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PRESENTED TO THE 
 
 Library ol the University of Calilornia, 
 
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 AN EXAMINATION 
 
 OF 
 
 CANON LIDDON S 
 
 BAMPTON LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 THE DIVINITY OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR 
 JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 BY 
 
 A CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 " Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good." ST. PAUL. 
 
 " The licence of affirmation about God and His proceedings, in which the religious 
 world indulge, is more and more met hy the demand for verification. 
 
 "Assertions in scientific language must stand the test of scientific examination." 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 1872. 
 
JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
 
 Cambridge. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IN theological controversy a disputant does not necessarily 
 deny the truth of a tenet, by denying the tenet to be sus 
 ceptible of a particular kind of proof. Different schools 
 of reasoners may erect the same dogma on different bases, 
 and the very men who refuse to admit the soundness of 
 one basis may resolutely cling to the dogma in connection 
 with another. Methods of exposition are, moreover, to 
 be asses-sed from the position occupied by the expositor. 
 Protestants cannot, without grave fault, adopt a scheme 
 of interpretation wherein the Church s subsequent defini 
 tions determine and amplify the meaning of the New 
 Testament ; and the meaning of the New Testament, 
 thus settled, throws significance into the Old. Avowed 
 acceptance of such a scheme would be repudiation of 
 Protestant principles, and application of it, without avowed 
 acceptance, would betray either gross ignorance, or dis 
 honesty ; but a Catholic can blamelessly follow the method 
 from which Protestants are debarred. Father Newman, 
 in a " Letter " called forth by Dr. Pusey s Eirenicon, 
 declares even of the great St. Athanasius, "I am sure 
 that he frequently adduces passages as proofs of points 
 in controversy, which no one would see to be proofs, unless 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 Apostolical tradition were taken into account, first as sug 
 gesting, then as authoritatively ruling, their meaning." 
 
 The question discussed in this volume is obviously one 
 of primary importance, and has every claim to be treated 
 with candid, searching fearlessness. And it is not a ques 
 tion merely for scholars and students in Theology ; it is 
 also within the reach of every intelligent Christian who 
 will honestly search the Scriptures, using the very acces 
 sible helps to the ascertainment of true Text and true 
 translation, which now surround us. 
 
 No one acquainted with history and plain facts will 
 affirm that the formulated dogma of Christ s Deity has 
 ever yet undergone the ordeal of free inquiry. However 
 securely it may repose on the authority of a Church com 
 missioned to reveal, it certainly has not acquired the un 
 answerable evidence which real, long continued exposure 
 to re-examination, modification, and disproof, furnishes. 
 It has no pretensions to stand before the world as the pure 
 net result of investigation freely applied throughout the 
 Christian Ages. From the Fourth Century to the present 
 hour, the dogma has been mainly upheld by modes of 
 external force ; and though among Protestants this force 
 is rapidly diminishing, it still exists, and exerts in Ortho 
 dox circles a very perceptible pressure. 
 
 In handling a fundamental topic, inseparable, within 
 the Reformed Churches, from immediate and practical 
 issues, I have taken no pains to be reserved and unreal. 
 I shall therefore, doubtless, incur the censure of those 
 stunted and stationary Protestants who, unhappily for 
 their own peace of mind, cannot bar out reasonable inter 
 pretation, though they do approach the Bible with warily 
 contrived and wholly unwarranted preliminary assump- 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 lions. But much of what I have written will probably 
 gain the approval both of genuine Catholics and of pro 
 gressive Protestants. And if I have not despicably failed 
 in executing my purpose, my work will contribute to meet 
 an existing need, and be welcome to students who deem 
 love of truth a part of piety, and dread of inquiry a sure 
 indication of faith s decay. 
 
 I expect to be credited with bad motives, but that, 
 among Christians, is a small matter. Our best intentions 
 can never be wholly free from defects and demerits, but 
 I possess the testimony of a good conscience, and know 
 that I have written, and am now publishing, from motives 
 which I can trustingly entreat our Father in Heaven to 
 behold and bless. 
 
 The reasonings and expositions criticised are copiously, 
 and I believe fairly, exhibited, so that my " Examination" 
 presents, to an unusual extent, arguments on both sides ; 
 but I wish to be read in company with the Bampton 
 Lectures for 1866. Reading cannot always be extensive; 
 but purely one-sided reading, in controversies of vital 
 interest, is always an evil ; it can never make soundly 
 instructed teachers of religion, and is not unlikely to mar 
 good men. 
 
 Later editions of Mr. Liddon s Lectures appear to be 
 reprints from the second the thoroughly revised, and 
 presumedly final shape of his work. I have used the third 
 edition. 
 
 The indexes of " Texts specially referred to," " Quota 
 tions," &c., will, it is hoped, render reference easy. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The fault of Mr. Liddon s position, and the point of view from which 
 alone this Examination of his Lectures is pursued. The superiority 
 of the Catholic as compared with the Protestant basis for the main 
 tenance of Orthodoxy. Progress of Anglican opinion regarding the 
 Bible s insufficiency. Difficulty, alarm, and mischief engendered 
 by the attempt to ally Protestant principle with Orthodox faith. 
 The doctrine Mr. Liddon undertakes to defend, a crucial test of the 
 worth of this attempted alliance. Defective Education in relation 
 to the doctrine, of both the Anglican Clergy and Orthodox Non- 
 conforming Ministers. Some plausible evasions, &c., which are 
 made to fill the place of arguments, noticed. Premature assertions 
 of the spiritual inefficiency of Christian Theism as compared with 
 Protestant Orthodoxy. The obligation of the clergy of the Estab 
 lished Church to Faith in Christ s Godhead, impaired by the Church s 
 acceptance of conflicting fundamental principles. Excessive im 
 position of dogmatic propositions has resulted in sanctioned 
 laxity of assent. The Anglican Via Media stated and criticised. 
 Appeal to Orthodox Protestants, from the ground of fairness, facts, 
 and policy. Some further remarks on characteristics of Mr. 
 Liddon s Lectures, and on the aim, occasion, and method of this 
 Examination Page I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Precise statement of the dogma maintained, and of some more general 
 objections to which it is exposed. Mr. Liddon s theories respecting 
 the organic unity, perfect trustworthiness, and minute accuracy of 
 the Scripture records, not sustainable in the presence of free inquiry. 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 His argument for the Apostolic authorship of the Fourth Gospel 
 considered, and some leading points of adverse evidence stated. On 
 this topic, Orthodox preconceptions have the practical advantage of 
 forbidding intelligent criticism. Though Mr. Liddon s method is 
 critically unsound, and devised for the service of his dogma, he may 
 nevertheless be met upon his own assumptions, and convicted of 
 arbitrary and irrational interpretation of Scripture 37 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Supposed intimations in the Old Testament of the existence of a Plu 
 rality of Persons within the One Divine Essence. The plural form 
 of the Name of God (Elohim). Significance of the Theophanies. 
 Imagined Personality of the Divine Wisdom, as depicted in the 
 Hebrew Canonical Books and the Apocrypha. The Logos of Philo, 
 Judaeus, and the probable relation of Philo s speculations to the 
 Fourth Gospel. Periods of Messianic Prophecy in the Jewish 
 Canon. Supposed evidence for Christ s Deity in the Psalms, fsaiah, 
 Jeremiah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, examined. Reckless 
 and unwarranted reference, on the part of Mr. Liddon, to Rabbinical 
 literature . , . 56 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Brief criticism of the argument entitled, " Our Lord s work in the world 
 a witness to His Divinity." Christ s authority and kingship. 
 Characteristic " originality and audacity " of His teaching and plan. 
 Evidence for the contemplated universality of His kingdom. 
 Difficulties attaching to the supposition that genuine words of Christ 
 are recorded in St. Matt, xxviii. 19, 20. Are the "Synoptical 
 accounts of our Lord s Nativity in essential unison with the Chris tol- 
 ogy of St. John s Gospel ? " The argument concerning the " Doc 
 trine of the Eternal Word in the Prologue of St. John s Gospel " 
 examined. Strong contrasts between the accounts in the Synoptists, 
 and in the last Gospel, of the time and manner in which our Lord s 
 Messiahship was freely made known. The reasonable conclusion 
 from a general view of his Gospel is, that the latest Evangelist did 
 not intend in his Prologue to affirm the absolute Deity of the Logos 
 or Word . .88 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 CHAPTER V. . 
 
 Discussion of texts supposed " expressly to assert the doctrine of Our 
 Lord s Divinity ; " viz., 1 John v. 20 ; Titus ii. 13 ; Romans ix. 5 ; 
 Philippians ii. 6-11. Examination of Mr. Liddon s exposition of 
 passages in the Epistles to the Colossians and Hebrews, and in the 
 Apocalypse 109 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Illuminative action of the Holy Ghost, and presumed resulting unity of 
 Apostolic doctrine. The " incidental expressions implying a high 
 Christology in St. James s Epistle," considered. Supposed evidence 
 favoring the dogma of Christ s Godhead, in St. Peter s Missionary 
 Sermons. Difficulty involved in the constant ascription of our 
 Lord s Resurrection to the power of the Almighty Father. How 
 far are John ii. 19, and x. 18, able to bear out the summary assertion, 
 " Christ raises Himself from the dead" ? Argument from the Mis 
 sionary Sermons continued, -r- Argument from St. Peter s General 
 Epistles. " St. Jude s implications that Christ is God." Rational 
 statement of the evidential purport of the documents referred to in 
 this Chapter 154 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Dissection of the reasoning by which Mr. Liddon endeavors to show that 
 " Christ s Deity is bound up with St. Paul s whole mind," and is 
 implicitly taught throughout his Epistles. In reality the Bampton 
 Lecturer refuses to take the point of view which St. Paul s writings, 
 and other New Testament Scriptures, incessantly present. Doctrine 
 of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist. Mistaken deductions 
 from the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians. Some additional 
 imaginary implications of a Christ Divine in the sense maintained 
 by the Lectures. Adverse testimony of St. Paul exhibited, and an 
 appeal made from the ground of that testimony to the honesty, in 
 tellectual conscientiousness, and common sense of Orthodox Protest 
 ants. Catholic Churchmen not liable to this appeal .... 184 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The title Son as expressive of relationship to God. Supposed indications 
 in the Old Testament of a Divine Sonship internal to the Being of 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 God. Synoptists use of the title Son of God. Mr. Liddon s 
 attempt to show that the Son is identical with the Logos or Word, and 
 that the two descriptions complete and guard each other. The 
 expanded title, Only-begotten Son. Weakness of Mr. Liddon s posi 
 tion metaphysically. His view of the bearing of the miracles Tipon 
 the question of Christ s Person. His deductions from the Self-as 
 sertion exhibited in the first or Ethical stage of our Lord s teaching. 
 Difficulties connected with our Lord s exposure to temptation, 
 &c. Mr. Liddon s arbitrary, evasive treatment of a troublesome 
 saying reported by two Evangelists. Inferences drawn from the 
 authoritativeness of Christ s teaching. Did He ratify the Penta 
 teuch as a whole ? * . . 222 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Mr. Liddon s view of the second stage of our Lord s public teaching 
 depends almost entirely on materials peculiar to the Fourth Gospel. 
 These materials discussed in detail, and shown neither to warrant 
 Mr. Liddon s deductions, nor to contain the presumed dogmatic 
 revelations of Christ s Co-equality and Essential Oneness with the 
 Father. No consciousness of Eternal Being is unveiled in John viii. 
 58, and there is no justification for connecting that text with Exodus 
 iii. 14 . 247 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Supposed Evidence that the Sanhedrim condemned Christ for claiming 
 to be God. The Title Son of God never, in Jewish estimation, equiv 
 alent to God, or more than a Messianic designation. Force of the 
 Exclamation attributed to the Apostle Thomas when he was con 
 vinced of Christ s Eesurrection. The Argument from certain say 
 ings in the Synoptical Gospels assumed to be closely similar to 
 sayings found in the " Gospel according to John." Baseless, repre 
 hensible, and irreverent character of the Dilemma, " If Jesus Christ 
 is not God, He is not morally good." Language ascribed to Christ 
 Himself is, plainly and often, not rationally reconcilable with the 
 Dogma of His Godhead 291 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Examination of the Scripture testimony adduced in support of the prop 
 osition, "from the earliest age of Christianity, Jesus Christ has 
 
CONTENTS. Xi 
 
 been adored as God." The terms which precisely and definitely 
 describe the worship and service due to the Supreme Being are 
 never connected with the Name of Christ. Detailed investigation 
 of the feeble and forced pretexts on which Mr. Liddon relies. 
 Meaning of the expressions, to call upon the Lord, and upon the Name of 
 the Lord. Dying petitions of St. Stephen. Words of frequent use, 
 and specific, restricted application, denoting prayers and vows to the 
 Almighty, are never used of petitions addressed to Christ. The 
 prayer at the election of the Apostle Matthias was offered to our 
 God and Father, not to our Lord Jesus Christ. Argument from the 
 prayer of the disciple Ananias, and from the first prayers of St. Paul, 
 examined. Supposed recognition, in St. Paul s Epistles, of prayer 
 to Jesus Christ, including the Apostle s entreaty to be freed from 
 " the thorn in the flesh." Strained and erroneous constructions of 
 passages in St. John s First Epistle, and in the Apocalypse. Brief 
 summary of the evidence that Christ was not worshipped as God. 
 A glance at some arguments from the earlier Fathers. Frequency of 
 devotional addresses to our Lord Jesus Christ in the Anglican Book 
 of Common Prayer. Remarks on the action of the Clergy, and on 
 the use of Family Prayers, and Hymns, wherein Jesus Christ is 
 studiedly equalized with the Father, in the language of supplica 
 tion and praise 312 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Texts which imply" or assert Limitation of Knowledge in Christ. 
 There is nothing to prompt or justify Mr. Liddon s forced explana 
 tions. Asserted illuminative power of the dogma of Christ s Deity, 
 in relation to the Atonement. Examination of an attempt to meet 
 the objection that the dogma detracts from the value of Christ s Life 
 as an ethical model for Mankind. The dogma cannot be shown to 
 be morally fruitful in giving intensity to Christian virtues, and is not 
 calculated to promote the devotion of the heart to God . . . 364 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The doctrine defended by Mr. Liddon is, wholly and necessarily, outside 
 the sphere of reason. Even the explicit statements of the Creeds 
 cannot be rationally harmonized, and are fitted for a blindly confiding, 
 rather than a reflective and intelligent reception. Utter insuffi 
 ciency of the supposed Scriptural testimony for Christ s Godhead ; 
 and recapitulation of the adverse testimony. Mistaken impres 
 sions kept up by false statements in Commentaries, Sermons, &c. 
 
Xli CONTENTS. 
 
 The Church s teaching cannot be fairly appropriated without an 
 acknowledgment of the Church s paramount authority. This fact 
 appears to have been at times forgotten even by great Fathers 
 in the Church. Necessity for an explicitly speaking Supreme 
 Tribunal. The inevitable outcome of Protestant principle. Con 
 clusion . . 386 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 411 
 
 INDEXES. 
 
 Texts specially referred to 421 
 
 Quotations, and some principal topics 425 
 
AN EXAMINATION 
 
 ,OF 
 
 LIDDON S BAMPTON LECTURES, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The fault of Mr. Liddon s position, and the point of view from which 
 alone this Examination of his Lectures is pursued. The superiority 
 of the Catholic as compared with the Protestant basis for the main 
 tenance of Orthodoxy. Progress of Anglican opinion regarding the 
 Bible s insufficiency. Difficulty, alarm, and mischief engendered 
 by the attempt to ally Protestant principle with Orthodox faith. 
 The doctrine Mr. Liddon undertakes to defend, a crucial test of the 
 worth of this attempted alliance. Defective Education in relation 
 to the doctrine, of both the Anglican Clergy and Orthodox Non- 
 conforming Ministers. Some plausible evasions, c., which are 
 made to fill the place of arguments, noticed. Premature assertions 
 of the spiritual inefficiency of Christian Theism as compared with 
 Protestant Orthodoxy. The obligation of the clergy of the Estab 
 lished Church to Faith in Christ s Godhead, impaired by the Church s 
 acceptance of conflicting fundamental principles. Excessive impo 
 sition of dogmatic propositions has resulted in sanctioned laxity of 
 assent. The Anglican Via Media stated and criticised. Appeal to 
 Orthodox Protestants, from the ground of fairness, facts, and policy. 
 Some further remarks on characteristics of Mr. Liddon s Lectures, 
 and on the aim, occasion, and method of this Examination. 
 
 AXY true doctrine would be imperilled if defended from ill- 
 selected and untenable ground. Mr. Liddon, with anxiously 
 good intent, has done the dogma he maintains the disservice 
 of exposing its weaker side, and presenting it on a basis 
 which, in fact and logic, is utterly unsound. No transient 
 popularity, and no confirmation of disquieted but credulous 
 
 1 
 
2 THE GROUND TAKEN BY MR. LIDDON. 
 
 waverers, can ultimately compensate for the damage lie may 
 thus inflict. He denies that the tenet of Christ s veritable 
 Godhead was, in the natural sense of the word, a develop 
 ment. He will not even concede, it was "related to the teach 
 ing of the Apostles as an oak is related to an acorn." He 
 pronounces its real relation to their teaching to have been 
 "that of an exact and equivalent translation of the language 
 of one intellectual period into the language of another. As 
 a matter of fact the Nicene Fathers only affirmed, in the 
 philosophical language of the fourth century, what our Lord 
 and the Apostles had taught in the popular dialects of the 
 first. If, then, the Nicene Council developed, it was a de 
 velopment by explanation. It was a development which 
 placed the intrinsically unchangeable dogma, committed to 
 the guardianship of the Church, in its true relation to the 
 new intellectual world that had grown up around Christians 
 in the fourth century." (Pp. 428, 429.) 
 
