me. We are told that "the ways of God are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts;" and that "he is past finding out." Shall we then question the wisdom which we cannot comprehend, merely because we cannot understand it? Were the Almighty pleased to open the stores of his wisdom to our eyes, but not to open our eyes with more extended faculties for looking at them than we now enjoy, is it to be conceived that we could comprehend them? I therefore readily grant the Defendant that Jesus Christ formally professes his inferiority and dependence, and that he received his human being and his powers from God; but what can he infer more than I have already done, that, as man, the Man Jesus was inferior to God; that is, having two natures, one was greater, and, consequently, the other was less? Were I, in the midst of an argument proving the immortality of the soul of man, to say, that I laboured under a lingering disease, of which I feared that I should die, would the Defendant say, I had confuted my own doctrine of the soul's immortality? Would he pronounce that I meant that my soul should die? Upon this reasoning, he may equally, as in the case before us, declare, that when Jesus Christ speaks as man, he denies his Godhead.1

1 See Scriptural Confutation, p. 25, 27.

Court. Now, then, Defendants, if any of you be disposed to question this witness, you may proceed.

Lindsey. In reply to what this witness has advanced, I have first to state, my Lord, that to the doctrine called the Trinity I object, as not being revealed by Scripture; and if it were one of such vital importance as the Attorney-General and the several Witnesses represent it, it seems only reasonable to expect that what constitutes the leading point of Christianity should be clearly and unequivocally defined. If it were, indeed, required as an article of Christian belief, Christians of the dullest faculties, in all justice, should be possessed of sufficient ability to comprehend it. That the doctrine is mysterious, all who hear any thing of it must admit; but my words respecting mysteries have been wantonly misunderstood: my own expression and my own belief is, that "our Saviour Christ teaches no mysterious doctrine." And I beg to ask the witness, whether what he has declared as the doctrines of Christ are not the doctrines of the Apostles; and of the Apostles I have not said that they taught no mysteries.

Witness. What I have before stated, at all events, refers to the belief of the Apostles, who declared many of the doctrines of Christianity mysterious; and particularly that which relates to the divinity of Christ; and upon this ground alone your arguments fall but I moreover maintain, that the

deep and mysterious doctrine of the incarnation, and previous divinity of Christ is insisted upon by our Saviour himself; for, as I have already mentioned, he declares that God "loved him before the foundation of the world;"- that "he had a glory with the Father before the world was;" -that he spake "what he had seen with the Father, whom no man had seen but himself alone; ❞—that "he came down from heaven to do the will of him that sent him; " that "he came forth from the Father, and came into the world, and was to leave the world, and go to the Father;"—that "he should be seen ascending up where he was before." - And because the Jews cavilled when he observed, that Abraham saw his day with joy, he adds, "Before Abraham was, I AM." It is true that he calls himself a man; but this no more excludes his divine nature, than the application of that term to angels excludes their angelic nature.1

Lindsey. Again, my Lord, with respect to the term Trinity, it is one which none have a right to assume as the designation of a doctrine of Christianity, when the doctrine itself is, at best, but

1 This paragraph is taken from Archbishop Newcome's observations on the conduct of our Lord, sect. ii. p. 6.; and shows what was that Prelate's belief respecting the divinity of Christ; although the editors of "the Improved Version " conspicuously place his name in their titlepage, as if he were a favourer of a very different doctrine.