It is sufficient, however, here to show, that the title "KING OF ISRAEL" was understood, by Jews, to imply Divinity. Nathanael exclaims, "Rabbi, thou art the SON OF GOD, thou art the KING OF ISRAEL." This was said upon such a proof of his Messiahship as, from his acquaintance with some matter private to Nathanael alone when he was "under the fig-tree," was a full demonstration of Omniscience: a circumstance which also determines the Divine import of "SON OF GOD," the title which is here connected with it. Both were certainly understood by Nathanael to imply an assumption of Godhead.

"As our Saviour hung upon the cross,' says St. Matthew, they that passed by reviled him wagging their heads and saying, Thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days, save thyself; if thou be the SON OF GOD, come down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the KING OF ISRAEL, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver him now, if He will have him for he said, I am the SON OF GOD. The thieves also, which were crucified with him, CAST THE SAME in his teeth. [One of them saying, If thou be CHRIST, Save thyself and us; but the other said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me, when thou comest into thy kingdom.] [And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar, and saying, If thou be THE KING OF THE JEWS, save thyself.] Now when the centurion, and they that were with him watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, [Certainly this was a righteous man] Truly this was THE SON OF GOD.' Here we see the Jews, and the Gentiles residents among them, uniting to speak in a language that stamps Divinity upon the title used by them both. The Jewish passengers, upon the road over the top of Calvary, stood still near the cross of our Saviour, insultingly to nod at him, to reproach him with his assumed appellative of the Son of God, and to challenge him to an exertion of that Divinity which both he and they affixed to it, by coming down from the cross, and saving himself from death. The elders, the scribes, and the chief priests equally insulted him with the same assumption, and equally challenged him to the same exertion, calling upon him now to show he was truly THE KING OF ISRAEL, or the Lord and Sovereign of their nation in all ages, by putting forth the power of his Divine royalty, and coining down from the cross."(8)

Such is the testimony of the Jews to the sense in which our Saviour applied these titles to himself. The title "SON OF GOD" demands, however, a larger consideration; various attempts having been made to restrain its significance, in direct opposition to this testimony, to the mere humanity of our Saviour, and to rest its application upon his miraculous conception.

by him, and by his disciples for him. The question therefore is, what this title imported.

Those who think that it was assumed by Christ, and given to him by his disciples, because of his miraculous conception are obviously in error. Our Lord, when he adopts the appellation, never urges his miraculous birth as a proof of his Souship; on the contrary, this is a subject on which he preserves a total silence, and the Jews were left to consider him as "the son of Joseph ;" and to argue from his being born at “Nazareth," as they supposed, that he could not be the Messiah; so ignorant were they of the circumstances of his birth, and therefore of the manner of his conception. Again, our Lord calls God his Father, and grounds the proof of it upon his miracles. The Jews, too, clearly conceived, that, in making this profession of Sonship with reference to God, he assumed a Divine character, and made himself "equal with God." They therefore took up stones to stone him. In that important argument between our Lord and the Jews, in which his great object was to establish the point, that, in a peculiar sense God was his father, there is no reference at all to the miraculous conception. On the contrary, the title "Son of God" is assumed by Christ on a ground totally different; and it is disputed by the Jews, not by their questioning or denying the fact that he was miraculously conceived, but on the assumed impossibility that he, being a man, should be equal to God; which they affirmed that title to import.

Nor did the disciples themselves give him this title with reference to his conception by the Holy Ghost. Certain it is, that Nathanael did not know the circumstances of his birth; for he was announced to him by Philip as Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph;" and he asks, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" He did not know, therefore, but that Jesus was the son of Joseph; he knew nothing of his being born at Bethlehem, and yet he confesses him to be "THE SON OF GOD, and the KING OF ISRAEL."

