in the wording of that article, as they have always been, dreading to speak it out in broad terms. However, if God the Son be God, as the text plainly says, he must be either another God, or one God with the Father: so that if our doctrine of one God be rejected, two Gods is the consequence directly. Besides, since they must own, and do own, that he was God before the world was made, they should tell us, whether he was God by nature, or by office. He had no office so early, that I know of: it seems then, he was God by nature. So there are two Gods by nature upon the Arian principles. Therefore let any sober Christian judge which is the true interpretation of the text, theirs or ours, thus far. Now let us proceed. The Word WAS IN THE BEGINNING WITH GOD. That is, say we, before any thing was made. And we say it for these two plain reasons: because the order of the sentence requires it, since the account of the creation follows after; and because all things were made by the Word: therefore he was before all creatures. The Arian construction, as this gentleman represents it P, is, "IN THE BEGINNING, when God created the heavens and "the earth." Now if heaven and earth are words which signify all creatures, we admit the exposition: but if they mean any thing less, they are short of St. John's exposition of his own phrase, which he interprets to mean all things that ever were made, that is, all creatures. ALL THINGS WERE MADE BY HIM, AND WITHOUT HIM WAS NOT ANY THING MADE THAT WAS MADE 9. P Sober and Charitable Disquisition, p. 54, 55. ¶ One may observe the force of this text even upon those that came very unwillingly (and upon the whole not sincerely) into the doctrine it contained, since it obliged Eunomius himself, one of the grosser kind of Arians, but the shrewdest man of the sect, to admit thus much, that Christ must be as much superior to his creatures, as the Maker must be to the things he has made; and that he was really invested with creatine powers by the Father. A remarkable concession, and such as ought to have made a modest man renounce all his metaphysics; which alone hindered him from coming entirely Now we interpret and say, that if all things were made by him, then he himself must be unmade: and since made by him, amounts to declaring him Maker of all creatures, (as we shall see upon Hebr. i. 10.) we again conclude, he is no creature; because a creature creator, if at all reconcileable with reason, is however utterly irreconcileable with Scripture, which every where makes creative power the distinguishing character of God most highs. The Arian construction is, " All [other] things were made by "him, and without him was not any thing made that "was [then] made." So by inserting other there, and then here; that is, by altering St. John's most express, most emphatical propositions, a new sense is made for him which he had doubly excluded, as far as words could do it. For our construction we have, 1. Express text. 2. The order and coherence of the sentence. 3. The tenor of Scripture, appropriating creative powers to God supreme. 4. The reason of the thing: for it is not reasonable to suppose that one creature should create another. 5. The universal judgment of the first and purest ages of the Christian Church. What is there now, on the other into Church principles. The place I speak of is in his Apologetic, (which was answered by St. Basil,) and runs as here follows.. Τοσαύτην αὐτῷ νέμομεν ὑπεροχὴν, ὅσην ἔχειν ἀναγκαῖον τῶν ἰδίων ποιημάτων τὸν ποιητήν. πάντα γὰρ δι' αὐτοῦ γεγενῆσθαι κατὰ τὸν μακάριον Ἰωάννην ὁμολογοῦμεν, συναπογεννηθείσης ἄνωθεν αὐτῷ τῆς δημιουργικῆς δυνάμεως, ὡς εἶναι Θεὸν μονογενῆ πάντων τῶν μετ ̓ αὐτὸν, καὶ δὶ αὐτοῦ γενομένων. Eunom. Apolog. p. 281. Fabr. Bibl. Græc. lib. v. c. 23. Basil. Opp. tom. i. p. 623. edit. Bened. Conf. Basil. contr. Eunom. lib. ii. p. 255. edit. Bened. A late ingenious writer argues the point, in a very rational manner, thus: "Creation, or the bringing a thing into being which before had none; "or was once nothing, is undoubtedly the proper act of an almighty or in'finite power: and, as must be granted, infinite power is an incommuni" cable attribute or perfection. Besides, if a power of creating could be "communicated, then the being on which it is conferred, having the same "power, might endue a creature of its own with such a power; and this "creature might make another such creature, and so on in infinitum; which " is so shocking an absurdity, that no one can bear the thought or imagina"tion of it." Essay concerning Rational Notions, p. 159. printed for W. Innys, 1733. ⚫ See my Sermons, vol. ii. p. 53, &c. hand, to counterbalance these reasons, or to oblige us to run cross to so many evident marks of a true interpretation? The author of Sober and Charitable &c. pleads on the other side, that the Apostle, if he had intended to teach that the Logos was God, Creator of all things, might have said it more plainly, and with less circumlocution t. But we think St. John has done it in chosen and expressive words, and could not have made use of better, to express what he intended, all things considered". He might have said, adds this gentleman, that "in "God are three personal distinctions, the