 Now, these assertions unequivocally embody the proposi 
 tion the Divinity of Jesus Christ, as taught by the Church, 
 is the probable, rational, and fairly provable sense of Holy 
 Scripture. They exclude the ideas of progress, growth, and 
 revelation, in the consciousness of the Church, and they 
 refuse to recognize the Church s possession of unwritten 
 Apostolic traditions which either supplemented the incom 
 pleteness, cleared the ambiguities, or shed necessary light on 
 the concealments, of the written Word. However far Mr. 
 Liddon s phraseology may at times diverge from that of 
 ordinary orthodox Protestants, he here proceeds upon dis 
 tinctively Protestant principle, and proffers his dogma to be 
 tested by the Bible thoroughly investigated and reasonably 
 understood. To prove his confidence justified, and his con 
 clusions sustained, by the Bible, is the one great end of his 
 carefully compiled, and, from his own side virtually exhaus 
 tive, pleadings. If he had not thus chosen to stand upon 
 indefensible ground, I should not have ventured to criticise 
 his Lectures. Against the evidence for the doctrine of our 
 Lord s Deity regarded as a revelation through the Church, 
 
PRELIMINARY ASSUMPTIONS. 3 
 
 or, as resting on ecclesiastical authority, I have said nothing. 
 The Christian Church is as grand a fact in the world s his 
 tory as is the Bible, and, with reference to the doctrine under 
 consideration, the mind of the Church Universal has long 
 displayed a perspicuity, explicitness, and uniformity of ex 
 pression, of which the Bible is conspicuously destitute. 
 
 If Orthodoxy is to be retained, some comprehensive pre 
 liminary assumption must be made, and the assumption that 
 the Church is the divinely appointed organ and vehicle of 
 Christian revealment, the Bible being a subordinate factor in 
 the Church s hands, seems to me incomparably more simple, 
 expedient, and valid, than the assumption that the Bible is 
 the one inspired and sufficient repertory of the dogmatic faith 
 proclaimed by the later two of the three great Creeds. Each 
 assumption has its own special difficulties, but the former is 
 not like the latter, self-refuting, and rife with decomposing 
 elements. If it should be urged, an inspired Book does not 
 address the rational intelligence, and is not to be rationally 
 interpreted the Church is in effect brought back under the 
 character of interpreter, with an authority hampered and 
 obstructed in administration, but not really limited and con 
 trolled. Granting, for argument s sake, that inspired and 
 authoritative Scriptures can be ascertained and assured with 
 out the Church s aid, still, the choice of Orthodoxy must lie 
 between reasonable interpretations which challenge scrutiny, 
 and decrees which demand assent ; in other words, between 
 the findings of free individual judgment and the ordinances 
 of the organized body; or, putting the antithesis in its most 
 condensed shape, between Reason and the Church. 
 
 Into the question of the Church s title to authority, I have 
 in no degree entered, and therefore should not have the right, 
 if I had the desire, to impugn any Article of the Church s 
 Creeds. My examination of Mr. Liddon s representations is 
 conducted entirely upon the hypothesis, that Protestant prin 
 ciple in relation to the sufficiency and sole supremacy of 
 Scripture is true ; and while confining myself to this hypothe 
 sis, I have been unable to escape the conclusion, that the 
 
4 IMPORTANCE OF THE QUESTION. 
 
 dogma Mr. Liddon advocates is false. The Catholic principle 
 which acknowledges, within the human exterior of ecclesiasti 
 cal organization, the secret infallible guidance of the Holy 
 Ghost as an abiding source and guarantee of dogma, is dis 
 allowed by Mr. Liddon, not controverted by me. Though 
 Protestants may be demonstrably unable. to hold, without 
 inconsistency, the doctrine of our Lord s Divinity, yet, if 
 Catholic principle is firm and sound, the doctrine has a sure 
 foundation. The subject-matter about which the following 
 chapters are employed is not, therefore, the truth or falsehood 
 of a doctrine, but the security or insecurity of a foundation 
 on which a minority of Christians have attempted to erect 
 that doctrine. 
 
 In debating the point which Mr. Liddon s method raises, we 
 go to the very heart of modern theological controversy. ~No 
 intelligent observer can have failed to notice how, ever since 
 the great Tractarian revival of Church sentiments, a convic 
 tion of the Bible s inadequacy, as the rule and fountain of 
 orthodox faith, has been spreading and deepening among the 
 more thoughtful of the Anglican clergy. With more or less 
 thoroughness and consistency, nearly every Anglican writer 
 of note has sought to throw upon Church authority some 
 portion of the vast burden which pure Prostestantism throws 
 upon the Canonical Scriptures. Indeed, we may safely affirm 
 that, among the clergy of the Established Church, only the 
 shrunken and intellectually bankrupt party, called Evangeli 
 cal, now tries to combine Orthodoxy with strictly Protestant 
 views of the nature and office of Scripture. Anglicans of 
 every shade of Churchmanship, from Moderate to High, per 
 ceive Orthodoxy to demand something more than the Bible 
 for its groundwork. * This perception is the mainspring and 
 core of the High Churchmanship, which some unreflecting 
 
 * I had marked for quotation, in illustration of this fact, passages from 
 the fifth of Dr. Jelf s Bampton Lectures for the /year 1844; from Dean 
 Goulbourn s " Farewell Counsels of a Pastor to his Flock" (Sermon 
 VI.) ; and from the calmly effective volume, entitled, " The Bible and its 
 Interpreters," by Dr. Irons, recently vicar of Holy Trinity, Brompton. 
 
" PERCEPTION OF THE BIBLE S INADEQUACY. 5 
 
 Protestants, who are loud-mouthed for orthodox beliefs, so 
 incessantly misconceive and vilify. 
 
 An apprehension of the Bible s inadequacy is often incon 
 gruously qualified by a professed retention of the Bible as a 
 standard of doctrine and court of appeal ; but inquiry easily 
 elicits that the retention is peculiarly conditioned. The ca 
 nonical standard must be applied, and the appeal in the court 
 of Scripture must be prosecuted, by those who thoroughly 
 believe the Church s dogmas by those who bring to the 
 handling of Scripture ecclesiastical enlightenment, assured 
 information, and faith already systematized. To collect from 
 the pages of the Bible the distinctive features of Orthodoxy, 
 decided mental bias and prepossession are needed. The con 
 clusion to be reached must be seen, and grasped, and cher 
 ished, before the investigation is begun. The Bible is explored 
 for illustrations of the explorer s faith, or to do the laudable 
 service of ingeniously reconciling discrepancies between Bibli 
 cal statements and the explorer s previously accepted opinions. 
 It is only under conditions which make the invocation practi 
 cally insincere, and the response settled beforehand, that the 
 Bible is invoked on the dogmas of the Creeds respecting the 
 Divine Nature. The felt, though not always confessed, neces 
 sity for such conditions is the root of the difficulties which 
 thwart every plan of general elementary religious education. 
 Xo sensible person denies the existence of great and most 
 essential "features in religion, about which all believers in a 
 personal God and Father, and a life beyond the grave, are 
 agreed. The duties of devotional and moral service, obvi- 
 
 But it seemed needless to support a statement which no moderately well- 
 read man will be inclined to deny. 
 
 The delicate sensitiveness of the perception to which I refer has been 
 lately manifested in the intrepid protests of some Churchmen, and the 
 deep murmurs of many against the mingling of a few heretical scholars 
 among the selected Revisers of the English Version. Learning and sin 
 cerity, without orthodox opinions, do not qualify a man to take part in 
 translating the Church s Book. Minds not taught by an external author 
 ity the true sense of the Sacred Volume may be expected to misunderstand, 
 with pertinacious blindness, some of its most momentous dogmatic words. 
 
b PROTESTANT CONCEPTION OF INTERPRETATION. 
 
 ously comprised in the two great commandments to love 
 God, and to love our neighbor; the efficacy of prayer for 
 spiritual blessings ; the sense of sin ; the expectation of enter 
 ing in the next life upon a portion suited to the character we 
 have formed in this ; the broad belief that Jesus Christ is to 
 us a Messenger, Instructor, Example, and Master, sent and 
 inspired by God ; surely, these things might be deduced from, 
 and enforced by, the Sacred Writings would cover all the 
 morals and religion necessary for social purposes, and would 
 lay an ample and a solid foundation for the reception in after 
 years of any dogma not glaringly devoid of evidence and 
 consonance with the religious sentiments. 
 
 But men who identify Christianity with the definitions of 
 the Nlcene and Athanasian symbols are governed by a sus 
 picion, tantamount to persuasion, that nothing short of train 
 ing in explicit dogmatic faith from infant years will suffice to 
 insure orthodox conviction. They perceive in the saying of 
 Jesus concerning little children of such is the kingdom of 
 heaven a pointed reference to the receptiveness, and easy 
 flexibility with which a child s mind learns to wear and revere 
 the bandages of inexplicable doctrinal statements. By early 
 habit, dint of repetition, and close pinioning of Avhat is weak, 
 to what is cogent and reasonable, the end must be achieved, 
 towards which developed intellect and devout feeling are 
 worse than unequal means. The more minds not ecclesiasti 
 cally indoctrinated in childhood believed in One God and 
 Father the more they gave earnest heed to spiritual things, 
 and appreciated practical Christian virtues, the less likely 
 would they be to admit the Church s conception of a Trinity, 
 and its dogmatic pendants. Their spiritual wants would be 
 satisfied without a merely verbal analysis of the One God 
 into three Persons, or a real division of the One Divine 
 Nature into three Gods ; and their reason, freely searching 
 Scripture, would be unable, by any defensible mode of inter 
 pretation, to extract from " the popular dialect employed by 
 our Lord and His Apostles the intrinsically unchangeable 
 dogma which the Church has affirmed in the philosophical 
 
PRESENT STATE OF PROTESTANT FEELING. 7 
 
 language of the fourth and subsequent centuries." Unsuc- 
 cored by the bent of early and heavily impressed bias, the 
 mature intelligence of a cultivated mind would be peculiarly 
 unlikely to attain the proportions of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, 
 or to comprehend how person can mean any thing but a com 
 plete individual Being, and three any thing but one thrice 
 counted. 
 
 The truly Protestant view of scriptural interpretation, 
 vividly stated in Professor Jowett s celebrated Essay, is very 
 objectionable in the eyes of many who profess and call them 
 selves Protestants. 
 
 " The office of the interpreter is not to add another inter 
 pretation, but to recover the original one ; the meaning, that 
 is, of the words as they struck on the ears or flashed before 
 the eyes of those who first heard and read them. He has to 
 transfer himself to another age ; to imagine that he is a disci 
 ple of Christ or Paul ; to disengage himself from all that 
 follows. The history of Christendom is nothing to him ; but 
 only the scene at Galilee or Jerusalem, the handful of believ 
 ers who gathered themselves together at Ephesus, or Corinth, 
 or Rome. His eye is fixed on the form of one like the Sou 
 of Man, or of the Prophet who was girded with a garment 
 of camel s hair, or of the Apostle who had a thorn in the 
 flesh. The greatness of the Roman Empire is nothing to 
 him; it is an inner not an outer world that he is striving 
 to restore. All the after- thoughts of theology are nothing to 
 him ; they are not the true lights which light him in difficult 
 places. His concern is with a book in which, as in other 
 ancient writings, are some things of which we are ignorant ; 
 which defect of our knowledge cannot, however, be supplied 
 by the conjectures of Fathers or divines. The simple words 
 of that book he tries to preserve absolutely pure from the 
 refinements or distinctions of later times. 
 
 " The growth of ideas in the interval which separated the 
 first century from the fourth or sixth makes it impossible to 
 apply the language of the one to the explanation of the other. 
 Between Scripture and the Nicene or Athanasian Creed, a 
 
PRESENT STATE OF PROTESTANT FEELING. 
 
 world of the understanding comes in that world of abstrac 
 tions and second notions ; and mankind are no longer at the 
 same point as when the whole of Christianity was contained 
 in the words, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou 
 mayest be saved, when the Gospel centred in the attach 
 ment to a living or recently departed friend and Lord." 
 
 Although, among nominal Protestants, there are increasing 
 numbers who discern the moral and spiritual sovereignty of 
 the Church, and see in her the depository, guardian, and liv 
 ing channel of truth revealed by God to man, yet a frank 
 unconditional confession of what they discern is compara 
 tively rare, and from the confession when made an orthodox 
 multitude vigorously dissents. The effect of this is, as might 
 be surmised, very palpable, and full of injury to religion. 
 Dependence upon the better foundation is not avowed, and 
 discussion conducted upon the other foundation is avoided, 
 in virtue of a logical insight truer and deeper than loudly 
 repeated professions. 
 
 The subject selected by Mr. Liddon supplies the crucial test 
 of Protestant principle in its relation to the Church s Creeds. 
 If that principle is, in its results, compatible with the ecclesi 
 astically prescribed faith of the fourth and more immediately 
 succeeding centuries, on the topic of Christ s nature and attri 
 butes, then the future of orthodox Protestantism may be 
 anticipated without misgivings ; but if the principle is not 
 commensurate with the Church s Creeds, orthodox Protest 
 antism is drifting to complete and speedy wreck. Not only 
 the clergy, and a growing section of the better educated laity, 
 in the Established Church, but the ministers of orthodox. 
 Nonconforming communities also, are beginning in various 
 degrees to see or scent the danger. At present, however, 
 there is little visible movement outside the Anglican body ; 
 sensibility is roused, but intellect is repressed and passive. 
 Orthodox men are too often ready to denounce and stigmatize 
 those who unveil the obnoxious facts that must sooner or 
 later be faced. They chafe at opposition, recoil from inquiry, 
 and try in practice to make puny and contemptible individual 
 
DEFECTS OF CLERICAL EDUCATION. 9 
 
 dicta fill the place of the vast and venerable dogmatic au 
 thority which Protestant theory rejects. With respect to 
 Christ s Deity, they seem to be wholly bereft of the tranquil 
 reliance on truth s power and eventual triumph, which ought 
 to flow from inward assurance that the doctrine is from 
 Heaven, and has a verifiable, trustworthy foundation in the 
 written Word of God. This sensitive and distrustful frame 
 of mind can be traced in the exaggeration, and excited obliq 
 uity of vision, with which they meet the supposition that 
 the Uncreated, Imperishable Essence comprises only a single 
 Personality. Some of them would appear to be even inca 
 pable of conceiving faith in God, unless such faith embraces 
 the notion of a Triad of coequal Beings within the Divine 
 Nature, to each of Whom all the attributes of Deity pertain. 
 The denial of Christ s Deity is, in their view, equivalent to 
 Atheism. 
 
 Now, if this mental attitude is not the fruit of barely sup 
 pressed involuntary scepticism, it is the fruit of gross igno 
 rance. The ingrained prejudgrnents of early education, and 
 the defects of ministerial training, suggest that, in the greater 
 number of instances, ignorance is the malady under which 
 the Protestant clergy are laboring. Their theory enjoins 
 the exercise of individual reason and conscience, but their 
 habitual practice neglects the means by which alone rational 
 beings can test the worth, and, if need be, correct the lean 
 ings, of educational bias. They have, and rather pride them 
 selves on having, as regards the central topic of controversy, 
 only a knowledge which is in effect the worst kind of igno 
 rance knowledge of one side. The majority of the men 
 who now enter the ranks of the Anglican priesthood study 
 nothing in theology, beyond Butler s Analogy, Paley s Evi 
 dences, the fifth Book of Hooker, and standard expositions 
 of the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Apostles Creed. The 
 Old and New Testaments are, of course, read with the notes 
 of approved commentators, and with a view to mastering the 
 arts of intrusion and inference, the latest editings of the leg 
 acy of elaborately contrived expository methods by which 
 
10 DEFECTS OF CLERICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 the junction between Holy Scripture and traditional dogma 
 is effected. Some knowledge of Church history, also, is ac 
 quired from handbooks of trusted and orthodox complexion. 
 Coming after the deeply instilled lessons of childhood, and 
 according with impressions interlaced with every form of 
 habitual devotion, this process has been, on the whole, cheer- 
 ingly successful in producing obstinate adherents, and dogged 
 defenders, for the foregone conclusions from which investiga 
 tion has been w r arded off. Similar circumstances, and a simi 
 lar process, would create faithful ministers of religions which 
 have biit a small fraction of the moral and spiritual beauty, 
 the power and self-luminous truth, which are enshrined in the 
 undogmatic precepts of the religion of Christ. The risk of 
 free-thinking is provided against, and the feelings attuned to 
 repel, with fractious irritation and disgust, the first approaches 
 of reasoning against predominant dogma. In the persons of 
 the ordained teachers of Christianity, the traditional faith is 
 thus entrenched, so far as human means permit. Some avoid- 
 less danger arises from the presence, in . the educated and 
 more influential classes, of many who have not been moulded 
 by training after the clerical fashion, and their breadth of 
 view, added to the diffusion of a freely inquisitive and scepti 
 cal literature, tends to diminish the clerical horror of inquiry, 
 and occasionally so far breaks down the barriers of pre- 
 engaged feeling, that even stanchly evangelical minds are 
 betrayed into examination and its results. 
 
 Another, though perhaps lesser, source of jeopardy is con 
 tained in those secular portions of every gentleman s educa 
 tion which develop and exercise the rational faculties, and 
 encourage the pursuit of truth for its own sake. But this 
 danger has been in a measure obviated by recruiting the 
 clerical ranks from Theological Colleges, instead of from the 
 Universities ; arid, if Protestantism is to continue its unnat 
 ural alliance with the Church s tenets, the expediency of 
 enlarging and multiplying such Colleges, and stocking them 
 with students whose capacities for belief have been as little 
 as possible affected by a liberal culture, becomes matter for 
 
DEFECTS OF CLERICAL EDUCATION. 11 
 
 serious consideration. The strengthening and enlightenment 
 of the intellectual powers by the methods of secular educa 
 tion have a marked tendency to indispose the mind for the 
 compliant faith, which can cement into one composite rule a 
 supremely authoritative book addressing reason and con 
 science, and a traditional interpretation of that bpok, setting 
 reason at defiance. 
 
 EA^en among the more scholarly and better informed of the 
 Anglican clergy, there are very few who have taken the one 
 easy, and absolutely needful, step towards an intelligent, 
 honest, and steadfast belief in Christ s Deity. Not one in a 
 hundred has tested and consolidated his hereditary faith by 
 a close study o the arguments which those who differ urge 
 against it. What the majority know of the adversary s case 
 has been gleaned from controversial teachers on their own 
 side* The treatises of Bishops Bull, Waterland, Jackson, 
 and Archbishop Magee, added to books already mentioned, 
 are presumed to furnish the mind perfectly, whereas, in 
 reality, when taken alone, they confirm preconceptions with 
 out enlarging knowledge. No man can arrive at a stable 
 and enlightened conviction on a debated question, unless he 
 reads, reflects upon, and mentally grapples with, the view 
 opposed to his own, presented and enforced as an earnest 
 competent opponent would present and enforce it. When 
 our information comes exclusively through writers in one camp, 
 we are very unlikely, whether our opinions are right or wrong, 
 to understand a contested point. Our. persuasion, be it w r hat 
 it may, is not, in relation to ourselves, morally and intellect 
 ually healthy and secure. And this general maxim is espe 
 cially true in regard to that notable doctrine which was 
 
 * The excellent Dean of Chichester, whose historical work, " Lives 
 of the Archbishops of Canterbury," is so admirable, appears, in his 
 Introduction to " The Church and the Age," feelingly to deprecate inves 
 tigation into inherited opinions on fundamental dogmas. What could 
 have prompted him to expend his valuable time, and pleasant English, 
 upon the shallow Essay entitled, " Anglican Principles " ? " Soothing 
 Syrup for Aged and Infant Anglicans," would have been a more appro 
 priate title. 
 