It may also be observed, that, in the celebrated confession of Peter, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the LIVING GOD," there is no reference at all to the miraculous conception; a fact, at that time probably not known even to the apostles, and one of the things which Mary kept and pondered in her heart, till the Spirit was given, and the full revelation of Christ was made to the apostles. But even if the miraculous conception were known to St. Peter, it is clear, from the answer of our Lord to him, that it formed no part of the ground on which he confessed "the SON OF MAN" to be the "SON OF GOD;" for our Lord replies, "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my FATHER which is in heaven." He had been specially taught this doctrine of the Sonship of Christ by God; an unnecessary thing, certainly, if the miraculous conception had been the only ground of that Sonship; for the evidence of that fact might have been collected from Christ and the Virgin mother, and there was no apparent necessity of a revelation from the Father so particular, a teaching so special, as that mentioned in our Lord's reply, and which is given as an instance of the peculiar "blessedness" of Simon Barjona.

That the title "SON OF GOD" was applied to Christ is a fact. His disciples, occasionally before and frequently after his resurrection, give him this appellation; he assumes it himself; and it was indignantly denied to him by the Jews, who, by that very denial, acknowledge that it was claimed in its highest sense venit ad possessionem suam, et qui possessionis ipsius erant, eum non receperunt: quod explicatur, Matt. xxi., ubi filius dicitur missus ad ecclesiam Judaicam os kanovopos els av kλпpovoμiav aνrs.-Ludov. de Dieu,

in loc.

(8) WHITAKER's Origin of Arianism.

be the Jehovah of the Old Testament is plain from the texts adduced in a former chapter, and this, therefore, is to be considered the faith of the ancient Jewish church. It is however certain, that at the period of our Lord's advent, and for many years previously, the learned among the Jews had mingled much of the philosophy which they had learned from the heathen schools with their theological speculation; and that their writings present often a singular compound of crude metaphysical notions, allegories, cabalistic mysteries, and occasionally great and sublime truths. The age of our Lord was an age of great religious corruption and error. The Sadducees were materialists and skeptics; and the Pharisees had long cultivated the opinion, that the Messiah was to be a temporal monarch; a notion which served to vitiate their concep tions of his character and office, and to darken all the prophecies. Two things, however, amid all this con

fusion of opinions, and this prevalence of great errors appear exceedingly clear from the evangelists. 1. That the Jews recognised the existence of such a Being as the "Son of God;" and that, for any person to profess to be the Son of God, in this peculiar sense, was to commit blasphemy. 2. That for a person to profess to be the Messiah simply was not considered blasphemy, and did not exasperate the Jews to take up stones to stone the offender. Our Lord certainly professed to be the Messiah; many of the Jews also, at different times, believed on him as such; and yet, as appears from St. John's Gospel, these same Jews, who "believed" on him as Messiah, were not only "offended," but took up stones to stone him as a blasphemer, when he declared himself to be the "Son of God," and that God was his proper Father." It follows from these facts, that the Jews of our Lord's times, generally, having been perverted from the faith of their ancestors, did not expect the second person of the Trinity, "the Son of God," the Divine Memra, or Logos, to be the Messiah. Others indeed, had a dim and uninfluential apprehension of this truth; there were who indulged various other speculations on the subject; but the true doctrine was only retained among the faithful few, as Simeon, who explicitly ascribes Divinity to the Messiah, whom he held in his arms; Nathanael, who connects "SON OF GOD and KING OF ISRAEL" together, one the designation of the Divine nature, the other of the office of Messiah; and the apostles of our Lord, whose minds were gradually opened to this mystery of faith, and brought off from the vulgar notion of the civil character and mere human nature and human work of Messiah, by the inspiration and teaching of God-"flesh and blood did not reveal it to them, but the Father."

We cannot, therefore, account for the use of the title "SON OF GOD," among the Jews of our Lord's time, whether by his disciples or his enemies, by considering it as synonymous with "Messiah." The Jews regarded the former as necessarily involving a claim to Divinity, but not the latter; and the disciples did not conceive that they fully confessed their Master by calling him the Messiah, without adding to it his higher personal designation. "Thou art the CHRIST," says St. Peter; but he adds, "THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD:" just as Nathanael, under the influence of a recent proof of his omniscience, and consequently of his Divinity, salutes him first as "SON OF GOD," and then as Messiah, "KING OF ISRAEL."

