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them, and gloried in them. They said, moreover, that the kingdom of Christ was earthly, and that he would not return to raise the dead and judge the world. As they discarded all the moral duties, they insisted on their privileges as descendants of Abraham, on circumcision, and other rites, which were called the works of the law as the means of salvation. The Apostle Paul had reasons equally good with them to boast of his privileges: but he considered nothing of any use or value but the exercise of piety, benevolence, and temperance, through an efficacious faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The circumstance that the Apostle in this epistle refers to the false teachers, supplies a very easy and natural explanation of the following passage, which has occasioned so much dispute and embarrassment among divines. Philip. ii. 6. "Let the same mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in a form of God, did not think to rob God, to be equal with him; but he emptied himself of it, having taken the form of a slave, being found to be in frame as a man. And be humbled himself so as to be obedient unto death, and that a death on the cross. And on this account God hath highly exalted him, and bestowed on him a name above every other name, that, in the name of Jesus, every knee should bend, of beings in heaven, and on earth, and beneath the earth, and every tongue should confess Jesus Christ to be Lord, unto the glory of God the Father."

In this chapter Paul exhorts the Christians at

Philippi to preserve among themselves unanimity and meekness, and then adverts to the sentiments of the deceivers as the cause of their dissensions. The phrase in a form of God is opposed to the form of a slave; but the latter means a mean or humble form: the former therefore denotes not the form of a supernatural being, but a grand, magnificent, or splendid form. And, when was Jesus Christ invested with this superior form? The transfiguration on the mount is the scene to which the Apostle, I conceive, principally alludes *. At that time Jesus assumed a very splendid appearance, in order to delineate, in sensible colours, the glorious change he should undergo in his person and character, after his death and resurrection. Did he then retain this form? Did he boast of it, or did he make any ostentatious shew of it? No, he immediately laid it aside, and reassumed his former humble and mean figure, and even commanded his disciples not to divulge it, until the event had explained the nature, and realized the object, of the scene. Had Jesus been so disposed, he might have boasted of the splendid form, and supernatural majesty with which he was then invested. But he would not rob God of his attributes and supremacy, by claiming equality or resemblance to him. He, therefore, laid aside

Origen seems to have understood the words of Paul as referring to the transfiguration: for speaking of the appearance, which Jesus then assumed before his three disciples, be says, Ωφθη αυτοις εν μορφή θεού. Commen. Vol. i. p. 292.

that splendid figure, and again put on his wonted humble appearance. This the Apostle asserts in opposition to the false teachers, who with violence and turbulence contended for the divinity of Christ. The term grayμos, robbery, which in this place appears so forced and unuatural, is copied by association from the character of the deceivers. Our Lord himself calls them thieves and robbers: and from Josephus we learn that they were in the number of those banditti, who, infested Judea under the name of sicarii, or robbers. These impious men hesitated not to rob the Supreme Being of his glory. The character and temper of Jesus in this respect, presented a striking contrast, and on this contrast Paul led the Philippians to dwell by a term which was descriptive of the men whom he opposed. The Gnostics, while they maintained the divinity of Christ, said, that he was a man only in the likeness of men. This is what the Apostle next notices; and he virtually asserts, that as Jesus in form resembled men, so he was found to be so in reality. He was in the likeness of man, and found or proved to be in frame as a

man.

The object of the fiction that Jesus existed only in the likeness of men, was to furnish a specious pretext for denying his death, and subsequent resurrection. According to them, Christ continued obedient in the humble figure of a man, no farther than the period of his public apprehension: he then vanished away. This the Apostle contradicts, by declaring that he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, and that a death on the cross.

The false teachers, who first deified the man Christ Jesus, naturally enough held him up as an object of religious worship. This is the interesting point on which the Apostle next decides: the glory, he says, is to be ascribed to God; and the name of Jesus, however to be loved and admired, is only a medium through which this glory is to be offered to the universal Father. "In the name of Jesus, every knee should bend-unto the glory of God the Father,"

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DIVINITY, THE MIRACULOUS BIRTH, AND THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST REFUTED FROM THE EPISTLES TO THE HEBREWS, TO THE COLOSSIANS, AND TO TIMOTHY.

THESE epistles contain some passages which the orthodox urge with great plausibility, in support of their system, and which their opponents have not been able satisfactorily to explain. The following remarks may serve to remove the difficulties that have hitherto been felt in the epistle to the Hebrews.

Philo and Josephus bave described the Hebrew believers under the name of Esseans: The accounts which these learned Jews have given of this people, as existing in Palestine and Egypt, forms, therefore, the best commentary on the epistle which the Apostle Paul addressed to them from Italy. Philo relates, that those Jews who lived in Alexandria had their houses plundered, and themselves destroyed, or driven to the wilderness; and that even the women did not escape reproaches and tortures. The believers received similar treatment from their own brethren in Judea; and the Apostle, by the examples of faith which he sets before the Hebrew

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