12 EVILS OF ONE-SIDED KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 eagerly fought over in the fourth century, and has never, 
 since the sixteenth century, lacked keen-witted and irrepres 
 sible assailants. Other doctrines have been assailed by 
 greater numbers, and with greater enthusiasm, but no doc 
 trine has summoned opponents^so uniformly above average 
 in ability, cultivation, and fearless appeal to the plain rational 
 sense of Scripture. The conception of the Personal Unity, 
 as opposed to the Personal Plurality, of the Divine Nature, 
 has, since the Reformation, been asserted with a force of rea 
 soning, and an undaunted reliance upon Scripture, which 
 ought to compel the attention of every theological student. 
 The subject is confessedly of no secondary moment, but of 
 the primest importance. The Unitarian doctrine is no " par 
 adoxical speculation with which the public mind may from 
 time to time be astonished or amused," but is of a thoroughly 
 fundamental, crucial character. Yet the mastery of one 
 standard Unitarian book is no part of prescribed clerical prep 
 aration in the Church of England, and is an exceedingly 
 rare accomplishment among her better-read divines. How, 
 then, can the truth be known, or the dogma that Jesus is 
 God, if true, be effectively maintained ? 
 
 And the choicer specimens of orthodox Nonconformist 
 ministers are in no better plight than ourselves. They study 
 the pages of Pye Smith, or Wardlaw, or Moses Stuart; 
 are familiar w r ith commentators of repute in their own com 
 munity, and, perchance, with Church of England authors ; 
 but not one in a hundred reads Wilson, or Yates, or Andrews 
 Norton.* Their students, like ours, are acquainted with the 
 most formidable, though not the most demonstrative of ad- 
 
 * These are standard authors on the Unitarian side. With Professor 
 Norton s " Statement of Reasons," &c., I am well acquainted. It is, as 
 might be supposed, very able and suggestive, but not, I think, quite 
 adapted for general reading. Wilson s " Scripture Proofs and Illustra 
 tions of Unitarianism," I have recently looked into, but not closely 
 examined. Its plan seems good and exhaustive, and re-edited by a com 
 petent hand it would leave little to be desired. Of Yates s " Vindication 
 of Unitarianism," I know nothing, except that it is very highly esteemed by 
 members of his own communion, and has passed through several editions. 
 
THE PLEA OF MYSTERIOUSNESS. 13 
 
 versaries, only through the writings and lectures of their own 
 controversialists and professors ; in other words, they are 
 not honestly and genuinely acquainted with the adversary 
 at all. 
 
 The deficient and discreditable state of theological training, 
 among adherents to Protestant principles, necessarily pro 
 duces the results unhappily so common ; namely, a dread of 
 inquiry a consciousness of insecurity an aversion to 
 apply the Bible as the sole and Divine Rule of Faith a 
 prompt uncharitableness, and rising venom, whenever the 
 tenet of our Lord s Deity is referred to in any terms but 
 those of vehement affirmation and ostentatious assent. 
 There is, manifestly, some more deeply seated feeling than 
 mere dislike to disturbing but legitimate polemics ; there is 
 the logical distrust which attaches to suspected foundations 
 and insufficient means of defence. And when controversy 
 is ventured upon, plausible evasions, supercilious cant, and 
 thinly disguised insolence are apt to take the place of rea 
 soning. 
 
 The mysteriousness of the great ecclesiastical dogma is 
 often pleaded on behalf of its reception without inquiry, but 
 the plea is valid only in conjunction with the announcements 
 of a living, explicitly speaking authority, and does not touch 
 the question whether the sacred writers held and inculcated 
 the dogma. If Jesus be indeed God, the mystery of His 
 Being oppresses and baffles the understanding, but is no 
 bar to definite and distinct statements of the fact of His 
 Godhead. A mystery can be unambiguously preached, and 
 clearly implied, without being explained. The point at 
 issue is, not the intelligibility of the proposition, " the Son 
 is equal to the Father as touching His Godhead," but the pres 
 ence in Scripture of the proposition itself, or of testimony 
 which warrants the proposition. The- search is not for a solu 
 tion of the mystery, which, if real, may well be insoluble, but 
 for the existence of the mystery. To arrest examination by 
 the cry of mysteriousness is, therefore, poor subterfuge. But, 
 when this subterfuge is not permitted, the ungracious cant 
 
14 THE PLEA OP MYSTERIOUSNESS. 
 
 of spiritual self-complacency too frequently crops up. Hearty 
 acceptance of the dogma is said to pre-require a certain 
 moral condition, the absence of which indicates defect in spir- 
 itual-mindedness, humility, and love of holiness. In this 
 complacently ill-bred suggestion, however, two plain facts 
 are overlooked : (1) That the question is an intellectual 
 one, so far as it pertains merely to the existence of particular 
 evidence ; (*2) That, so far as it pertains to the formal con 
 ception of the dogma for which evidence is presumed to 
 exist, it belongs entirely to the domain of the speculative 
 intellect, and not of the religious emotional sentiments. A 
 want of healthful, moral, and religious interest an unde 
 veloped or perverted spiritual condition may, doubtless, 
 disincline men from faith in the primary supersensible real 
 ities to which the religious components of our nature point, 
 and which reason does not contravene ; such as the disem 
 bodied life of the soul, and the existence, perfections, and 
 moral government of an Omnipotent Creator, Who is also 
 the Helper and Father of His creatures, and holds inter 
 course with their spirits. These realities, together with 
 the grand lines of our duty to God and to our neighbor, are 
 forms of truth which cannot be rightly apprehended without 
 moral earnestness, but which cannot lose by scrutiny, specu 
 lation, and experience. They have no need to shun the 
 light, and are commended and strengthened by reinvestiga- 
 tion. But the theory of Christ s Godhead stands quite apart 
 from realities of this class, and cannot be associated with 
 them otherwise than by an arbitrary and artificial junction. 
 To bind ecclesiastical dogmas upon primary religious truths, 
 for the purpose of making proofs of the latter bear the 
 weight of the former, may be an astute, but is not a very 
 respectable device. Before theologians, rendered irascible 
 by scarcity of reasons, resort to impertinent innuendoes about 
 the moral condition of their fellow Christians, who, having 
 examined, cannot accept certain theories, they would do well 
 to ponder seriously how far their own moral condition may 
 be disordered by educational bias, excited feeling, and neglect 
 
WORTH OF MORAL PREDISPOSITIONS. 15 
 
 of single-minded, pains-taking search. Protestant ministers 
 are, in virtue of their own fundamental maxims, under strict 
 obligations of intellectual duty towards God and towards 
 their brethren ; when they shall have fulfilled these obliga 
 tions, they will be better qualified to talk of other men s 
 " moral condition." 
 
 Conceding, as we must, freely and thankfully, the existence 
 and claims to recognition of moral affections, predispositions, 
 and sentiments which favor, and lead up to, the acceptance of 
 some constituent features in Christianity, the question meets 
 us, What are these features ? are they the dogmatic defini 
 tions, or the more general and deeper ethical and spiritual 
 truths ? The most traditionally minded Protestant, if he be 
 also a man of ordinary truthfulness and acumen, will not 
 contend that moral intuitions and spiritual instincts, such as 
 (taking a much-cited class for example) conviction of sin, 
 self-condemnation, doubt of pardon, point to precise doc 
 trines, but to undetailed though actual relations between 
 responsible creatures and their Creator. All real instincts of 
 our nature, whether spiritual or physical, have corresponding 
 truths and objects; but, for the rightful apprehension of these 
 truths and objects, the inquisitive and constructive exercise 
 of the intellect is needed. Mere sentiment is a blind guide, 
 and our best intuitions can but indicate directions for the 
 excursions of thought. The sentiments belonging to an im 
 perfect and slowly unfolding rational constitution must be 
 liable to every degree of suppression, deflection, and perver 
 sion ; and it is an observed fact, that deformities and distor 
 tions are, to a considerable extent, capable of hereditary 
 transmission. Moral affections are also exposed to the influ 
 ences of sympathetic contagion. In connection with the 
 religious emotions, especially, particular forms of expression 
 and manifestation strengthen and propagate themselves, dur 
 ing periods more or less prolonged, by the mere infection of 
 existence, and in spite of demonstrable and even monstrous 
 errors. Whenever, therefore, spiritual instincts, moral senti 
 ments, and primary religious tendencies are appealed to m 
 
16 WORTH OF MORAL PREDISPOSITIONS. 
 
 defence of concrete theological theories, the first inquiry must 
 be, Have these underlying elements been fairly interpreted, 
 or pervertingly handled ? 
 
 The class of feelings and intuitions to which I have, for 
 the sake of -illustration, referred, reminds us of attempts 
 sometimes made to engraft upon the sense of guilt the ortho 
 dox conception of the Atonement, a conception which makes 
 the co-equally Divine God the Son take upon Him an apparel 
 of flesh and blood, in order to satiate and satisfy, by obe 
 dience, sufferings, and death, the righteous judicial demands 
 of God the Father. But may not every suggestion really 
 wrapt up in the sense of guilt be more genuinely met by 
 the revelation of a Father who forgives freely the imploring 
 penitent, and, through His own quickening presence in the 
 soul, helps to generate and deepen the emotions of penitence, 
 and the hunger after righteousness? The upbraidings of 
 conscience, the alarms of remorse, the cravings for assurances 
 of release, are not the only instinctive witnesses to a Holy God 
 with which our souls are furnished, and are witnesses singu 
 larly susceptible of developments, partial, exaggerated, twisted, 
 and false. Spiritual instincts as deep and real, but displaying 
 other aspects, are not to be excluded ; they are, indeed, soft 
 ening, consolatory, and corrective of the hard despair en 
 gendered by self-accusing remorse. Hope, trust, and love 
 witness for a tender and helpful God, Who is not extreme to 
 mark what is done amiss ; and there is, in the human heart, 
 the capacity, encouraged and sustained by the intellect, for a 
 strong faith that our heavenly Father has towards us infinite 
 stores of the forbearance and loving-kindness which He 
 commands and enables us to cultivate towards each other. 
 
 The appeal to native moral predispositions, and primary 
 spiritual instincts, is quite legitimately made when we are 
 examining the foundations of theological doctrine ; but let it 
 be made equitably, not in a partisan spirit, and with a view 
 to create that muddled mental atmosphere which favors the 
 reception of orthodox mysteries, and the protracted substi 
 tution of current phrases in place of intelligible ideas. The 
 
RESPONSE TO DEVOTIONAL FEELINGS. 17 
 
 moral condition of a man as regards his religious belief is 
 not blameworthy, unless (1) he wilfully rejects a suffi 
 ciently well-authenticated external revelation, or, while pro 
 fessing to accept it, refuses to search out and be guided by 
 its meaning ; or unless (2) he captiously objects to tenets 
 which are " commended to the mind as true in themselves, 
 and are in harmony with other truths, and with those gen 
 eral principles of belief which belong to the constitution of 
 our rational nature." The moral condition of a Protestant 
 who is unable to collect from the Bible satisfactory proofs of 
 Christ s Godhead is not, therefore, blameworthy. 
 
 The " moral condition of the recipient " argument has 
 some collateral accessories slightly less offensive than itself. 
 One of these is, that our own better nature responds to the 
 orthodox doctrine of Christ s Person. If this vague state 
 ment is not an insinuation aimed against the better nature of 
 opponents, no more is really meant than that the doctrine, 
 when its verbal expression hns been carefully adjusted, may 
 be restrained from collision with truths which correspond to 
 instinctive religious susceptibilities and cravings. Response 
 to our devotional nature is a plea which Protestants should 
 handle with extreme caution. Catholics of the Roman Com 
 munion can show that the cultus of the Blessed Virgin meets 
 wants of man s devotional nature, no less really than does 
 the worship of Deity in a second personal Form incarnate in 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 A continental theologian, of pre-eminent learning and abil 
 ity, traces the existence of an historical parallelism between 
 the gradual exaltation of the Virgin Mary, and the Deification 
 of her Son : 
 
 " The history of the worship of Mary oifers one of the most 
 instructive parallels to that of the dogma of the Deity of 
 her Son. In our days, and notwithstanding the very power 
 ful reasons which may be alleged from ancient Catholic Or 
 thodoxy, the great majority of ardent Catholics have declared 
 themselves in favor of the dogma of the Immaculate Con*, 
 ception, without exactly knowing what this may mean, and 
 
 2 
 
18 PREMATURE COMPARISONS. 
 
 just because profound devotion to Mary finds more satisfac 
 tion in proclaiming this doctrine than in denying it. The 
 gradual deification of Mary, though slower in its progress, 
 follows, in the Romish Church, a course analogous to that 
 which the Church of the first centuries followed, in elaborat 
 ing the Deity of Jesus. With almost all the Catholic writers 
 of our days, Mary is the universal mediatrix ; all power has 
 been given to her, in heaven, and upon earth. Indeed, more 
 than one serious attempt has been already made in the Ultra 
 montane camp to unite Mary in some way to the Trinity; 
 and if Mariolatry lasts much longer, this will probably be 
 accomplished in the end." - Reville : History of the Dogma 
 of the Deity of Jesus Christ (p. 75). 
 
 Sometimes experience is cited, and Protestant champions 
 proclaim loudly, " Take away belief in Christ s Deity, and 
 you take away an element of mighty attractive and awaken 
 ing power." But, when scrutinized, their assertion is found to 
 rest on an assumption of the belief s being in itself a spring 
 of vital energy, rather than the eternal and generally acknowl 
 edged verities with which in concrete fact the belief is always 
 joined. Moreover, in comparisons between the effectiveness 
 of Christian Theism on the one hand, and the theories of 
 the Sacerdotal and Evangelical schools on the, other, the 
 enormous force of sympathy and example attending widely 
 prevalent and historically rooted opinion is systematically 
 forgotten. But, with the gregarious multitude, this force is 
 equal to most potent evidence, and averts inquiry. The cir 
 cumstance that a particular tenet has been for a long time, 
 and pretty generally, maintained, suffices to draw the bulk of 
 mankind into professions and acts for which they have never 
 attempted to qualify themselves by cogitation and research. 
 Except with the thinking few, devotional feeling and practi 
 cal piety have unfolded themselves in association with im 
 plicit uninquisitive faith in orthodoxy. All living religion is, 
 in the ideas of the vast majority of Christians, entangled with 
 the acceptance of Nicene and Athanasian theologies. We 
 should beware, therefore, of instituting comparisons for which 
 
CHARGE OF SPIRITUAL IMPOTENCE. 19 
 
 no proper materials exist ; and it is very premature to talk of 
 the failure of Christian Theism to reach the hearts of mill 
 ions, and to produce the spiritual effects of the Gospel as 
 presented in Evangelical and Catholic preachings. All intro 
 ductions of new doctrines, and all reformations of old, are, in 
 their earlier stages, unavoidably open to the charge of spirit 
 ual feebleness. They have to fight against heavy odds, and 
 to win their way slowly. And, if the swelling agitation of 
 theological thought in this country is fated to carry Protest 
 antism to the natural issues of primary Protestant axioms, 
 the progress at first will be among the educated, and not 
 among the unreflecting masses, who, even with the Bible in 
 their hands, are very slowly incited to the trouble of search 
 ing what the Bible is, what the Bible means, and whether 
 traditional, systematic theology is not composed as much of 
 worthless husk as of precious kernel as much of the inven 
 tions and mistaken inferences of men, as of the revealed and 
 rationally verifiable messages of God. 
 
 Popular enthusiasm, and the surgings of excited religious 
 emotions, are not likely to be at once allied with pure Mono 
 theism, though Monotheism may include every ingredient 
 needful to satisfy the intellect and quicken the heart. Fifteen 
 centuries of inherited tradition, the assent of successive gener 
 ations numbering hundreds of millions, and the admixture 
 of unchanging, inestimable truths, are influences which, when 
 they concur, break up tardily, and cannot break up at all 
 without lowering for a time the pulse of religious life. If 
 their ecclesiastical progenitors have taught for doctrines the 
 commandments of men, consistent Protestants must not 
 fancy they can undo the error without suffering much obstruc 
 tion, persistent misrepresentation, and the payment of a pen 
 alty in the temporary derangement of the very sentiments 
 they prize most, and most ardently hope to expand and 
 intensify. 
 
 But, when impotence for the production of spiritual results 
 is contrastingly laid to the charge of Theistic or undogmatic 
 Christianity, the question may in all fairness be retorted, 
 
20 THE CLAIMS OF THEISM. 
 
 What marked spiritual results is Protestant Orthodoxy now 
 capable of producing? Does it lay hold of, arouse, and 
 satisfy cultivated minds ? Do not educated men, in augment 
 ing numbers, either fall away from it wholly, or yield to it no 
 more worthy tribute than torpid acquiescence and timid con 
 servatism ? In minds disposed to investigate, it survives less 
 and less through the conviction that it is true. Its remaining 
 chance is with the bigoted, the ignorant, and the unthinking. 
 In its missionary labors, it is powerless whenever it is called 
 to confront cultured intellects trained in the more refined and 
 spiritual forms of non-Christian faith. What has it ever 
 been able to accomplish among Mohammedans, Jews, and 
 educated Hindoos? What is it doing in any country of 
 Europe to revive among the masses the old lively faith in its 
 own distinctive tenets, or to raise and purify morals in the 
 common relationships and transactions of life? If any thing 
 has been effected, the effect has assuredly not been in virtue 
 of the dogma that God is Three Persons rather than One 
 Father, but in virtue of truths which are the property of 
 Theism as much as of Ecclesiasticism. What orthodox Prot 
 estantism did achieve, in times differing in moral and mental 
 atmosphere from our own, is fast disappearing now, because 
 it built upon the emotional, without a proportionate regard 
 to the intellectual, capacities of our nature. When it can 
 manifest, either at home or abroad, some conquering might 
 and vitality, it may excusably venture to decry the spiritual 
 efficacy of Christian Theism, but not before. The Theists 
 may justly reply : " With your great possession of num 
 bers, and your many prescriptive advantages, we should con 
 fidently expect to propagate our faith rapidly, and to make 
 the One God and His commandments universally known and 
 honored." 
 