We are to seek for the origin of the title "THE SON OF GOD" in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, where a DIVINE SON is spoken of in passages, some of which have reference to him as Messiah also, and in others which have no such reference. In both, however, we shall find that it was a personal designation; a name of revelation, not of office; that it was essential in him to be a Sos, and accidental only that he was the MESSIAH; that he was the first by nature, the second by appointment; and that, in constant association with the name of "SON," as given to him alone, and in a sense which shuts out all creatures, however exalted, are found ideas and circumstances of full and absolute Divinity.

Under the designation "SON," Son of God, he is introduced in the second Psalm: "The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee." From apostolic authority we know that the " SoN," here introduced as speaking, is Christ; this application to him being explicitly made at least twice in the New Testament. Now if we should allow with some, that "the day" here spoken of is the day of Christ's resurrection, and should interpret his being "begotten" of the Father of the act itself of raising him from the dead, it is clear that the miraculous conception of Christ is not, in this passage, laid down as the ground of his Sonship. The reference is clearly made to another transaction, namely, his resurrection. So far this passage, thus interpreted, furnishes an instance in which the Messiah is called "THE SON OF GOD," on some ground entirely independent of the mode of his incarnation. But he is so frequently called the Son, where there is no reference even to his resurrection, that this cannot be considered as the ground of that relation; and indeed, the point is sufficiently settled by St. Paul, who, in his Epistle to the Romans, tells us, that the resurrection of Christ was the declaration of his Sonship, not the ground of it DECLARED to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead." We perceive, too, from

the Psalm, that the mind of the inspired writer is filled with ideas of his Divinity, of his claims, and of his works as God. This SON the nations of the earth are called to "kiss, lest he be angry and they perish from the way;" and every one is pronounced blessed who "putteth his trust in him ;" a declaration of unequivocal Divinity, because found in a book which pronounces every man cursed "who trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm."

"It is obvious, at first view, that the high titles, and honours ascribed in this Psalm to the extraordinary person who is the chief subject of it, far transcend any thing that is ascribed in Scripture to any mere creature. But if the Psalm be inquired into more narrowly, and compared with parallel prophecies; if it be duly considered, that not only is the extraordinary person here spoken of called the Son of God, but that title is so ascribed to him, as to imply that it belongs to him in a manner that is absolutely singular and peculiar to himself, seeing he is said to be begotten of God (verse 12), and is called by way of eminence, the Son (verse 12); that the danger of provoking him to anger is spoken of in so very different a manner from what the Scripture uses in speaking of the anger of any mere creature; 'Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little;' that when the kings and judges of the earth are commanded to serve God with fear, they are, at the same time, commanded to kiss the Son, which, in those times and places, was frequently an expression of adoration; and particularly, that whereas other Scriptures contain awful and just threatenings against those who trust in any mere man, the Psalmist expressly calls them blessed who trust in the Son here spoken of. All these things, taken together and compared with the other prophecies, make up a character of Divinity; as, on the other hand, when it is said that God would set this his Son as his king on his holy hill of Zion (verse 6). These and various other expressions in this Psalm contain characters of the subordination which was to be appropriated to that Divine Person who was to be incarnate."(9)

"For

Neither the miraculous conception of Christ, nor yet his resurrection from the dead, is therefore the founda tion of his being called the Son of God in this Psalm. Not the first, for there is no allusion to it; not the second, for he was declared from heaven to be the "beloved Son" of the Father, at his very entrance upon his ministry, and consequently before the resurrection; and also, because the very apostle who applies the prediction to the resurrection of Christ, explicitly states that even that was a declaration of an antecedent Sonship. It is also to be noted, that in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul institutes an argument upon this very passage in the second Psalm, to prove the superiority of Christ to the angels. unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my SoN, this day have I begotten thee?" "The force of this argument lies in the expression 'begotten,' importing that the person addressed is the Son of God," not by creation, but by generation. Christ's pre-eminence over the angels is here stated to consist in this, that whereas they were created, he is begotten; and the apostle's reasoning is fallacious, unless this expression intimates a proper and peculiar filiation."(1) "He hath obtained," says Bishop Hall, "a more excellent name than the angels, namely, to be called and to be the Son of God, not by grace and adoption, but by nature and communication of essence." This argument, from Christ's superiority to all creatures, even the most exalted, shows the sentiment of St. Paul as to Divinity being implied in the title SON, given to the Messiah in the second Psalm. In this several of the ancient Jewish commentators agree with him; and here we see one of the sources from which the Jews derived their notion of the existence of a Divine Son of God.

