compare with the writings of the prophets; which it was not possible the disciples should do in so complete a manner, and to so great satisfaction during the life of Christ, had they been ever so sagacious, and ever so well prepared.

Question III. "How could the disciples trust in him as their Saviour, and commit their souls to him for salvation in his life-time, if they had not a firm faith in his godhead ?"

Answer I. The way whereby the fathers before Christ were saved, was not so much by a direct act of faith on the person of the Messiah, who was to come, as by the direct and immediate exercise of faith or trust on the mercy of God, as it was to be revealed in and through the Messiah in due time. Now the dispensation of those three or four years which past during the life of Christ, was a sort of medium between the law and the gospel and the acts and exercises of the apostles' faith or trust and dependence, like that of the patriarchs, might be more directly placed on the mercy of God himself for salvation, as it had begun to manifest itself in and by Jesus the Messiah, now come into the world. So St. Peter expresses it, 1 Pet. i. 21. You who by him do believe in God.

Though they were frequently called to believe in Christ, yet you find they were so unskilled in a direct act of divine faith on him, that our Lord was fain to repeat the command with great solemnity but just before his death. John xiv. i. Ye believe in God, believe also in me: as if he should have said, "Ye have a long time trusted and professed your faith in God and his mercy, make me now also the direct object of your faith or trust, as ye have made God the Father."

II. Under the great darkness and confusion of their notions in that season of twilight, they sometimes paid too little honour to Christ, because they had too low an esteem of him; and sometimes the honour they paid him through the influence of rapture and surprize, though not too high in itself, yet it might be above and beyond the clear discernment of their understanding's and their own settled judgment concerning him. Thus they might now and then exert some faint acts of divine faith on him, while in the main they were doubtful of his godhead. But a gracious God makes great allowances for such weaknesses in faith and practice, where the divine discoveries which he makes to men, have but imperfect degrees of light and evidence.

Question IV. " Does it not follow then, if the disciples were in a state of grace, and yet doubted of the deity of Christ; surely the deity of Christ was not a fundamental article in that

day

Answer I. Fundamentals are different in different seasons and times, nations and ages; for as God makes more or less discoveries of divine truth to men, so more or less is necessary to be

believed in order to salvation. Surely it was not a fundamental article for Peter to know, and believe the sufferings and death of Christ as a sacrifice for sin, and his resurrection from the dead, at that time when he rebuked our Saviour himself, because he spake of his dying; Mat. xvi. 22. And when none of the apos tles knew what rising from the dead should mean, as Mark ix. 10. yet the belief of the death and resurrection of Christ was certainly a fundamental article, and necessary to salvation in a little time afterward; and is become necessary to christianity itself; 1 Cor. xv. 14, 17. If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain, ye are yet in' your sins. The doctrine of the divinity of Christ therefore may not be supposed to be a fundamental article in the time of Christ's life, because we have reason to believe the apostles were in a state of grace and salvation, before there is any sufficient evi'dence of their faith therein: But it will not follow thence, that' the same doctrine either is or is not a fundamental, after it has been more fully and clearly revealed by the complete writings of the New Testament: And indeed a truth ought to be revealed very plainly and with convincing evidence, before it can be ever called a fundamental.

It has been the constant method of divine wisdom in all ages, to communicate to man the glorious discoveries of the grace of God by slow and gentle degrees, and not to overwhelm our faculties at once with a flood of divine light. He knows the weakness of our frame, he knows how dark are our understandings, how feeble our judgments, how many and great our natu ral prejudices, and how hard it is to surmount them; and he demands our belief in measures answerable to his discoveries. It is according to the growing evidence of any divine revelation, and the gradual advantages that any man has to know and understand that revelation, that God justly expects the growing exercises of our faith. Thus that faith which is necessary to salvation, consists of more or fewer articles, according to the different ages of the church, and different degrees of revelation and divine light. Thus though our Lord Jesus Christ was true God when he came first to be manifest in the flesh, yet the complete glory of his person and the beams of his godhead did not discover themselves in a triumphant and convincing light during the days of his humiliation: and though it was necessary then, to all those who had a clear knowledge of his doctrine and miracles, to believe that he was the Messiah: Except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins; John viii. 24. yet it doth not seem at that time to have been made necessary to believe his deity, since the discoveries of it were but imperfect, and it is plain that his own apostles hardly believed it.

It is certain, that after the resurrection of Christ, and the

days of Pentecost, the apostles by degrees had more divine light let into their souls by the Holy Spirit, whereby they arrived at a fuller knowledge of the glory of his person and his godhead; yet it is very probable that the idea which I have before described, is the highest they attained in his life-time; and that not only on the account of the arguments I have used already, but because this notion was so fixed and rooted in their minds, that they generally described our Lord Jesus Christ in this manner, in ail their first ministrations of the gospel, and they thought it proper to teach others in the same manner as they had learned. So St. Peter, Acts ii. 22. tells the men of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth was a man approved of God among you by miracles, and wonders, and signs which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves know; ver. 24. whom God has raised up, having loosed the pains of death.

Again, Acts iii. 13. The God of our fathers hath glorified his Son Jesus whom ye delivered up, &c. And he cites Moses to shew what he was, ver. 22. A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me. So when he preached to Cornelius a Roman, Acts x. 38. God hath anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed with the devil, for God was with him, &c.

And St. Paul himself preached Christ under this inferior character at first, though he came not a whit behind the chiefest of the apostles in knowledge; 2 Cor. xii. 11. and Gal. ii. 6. In his sermon at Athens, he says, God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead; Acte, xvii. 31. Thus they begun with the human nature and the offices of Christ, and the peculiar assisting presence of God with him, before they taught any thing of the mystery of his own godhead or personal union with the divine nature.