 When variations of moral character and religious opinion, 
 in successive family generations, are ascribed to definite 
 causes, conjecture almost necessarily adulterates deduction ; 
 but Theists may, at the least, claim to be as successful as 
 orthodox Protestants, in producing descendants of sound 
 
GROWTH OF THE THEISTIC FAITH. 21 
 
 morality and settled convictions. The lapses of Evangelical 
 offspring from the faith and morals of their fathers are only 
 too observable ; and its own intellectual deficiencies generally 
 insure the failure of Evangelicalism in the second educated 
 generation. Broad facts, in the present day, prohibit Protest 
 ant Orthodoxy from boasting of superior moral and spiritual 
 effectiveness. 
 
 And further: when comparisons are instituted, Theists 
 may justly complain against the identification of their faith 
 in a God intelligibly One, with the peculiarities and some 
 what arbitrary narrowness of Socinianism. The reformed 
 communities which have continued rooted in the Trinitarian 
 tradition would probably not be gainers by an equitable his 
 torical comparison with the dryest and coldest formal Socin 
 ianism. Faults and deficiencies, almost equally grave, though 
 very diverse, would be seen to exist on both sides. But the 
 Socinianism of bygone times is not identical with that recti 
 fied faith in the One God and Father, which, as distinguished 
 from faith in Three Persons, each of whom by Himself is 
 God, is the chief element in the unorthodox Christianity now 
 rising in its might to wrestle with Catholicism for the suf 
 frages of spiritually minded thinkers. And it would be vain 
 to deny that progress has been made, and fruit of righteous 
 ness borne. The assaults on slavery, and other social evils in 
 America, were led by Unitarianism ; and in the instance of 
 slavery, undoubtedly, were long opposed by Orthodoxy. Of 
 Theistic faith Reville s summary is strictly true : 
 
 " It has spread \vith marvellous success in America. From 
 Boston, its principal centre, it has been diffused throughout 
 Xew England, and amongst the other States. Such names 
 as those of Ware, Channing, and Theodore Parker, are in 
 themselves sufficient to shed lustre upon a religious commun 
 ion of recent date. Even more than in England, has it ex 
 tended in America beyond the Unitarian Churches, properly 
 so-called, and this chiefly amongst the Universalists and the 
 Society of Friends. Without exaggeration we may say, 
 that it is in fact the religion of the majority of enlightened 
 
22 ANGLICAN ATTEMPT TO COMBINE. 
 
 men in the young Republic. From it have sprung the great 
 movements in matters of philanthropy and social reform. 
 The unity of God Christ recognized as the great revealer 
 and the model of the truly religious life love as being the 
 assential attribute of God, and constituting the essential 
 quality of the Christian, such are the invariable character 
 istics of this remarkable tendency." History of the Dogma 
 of the Deity of Jesus Christ (p. 139). 
 
 The desperate plea is sometimes advanced, Unitarianism 
 makes no progress among the poor." Theists, of course, 
 reply by frankly admitting the passively obstructive power 
 of ignorance, thoughtlessness, and intellectual dependence. 
 The plea is, indeed, only another symptom of the tendency 
 produced by theological prepossession to build on the ground 
 of mere habit and blind sentiment, when driven from the 
 ground of intelligence. The doctrinal religion of uneducated 
 men and women consists usually of prevailing tenets unre 
 flectingly absorbed, and held with an obstinacy proportioned 
 to the lack of thought. The practical piety and conscien 
 tiousness of the poor are often bright and elevating, and their 
 errors and superstitions are not the reprehensible conse 
 quences of neglected intellectual duty. 
 
 But it may be said : Members of the Established Church, 
 and more especially the clergy, are, in all honesty, debarred 
 from Theism, being bound by solemn promises to continuance 
 in the orthodox faith ; the authoritative documents and for 
 mularies of the Church affirm the doctrine of Christ s Deity 
 with such explicitness as to leave no room for doubt, no 
 licence for discussion. The case may perhaps be so, and 
 would without doubt be so, if the Church had not, in her sixth 
 Article, pronounced Holy Scripture to be the sufficient rule 
 and repertory of the Christian faith ; in her twentieth Article 
 declared the sense of God s Word written to be superior to, 
 and restrictive of, the Church s decrees and expositions ; and, 
 in her Services for the Ordination of Priests and Consecra 
 tion of Bishops, exacted an engagement that the Sacred 
 Scriptures shall be the fountain of doctrine, and the dili- 
 
DISCORDANT METHODS. 23 
 
 gently consulted standard and guide. These Articles and 
 Services throw the clergy in the most emphatic way, not 
 upon decisions of doctrine, which the Church has ruled, and 
 not upon interpretations to which the Church witnesses, 
 but upon the Bible itself, as the source of sound doctrine 
 and the bulwark against error. If their expressions are to 
 be taken in the plain, unadulterated, legitimate meaning, the 
 Bible is made supreme, and individual judgments are invited 
 and enjoined to ponder its teaching, and follow its light. 
 The rudimentary Protestant principle is taken for granted, 
 and applied. The Holy Scriptures are constituted the sole 
 visible, external, sovereign instrument, from which the reve 
 lations and precepts of God are to be sought and accepted. 
 The Church rears no Article of the faith upon her own illu 
 mination and authority, but refers all to Scripture, and pre 
 scribes that all shall harmonize with, and bear to be tried by, 
 Scripture. Between Holy Scripture and private judgment 
 no dominant mediator, no divinely delegated instructor, is 
 made to intervene. If there is not express affirmation that 
 Scripture was written for the very purpose of teaching the 
 faith to all the ages, there is the assumption that, in matter 
 of fact, Scripture is the single, adequate, authoritative crite 
 rion and embodiment remaining to us of Apostolic doctrine. 
 On the other hand, it may be argued : The Church imposes 
 on the minds and consciences of her clergy Thirty-nine Arti 
 cles, and the general significance of copious Liturgical For 
 mularies, thus making incumbent the acceptance of particular 
 interpretations of Scripture, and forbidding the supposition 
 of her either encouraging or allowing the exercise of private 
 judgment in deductions from the Written Word. In par 
 ticular, she has distinctly affirmed the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 and unreservedly indorsed the three Creeds. Her appeal to 
 Holy Writ is, therefore, merely a notification that therein 
 she has found, and directs her clergy to find, such and such 
 tenets. The conclusions to be arrived at are in reality dic 
 tated, but, in exuberant confidence of their truth, investiga 
 tion is solicited, and even enjoined. The one foundation on 
 
24 CONSEQUENT WEAKENING OF THE MORAL SENSE. 
 
 which the whole superstructure reposes is the authority of 
 the Church ; but the authority is shown in expounding an 
 original and a wealthy deposit, not in imparting a continuous 
 revelation. 
 
 But, disguise the fact how we will, there is a most real and 
 confusing incongruity between declaring the Bible to be the 
 one sufficient fountain and evidence of Christian doctrine, 
 and imposing Articles and Creeds containing hundreds of 
 propositions, not a few of which admit of no respectable 
 scriptural proof. Reference to the Bible is nugatory when 
 what we are to find in the Bible is prescribed with so much 
 elaboration ; and the royalty of the Church is reduced to a 
 name when her proclamations are submitted to the test of 
 Scripture, explored by individual judgment. The contrariety 
 between Catholic and Protestant first principles is indestruc 
 tible ; though shackled together, and imprisoned within the 
 legal fences of an establishment, they are not reconciled, and 
 can never be true yoke-fellows. 
 
 The practical effect of the position our Church occupies is 
 the enfeeblement among her clergy of the sense of moral 
 obligation to believe her dogmas. By her unguarded appeal 
 to the Bible she. has granted so much freedom, and by her 
 multitudinous propositions inflicted so much constraint, that 
 her hold upon the conscience is loosened, and her moral rights 
 abridged. When religious opinions are dictated, it is, before 
 all things, necessary that the constitution and methods of the 
 dictating authority should be clearly and concordantly de 
 fined. If discordant premises are avowed, and perplexing 
 directions given, the claim to prescribe is forfeited, and the 
 sense of obligation sapped. And the Church of England 
 does appear to be justly exposed to the indictment of having 
 attempted to amalgamate irreconcilable axioms, and to build 
 upon two incongruous foundations. This may not have 
 been suspected by her remodellerS in the sixteenth century ; 
 they may have failed to perceive all that their own legislation 
 of compromise involved; but the letter of their enactments, 
 and not their ignorance or their intentions, is the law of the 
 
NECESSITY OF UNAMBIGUOUS AUTHORITY. 2 d 
 
 Church. Assumptions virtually at variance with each other, 
 and methods which cannot be harmonized, are mutually 
 counterpoising, and leave the mind unbound, to the full 
 extent of their discrepancy. The fate of the sitter on two 
 stools is proverbial, and noAvhere more certain than in the 
 imposition of Articles of theological belief. 
 
 And, over and beyond the general deteriorating result ot 
 inconsistent primary principles, the doctrine of Christ s abso 
 lute Deity is surrounded with oppositions of thought and 
 expression, which make the voice of unambiguously authori 
 tative injunction doubly needful. The Articles begin with 
 an announcement of the Divine Unity. " There is but one 
 living and true God, the Maker and Preserver of all things." 
 Now, if inquiry, reflection, and freedom of thought are not 
 prohibited, this simple declaration will appear to most minds 
 effectually to set aside, and render hopelessly unmeaning, the 
 subsequent statements : " in the Unity of this Divine Nature 
 there be three Persons of the same substance, power, and 
 eternity ; " and " the Son is very and eternal God of one 
 substance with the Father." To insure the reception of 
 propositions so conflicting, a supreme revealing authority 
 must be recognized in them. The Catholic Churchman does 
 recognize such an authority, and, with the recognition and 
 consequent submission of mind and conscience, his difficulties 
 are ended, and his way is logically clear. But the orthodox 
 Protestant, with his theories about the right and duty of 
 private judgment, his professed dependence on the Bible 
 alone, and his depreciation of the Church s revealing func 
 tions, is in the anomalous posture of inviting inquiry, while 
 in practice, and by indirect reasonings, he with tremulous 
 vigilance treats the dogma of Christ s Godhead as a point 
 settled for ever, and on no account to be reinvestigated or 
 reopened. In the insuperable difficulty of intelligible and 
 consistent explanation, unorthodox men, of course, discern a 
 demonstration that the dogma ought not to be made a term 
 of communion. They refuse to believe that, in the good 
 news from God, salvation is made to hang upon faith in 
 
2 EFFECTS OF CLERICAL SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
 exceedingly abstruse and enigmatical, not to say flatly con 
 tradictory, definitions respecting the Infinite, Uncreated 
 Nature. 
 
 Arguing from the mysteriousness which no one is disposed 
 to deny, they contend that, presuming the actual existence 
 of a mystery beyond our knowledge, or our capacity for 
 knowledge, we are not thereby justified in making the mys 
 tery a subject for minutely formal statements. If the intelli 
 gence of orthodox Protestants had not been terribly dulled 
 and debased, under a system which, without bowing to a 
 supreme infallible voice, scorns logic, thought, and history, 
 there would be recognized in mysteriousness the most con 
 clusive of all reasons against imposing definitions ; because 
 the very idea of a mystery is, that which the mind cannot 
 grasp and formulate. No man, or society of men, while 
 abjuring the Church s authoritatively interpreting and reveal 
 ing functions, is legitimately empowered to bind upon the 
 conscience doctrines which have not reasonable evidence, 
 and do not admit of reasonable detailed exhibition. To what 
 have Sectarian attempts to state and impose dogmatic puz 
 zles tended ? have they not plainly tended to weaken united 
 witness in favor of simple spiritual truths, and to thwart 
 united action for good ends ? 
 
 To these considerations might be added the admitted laxity 
 engendered by the foolish, immoral, and, as experience proves, 
 inefficacious form of Clerical Subscription in the Established 
 Church. The quantity of matter imposed is so excessive, 
 that legislative interference has recently diluted the quality 
 of the assent, and now, with a sanctioned reduction of mean 
 ing, candidates for Holy Orders gravely aver their agreement 
 with a mass of propositions, the chief of which their Prot 
 estant theological preceptors devoutly hope they may never 
 thoroughly examine. But the impolicy and worthlessness of 
 Clerical Subscription, as now T exacted, belongs only incident 
 ally to my subject. It conspires, however, with other and 
 more important considerations, to relieve consciences from 
 that sense of obligation to faith in the Deity of Jesus, which 
 
EFFECTS OF CLERICAL SUBSCRIPTION. 27 
 
 declarations of assent to the doctrine contained in the Angli 
 can Articles and Liturgy might not unnaturally be expected 
 to awaken. 
 
 Earnestness and conscientiousness, when joined to intelli 
 gence, afford no guarantee that a Protestant who has been 
 caught in the meshes of Clerical Subscription will either 
 rescind his vows, and cease from the exercise of his ministry, 
 or try to frame his faith and teaching according to the notions 
 and aims of the divines who compiled the Articles and Book 
 of Common Prayer. In many, perhaps the majority of 
 instances, devoted and upright men who are able to see will 
 disregard the pretensions of a system whose rudimentary 
 principles nullify each other, and will shape their conduct 
 simply by their perceptions of duty to God, and what they 
 believe to be His truth. Ministrations within the Established 
 Church occupy the most advantageous position for the dis 
 semination of precious spiritual truths, and for the promotion 
 of moral improvement and practical piety. The duty of 
 continuing to act from this advantageous position is, to many 
 morally keen and sensitive minds, the motive which deter 
 mines their course, and emancipates them from all sense of 
 bondage and uneasiness on account of past pledges to believe 
 and inculcate a mass of propositions, which would still be 
 wantonly burdensome, even if they did not jostle. They 
 adhere to one fundamental base of the Church s teaching; 
 and the quantity of inconsistent formally enjoined material, 
 their adhesion causes them to cast away, does not, after the 
 first pain of awaking to the perception of a difficult situation, 
 disturb the serenity of conscience. This I take to be a true 
 account of prevalent feeling among the consistently Protest 
 ant, or Broad Church, Anglican clergy. The retrograde 
 and impracticable device of engrafting Protestantism on to 
 Catholicity they leave to men whose wisest and most dutiful 
 aspirations are directed to the avoidance of unsettling inquiry, 
 and the perpetuation of the motley doctrinal structure which 
 satisfied the more eminent English Reformers. 
 
 There is, however, a modification of the device just named, 
 
28 ANGLICAN VIA MEDIA DISCUSSED. 
 
 not destitute of plausibility; a cautiously adjusted middle 
 way, which a few years since enlisted the suffrages of learned 
 and able men ; but it always exasperated hearty Protestants, 
 and it is now seen to fall short of a tenable and coherent 
 Catholicity. Put in its best form, the position known as the 
 Via Media may be thus stated : The Primitive Church pos 
 sessed an oral tradition setting forth explicitly doctrines which 
 Scripture contained only implicitly. The growth and settle 
 ment of interpretation practically incorporated this tradition 
 with Scripture, and in the dogmatic enunciations of the first 
 four General Councils the w r hole of the Church s inherited 
 knowledge in its bearing on controversies of faith was exhib 
 ited in due correlation to the Divine written Word, so that 
 no more room was left for development and elucidation. 
 The Bible presents obscurely and germinally, the Bible and 
 the Creeds present perspicuously and definitively, the whole 
 counsel of God, so far as that counsel need be compacted 
 into Articles of a common faith. Further developments by 
 definition are unnecessary, if not mistaken, and would cer 
 tainly be spurious should they involve new articles of belief. 
 
 Now, this position is evidently an abandonment of Prot 
 estant principle, and the query inevitably occurs : What 
 faculty passes judgment adverse to developments beyond 
 the date of the fourth General Council, or beyond the enun 
 ciations of the Athanasian Creed? The answer must be, 
 reason ; and if reason is competent for that decision, why is 
 reason to be precluded from examining whether the Creeds 
 bring out, add to, or contravene the meaning of Scripture ? 
 
 From the Catholic side, too, exception may be justly taken 
 at limitation, which seems unwarranted and capricious. If 
 the central verity of orthodox Christianity was, in effect, 
 trusted to the knowledge, and formal unfolding, of the 
 Church, it is certainly probable that points of minor impor 
 tance were committed to the same instrumentality. Why 
 should the three Creeds accepted by Anglicans be supposed 
 to exhaust the Church s stores of traditional enlightenment, 
 and the corresponding Scriptural supply of minute dogmatic 
 
DUTY OF ORTHODOX PROTESTANTS. 29 
 
 germs which elude the eye of rational research? Why are 
 Papal supremacy, Masses for the dead, Purgatory, and Invo 
 cation of Saints, excluded ? The ability to find, in the 
 document of which she is the guardian and expositor, senses 
 which none but herself can descry, is a standing manifesta 
 tion of the Church s prerogatives and mission. It attests at 
 once her endowment with peculiar wisdom, and the wonder 
 ful adaptation to her office of the Book whose mystic re 
 cesses she alone is able to penetrate. If it should be said, 
 the Church, though orally inheriting Apostolic doctrine not 
 explicitly contained in Holy Scripture, has been merely the 
 witness and historical conduit for the descent of that doc 
 trine, then her teaching is surrendered to every customary 
 method of rational investigation, and we are brought back 
 again to the Protestant basis. 
 
 I know well how irksome these statements will appear to 
 men who, in the honest infatuation of prejudice and half- 
 knowledge, are sure Protestantism brings no peril to the 
 dogma of Christ s Deity. They eagerly re-echo "the 
 Bible does teach the dogma to rational and painstaking 
 searchers," and they can perceive nothing illogical, and no 
 forfeiture of moral claims, in offering the Bible to individual 
 judgment, and, at the same time, dictating the most moment 
 ous conclusion to be reached. I can only entreat them, for 
 the sake of the doctrine itself, as well as for their own sakes, 
 to give themselves to the task of diligently searching the 
 Scriptures, with the single view of ascertaining, from the 
 indications those Scriptures furnish, what were the mind and 
 meaning of the writers. Let them, at least, try to acquire 
 that familiarity with Scripture, without which it is impossible 
 to understand Scripture. If, in any other department of 
 knowledge, they had to encounter opponents who differed 
 from them about the sense of a document, they would right 
 eously insist that the diverse interpretations should both be 
 carefully studied, or, at all events, that the document itself 
 should be read without predeterminations and bias. Let 
 them accord to the Volume, for which they profess so deep a 
 
80 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE REFORMATION. 
 
 reverence, the fair treatment they would accord to any other 
 document they sincerely desired to understand. Let the 
 inquiry not be, What does the Church teach ? or, What do 
 the bequeathed and widely accepted traditions of ages teach ? 
 but, What saith the Scripture ? 
 