Though the above argument stands independent of the interpretations which have been given to the clause "THIS DAY have I begotten thee," the following passage from Witsius, in some parts of its argument, has great weight :

"But we cannot so easily concede to our adversaries,

(9) MACLAURIN's Essay on the Prophecies. (1) HOLDEN'S Testimonies.-"Non dicit Deus adoptavi, sed generavi te; quod communicationem ejusdem essentiæ et naturæ divinæ significat, modo tamen prorsus ineffabile."-Michaelis.

that, by the generation of Christ, mentioned in the second Psalm, his resurrection from the dead is intended, and that by this day, we are to understand the day on which God, having raised him from the dead, appointed him the king of his church. For, 1. To beget signifies no where in the sacred volume to rescue from death; and we are not at liberty to coin new significations of words. 2 Though, possibly, it were used in that metaphorical acceptation (which, however, is not yet proved), it cannot be understood in this passage in any other than its proper sense. It is here adduced as a reason for which Christ is called the Son of God. Now, Christ is the Son of God, not figuratively, but properly; for the Father is called his proper Father, and he himself is denominated the proper Son of the Father, by which designation he is distinguished from those who are his sons in a metaphorical sense. 3. These words are spoken to Christ with a certain emphasis, with which they would not have been addressed to any of the angels, much less to any of mankind; but if they meant nothing more than the raising of him from the dead, they would attribute nothing to Christ which he doth not possess in common with many others, who, in like manner, are raised up by the power of God to glory and an everlasting kingdom. 4. Christ raised himself from the dead, too, by his own power; from which it would follow, according to this interpretation, that he begat himself, and that he is his own Son. 5. It is not true, in fine, that Christ was not begotten of the Father, nor called his Son till that very day on which he was raised from the dead; for, as is abundantly manifest from the Gospel history, he often, when yet alive, professed himself the Son of God, and was often acknowledged as such. 6. To-day refers to time, when human concerns are in question; but this expression, when applied to divine things, must be understood in a sense suitable to the majesty of the Godhead. And, if any word may be transferred from time to denote eternity, which is the complete and perfect possession, at once, of an interminable life, what can be better adapted to express its unsuccessive duration than the term to-day? Nor can our adversaries derive any support to their cause from the words of Paul (Acts xiii. 32, 33), And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.' For, 1. Paul doth not here prove the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, from this expression in the second Psalm (which, though it describes him who is raised again, doth not prove his resurrection), but from Isaiah iv. 3, and Psalm xvi. 10; while he adds (verses 34 and 35), And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead,' &c. 2. The words 'raised up Jesus,' do not even relate to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, but to the exhibition of him as a Saviour. This raising of him up is expressly distinguished from the raising of him again from the dead, which is subsequently spoken of, verse 34. The meaning is, that God fulfilled the promise made to the fathers, when he exhibited Christ to mankind in the flesh. But what was that promise? This appears from the second Psalm, where God promises to the church, that in due time he would anoint as king over her his own Son, begotten of himself roDAY; that is, from eternity to eternity, for with God there is a perpetual to-day. Grotius, whose name is not offensive to our opposers, has remarked, that Luke makes use of the same work to signify exhibiting, in Acts ii. 30; iii. 26. To these we add another instance from chap. vii. 37: A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you.' 3. Were we to admit, that the words of the psalm are applied to the resurrection of Christ, which seemed proper to Calvin, Cameron, and several other Protestant divines, the sense will only be this, that, by his being thus raised up again, it was declared and demonstrated, that Christ is the Son of the Father, begotten of him from everlasting. The Jewish Council condemned him for blasphemy, because he had called himself the Son of God. But, by raising him again from the grave, after he had been put to death as a blasphemer, God acquitted him from that charge, and publicly recognised him as his only-begotten Son. Thus he was declared, exhibited, and distinguished as the Son of God with power, expressly and particularly, to the entire exclusion of all others. The original word here employed by the apostles is remarkably expres