Father, the "Word, and the Spirit." But St. John was wiser than to teach Sabellianism, as it has been since called: the blessed three are not personal distinctions, but distinct persons; as is proved from St. John in this very place, because the Word was with God. It is asked, could either Jew or heathen guess that he did not mean a distinct being? I answer, neither Jew nor heathen, who knew that St. John believed the Old Testament, could be so weak as to imagine that he meant to teach another God, or two Gods. However, the Christian Church are the properest interpreters of St. John's meaning: why must Jews or heathens, as such, be appealed to y, rather than Christ's disciples, for the understanding Christian doctrine? The objector here twice z confounds personal characters (as he had before done personal distinctions) with persons; which is not fair towards our side, nor so prudent for the other side, because it is tacitly confessing, that our notion wants to be misrepresented, in order to afford some colour for disputing against it. He asks, "Why is it doubled over, THE SAME WAS Sober and Charitable Disquisition, p. 55. "See the whole explained above. Compare Tillotson, Sermon xliii. vol. i. fol. edit. * Sober and Charitable &c. p. 56. y See my Sermons, vol. ii. p. 21, 22, 23. 2 Sober and Charitable, &c. p. 56, 57. "IN THE BEGINNING?" To be the more emphatical against heretics, or the better to connect the sentence, and to introduce what follows. "And why so minute, as to inform us, not one is to be "excepted a?" Perhaps to foreclose, condemn, and put to shame all those who, notwithstanding such his minuleness, would yet be bold enough to foist in other there, and then here, to elude and frustrate his meaning: experience shows, that all his guards are useful, none superfluous. But if the reader desires a fuller account, he may please to look back to what I have said above b. I have answered all the questions: and now let the reader judge, whether they have weight enough to bear down the Christian interpretation founded upon the reasons before recited. Yet the author is pleased to recommend the other, in very high terms: "Not a word is lost, in that "way, every thing has a plain, proper, and obvious "sense c." Is it possible? Has the word God, for instance, its plain, proper, and obvious sense, when it is made to signify a Godlike creature? And is there not a word lost, when the very strongest expressions which the Apostle could use, to exempt the Logos from being one of the things made, are defeated and frustrated, by forcing the words other and then upon him, which he never wrote, and by obtruding a sense, which, it is likely, he abhorred? Have the words, all things, and was not any thing, their plain and obvious sense assigned them, when they are violently wrested from their absolute meaning to a limited one; and are arbitrarily clogged with reserves and restrictions, though, according to the plain letter, and other plain circumstances, they form universal propositions, affirmative and negative? If such liberties as these are to be taken with plain texts, and without any appa Sober and Charitable &c. p. 57. See above, p. 182. Sober and Charitable, &c. p. 55. As to the strict sense of the word God, in that place, see my Sermons, vol. ii. p. 20, 21. rent necessity, it is in vain to prescribe any sober rules of interpretation, or to attempt to prove any thing from dead writings. But if words can be of any weight or significancy, these texts of St. John are plainly definitive on our side of the question: which I have shown more at large elsewhere. Or if the reader pleases to peruse Professor Frank's Treatise, lately translated from the German into English f, he will there find the Divinity of our blessed Lord solidly demonstrated by six several arguments drawn from this single chapter, but compared with other texts. I may over and above advance one more argument, fairly deducible from the distress which the impugners of Christ's Divinity have all along been in, with relation to this proeme of St. John, and the difficulties they have lain under in contriving to evade its force. The Alogi 8, (who appear to have been a branch of the Ebionites,) as also Theodotus h, took the short and plain way, which was to reject the whole Gospel, as not being of St. John's inditing. The Arians were so distressed with the same passages, that they knew not how to evade them but by a new invention of a twofold Logos i, one considered as an attribute, quality, or operation of God, (after the Sabellian way,) the other considered as a creature, made by the former. And here they were under a dilemma which they could never get clear of: for either all things were made by the Logos in the former sense, and then how was the Logos MADE FLESH? Or all things were made by the Logos in the latter sense, created by a creature, who must also, if the word all be strictly taken, have created himself; which • Sermons the first, second, and third, at Lady Moyer's Lecture. f Frank's Nucleus, or Christ the Sum and Substance of Scripture, p. 93173. Epiphan. Hær. 1. i. 3. Philastr. Hær. Ix. Damascen. Hær. li. i Vid. Athanasii Opp. 260, 282, 398, 409, 413, 503, 505, 620. edit. Bened. |