 JSTo Protestant, who is cognizant of the large variety of 
 opinions entertained by men who start from the same funda 
 mental maxim, "Scripture alone is sufficient," needs to 
 be reminded how easily errors harden into theories which are 
 transmitted and buttressed through generations of blindly 
 confiding and immovably obstinate adherents. Ecclesiastical 
 history, as Protestants read it, is one continuous note of 
 warning against human liability to falsehood and corruption, 
 and human persistency in upholding false doctrines which 
 have once gained a footing. If the Bible is, indeed, the sole 
 sufficient rule and storehouse of doctrine, the reference to it 
 should be incessant, free, and watchfully impartial. For the 
 genuine Protestant, who would keep a good conscience to 
 wards God and towards his brethren, there is no other 
 course. What would a Trinitarian Protestant think of some 
 sturdy Monotheist who should be abusively confident in his 
 faith, without having weighed the Trinitarian scheme of in 
 terpretation, or endeavored to look at the Bible from the 
 Trinitarian point of view? Timidity, reserve, reluctance to 
 study conflicting expositions on prominent and presumedly 
 vital points, are, in men who make the Bible their standard, 
 suggestive of weak diffidence and moral cowardice, if not of 
 culpable negligence and positive dishonesty. 
 
 The mere fact that a stream of traditionalism on the sub 
 ject of Christ s Deity has flowed on in Protestant communi 
 ties from the time of the Reformation is no proof the stream 
 is the tide of truth. The Reformation in England accepted, 
 and permitted to survive, most things not manifestly corrupt 
 and mischievous. The removal of practical evils was far 
 more aimed at than the purification of dogmatic theology. 
 Wherever dogmas were struck, the blow was instigated by 
 crying abuses with which they had become entwined. What- 
 
THE IMPOLICY OF SUPPRESSION. 31 
 
 ever did not directly minister to the usurpations and vicious 
 procedures of the priestly order was very generally retained, 
 and, unquestionably, large sections of existing ecclesiastical 
 exposition were, by tacit consent, preserved intact ; and thus 
 a potent directing impulse, not yet spent, was carried over 
 into Protestant interpretation of Scripture. In the pathway 
 of untrammelled, searching, and rational understanding of 
 the Bible, this impulse has been a stubborn impediment, 
 causing men to stop short with assuming the Canonical Writ 
 ings to afford ample proofs of Christ s Godhead ; of which, 
 in reality, they afford no proof whatever, unless they are 
 subordinated to the Church s light and supremacy. But 
 reflecting Protestants in these days are ceasing to be satisfied 
 with the assumption. They are beginning to act upon their 
 distinctive axiom, and to feel they must either renounce that 
 axiom, or abide by the consequences it entails. 
 
 No policy can really be worse for Protestantism than the 
 policy of suppression and half-information, which is in vogue 
 at theological seminaries. The claims of the Church are 
 repudiated ; the claims of the Bible are, indeed, laid down in 
 theory, but are neutralized in practice, by the weight of 
 received, unsifted interpretations, and the opinions of selected 
 commentators. No foundation is felt beneath the feet, no ru 
 dimentary principle or preliminary assumption is heartily 
 grasped and fearlessly reasoned from. Theological students 
 are not encouraged to be candid, unshrinking, and consistent in 
 the application of any fundamental aphorism. The very aim 
 of their education would seem to be the production (as varie 
 ties of individual material may determine) of unreasoning, 
 tenacious bigots, and of apprehensive faint-hearted shufflers, 
 unacquainted with the strength of their adversaries position, 
 and the details of their adversaries tactics, and so utterly 
 unable effectively to repulse their adversaries assaults. If 
 fear, hatred, and contempt of heresy can be instilled without 
 any frank examination of heretical arguments, the grand end 
 of orthodox Protestant theological training would apppear 
 to be achieved. That this state of things is not extremely 
 
32 ONLY THE TRUTH CAN PROSPER. 
 
 perilous, no sensible man will imagine. The surface may for 
 a while be kept smooth, but the doctrines shielded and fos 
 tered by such false methods are being surely undermined 
 and betrayed. 
 
 Even in theology, nothing but truth and straightforwardness 
 can eventually prosper. And it is not truthful and straight 
 forward proceeding to parade the Bible as far as the Bible 
 will serve, and then, by sleight of hand and under cover of 
 the Bible s name, to import ecclesiastical assumptions. If 
 the notion that Holy Scripture, reasonably interpreted by its 
 own light, is the sole and sufficient Rule of Christian faith, is 
 mistaken, let it be resigned ; if it is correct, let it be boldly 
 adhered to, acted upon, and admitted in all its logical results. 
 Whether the notion is or is not compatible with Orthodoxy 
 cannot be tried by a better and more crucial test than the 
 dogma for which Mr. Liddon argues. If it fails with respect 
 to this dogma, its failure in relation to Orthodoxy is complete 
 and irreparable. 
 
 But, whether it fails or not, every man set apart to the 
 Clerical office should be compelled by his theological educa 
 tion to subject it to severe scrutiny, and so to estimate its real 
 worth. Lack of knowledge of the Scriptural argument, as 
 set forth by those who doubt or deny the coessential God 
 head of Jesus, is a real disqualification for the effectual dis 
 charge of Ministerial duty. The individual faith of the 
 teacher is timorous and intellectually nerveless ; he is tempted 
 continually to cast his burden upon man, and to lean upon a 
 consensus of great divines ; cogitation, search, reliance upon 
 God, and " God s written Word," are, in practice, abjured, and 
 the pages of fallible orthodox commentators are resorted to, 
 for consoling and conclusive corroboration of prejudgments 
 already backed by powerful incentives, and therefore need 
 ing, the more urgently, scrupulous inspection and testing. 
 The faith of the taught unavoidably suffers, and is mentally 
 too sickly to endure trial, b9cause it stands upon deficient 
 and delusive instruction. Intellectual defencelessness is not, 
 indeed, immediately, though it is ultimately, a fatal flaw in 
 
INADEQUACY OF THE SENTIMENTAL BASIS. 33 
 
 religious belief. What has been remarked upon another sub 
 ject, by a great leader of thinkers in our day, is especially 
 applicable to faith in religious dogmas, and to none more 
 than to Protestant faith in the Deity of our Master Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 " So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, 
 it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponder 
 ating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted 
 as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument 
 might shake the solidity of the conviction ; but when it 
 rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative 
 contest, the more persuaded its adherents are that their feel 
 ing must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do 
 not reach ; and while the feeling remains, it is always throw 
 ing up fresh intrenchments of argument to repair any breach 
 made in the old." J. S. Mill 
 
 But, as regards a dogma so grave and aspiring, we ought 
 not to rest satisfied with the unfixed, temporary tenure of 
 blind but earnest feeling. Real lovers of truth will not be at 
 ease in the habit of listening delightedly to reason in confir 
 mation of long-descended theory, while reason is refused a 
 hearing against that theory. ISTeither will they be content 
 to call even their dearest prejuclgments their " highest relig 
 ious feelings and instinctive perceptions," and they will 
 hesitate to give themselves airs of profound philosophy, in 
 " evolving from their own inner consciousness " a theological 
 dogma which defies consistent exposition. 
 
 If, by a searching, and, I trust, thoroughly fair examination 
 of Mr. Liddon s appeal to Scripture, I can help others to see 
 the true basis on which the Orthodox doctrine concerning 
 Christ s Person must be placed, my object will have been 
 gained. For a dozen years after my Ordination, I was as 
 firmly convinced as any man, who had read a good deal on 
 one side of the question and nothing on the other, could be, 
 that a reasonable exposition of Holy Scripture yielded the 
 conclusion of Christ s Godhead. But a popular Evangelical 
 book, in which Jesus was everywhere, and God our Father 
 
 3 
 
34 THE AUTHOR S WISHES AND AIMS. 
 
 almost nowhere, provoked suspicions that Protestant ortho 
 doxy was, in its central feature, out of Scriptural method and 
 proportion, and repeated examinations (the last in company 
 with Mr. Liddon) have convinced me of the inability of un 
 biassed individual judgment, rationally exercised, to deduce 
 from the Bible the doctrine of Christ s coequal Deity. As 
 suming the doctrine to be from God, facts of the plainest 
 character appear to compel the admission that He has seen 
 fit to promulgate it, not through the Sacred Volume, but 
 through the living voice of a divinely organized and divinely 
 inspired Church. Men who esteem Orthodoxy a vitally 
 precious possession gain nothing, and risk the loss of every 
 thing, when they strive to put the doctrine on a basis differ 
 ent from that which the Almighty in His wisdom has chosen 
 to provide. 
 
 For the matter of the following pages I have no apology to 
 offer, and do not deprecate any just criticism, however strin 
 gent and severe. I only ask at the hands of Reviewers who 
 may deem me worth their attention " the same measure 
 which I have meted." I have tried, with anxious care, to 
 present Mr. Liddon s case equitably, and to reproduce and 
 dissect the whole strength and substance of his reasonings 
 from Holy Scripture. His treatment of critical questions 
 bearing upon the accuracy and authorship of the Sacred 
 Books is extrinsic and incidental, and so, in consequence, is 
 mine. For a full and adequate discussion of such questions, 
 the theological reader must look elsewhere. The main, and 
 more completely treated subject is the meaning of the 
 Canonical Scriptures, assuming them to be, in origin and 
 authority, all that Mr. Liddon imagines. 
 
 Whatever opinion may be formed of Mr. Liddon s reasoning, 
 his rhetoric cannot fail to be admired. No treatise so at 
 tractively eloquent as his has been written upon the same sub 
 ject. And, although his arguments are not always well selected, 
 and his special ability evidently does not lie in the direction 
 of vigorous thought and close disputation, yet his Lectures, 
 taken as a whole, deserve the foremost place among books 
 
HIS COURSE OF ARGUMENT. 85 
 
 on his side of the controversy. If he has rehabilitated some 
 pleadings palpably too inane and bad, he has, at the same 
 time, omitted nothing pertinent and plausible. He brings 
 forth every weighty argument arrayed in the best dress it can 
 be made to wear. 
 
 My own book I must leave to speak for itself. Its faults 
 will, doubtless, be even more obvious to other eyes than they 
 are to mine. It is certainly not the book of a rhetorician, 
 and in that aspect I gladly acknowledge the unapproachable 
 superiority of Mr. Liddon s volume. My heart s prayer and 
 purpose have been wholly directed to the end of writing 
 truthfully, calmly, and clearly. While I have never been 
 forgetful of corrections and amendments in readings and 
 renderings, I have shunned all needless references to the 
 
 & " 
 
 Hebrew and Greek languages, and have, I hope, written 
 nothing which general readers, of good English education, 
 will not be quite sufficiently able to follow. Writing anony 
 mously, I have naturally preferred, at several points, to 
 strengthen my positions by quotations from authors of un 
 doubted eminence and scholarship. The course of Mr. Lid 
 don s argument has, in all important features, determined 
 the course of mine, which is really a close running commen 
 tary ; but I have departed from his order of topics, and, 
 in particular, have made the examination of texts from the 
 Epistles precede the examination of sayings recorded in the 
 Gospels. I may add, that my criticisms were not written 
 continuously, but at intervals (sometimes wide intervals), as 
 I could find leisure from the requirements of parochial 
 work. 
 
 In tracking the brilliant preacher s footsteps, and meditat 
 ing upon his methods, I have been increasingly impressed 
 with the justice and accuracy, from the Protestant point of 
 view, of the folloAving sentences in that contribution by 
 Professor Jowett, which is the gem of the much-abused, but 
 essentially Protestant volume, " Essays and Reviews." 
 
 " All the resources of knowledge may be turned into a 
 means., not of discovering the true rendering, but of uphold- 
 
36 THE JUSTICE OF JOWETT S STATEMENT. 
 
 ing a received one. Grammar appears to start from an inde 
 pendent point of view, yet inquiries into the use of the 
 Article or the Preposition have been observed to wind round 
 into a defence of sound doctrine. Rhetoric often magnifies 
 its own want of taste into the design of inspiration. Logic 
 (that other mode of rhetoric) is apt to lend itself to the illu 
 sion, by stating erroneous explanations with a clearness 
 which is mistaken for truth. Metaphysical aid carries 
 away the common understanding into a region where it must 
 blindly follow. Learning obscures as well as illustrates; it 
 heaps up chaff when there is no more wheat. These are 
 some of the ways in which the sense of Scripture has be 
 come confused, by the help of tradition, in the course of 
 ages, under a load of commentators." 
 
 And, again, an undeniable but perpetually neglected truth 
 is well presented in the words : 
 
 "Many persons who have no difficulty in tracing the 
 growth of institutions, yet seem to fail in recognizing the 
 more subtle progress of an idea. It is hard to imagine 
 the absence of conceptions with which we are familiar; to 
 go back to the germ of what we know only in maturity ; to 
 give up what has grown to us, and become a part of our 
 rninds." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Precise statement of the dogma maintained, and of some more general 
 objections to which it is exposed. Mr. Liddon s theories respecting 
 the organic unity, perfect trustworthiness, and minute accuracy of 
 the Scriptural records, not sustainable in the presence of free inquiry. 
 His argument for the Apostolic authorship of the Fourth Gospel 
 considered, and some leading points of adverse evidence stated. On 
 this topic, Orthodox preconceptions have the practical advantage of 
 forbidding intelligent criticism. Though Mr. Liddon s method is 
 critically unsound, and devised for the service of his dogma, he may 
 nevertheless be met upon his own assumptions, and convicted of 
 arbitrary and irrational interpretation of Scripture. 
 
 IN his first Lecture, Mr. Liclclon states briefly and clearly 
 the doctrine he asserts. After pointing out the insufficiency 
 of moral divinity resulting from any gift or infusion of the 
 Divine presence in man, he excludes all forms of Being, how 
 ever ancient and exalted, which had in any sense a beginning 
 and an author. Such forms of Being are " parted from the 
 Divine Essence by a fathomless chasm ; whereas the Christ 
 of Catholic Christendom is internal to That Essence." He 
 further informs us : 
 
 "This assertion of the Divinity of Jesus Christ depends on 
 a truth beyond itself. It postulates the existence in God of 
 certain real distinctions having their necessary basis in the 
 Essence of the Godhead. That Three such distinctions exist 
 is a matter of Revelation. In the common language of the 
 Western Church, these distinct Forms of Being are named 
 Persons. Yet that term cannot be employed to denote 
 Them, without considerable intellectual caution," and must 
 be understood in a sense different from that in which it is 
 applied to men ; but " we are not, therefore, to suppose 
 nothing more to be intended by the revealed doctrine than 
 three varying relations of God in His dealings with the 
 world. On the contrary, His Self-Revelation has for its 
 
38 THE DOGMA STATED. 
 
 basis certain Eternal Distinctions in His Nature, which are 
 themselves utterly anterior to, and independent of, any rela 
 tion to created life. Apart from these distinctions, the 
 Christian Revelation of an Eternal Fatherhood, of a true 
 Incarnation of God, and of a real communication of His 
 Spirit, is but the baseless fabric of a dream. These three 
 distinct Subsistences which we name Father, Son, and Spirit, 
 while they enable us better to understand the mystery of 
 the Self-sufficing and Blessed Life of God before lie sur 
 rounded Himself with created beings, are also strictly com 
 patible with the truth of the Divine Unity. And when w r e 
 say that Jesus Christ is God, we mean that in the Man 
 Christ Jesus, the Second of these Persons or Subsistences, 
 One in Essence with the First and with the Third, vouch 
 safed to become Incarnate ; " i.e., as explained in the next 
 paragraph, " He robed His Higher Prc-existent Nature, 
 according to which He is Very and Eternal God, with a 
 Human Body and a Human Soul " (pp. 32-34). 
 
 These theories are supplemented in Lecture V. by more 
 precise statements respecting Christ s incarnate Being. Mr. 
 Liddon insists that our Lord s Godhead is exclusively the 
 seat of His personality. 
 
 "The Son of Mary is not a distinct human person mysteri 
 ously linked with the Divine Nature of the Eternal Word. 
 The Person of the Son of Mary is Divine and Eternal. 
 . . . Christ s Manhood is not of Itself an individual beino-; 
 
 O 7 
 
 It is not a seat and centre of personality ; It has no conceiv 
 able existence apart from the act whereby the Eternal Word, 
 in becoming Incarnate, called It into being and made It His 
 Own. It is a vesture which He has folded around His Per 
 son; It is an instrument through which He places Himself in 
 contact with men, and whereby He acts upon humanity. . . . 
 His Manhood no more impaired the unity of His Person than 
 each human body, with its various organs and capacities, 
 impairs the unity of that personal principle which is the cen 
 tre and pivot of each separate human existence, and which 
 has its seat within the soul of each one of us. As the 
 
CRITICISMS ON THE STATEMENT. 39 
 
 reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is 
 one Christ. As the personality of man resides in the soul, 
 after death has severed soul and body, so the Person of 
 Christ had Its eternal seat in His Godhead before His Incar 
 nation " (pp. 259, 260). 
 
 From the foregoing extracts we gather that, in Mr. Lid- 
 don s view, our Lord Jesus Christ has a necessary Being in 
 the Self-existent Everlasting Deity, a Being not derived 
 from, not originating in, and in no way whatever dependent on, 
 the choice, or power, or action of the Father. He belongs to 
 the necessary mode of the Self-existent Essence, and is bound 
 up within It by the indissoluble bonds of inherent nature. 
 