sive; and, as Ludovicus de Dieu has learnedly observed, it signifies that Christ was placed between such bounds, and so separated and discriminated from others, that he neither should nor can be judged to be any one else than the Son of God. The expression with power' may be joined with 'declared ;' and then the meaning will be, that he was shown to be the Son of God by a powerful argument. Or it may be connected with the Son of God;' and then it will intimate that he is the Son of God in the most ample and exalted sense of which the term is susceptible; so that this name, when ascribed to him, is a more excellent name' than any that is given to the noblest of creatures.”(2) Solomon, in Proverbs viii. 22, introduces not the personified, but the personal wisdom of God, under the same relation of a Son, and in that relation ascribes to him Divine attributes. This was another source of the notion which obtained among the ancient Jews, that there was a Divine Son of God.

"Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, Before his works of old.

I was anointed from everlasting,

From the beginning, before the world was,

When there were no depths I was BORN," &c.(3) Here," from considering the excellence of wisdom, the transition is easy to the undefiled source of it. Abstract wisdom now disappears, and the inspired writer proceeds to the delineation of a Divine Being, who is portrayed in colours of such splendour and majesty, as can be attributed to no other than the eternal Son of God."(4) "Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way." "The Father possessed the Son, had, or, as it were, acquired, him by an eternal generation. To say of the attribute wisdom, that God possessed it in the beginning of his work of creation is trifling; certainly it is too futile an observation to fall from any sensible writer; how, then, can it be attributed to the wise Monarch of Israel?"(5) "I was anointed from everlasting." "Can it, with propriety, be said of an attribute, that it was anointed, invested with power and authority from everlasting? In what way, literal or figurative, can the expression be predicated of a quality? But it is strictly applicable to the Divine Logos, who was anointed by the effusion of the Spirit; who was invested with power and dignity from everlasting; and who, from all eternity, derived his existence and essence from the Father; for in him 'dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily."(6)

It is a confirmation of the application of Solomon's description of wisdom to the Second Person of the Trinity, that the ancient Jewish writers (Philo among the number), as Allix has shown,(7) speak of the generation of Wisdom, and by that term mean "the Word," a personal appellation so familiar to them. Nor is there any thing out of the common course of the thinking of the ancient Hebrews in these passages of Solomon, when applied to the personal wisdom; since he, as we have seen, must, like them, have been well enough acquainted with a distinction of persons in the Trinity, and knew Jehovah, their lawgiver and king, under the title of "the Word of the Lord," as the Maker of all things, and the Revealer of his will, in a word, as Divine, and yet distinct from the Father. The relation in the Godhead of Father and Son was not, therefore, to the Jews an unrevealed mystery, and sufficiently accounts for the ideas of Divinity which they, in the days of Christ, connected with the appellation Son of God. This relation is most unequivocally expressed in the prophecy of Micah, chap. v. 2, "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting ;" or as it is in the margin, "from the days of eternity."(8) Here the person spoken

(2) WITSIUS's Dissertations on the Creed. (3) HOLDEN'S Translation of Proverbs. In the notes to chapter viii. the application of this description of Wisdom to Christ is ably and learnedly defended. (4) HOLDEN's Translation of Proverbs. (5) Ibid. (6) Ibid.

(7) Judgment of the Jewish Church. (8) So the LXX. and the Vulgate, and critics generally. "Antiquissima erit origine, ab æternis tempori bus."-DATHE. "Imo a diebus æternitatis, i. e. priusquam natus fuerit, jam ab æterno extitit."-ROSENMUL

LER.

of is said to have had a twofold birth, or "going forth."(9) By a natural birth he came forth from Bethlehem of Judah; by another and a higher, he was from the days of eternity. One is opposed to the other; but the last is carried into eternity itself by words which most clearly intimate an existence prior to the birth in Bethlehem, and that an eternal one: while the term used, and translated his "goings forth," conveys precisely the same idea as the eternal generation of the Son of God. "The passage carefully distinguishes his human nature from his eternal generation. The Prophet describes him who was to come out of Bethlehem' by another more eminent coming or going forth, even from all eternity. This is so signal a description of the Divine generation, before all time, or of that going forth from everlasting of Christ, the eternal Son of God; 'God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; who was afterward in time made man, and born into the world in Bethlehem, that the prophecy evidently belongs to him, and could never be verified of any other."(1)