And indeed there is a good deal of reason, why they should not at first reveal and display the glorious doctrine of the Trinity and the godhead of Jesus, though they had known it ever so well. It was not fit they should break in all at once upon the blind Jewish nation, nor upon the blinder Gentiles, with the blaze of Christ's divinity. For, to speak humanly, it would have filled the minds of strangers with surprizing doubts and scruples, and raised in them an utter prejudice against all further attention to the gospel, if they had been told at first of three persons who were each of them the true God, and yet all three but one God*.

* There is a remarkable instance to this purpose in the "Conferences of the Danish missionaries with the heathens of Malabar." The missionary speaking of the Son of God, the Malabarian replied, Who is his Son? and is he also God? Missionary. He is God blessed for ever. Malabarian. But pray Sir, recollect

This was not proper to be the very first lesson in christianity. The great work of the conversion of the world was done by degrees as human nature could bear. Thus God hath treated men in all ages, and led them on "from faith to faith ;" Rom. i. 17. Thus our Lord Jesus Christ treated his disciples;, John xvi. 12. I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now. And thus the apostles treated the Jews and Gentiles, to whom they preached; I Cor. iii. 2. and fed them with milk and not with meat, for they were not able to bear it. Thus by slow degrees they led them from the knowledge of Jesus, the Son of man, to the knowledge of Jesus the Son of God; from the discovery of Jesus the prophet, to the discovery of Jesus the Messiah, the priest and the king; from the revelation of Christ the Saviour of men to the revelation of Christ the eternal life and the true God; from the doctrine of the presence of God with him, to the doctrine of his personal union with godhead, "in whom dwells all the fulness of the godhead bodily; Col. ii. 9. and who is "God over all blessed for ever; Rom. ix. 5. by virtue of this glorious and personal union with the eternal God.

yourself, have not you been just now inveighing against plurality of Gods? And now I find, you have yourselves more than one; the Father is God, and the Son is God, then you have two gods. Missionary. We do not believe two gods, but one only God; though at the same time, we firmly believe, that there are three persons in one divine essence; and yet these three persons are not three, but one God: And this we believe as a great mystery, &c. And then he goes on to explain it by the understanding and the will proceeding from the soul, which are yet really one and the same thing with the soul. Upon which the Malabarian makes this reply; I find, said he, that you, with your subtil ways of arguing, can make a Trinity consistent with unity; and if your explication is absolutely necessary to make others understand what you mean, pray allow us the same advantage of explaining the doctrine of our religion, and putting it in the most favourable light we can, for the excluding the absurdities imputed to us? And this once granted us, it will follow, that our plurality does not destroy the unity of God, no more than your Trinity does. We worship the gods upon no other account, than because they are the vicegerents of the Almighty, whose administration be employs in governing the world, as he did employ them at the beginning, in creating and forming the same. And our God appearing among men at Buodry times under different shapes, bad at every apparition a different name given him, which contributed very much to the multiylying of the number of our images; whereas in truth, they are but different representations of the same God, under different aspects and appearances. See "Conference, number xi." Now if the apostles had dealt so imprudently with the Heathens or with the Jews, by preaching the doctrine of the Trinity at first in the fullest expressions, they had embarrassed the minds of their hearers, and exposed themselves and their doctrine of salvation by Jesus the Messiah to such difficulties and wrangling di putations. But you find no controversies of this kind raised in their first preaching.

QUEST. III. Could the Son of God properly enter into a Covenant with his Father to do and suffer what was Necessary to our Redemption, without a Human Soul?

SECTION I.

IT is granted that the generality of our christian writers believe that it was only the divine nature or godhead of Christ had an existence before he was conceived by the Virgin Mary, and became incarnate; yet whensoever they would represent the exceeding great love of the Father in sending his Son into our world, that he might suffer and die for us, and when they would describe the transcendent love of Christ, in his coming into our world, and his submitting to death for our sakes, they usually represent it in such language as can never agree to his divine nature in any propriety of speech, but only to the pre-existent human soul of Christ, with its descent into flesh and blood, and the sufferings of his human soul for us. And it is evident that the scripture itself leads them plainly to such a representation of things so that while they are explaining the transcendent degree of the love of God and Christ to sinners, according to scripture, they are led by the force of truth into such expressions as are indeed hardly consistent with their own professed opinions, but perfectly consistent with the revelation of scripture, and the doctrine of the pre-existent soul of Christ. I was lately looking into the sermons of that most excellent, practical and evangelical writer, the late Mr. John Flavel, in his treatise called the Fountain of Life Opened; or, a Display of Christ; where I found the following expressions:

Sermon II. page 13. in quarto, where the excellent author is describing the glorious condition of the non-incarnate Son of God, he says, "Christ was not then abased to the condition of a creature, but it was an inconceivable abasement to the absulute independent being to come under the law; yea, not only under the obedience, but also under the malediction and curse of the law; Gal. iv. 4. God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.

Page 14. "He was never pinched with poverty and wants while he continued in that bosom, as he was afterwards. Ah blessed Jesus! Thou needest not to have wanted a place to have lain thy head, hadst thou not left that bosom for my sake." And here the author quotes Mr. Anthony Burges, in his lectures on John: "He that was in the bosom of the Father and had the most intimate, close, and secret delight and love from the Father, how unspeakable is it that he should deprive himself of the sense of it, to put himself, as it were out of heaven into hell!" Mr. Flavel then proceeds, "He never underwent reproach and shame in that bosom There was nothing but glory and honour reflected

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