 Now, although on the whole evidence of which Protestants 
 can take cognizance this doctrine is incredible, there might, 
 on merely a priori ground, be no valid objection against it, 
 if it were taught by a competent authority. Self-existence 
 which must be ascribed to the Almighty is a property 
 so utterly beyond the grasp of our intellect, that we are in no 
 position to deny, either that one Self-existent Substance may 
 be distributed into two, three, or more individuals, the exact 
 counterparts of each other, or that there may be Self-exist 
 ent Substances distinguished by differences from each other. 
 But we do not approach the subject on purely abstract and 
 a priori grounds. Reflection, on our own nature and the 
 works of creation which surround us, points to the conclusion 
 there is One Being, and One only, in Whom the mysterious 
 attributes of Deity reside. And this conclusion, which com 
 mends itself to natural reason, the teaching of Scripture con 
 firms with marked emphasis, and frequent repetitions. Mr. 
 Liddon s theory is, however, a virtual denial of the Divine 
 Unity, because we are unable, without dividing the Self- 
 existent Substance, to recognize in That Substance two or 
 more Forms, Subsistences, or Persons, each of Whom, hav 
 ing all the attributes of Godhead, is truly and properly God. 
 Attributes or properties are inconceivable apart from a sub 
 stance in which they have a connecting and supporting basis, 
 and no specious refinements of phraseology can hide the fact 
 
40 CRITICISMS ON THE STATEMENT. 
 
 that the possession of personal attributes implies the posses 
 sion of distinct individual Being. If the Second and Third 
 Persons in the Trinity have the attributes of Deity, they are 
 second and third Gods. The supposition that they are of 
 the same Self-existent Substance with the First Person 
 gives them no real numerical unity, but makes them exact 
 counterparts and fac-similes of each other. If by person 
 is meant any thing more than a manifestation in action, or 
 a mode, aspect, and relation, as conceived and contemplated 
 by our minds, a threefold personality in one Divine Essence 
 is a division of that Essence into three separate Gods; and, 
 since ideas of quantity are inapplicable, these Gods are repe 
 titions of each other, and Deity, according to the language 
 which I have quoted, is the same Infinite Spirit three times 
 repeated. If we are compelled to confess each Person to be, 
 by Himself (singittatim), God and Lord, clearly not reason, 
 but inspiration and infallibility alone, can prohibit us from 
 believing and saying there are three Gods. This obvious 
 dilemma does not escape Mr. Liddon s notice, and in a note 
 to his first Lecture he adduces the perfectly unintelligible 
 patristic imagination of a mutual indwelling, or interhabita- 
 tion, by which the three Forms, Subsistences, &c., in the 
 Divine Substance, having gone forth into plurality, recede 
 into oneness, and sees in it " the safeguard and witness of 
 the Divine Unity." * Elsewhere, in subsequent Lectures, 
 mention is more than once made of our Lord s subordina 
 tion, on the ground that the Father alone is " Unoriginate, the 
 Fount of Deity in the Eternal Life of the Ever-blessed Trin 
 ity," and that the " Son is derived eternally from the Father." 
 " Christ is the exact likeness of the Father, in all things 
 except being the Father." But these verbal precautions are 
 unavailing ; they have no lucid ideas behind them, and do 
 
 * John xiv. 11 ; 1 Cor. ii. 11, to which Mr. Liddon refers, should be 
 compared with John xiv. 20 ; xvii. 21, 23 ; 1 John iv. 15, 16 ; v. 20, and 
 other texts which will occur to every thoughtful reader of the New Test 
 ament. Aspects of this profoundly mysterious Unity in Personal sepa 
 ration are expressed by the terms immanence, emanence, and retrocession. 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE INCARNATION. 41 
 
 not in any degree shelter the doctrine of the Divine Unity, 
 unless they are joined with the admission that the derivation 
 of the Son was not from a necessity inherent in the Self- 
 existent Substance, but from an act of the Father s choice, 
 and power, and will. Mr. Liddon, however, cannot admit the 
 Being of the Son to result from any free and voluntary 
 action on the part of the Father, because origination by the 
 will of another is not distinguishable from creation, and im 
 plies inferiority and dependence. The statement of his doc 
 trine is, therefore, incompatible with the truth of the Divine 
 Unity, and also with the verbal requirements of ecclesiastical 
 orthodoxy. He throws out clouds of subtile, eloquent, and 
 bewildering words ; but his language, if it is not quite empty 
 of meaning, leads to one of two heresies, either the divid 
 ing of the Substance, or the confounding of the Persons. 
 
 Mr. Liddon s account of the manner of the Incarnation is 
 as much open to criticism as his description ot supposed 
 structural economies in the inner regions of the "One Un 
 created, Self-existent, Incorruptible Essence." He avows : 
 our Lord " took human nature upon Him in its reality and 
 completeness;" and then, afterwards, denies Christ had a 
 human person, and declares, " His Manhood is not of Itself 
 an individual being." Surely this is a contradiction in terms. 
 "What is a " real and complete " impersonal human nature ? 
 Our nature, in its completeness, is inconceivable, except as 
 existing in persons. To enfold a Divine Person with the 
 constituent elements of humanity, not combined into the 
 living entity of a real human person, is not to take our nature, 
 but to form a new nature, which is God plus what might in 
 another combination have been man. The dwelling of God 
 in man is a thoroughly credible and ennobling truth, the con 
 ception of which pervades all religious history, and lies at the 
 root of all spiritual aspiration and development ; but the robing 
 personal Deity with an impersonal manhood is an operation 
 which defies understanding, and, whatever else it may be, is 
 certainly not taking " our nature in its reality and complete 
 ness." The reception of a personal manhood into God is, in 
 
42 ASSUMPTIONS AS TO THE BIBLE. 
 
 any case, a process the inversion of that to which reason and 
 spiritual instinct point, but the clothing of God with " a man 
 hood which is not of itself an individual being " is an eccentric 
 fancy which Scripture never hints at, and reason refuses to en 
 tertain. The futility of the illustrative proposition from the 
 Athanasian Creed "as the reasonable soul and flesh is one 
 man, so God and man is one Christ"- is evident when we 
 write : " so God and the reasonable soul and flesh is one 
 Christ." The fact of two constituents composing one Being 
 does not assist us to apprehend how the same two constituents 
 together with a personal God compose one Being. 
 
 In his attempts to prove the position taken in his Lectures 
 deducible from Scripture, Mr. Liddon assumes the Bible to be, 
 in a peculiar sense, a consistent organic whole, and that, in 
 relation to moral and spiritual truths, and more especially in 
 relation to the central truth which he seeks to enforce, the 
 writers were guarded from error by the superintendence of a 
 practically effective inspiration. He uses the Gospels as 
 perfectly trustworthy and minutely accurate records of 
 Christ s sayings ; and, in commenting on the Acts and Epis 
 tles, takes for granted he may ascribe to language, which will 
 bear more than one meaning, the precis-e significance, the 
 extreme pregnancy, and the dogmatic definiteness, which the 
 Creeds of later times demand. This method is, no doubt, 
 very convenient, perhaps indispensable, in orthodox Protest 
 ant exegesis; but, after all, no adjustment of theory respecting 
 the unity, continuity, and infallibility of the revealed written 
 deposit, can establish the right to interpret that deposit un 
 reasonably. The difficulties of the Nicene and Athanasian 
 theologies can never be materially lessened, so long as the 
 sense of Scripture is supposed to lie open to the intellect and 
 conscience of individuals. And, measured by rational criti 
 cism, the assumptions to w r hich Mr. Liddon resorts are made 
 in the face of facts too palpable to be ignored. The origin 
 of all the Gospels is wrapt in obscurity. The New Testament 
 Epistles, though they may betray reminiscences of sayings 
 which the Evangelists have preserved, contain no quotations 
 
ORIGIN AND PURITY OF THE GOSPELS. 43 
 
 from the Gospels, and do not in any way assert or recognize 
 their existence. "While oral testimony was a fresh and living 
 voice, they were not called for, and we have no pretence for 
 fancying they appeared until the apostolic generation had 
 nearly died out. And they were not at once exalted to the 
 rank accorded to the earlier Scriptures. Though honorably 
 distinguished from inferior and less truthful records, they did 
 not reach otherwise than by a gradual progress, extending 
 over at least a hundred years, the high place and authority 
 which we find conceded to them in the third and following 
 centuries. And if we had unimpeachable evidence of their 
 genuineness, and could be sure they were originally written 
 by the men whose names they bear, we should still have to 
 consider the phenomena they^ present, the patches of ver 
 bal identity in the first three; their want of connected and 
 orderly arrangement ; their superficial differences, resulting 
 from omissions and slight variations, which are not incompat 
 ible with historical fidelity ; and their marked discrepancies, 
 which cannot be reconciled. We are not, moreover, able to 
 deny the possibility and probability of changes, interpolations, 
 and additions in the course of transcription and transmission ; 
 and we cannot be justified in assuming we have correct 
 accounts of all events, and correct reports of all discourses.* 
 There was, unquestionably, an interval of transition from 
 an oral and traditional to a written Gospel, and the latter 
 
 * "From the third century we have the confirming testimony of Ori- 
 gen respecting the ivilftd falsifications of Scripture. He writes that the 
 difference of the text in the various copies of St. Matthew s Gospel was 
 caused either by the carelessness of copyists, or by the malicious boldness 
 of the correcting writers, or of those who have added or taken airai/. If 
 Origen had written this about Luke s Gospel, he might possibly be sup 
 posed to refer to Marcion s counterfeit of the same. As it is, Origen 
 admits that different versions of Matthew s Gospel were, even in the 
 third century, in circulation, and that they originated partly in the activ 
 ity of malicious gospel forgers. In the end of the fourth century, Jerome 
 writes the same thing in other words about the Latin translation, and he 
 adds, There are as many texts as manuscripts. " E. DE BUNSEN S 
 Hidden Wisdom of Christ, vol. ii. p. 109. 
 
 No extant manuscript of the New Testament can be dated earlier than 
 the middle of the fourth century. 
 
44 THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 
 
 rose in estimation as the advantages of it were increasingly 
 felt. At the most inauspicious time, therefore, a time of 
 seething mental commotion, and ill-regulated enthusiasm, 
 when writings misnamed Evangelical and Apostolic were 
 produced, our Gospels were neither tested by the vigilant 
 criticism, nor protected by the jealous custody, which subse 
 quent veneration too tardily secured. Apart from the postu 
 late of a supernatural guidance within the Church, in all that 
 related to the faith, we have no reason to think highly of the 
 capacity for weighing evidence, possessed by Christians who 
 lived between the middle of the second and the end of the 
 third centuries. We should be careful not unduly to depre 
 ciate their acquirements, and their interest in truth; but, 
 knowing from their writings^ something of their style of 
 thought, their methods of illustration, and the extent to 
 which they gave the rein to a credulous fancy, we cannot 
 honestly say they were the men wisely to reduce swollen 
 traditions, or rectify corrupted texts. Looking at the whole 
 subject from the Protestant pathway of historical research, 
 the utmost we can reasonably assert respecting the Synop 
 tical Gospels is, they are in the main trustworthy, and sub 
 stantially true. 
 
 In relation to the Fourth Gospel, there are peculiar and 
 almost overwhelming difficulties to be encountered by the 
 free investigator. Mr. Liddon struggles to show, not I think 
 with success, the existence of external evidence decisively 
 favoring St. John s authorship. He appears to forget that 
 the Apostolic Fathers do not invoke the Logos doctrine to 
 explain the nature of Christ. When he affirms : " In their 
 writings there are large districts of thought and expression, 
 of a type unmistakably Johannean " (p. 214), he uses the 
 language of exaggeration, and also appeals to treatises of 
 doubtful genuineness, and undoubtedly adulterated text. 
 " St. Ignatius s allusion to St. John in his Letter to the Ro 
 mans " (chap. 7) is, according to the Syriac version (which, 
 if the Epistle is genuine, probably represents its original form 
 more nearly than the Greek text) : " I seek the bread of God 
 
IGNATIAN AND JUSTINIAN CITATIONS. 45 
 
 which is the flesh of Jesus Christ ; and I seek His blood, a 
 drink which is love incorruptible." But the Ignatian Epis 
 tles, if authentic, would not help to sustain the doctrine of 
 Christ s Deity, and their authenticity in any shape is exceed 
 ingly doubtful. A well-informed critic in the " Athenaeum " 
 (Jan. 19, 1867) writes: "The discussions of Baur, Hilgen- 
 field, Lipsius, Merx, Denzinger, Diisterdieck, &c., present the 
 most recent arguments, the result of which is, that neither 
 the Syriac nor the Greek Epistles are authentic." 
 
 " Justin s emphatic reference of the doctrine of the Logos 
 to our Lord, not to mention his quotation of John the Bap 
 tist s reply to the messengers of the Jews " (the bare words, 
 I am not the Christ], "and of our Saviour s language about 
 the new birth," does not " make his knowledge of St. John s 
 Gospel much more than a probability." The matter of the 
 Fourth Gospel stands aside from the common oral tradition, 
 which was embodied in, and for a while survived, concurrently 
 with the other three ; and therefore a reason existed for 
 mentioning St. John by name, which did not exist for men 
 tioning the other three Evangelists. The particular form of 
 Justin s doctrine, also, supplied him with weighty motives 
 for using the statements of the Fourth Gospel, and bringing 
 forward, if he felt he could bring forward, the name and 
 authority of the Apostle St. John ; and his omitting to do 
 so is made the more prominent by his express mention of " a 
 certain man whose name was John, one of the Apostles of 
 Christ," as the author of. the Apocalypse. 
 
 The supposed citations in Justin and other writers are 
 very inadequate vouchers that, before the middle of the sec 
 ond century, the Fourth Gospel was known and accepted as 
 the work of an Apostle. It is the merest assumption to call 
 verbal scraps quotations from St. John, when St. John is not 
 named, and when it is notorious that, through the influence 
 of the writings of Philo, the Logos doctrine was familiar to 
 educated Jews, and also that traditionary retentions and 
 early records of Christ s life and sayings were in circulation 
 which were very likely to contain and give currency to some 
 
46 HIPPOLYTUS AND BASILIDES. 
 
 of the sentences wrought up into the Fourth Gospel. That 
 Gospel preserves sayings worthy of the Christ of the Syn- 
 optists, and not fairly ascribable to mere invention. The 
 better and more veracious of floating materials, whether 
 documentary or oral, would naturally be selected by the 
 Evangelist, and would in his narrative survive in a fixed and 
 authoritative form. It would be no less unwise to argue 
 none of his distinctive matter has a good foundation in his 
 torical truth than to argue, the whole must be accepted 
 because portions commend themselves as authentic. But the 
 extreme insufficiency of the indirect, fragmentary testimonies, 
 which are imagined to reveal the presence of the Gospel in 
 the former half of the second century, must strike every 
 unprejudiced inquirer who examines them, even as they are 
 exhibited by those who believe in their validity. A passage 
 from the treatise of Hippolytus, " Refutation of all Heresies," 
 is often adduced to show that Basilides (about A.D. 125) used 
 the " Gospel according to John." But exactness in allusions 
 to the writings of his predecessors is not among the merits 
 of Hippolytus, and it is very far from being clear whether 
 the reference is to Basilides and his followers in a succeeding 
 generation, or to Basilides alone. The language admits 
 both constructions. The context rather favors the supposi 
 tion Hippolytus was thinking of the Basilidian school col 
 lectively, down to his own day ; and, as the case stands, 
 nothing more decisive than the opinion of Mr. Liddon and 
 consentients, as against that of equally good judges, is con 
 tained in the stanch assertion : " It is certain from St. Hip 
 polytus that Basilides appealed to texts of St. John in favor 
 of his system" (p. 216).* The real evidence for the Apos 
 tolic authorship of the latest Gospel begins after A.D. 150. 
 
 * The passage on which Mr. Liddon and others have built is in the 
 " Refutation of Heresies/ vii. 22, and their inference turns on a presumed 
 exactness in the use of the singular verb ^r/al (he says). But Hippolytus 
 often uses tyr)ai to indicate an unnamed representative of the sect referred 
 to, or, perhaps, the sect regarded as professing a particular opinion. The 
 late Mr. J. J. Tayler on " The Fourth Gospel " remarks : " In vii. 20, 
 Hippolytus mentions Basilides, and Isidore his son, and the whole troop 
 
DID JUSTIN USE THIS GOSPEL ? 47 
 
 With regard to Justin s " knowledge," very competent and 
 impartial recent investigators, who approach the subject 
 from different sides, concur in judging: "There is no good 
 proof that Justin used the Gospel of John. All that can be 
 appealed to is the similarity of some of Justin s expressions 
 to those of John " (Donaldson s Critical History of Chris 
 tian ^Literature and Doctrine, &c., vol. ii. p. 331). This 
 conclusion of Dr. Donaldson is shared by the late Mr. J. J. 
 Tayler, in his work on " The Fourth Gospel ; " and also by Mr. 
 Ernest De Bunsen (Hidden Wisdom, <fcc., vol. ii. p. 103), 
 who holds that the Gospel in question had its origin with St. 
 John, but " was not published till an advanced period in the 
 second century." Dr. Davidson, after closely reviewing the 
 evidence, concludes : " The result of our inquiry into Jus 
 tin s writings is, that his use of the Fourth Gospel is not 
 proved" (Introduction to New Testament, vol. ii. p. 387). 
 Mr. Westcott s individual persuasion, and the persuasion he 
 is anxious to impart, is, doubtless, that Justin Martyr was 
 acquainted with the four Canonical Gospels; but his > percep 
 tion of the force of evidence saves him from the overween 
 ing confidence indulged by Mr. Liddon. In treating the 
 precise question, "How far Justin witnesses to St. John s 
 
 of these, and then cites them collectively through the whole of the follow 
 ing paragraph, by the word fyrjoi. Nor is this the only instance. In vi. 
 29, speaking of Valentinus, Heracleon, Ptolemy, and all the scltool of these, 
 he quotes the opinion of the school by the singular verb pr/ai. It is sur 
 prising that so great a scholar as Baron Bunsen should have laid all this 
 stress on so small a matter. It says (<p?i<7i) is the familiar mode of citing 
 the doctrines of a particular school, whether represented by many writers 
 or by one. Scripture, notwithstanding its multifarious contents and 
 numerous authors, is constantly quoted by writers of the second century 
 in this form." (See, also, to the same effect, Dr. Davidson s " Introduc 
 tion to New Testament," vol. ii. pp. 388-93.) 
 
 Mr. David Rowland on " The Apostolic Origin of the Fourth Gospel " 
 (Longmans) calls Mr. Tayler s argument a feeble objection," and ex 
 hibits it by citing oalij some comparatively unimportant observations 
 which introduce the sentences I have quoted. Mr. Rowland s Essay 
 purports to submit the topic he discusses " to an examination of the kind 
 which courts of law employ in investigating rights or titles to property 
 dependent on ancient traditional and documentary evidence." 
 