This text, indeed, so decidedly indicates that peculiar notion of the Divinity of our Lord, which is marked by the term and the relation of SoN, that it is not surprising that Socinians should resort to the utmost violence of criticism to escape its powerful evidence. Dr. Priestley, therefore, says, "that it may be understood concerning the promises of God, in which the coming of Christ was signified to mankind from the beginning of the world." But nothing can be more forced or unsupported. The word here employed never signifies the work of God in predicting future events: but is often used to express natural birth and origin. So it is unquestionably used in the preceding clause, and cannot be supposed to be taken in a different sense, much less in a unique sense, in that which follows, and especially when a clear antithesis is marked and intended. He was to be born in time; but was not, on that account, merely a man: he was "from the days of eternity." By his natural birth, or "going forth," he was from Bethlehem; but his "goings forth," his production, his heavenly birth or generation, was from everlasting; for so the Hebrew word means, though, like our own word "ever," it is sometimes accommodated to temporal duration. Its proper sense is that of eternity, and it is used in passages which speak of the infinite duration

of God himself.

Others refer "his goings forth from everlasting" to the purpose of God that he should come into the world; but this is too absurd to need refutation: no such strange form of speech as this would be, if taken in this sense, occurs in the Scriptures; and it would be mere trifling so solemnly to affirm that of Messiah, which is just as true of any other person born into the world. This passage must, then, stand as an irrefutable proof of the faith of the ancient Jewish church, both in the Divinity and the Divine Sonship of Messiah; and, as Dr. Hales well observes,(2) "This prophecy of Micah is, perhaps, the most important single prophecy in the Old Testament, and the most comprehensive respecting the personal character of the Messiah, and his successive manifestation to the world. It crowns the whole chain of prophecies descriptive of the several limitations of the Blessed Seed of the woman to the line of Shem, to the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to the tribe of Judah, and to the royal house of David, here terminating in his birth at Bethlehem, the city of David.' It carefully distinguishes his human nativity from his eternal generation; foretels the rejection of the Israelites and Jews for a season, their final restoration, and the universal peace destined to prevail throughout the earth in the regeneration.' It forms,

(9) The word ', to come forth, is used in reference to birth frequently, as Gen. xvii. 6; 2 Kings xx. 18; and so the Pharisees understood it, when referring to this passage, in answer to Herod's inquiry, where Christ should be" born." The plural form," his goings forth" from eternity, denotes eminence. To signify the perfection and excellence of that generation, the word for birth is expressed plurally; for it is a common Hebraism to denote the eminence or continuation of a thing or action by the plural number. God shall judge the world" in righteousness and equity," or most righteously and equitably. Ps. xcviii. 9. "The angers of the Lord." Lam. iv. 16, &c. (1) Dr. PocoCK.

(2) HALES' Analysis.

therefore, the basis of the New Testament, which begins with his human birth at Bethlehem, the miraculous circumstances of which are recorded in the introductions of Matthew's and Luke's Gospels; his eternal generation, as the ORACLE, or WISDOM, in the sublime introduction of John's Gospel; his prophetic character and second coming illustrated in the four Gospels and the Epistles; ending with a prediction of the speedy approach of the latter, in the Apocalypse, Rev. xxii. 20." The same relation of SON, in the full view of supreme Divinity, and where no reference appears to be had to the office and future work of Messiah, is found in Proverbs xxx. 4. "Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? Who hath gathered the wind in his fists? Who hath bound the waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his Son's name, if thou canst tell?" Here the Deity is contemplated, not in his redeeming acts, in any respect or degree; not as providing for the recovery of a lost race, or that of the Jewish people, by the gift of his Son: he is placed before the reverend gaze of the prophet in his acts of creative and conserving power only, managing at will and ruling the operations of nature; and yet, even in these peculiar offices of Divinity alone, he is spoken of as having a SON, whose "name," that is, according to the Hebrew idiom, whose nature is as deep, mysterious, and unutterable as his own. "What is His name, and what is his Son's name, canst thou tell?"(3)

The Scriptures of the Old Testament themselves in this manner furnished the Jews with the idea of a personal Son in the Divine Nature; and their familiarity with it is abundantly evident, from the frequent application of the terms "Son," "Son of God," "first and only-begotten Son," "Offspring of God," to the Logos, by PHILO; and that in passages where he must, in all fair interpretation, be understood as speaking of a personal, and not of a personified LOGOS. The same terms are also found in other Jewish writers before the Christian era.

The phrase "Son of God" was, therefore, known to the ancient Jews, and to them conveyed a very definite idea; and it is no answer to this to say, that it was a common appellative of Messiah among their ancient writers. The question is, how came "Son of God" to be an appellative of Messiah? "MESSIAH" is an official title; "SON," a personal one. It is granted that the Messiah is the Son of God; but it is denied that, therefore, the term Son of God ceases to be a personal description, and that it imports the same with Messiah. David was the " Son of Jesse" and the "King of Israel;" he, therefore, who was king of Israel was the son of Jesse; but the latter is the personal, the former only the official description; and it cannot be argued that "Son of Jesse" conveys no idea distinct from "King of Israel." On the contrary, it marks his origin and his family; for, before he was king of Israel, he was the Son of Jesse. In like manner, "Son of God" marks the natural relation of Messiah to God; and the term Messiah, his official relation to men. The personal title cannot otherwise be explained; and as we have seen, that it was used by the Jews as one of the titles of Messiah, yet still used personally and not officially, and, also, without any reference to the miraculous conception at all, as before proved, it follows, that it expresses a natural relation to God, subsisting, not in the human, but in the higher nature of Messiah; and this higher nature being proved to be Divine, it follows, that the

(3) Dr. A. Clarke, in his note on this text, evidently feels the difficulty of disposing of it on the theory that the term Son is not a Divine title, and enters a sort of caveat against resorting to doubtful texts, as proofs of our Lord's Divinity. But, for all purposes for which this text has ever been adduced, it is not a doubtful one; for it expresses, as clearly as possible, that God has a SON, and makes no reference to the incarnation at all; so that the words are not spoken in anticipation of that event. Those who deny the Divine Sonship can never, therefore, explain that text. What follows in the note referred to is more objectionable: it hints at the obscu rity of the writer as weakening his authority. Who he was, or what he was, we indeed know not; but his words stand in the book of Proverbs: a book, the inspiration of which both our Lord and his apostles have verified, and that is enough: we need no other attestation.

ment.

term Son of God, as applied to Jesus, is, therefore, a title of absolute Divinity, importing his participation in the very nature and essence of God. The same ideas of DIVINE Sonship are suggested by almost every passage in which the phrase occurs in the New Testa"When Jesus was baptized, he went up straightway out of the water, and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him; and lo, a voice from heaven, This is my BELOVED SON, in whom I am well pleased." The circumstances of this testimony are of the most solemn and impressive kind, and there can be no rational doubt but they were designed authoritatively to invest our Lord with the title "Son of God" in the full sense which it bears in those prophecies in which the Messias had been introduced under that appellation, rendered still more strong and emphatic by adding the epithet "beloved," and the declaration, that in him the "Father was well pleased." That the name "Son of God" is not here given to Christ with reference to his resurrection need not be stated; that it was not given to him, along with a declaration of the Father's pleasure in him, because of the manner in which he had fulfilled the office of Messiah, is also obvious, for he was but just then entering upon his office and commencing his ministry; and if, therefore, it can be proved, that it was not given to him with reference to his miraculous conception, it must follow that it was given on grounds independent of his office, and independent of the circumstances of his birth; and that, therefore, he was in a higher nature than his human, and for a higher reason than an official one, the "Son of God."