48 CANON OF MURATORI. 
 
 Gospel ? " -he says : " His references to St. John are uncer 
 tain ; but this follows from, the character of the Fourth 
 Gospel. It was unlikely that he should quote its peculiar 
 teaching in apologetic writings addressed to Jews and 
 heathens" (Westcott, Canon of New Testament, p. 201, 
 1st Ed.). 
 
 Mr. Liddon appeals to a Catalogue of the books of the 
 New Testament, purporting to belong to the latter half of 
 the second century, and known as the Canon of Muratori, 
 but he does not reproduce the information on which he builds. 
 " At Rome, St. John s Gospel was certainly received as being 
 the w^ork of that Apostle, in the year 170. This is clear 
 from the so-termed Muratorian fragment" (p. 212). The 
 fragment ascribes the Fourth Gospel to "John, one of the 
 Disciples," and gives an account of the causes which led to 
 its production. "At the entreaties of his fellow disciples 
 and bishops, John said, Fast with me three days from to 
 day, and whatever shall be revealed to each of us, whether 
 it be favorable to my writing or not, let us relate it to one 
 another. On the same night it was revealed to Andrew, 
 one of the Apostles, that John should the rest revising 
 (recognoscentibus cunctis) relate all things in his own name. 
 And so, although differing elements (principia) are taught 
 in the several books of the Evangelists, yet there is no dif 
 ference in the faith of believers, since in all the books all 
 things are set forth by one and the same directing Spirit." 
 Now, this story has a suspiciously defensive and explanatory 
 look. Its attempt to throw around the Gospel the special 
 sanction of divinely suggested origin rather implies the Gos 
 pel s apostolicity was not a well-attested and accepted fact, 
 but viewed with doubts and hesitancy. 
 
 In concluding his undaunted, but very one-sided argument 
 on the external witness which he supposes to prove " the 
 Fourth Gospel certainly St. John s," Mr. Liddon jubilantly 
 writes (p. 218) : 
 
 "Ewald shall supply the words with which to close the 
 foregoing considerations. Those who, since the first dis- 
 
49 
 
 cusskm of this question have been really conversant with it, 
 never could have had, and never have had a moment s doubt. 
 As the attack on St. John has become fiercer and fiercer, 
 the truth during the last ten or twelve years has been more 
 and more solidly established, error has been pursued into 
 its last hiding-places; and at this moment the facts before us 
 are such, that no man, who does not will knowingly to choose 
 error and to reject truth, can dare to say that the Fourth 
 Gospel is not the work of the Apostle John. " The fervor, 
 modesty, and sweetness of this deliverance will have their 
 reward in the applauding sympathy of orthodox Protestants. 
 Ewald, however, has not, on many topics, the good fortune 
 to coincide with Mr. Liddon, and the latter complains (p. 
 15) : "Ewald may see in Christ the altogether human source 
 of the highest spiritual life of humanity ; " and again (Notes, 
 p. 505) : Ewald s defence of St. John s Gospel, and his 
 deeper spirituality of tone, must command a religious inter 
 est, which would be of a high order if only this writer 
 believed in our Lord s Godhead." But where the great 
 German elucidator of the Old Testament does retain a mor 
 sel of orthodoxy, his dictum is triumphantly conclusive ! 
 Those who know his history will perhaps be disposed to 
 wonder more at his having travelled so far in the paths of 
 Rationalism, than at his having, in advanced age, stopped 
 short of some conclusions w r hich seem inevitable to younger 
 men of his own school. If he is to be made a judge on 
 questions connected with the New Testament, let his failure 
 to discover Christ s true Deity in the Fourth Gospel be bal 
 anced against his success in convincing himself the Fourth 
 Gospel is a work of St. John. 
 
 But, as will be confessed on both sides, the controversy 
 hangs more upon internal than upon external evidences. If 
 the fourth did not differ from the earlier Gospels more than 
 they differ from each other, the external credentials might 
 pass unchallenged, not because they would amount to proof, 
 but because, in favor of probabilities, comparatively slight 
 testimony is required. The differences between the Fourth 
 
 4 
 
50 WESTCOTT S AND TAYLER S OPINIONS. 
 
 Gospel and its predecessors are, however, differences of strik 
 ing contrast and wide divergency. The most able English 
 champion of traditional views concerning the New Testa 
 ment Canon assures us : " It is impossible to pass from the 
 Synoptic Gospels to that of St. John without feeling that 
 the transition involves the passage from one world of thought 
 to another. No familiarity with the general teaching of the 
 Gospels, no wide conception of the character of the Saviour, 
 is sufficient to destroy the contrast which exists in form 
 and spirit between the earlier and the later narratives ; and 
 a full recognition of this contrast is the first requisite for the 
 understanding of their essential harmony" (Westcott s In 
 troduction to the Study of the Gospels, p. 231). The full 
 recognition which Mr. "Westcott recommends cannot be at 
 tempted here. It is enough to remark, not only are the mysti 
 cism and obscurity which characterize many of the discourses 
 in the Fourth Gospel utterly unlike the general simplicity 
 and clearness of the sayings recorded in the preceding three, 
 but there are also contradictions as to plain matters of feet, 
 contradictions which refuse to be reduced into superficial 
 differences, or varieties of detail. " One form of narrative 
 excludes the other. If the first three Gospels represent 
 Christ s public ministry truly, the fourth cannot be accepted 
 as simple reliable history. If we assume the truth of the 
 fourth, we must reject, on some fundamental points, the evi 
 dence of the first three " (Tayler On the Fourth G-ospel, 
 p. 7).* 
 
 Mr. Liddon contends : " St. John s Gospel is an historical 
 supplement, and a polemical treatise addressed to an intellect 
 ual world widely different from that which had been before 
 
 * Similarly, Dr. Schenkel : " If the synoptic representation of the 
 evangelical history be the correct one, then that of the Fourth Gospel is 
 not correct, and vice versa." 
 
 Dr. Davidson, " Theological Review," July, 1870, supplementing the 
 discussion in the second volume of his " Introduction to the New Testa 
 ment," exposes the worthlessness of Irenseus s testimony, and the decided 
 untruth of the conjecture : " Irenaeus attests the authenticity of the 
 Gospel out of the tradition of Polycarp." 
 
INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 51 
 
 the minds of the earlier Evangelists." He also admits : " St. 
 John s translation of the actual words of Jesus may be 
 colored by a phraseology current in the school which he is 
 addressing, sufficiently to make them popularly intelligible. 
 But the peculiarities of his language have been greatly ex 
 aggeratedly criticism, while they are naturally explained 
 by the polemical and positively doctrinal objects which he 
 had in view" (p. 223). The explanation is not to the pur 
 pose, and the admission is damaging. Two conflicting ver 
 sions of the same events cannot both be truthful ; and, in 
 relation to the discourses, the Evangelist is not supposed to be 
 the composer, but the reporter. The explanation required is 
 that our Lord himself addressed widely different intellectual 
 worlds, and in consequence employed totally distinct styles 
 of thought and diction. Will Mr. Liddon venture to offer 
 this explanation ? The supplementary theory, and reasons 
 drawn from the purpose of the Evangelist, do not relieve the 
 difficulty involved in the fact of the Fourth Gospel s having 
 so little in agreement, so much in contrast, with its prede 
 cessors. And the theory itself seriously disparages the credit 
 of the Synoptists. Matthew, Mark, and Luke may reason 
 ably be presumed to have intended to proclaim the gospel in 
 its connection with Christ s life and teaching, and to have 
 given us what, in their judgment, was a true and sufficient 
 presentation of Christ s words and works. But what must 
 we think of their knowledge, memory, and spiritual discern 
 ment, when they could all omit such materials as the fourth 
 Evangelist brings together? What was the character of 
 their inspiration, and what share had they in the promise their 
 successor records : " The Holy Ghost shall teach you all 
 things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever 
 I haye said unto you " ? Does Mr. Liddon consider the Xew 
 Testament narratives to furnish a complete Gospel, exclud 
 ing what he believes to be the testimony of St. John ? 
 Could he, without the Fourth Gospel, prove, even to his own 
 satisfaction, that the doctrine his "Bampton Lectures " were 
 written to maintain has any foundation in our Lord s teach- 
 
52 THE SUPPLEMENTARY THEORY. 
 
 ing ? The supplementary theory, therefore, evidently impairs 
 the credit of those who, while they proclaimed the gospel of 
 Christ, could, singly and collectively, leave room and occasion 
 for such a supplement. The hard pressure of facts, which 
 Mr. Liddon seems unable duly to appreciate, is keenly felt by 
 a theologian who is in no qualification, except the graces of 
 style, his inferior. Mr. De Bunsen labors, with much thought 
 and learning, to assign " a satisfactory reason for the mysteri 
 ous fact, that the first three Evangelists have evidently agreed 
 not to refer to any of those important sayings of Christ 
 which have been recorded only by the Beloved Apostle " 
 (Hidden Wisdom, Preface). But he does not withhold the 
 confession : " Truly lamentable is the fact that the tradition 
 of the Roman Church has not made known to tfye world 
 under what circumstances the first and incomplete evangelic 
 record of Matthew was written, and why it had to be fol 
 lowed, first by the Paulinic Gospel after Luke, then by the 
 more compromising Gospel after Mark, and finally by the 
 uncompromising Gospel after John. The Roman Church 
 need not have dreaded the consequences of making known 
 to the world that the gradual revelation of pure Christianity 
 was a work of almost a century" (Hidden Wisdom, &c., 
 vol. ii. p. 113). 
 
 Mr. De Bunsen must be allowed to have lightened some 
 difficulties; but, after all his efforts, his conclusion has to be 
 expressed in terms of compromise. 
 
 " We may therefore firmly believe that the Apostle John 
 has recorded the secret and hidden sayings of Christ, and 
 that during, or after, the Apostle s lifetime, one or more of 
 John s personal friends faithfully embodied the apostolic 
 record into the Gospel after John, which the editors com 
 posed in the form we possess it, and not without especial 
 reference to the state of the Church towards the end of the 
 second century" (vol. ii. p. 328). 
 
 The embarrassments, which an examination of the contents 
 of the latest Canonical Gospel throws in the way of its recep 
 tion as a work of St. John, are increased by the broad differ- 
 
EFFECT OF PRECONCEPTIONS. 58 
 
 ences distinguishing its style and spirit from those of the 
 Apocalypse. When the two documents are carefully com 
 pared, it is very hard indeed to avoid inferring both have 
 not the same author. It is also noteworthy that, in the 
 Apocalypse, the writer frequently refers to himself by name, 
 while in the Gospel there is no direct statement of authorship 
 except in the chapter which is generally admitted to be a sub 
 sequent addition. The 35th verse of chap, xix., so far from 
 distinctly suggesting the writer was an Apostle, or an eye 
 witness of what he relates, rather indicates he was not himself 
 an eye-witness, but relied on the testimony of one who was. 
 
 After a recognition of the peculiarities * in form and sub 
 stance w r hich put the Fourth Gospel so widely out of 
 agreement with its predecessors, suspicion becomes almost 
 inevitable, that the promise ascribed to Christ (xiv. 26) is an 
 anticipatory explanation and apology for the production of 
 matter so distinct from what the common oral tradition, and 
 the existing written memoirs, embraced. 
 
 The spiritual depth and beauty which have been discerned 
 in the Fourth Gospel are sometimes thought to attest its 
 truthfulness and apostolic origin ; but there can be no doubt 
 our estimate of its contents is, in a very great degree, shaped 
 and colored by our foregone conclusions. Intellectual criti 
 cism and clear-sighted moral perception are not possible 
 while we are persuaded we have before our eyes the very 
 words of God Himself, preserved in the narrative of an his 
 torian infallibly inspired. Reason may ingeniously expound 
 and defend, but can never fairly investigate discourses and 
 narratives which are believed to have such overwhelmingly 
 awful sanctions. The preconception puts intelligence out of 
 the field, for all but defensive and laudatory purposes. But 
 if the controversy respecting the inspiration of Scripture, 
 and the authorship of our latest Gospel, issues in disburdening 
 
 * Peculiarities are, of course, not all or necessarily discrepancies ; but 
 Mr. Westcott adopts the calculation that, " if the total contents of the 
 several Gospels be represented by 100, there are in St. John s 92 peculi 
 arities and 8 concordances." Introduction, &c., p. 177. 
 
54 UNSOUNDNESS OF MR. LIDDON S 
 
 men s minds from the supposition that St. John, under the 
 guidance of a plenary inspiration, has recorded with minute 
 accuracy the very words of Christ, a widely different judg 
 ment will probably be arrived at as to some portions of the 
 Fourth Gospel ; and passages from which it is next to impos 
 sible to elicit any clear consistent sense will no longer be 
 pronounced profoundly spiritual and full of beauty. Disturb 
 ance of rooted opinions on this subject is, as clerical inquir 
 ers learn from experience, peculiarly distressing, but, in the 
 order of Divine Providence, abstinence from inquiry would 
 appear to be the condition of Protestant continuance in the 
 orthodox faith. Whatever the meaning of the fact may be, 
 application of individual intellect and research does not 
 bring peace and contentment to the holder of traditional 
 dogmas. But, upon all questions touching the formation of 
 the Canon, and the authorship and meaning of the Canonical 
 Books, orthodox men may secure repose of mind, without 
 immediate diminution of practical piety, by abnegation of 
 reason, and by trust in the Church. 
 
 The considerations to which I have briefly drawn attention 
 will suffice to show that, in assuming the Gospels, and more 
 especially the last of them, to furnish verbally correct accounts 
 of Christ s sayings, Mr. Liddon has followed a method whose 
 radical unsoundness vitiates all his reasonings. With the 
 essentially Protestant and rational criticism, by which time- 
 honored assumptions about the Bible have been besieged and 
 curtailed, he makes only a semblance of grappling. He nei 
 ther screens his conceptions of the Bible behind the par 
 amount authority of the Church, nor vindicates them from 
 the fundamental objections to which free inquiry gives rise. 
 But if the faults of his method are not insisted upon, and 
 the broader results of modern investigation and historical 
 criticism are not urged against him, other ground remains on 
 which his conclusions may be combated. The dogma for 
 which he argues so impetuously is eminently a question 
 of interpretation; and if that dogma is really deducible from 
 the Bible by individual judgment, it must be deducible by 
 
CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS. 55 
 
 just and reasonable, and not by arbitrary and irrational, 
 expositions. A review of the leading features in his argu 
 ment will, I believe, prove pretty conclusively that Mr. 
 Liddon does not find his doctrine in Scripture, but puts it 
 there, sometimes by contravening the clear sense, and more 
 often by impregnating vague phrases, straining figurative ex 
 pressions, and misunderstanding obscure texts. He cannot, 
 I know, be charged with originating his expositions. But he 
 rejoices to inherit, accept, and deliberately reiterate a string 
 of interpretations full of the worst faults with which any 
 exegesis, not avowedly either irrational or super-rational, can 
 be laden. Brief and indecisive words are laboriously drawn 
 upon ; explicitness is cleverly darkened with rapid and dis 
 coloring touches. Contextual settings, the scope of the par 
 ticular Canonical document in hand, and the plain general 
 teaching of the whole Bible, are treated as if they did not 
 exist, or existed only to be curtly explained away. Barely 
 possible senses of rare, difficult, and arbitrarily detached 
 expressions are employed to override and transmute the 
 abundant and perspicuous sentences, which, by every rule of 
 reason, determine the probable meaning of ambiguous texts. 
 Writers and speakers are understood as though they had 
 written and spoken in jerks, without mental continuity, or 
 firm hold of the momentous conception assumed to have been 
 presiding and influential ; in a style, in short, which makes 
 the pages of the New Testament swarm with psychological 
 enigmas, and tempts us to conclude that inspiration involves, 
 not the quickening and expansion, but the restraint and con 
 traction of our intellectual powers. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Supposed intimations in the Old Testament of the existence of a Plu 
 rality of Persons within the One Divine Essence. The plural form 
 of the Name of God (Elohim). Significance of the Theophanies. 
 Imagined Personality of the Divine Wisdom, as depicted in the 
 Hebrew Canonical Books and the Apocrypha. The Logos of Philo 
 Judaeus, and the probable relation of Philo s speculations to the 
 Fourth Gospel. - 1 - Periods of Messianic Prophecy in the Jewish 
 Canon. Supposed evidence for Christ s Deity in the Psalms, fsaiah, 
 Jeremiah, Hagyai, Zechariah, and Malachi, examined. Reckless 
 and unwarranted reference, on the part of Mr. Liddon, to Rabbinical 
 literature. 
 
 IN the plural form of the name of God (Elohim), and in the 
 use, a few times repeated in the earlier chapters of Genesis, 
 of a plural verb, &c., let Us make, &c.; like one of Us; 
 let Us go down (i. 26 ; iii. 22 ; xi. 7) ; together with Isa. vi. 
 8, Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us? Mr. 
 Liddon detects "intimations of the existence of a Plurality 
 of Persons within the One Essence of God ; " intimations all 
 the more significant because the Divine Unity was so funda 
 mental an article in the Hebrew faith. 
 
 The answer, with respect to the noun Elohim, is that it 
 seems to have remained in the plural from remoter times, 
 because the Deity was contemplated as the aggregate of 
 manifold forces and powers, and as combining in Himself all 
 the energies which polytheism had distributed among the 
 " gods many " of the heathen world. " His internal resources 
 were regarded as infinite and yet united. It is with reference 
 to such multiplicity of the manifestations of Divine power, 
 that the plural Elohim was employed by monotheism" 
 (Davidson s Introduction to the Old Testament, vol. i. p. 
 194). 
 
THE ELOHIM-ARGUMENT. 57 
 
 " Whatever the names of the Elohim worshipped by the 
 numerous clans of his race, Abraham saw that all the Elohim 
 were meant for God, and thus Elohim, comprehending by 
 one name every thing that ever had been or could be called 
 Divine, became the name with which the monotheistic age 
 was rightly inaugurated, a plural conceived and construed 
 as a singular. Jehovah was all the Elohim, and therefore 
 there could be no other God " (Max Miiller : Chips, <#c., Essay 
 on Semitic Monotheism). 
 