Now, this is, I think, very easily and conclusively proved As soon as the Baptist John had heard this testimony, and seen this descent of the Holy Spirit upon him, he tells us that he "bore record that this is the SON OF GOD:"-the Messiah, we grant, but not the Son of God because he was the Messiah, but Son of God and Messiah also. This is clear, from the opinion of the Jews of that day, as before shown. It was to the Jews that he "bore record" that Jesus was the Son of God. But he used this title in the sense commonly received by his hearers. Had he simply testified that he was the Messiah, this would not to them in general have expressed the idea which ALL attached to the name "Son of God," and which they took to involve a Divine character and claim. But in this ordinary sense of the title among the Jews, John the Baptist gave his testimony to him, and by that shows in what sense he himself understood the testimony of God to the Sonship of Jesus. So, in his closing testimony to Christ, recorded in John iii., he makes an evident allusion to what took place at the baptism of our Lord, and says, "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand." Here the love of the Father, as declared at his baptism, is represented as love to him as the Son, and all things being given into his hands, as the consequence of his being his beloved Son. "All things," unquestionably imply all offices, all power and authority; all that is included in the offices of King, Messias, Mediator; and it is affirmed, not that he is Son, and beloved as a Son, because of his being invested with these offices, but that he is invested with them, because he was the well-beloved Son; a circumstance which fully demonstrates that" Son of God" is not an official title, and that it is not of the same import as Messiah. To the transaction at his baptism our Lord himself adverts in John v. 37. "And the FATHER HIMSELF, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me." For, as he had just mentioned the witness arising from his miraculous works, and in addition to these, introduces the witness of the Father himself as distinct from the works, a personal testimony from the Father alone can be intended, and that personal testimony was given at his baptism. Now, the witness of the Father, on this occasion, is, that he was his beloved Son; and it is remarkable that our Lord introduces the Father's testimony to his Sonship on an occasion in which the matter in dispute with the Jews was respecting his claim to be the Son of God. The Jews denied that God was his Father in the sense in which he had declared him to be so, and "they sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also, that God was his Father, making himself equal with God." In this case, what was the conduct of our Lord? He reaffirms his

Sonship even in this very objectionable sense; asserts that "the Son doeth all things soever that the Father doeth" (verse 19); that " as the Father raiseth the dead, so the Son quickeneth whomsoever he will" (verse 21); that "all judgment has been committed to the Son, that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father" (verse 23); that " as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself" (verse 26); and then confirms all these high claims of equality with the Father, by adducing the Father's own witness at his baptism." And the Father himself hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape; and ye have not his word abiding in you, for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not."(4) With respect to this testimony, two critical remarks have been made, which, though not essential to the argument, farther corroborate the views just taken. The one is, that in all the three evangelists who record the testimony of the Father to Christ at his baptism, the article is prefixed both to the substantive and the adjective. Matt. iii. 17, OUTOS EOTIV & Vios μ8 d aуaпηтоs, the most discriminating mode of expression that could be employed, as if to separate Jesus from every other who, at any time, had received the appellation of the Son of God: This is that Son of mine who is the beloved. In the second clause," in whom I am well pleased," the verb in all the three evangelists is in the first aorist, ev w εvdoknoα. Now, although we often render the Greek aorist by the English present, yet this can be done with propriety only when the proposition is equally true, whether it be stated in the present, in the past, or in the future And thus the analogy of the Greek language requires us not only to consider the name Son of God, as applied in a peculiar sense to Jesus, but also to refer the expression used at his baptism to that intercourse which had subsisted between the Father and the Son, before this name was announced to men.(5)

time.

The epithet "ONLY-BEGOTTEN," which several times occurs in the New Testament, affords farther proof of the Sonship of Christ in his Divine nature. One of these instances only need be selected. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the ONLY-BEGOTTEN of the Father, full of grace and truth." If the epithet Only-begotten referred to Christ's miraculous conception, then the glory "as of the Only-begotten" must be a glory of the human nature of Christ only, for that alone was capable of being thus conceived. This is, however, clearly contrary to the scope of the passage, which does not speak of the glory of the nature, "the flesh," which "THE WORD" assumed, but of the glory of the Word HIMSELF, who is here said to be the Only-begotten of the Father. It is, therefore, the glory of his Divine nature which is here intended.(6) Such, too, was the