 When Elohim is used in its plural sense to denote false 
 gods, the verbs and adjectives with which it is joined are, of 
 course, in grammatical concord, but the very great majority 
 of the numerous instances in which the word is used to denote 
 the Almighty have the verbs in the singular, and there is an 
 overwhelming probability on the side of the conclusion that 
 the stringent monotheism of the*Jews made the exceptional 
 usage unmeaning, unless with relation to the Almighty s 
 attributes, as compared with the conclusion that there was 
 in it any hint of Personal Distinctions within the Being of 
 God.* When Mr. Liddon says of the passages in Genesis 
 above referred to, " In such sayings it is clear that an equality 
 of rank is distinctly assumed between the Speaker and Those 
 Whom He is addressing," he promotes neither his cause nor 
 his reputation. Any explanation of these forms of language 
 is more admissible than an explanation which the Jews would 
 have understood to contradict the grandly distinctive concep 
 tion of their theology. Kings when speaking of themselves 
 employ the plural pronoun, and the royal usage may have 
 been transferred to the King of kings. 
 
 The fancies that the threefold repetition of the Divine 
 Name in the priestly blessing prescribed in the Book of Num- 
 
 * Fuerst (Heb. Lex.} says, that, " after the earlier period, the construc 
 tion with the plural was avoided as polytheistic." It is noticeable, also, 
 that the Hebrew poets resuscitated the singular Eloah. The plural 
 usage is, in none of its aspects, progressive, but the reverse, and therefore 
 could have had no share in conveying a doctrine the foreshadovvings of 
 which are presumed to have become more frequent and definite as time 
 went on. 
 
58 THE THEOPHANIES. 
 
 bers (vi. 23-26), and the similar repetition of the word Holy 
 in Isa. vi. 3, and " the recurrence of a Threefold rhythm of 
 prayer or praise in the Psalter," contain significant and pre 
 parative adumbrations of " the Most Holy Three, Who yet 
 are One," are sufficiently refuted by being mentioned.* 
 
 From these subtile linguistic suggestions of Personal Dis 
 tinctions within the Unity, Mr. Liddon goes on " to consider 
 that series of remarkable apparitions which are commonly 
 known as the Theophanies, and which form so prominent a 
 feature in the early history of the Old Testament Scriptures." 
 In one of the three superhuman Beings who came to Abra 
 ham in human shape, and partook of his hospitality (Gen. 
 xviii.), Mr. Liddon, guided by the plain meaning of the text, 
 recognizes Jehovah, and, with characteristic acuteness in the 
 manipulation of words, adopts the observation that, " when 
 we are told (xix. 24) that ! Jehovah rained upon Sodom and 
 Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven, a 
 sharp distinction is established between a visible and an In 
 visible Person, each bearing the Most Holy Name." t The 
 mysterious Being who wrestled with Jacob ; " the Angel of 
 the Lord ; " " the Angel of God s Presence ; " " the Captain 
 of the Lord s Host; " " the Angel of God who refuses to dis 
 close to Manoah his Name, which is secret or wonderful ; " 
 who appear in the Pentateuch and the books of Joshua and 
 Judges, are, by a confiding literal acceptance of the Scripture 
 phraseology, identified with special apparitions . of Jehovah. 
 " The Angel of Goal s Presence (Ex. xxxiii. 14, compare with 
 Isa, Ixiii. 9) fully represents God. God must in some way 
 
 * It must be confessed, however, in this species of interpretation Mr. 
 Liddon has been surpassed. "The threefold mention of the Divine 
 names, and the plural number of the Word translated God (Deut. vi. 4), 
 are thought by many to be a plain intimation of a Trinity of Persons, 
 even in this express declaration of the unity of the Godhead." Relig 
 ious Tract Society s Commentary, compiled mainly from Henry and Scott. 
 
 t In his admirable article on the "Jewish Messiah " (Theological Re 
 view, January, 1870), Dr. Davidson supplies the scholarly and common- 
 sense elucidation : " Jehovah rained from Jehovah is Hebraistic for the Lord 
 rained from Himself, a noun being used for a pronoun." 
 
AUGUSTINE S EXPLANATION. 59 
 
 have been present in Him. No merely created being, speak 
 ing and acting in his own right, could have spoken to men, 
 or have allowed men t6 act towards Himself, as did the Angel 
 of the Lord" (p. 54). But in handling the precise question, 
 " Who was this Angel ? " Mr. Liddon hesitates, though his 
 opinion seems to incline towards that of "the earliest 
 Fathers, who answer with general unanimity that the Angel 
 was the Word or Son of God himself." But an Arian 
 abuse of the Theophanic interpretation prevalent in the 
 Ante-Mcene Church produced a more guarded explanation, 
 in establishing which St. Augustine took the lead. The Arian 
 reasoning was : The Son was seen by the Patriarchs, the 
 Father was not seen ; an invisible and a visible nature are 
 not one and the same. 
 
 " St. Augustine boldly faced this difficulty by insisting upon 
 the Scriptural truth of the Invisibility of God as God. The 
 Son, therefore, as being truly God, was by nature as invisible 
 as the Father. If the Son appeared to the Patriarchs, He 
 appeared through the intermediate agency of a created being, 
 who represented Him, and through whom He spoke and 
 acted. If the Angel who represented Him spoke and acted 
 with a Divine authority, and received Divine honors, we are 
 referred to the force of the general law whereby, in things 
 earthly and heavenly, an ambassador is temporarily put in 
 the place of the Master who accredits him. . . . The general 
 doctrine of this great teacher, that the Theophanies were not 
 direct appearances of a Person in the Godhead, but Self- 
 manifestations of God through a created being, had been 
 hinted at by some earlier Fathers, and was insisted on by 
 contemporary and later writers of the highest authority" 
 (pp. 56-58). 
 
 Since Augustine s time this explanation has received the 
 predominant, though by no means the exclusive, acceptance 
 of the Church ; and Mr. Liddon, while remarking, " it is not 
 unaccompanied by considerable difficulties when we apply 
 it to the sacred text," confesses that " it certainly seems 
 to relieve us of greater embarrassments than any which it 
 
60 SUGGESTION OF CHRIST S DEITY. 
 
 creates." The difficulties are, I think, very manifest when 
 the explanation is applied to the accounts in the xviii. and 
 xxxii. chapters of Genesis. The writer of those accounts 
 does identify with Jehovah and Elohim the mysterious visi 
 tant who ate and talked with Abraham, and wrestled with 
 Jacob, and he gives no hint he imagined himself to be record 
 ing other than literal, veritable facts. Our intelligence, and 
 our reverence for the Almighty and Infinite Spirit, would 
 forbid us to think as the writer thought ; but have intelli 
 gence and reverence any claim to be heard against the state 
 ments of a narrative divinely inspired, and dealing with the 
 very topics around which the instructing light and control 
 ling care of inspiration more especially move, the miracles 
 and manifestations of God ? 
 
 But, whatever were the exact form and nature of the Old 
 Testament Theophanies, they have, according to Mr. Liddon, 
 an important bearing on the doctrine of our Lord s Divinity. 
 
 "If they were not, as has been pretended, mythical legends, 
 the natural product of the Jewish mind at a particular stage 
 of its development, but actual matter-of-fact occurrences in 
 the history of ancient Israel, must we not see in them a deep 
 Providential meaning ? Whether in them the Word or Son 
 actually appeared, or whether God made a created angel the 
 absolutely perfect exponent of His Thought and Will, do 
 they not point, in either case, to a purpose in the Divine 
 Mind, which would only be realized when man had been 
 admitted to a nearer and more palpable contact with God 
 than was possible under the Patriarchal or Jewish dispensa 
 tions ? Do they not suggest, as their natural climax and 
 explanation, some Personal Self-unveiling of God before the 
 eyes of His creatures ? Would not God appear to have been 
 training His people, by this long and mysterious series of 
 communications, at length to recognize and to worship Him 
 when hidden under, and indissolubly one with a created 
 nature ? Apart from the specific circumstances which may 
 seem to have explained each Theophany at the time of its 
 taking place, and considering them as a series of phenomena, 
 
THE " ANGELS " OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 61 
 
 is there any other account of them so much in harmony with 
 the general scope of Holy Scripture, as that they were suc 
 cessive lessons addressed to the eye and to the ear of ancient 
 piety, in anticipation of a coming Incarnation of God?" 
 (p. 58). 
 
 Now this reasoning has hardly the merit of being even 
 superficially plausible. If " the Word or Son " did not ap 
 pear in the manifestations referred to, they suggest nothing 
 respecting " Personal Self-un veilings of God," or distinctions 
 of Persons in the Godhead. The whole force of their mean 
 ing, in relation to the doctrine under discussion, depends 
 upon their having been, what a Puritan author has called 
 them, " prelibations of the Incarnation of Deity." How 
 could the fact of the Almighty s making a created being His 
 representative, and the exponent of His Will, foreshadow 
 that, within His own Infinite Invisible Essence, there was a 
 Second Person Who would one day come forth to clothe 
 Himself permanently with a created nature? How could 
 passing manifestations of one kind be in any sense lessons 
 anticipatory of a grand enduring manifestation totally dif 
 ferent in kind ? Would a pious Jew, meditating on the 
 Theophanies, have been able, in his most devout and spiritual 
 moments, to catch a glimpse of the inference that, because 
 God had made angels His authoritative messengers, therefore 
 He would at some future day not make them so again, 
 but substitute for manifestations and messages through them 
 a permanent Incarnation of His own Essential Being, dis 
 closing the existence of a Second Person equal with Him 
 self? And if the Theophanies were designed to be suggestive 
 preludes to the Incarnation, it is, to say the least, remarkable 
 they were not continued beyond the earlier, twilight periods 
 of the Jewish history. They were a series broken off at a 
 very early stage, and the narratives which enshrined them 
 do not hint at a connecting principle, or an ulterior signifi 
 cance, but rather present them as separate exceptional events, 
 attached to special cases and circumstances. 
 
 Another assessment of the Old Testament Theophanies is 
 
62 THE " WISDOM " OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 stated in the learned Article on " The Jewish Messiah," to 
 which I have already referred. Dr. Davidson writes : " Angels 
 belonged to the mythology of the Hebrews, who personified 
 the powers of Nature. Extraordinary operations, unusual 
 phenomena, manifestations of God, were invested with per 
 sonal attributes. They, were angels or messengers of Jeho 
 vah, and are identified with Himself, because they represent 
 no distinctive being. Without independent existence, they 
 are only the mode of His appearance, the invisible Deity 
 unveiling Himself to mortal eyes. The word Maleach 
 (Angel) favors this hypothesis, because its form is indefinite. 
 It means a sending, not one sent ; and is, properly, an ab 
 stract noun. Almost all the appearances of angels in the Old 
 Testament are to be explained in this manner. The Angel 
 of JehovaKs presence is identical with Jehovah, because 
 what is so termed is only the manifestation of His presence 
 at a certain time and place, a personified mode of His 
 operation. The Old Testament itself, in identifying the 
 Angel with the presence of Jehovah, and with Jehovah 
 Himself, confirms the correctness of this explanation." 
 
 " The preparatory service rendered to the doctrine of our 
 Lord s Divinity by the Theophanies in the world of sense " 
 was, in Mr. Lid don s view, " seconded by the upgrowth and 
 development of a belief respecting the Divine Wisdom, in 
 the region of inspired ideas." He considers the language 
 put into the mouth of Wisdom, in the first section of the 
 Book of Proverbs, to be more indicative of a real person than 
 of a poetic personification, and insists that in chapter viii. 22 
 possessed, and not created, is the accurate translation. He 
 appears to have overlooked the fact that possession by acquire 
 ment is, in the case of God, equivalent to production or 
 creation. The Lexicons of Gesenius, Fuerst, and Lee are in 
 substantial agreement in the meaning they assign to the 
 word in the passages to which Mr. Liddon refers, and show 
 that the sense to possess is unfolded from the more radical 
 sense to get or obtain. Dr. Davidson, in his remarks upon 
 the text of Proverbs under consideration, says : 
 
SUPPOSED HINTS IN THE APOCRYPHA. 63 
 
 " The verb never means to possess simply and solely, but 
 always indicates the act of coming into possession. All good 
 Hebrew scholars, together with the Septuagint, Targum, and 
 Peshito, translate it create. . . . The whole passage (22-31 
 verses) has no relation to the doctrine of the Trinity. It 
 contains nothing more than a bold personification of the 
 antiquity, excellence, and dignity of Wisdom. The feminine 
 gender would not be employed to set forth the second Person 
 in the Trinity, for the matter is more than one of mere gram 
 matical form. Wisdom is represented as a female, she; 
 showing a simple personification. In short, it may be confi 
 dently asserted that the passage contains nothing about the 
 internal relations of the Godhead " (Introduction, &c., vol. 
 ii. pp. 349, 350). 
 
 These remarks may be, in substance, transferred to the 
 figurative language of the uncanonical and therefore techni 
 cally uninspired books, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch. 
 In the former two especially, Wisdom is, after a mode of 
 conception rare among us, except in poetry, described in 
 language which, literally understood, implies real, personal 
 existence. The Logos (Word or Reason) of God is also 
 spoken of in a manner which intimates Word and Wisdom 
 to have been only different expressions for ideas so nearly 
 identical as to admit of interchange. This fact points to 
 the conclusion that Word and Wisdom were not intended 
 to stand for real personages, but were both expressions for 
 manifestations of the Divine attributes, verbal equivalents 
 for collective human notions of the pervasive, operative, 
 quickening, and enlightening energy which is ever going 
 forth from the Almighty Father "in Whom we live and 
 move and have our being." 
 
 Mr. Liddon, who finds everywhere significant traces of the 
 mystery he has undertaken to defend, " seems to catch," in 
 the Apocryphal books, " the accents of those weighty for 
 mulae by which Apostles will presently define the pre-existent 
 Glory of their Majestic Lord." He is most unwilling to 
 admit personification even where personification is obvious ; 
 
64 THE 
 
 and distinctly metaphorical language is, to his mind, literal. 
 Figurative descriptions, and the application of conceptions 
 derived from the nature and actings of man, seem to him out 
 of place in that region where to others they seem most allow 
 able and inevitable, the Nature and actings of God. 
 
 The writings of the Jew Philo, who lived in the century 
 before our Saviour s birth, abound in statements respecting 
 the Logos of God ; and of these Mr. Liddon has given some 
 well-selected specimens, though he has riot been careful to 
 inform his readers that the title Logos is given by Philo to 
 Moses and Aaron, and in the plural applied to angels. It is 
 needless, however, to discuss the controverted question 
 whether the Word was to Philo s mind a real person, or a 
 name for attributes and qualities conceived to be inherent in, 
 and in various ways exercised by, the Divine Being. The 
 view which is really antagonistic to Mr. Liddon s is not that 
 the Logos of the Fourth Gospel is a mere reproduction of 
 Philo s Logos, but that it had its origin, in the application to 
 Christ s Personality, of ideas suggested by current specula 
 tions, of whose prior existence and diffusion we have evidence 
 in Philo s writings, and also, less distinctly, in the ancient 
 sacred books which lie without the precincts of the Hebrew 
 Canon. The Logos doctrine is one which would almost of 
 necessity undergo modifications in every mind through which 
 it passed. Vague and shadowy, it could not escape subjec 
 tive influences in transmission ; and, when applied to define 
 the presence of God in Christ, it was, of course, moulded and 
 colored by contact with Christian facts, and combination 
 with Christian ideas. There is no need to surmise that 
 " Philo was St. John s master," or that there is in the Fourth 
 Gospel any close and premeditated adherence to speculative 
 teachings found in Philo and the Apocrypha. Occasional 
 coincidences of thought and language, and some similarity 
 of phraseological forms, are not denied to exist, and these 
 point to a common and suggestive intellectual atmosphere. 
 No one disputes that the Gospel ascribed to St. John con 
 tains elements to which Philo was a stranger, and to which 
 
ITS INFLUENCE ON THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 65 
 
 his general views may even stand in a relation of moral dis 
 crepancy. Philo s idea of the Logos was certainly not con 
 joined with Messianic anticipations, and may well have been, 
 as has been suggested, "to a great degree, a philosophical 
 substitute for them." The question at issue has little or 
 nothing to do with Philo s doctrine, taken as a whole, but 
 concerns one elastic and pregnant speculation. Mr. Liddon s 
 reasoning on this point is needless labor. Philo. and the 
 authors of the Apocryphal Jewish books, were not Christians, 
 and the author of the Fourth Gospel w^as a Christian, and 
 that circumstance at once entails large differences. But 
 since a Logos doctrine is found neither in the first three and 
 earlier written Gospels, nor in the writings of the Apostolic 
 Fathers, does it not appear more probable the writer of the 
 last Gospel adopted a widely diffused and attractive concep 
 tion, than that he stated a peculiar and fundamental Christian 
 dogma, which the writers of the preceding Gospels knew, but 
 had held in reserve ? It is conceded " Philo could do much 
 in preparing the soil of Alexandrian thought," and that, 
 " among the ideas circulating in the intellectual world, the 
 most instrumental in supplying a point of connection on 
 which to base the doctrine of a God revealed in Christ was 
 the Logos of Alexandria, if not the exact Logos of Philo." 
 On the assumption that the later Gospel is the work of an 
 infallibly inspired Apostle, and throughout in real though 
 undiscernible harmony with its predecessors, these conces 
 sions are only recognitions of a Providential preparation car 
 ried on outside the circle of Revelation ; but, on the ground 
 of criticism and free inquiry, they suggest a departure from 
 the primitive type of doctrine, and an accommodation of 
 Christianity to external thought, by the infusion of a foreign, 
 though easily assimilated ingredient. In another Book of 
 the New Testament, the date of whose composition precedes 
 that of the Fourth Gospel, the influence of the Alexandrian 
 Jewish Theology is too manifest to be ignored, though I do 
 not observe that Mr. Liddon anywhere acknowledges the 
 fact. Conybeare and Howson, in their " Life and Epistles of 
 
 5 
 
66 PYE SMITH ON THE PHILONIAN DOCTRINE. 
 
 St. Paul," candidly avow : " The resemblance between the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews and the writings of Philo is most 
 striking. It extends not only to the general points before 
 mentioned, but to particular doctrines and expressions ; the 
 parallel passages are enumerated by Bleek." 
 
 The summary into which Dr. Pye Smith (Scripture Testi 
 mony to the J\fessiah, Book ii. chap, vii.) compressed the 
 results of his quotations from Philo furnishes- materials for a 
 tolerably accurate judgment as to the relation of the Philo- 
 nian ideas of the Logos to portions of the New Testament 
 Scriptures. 
 
 " In these extracts, I think that the sum of the doctrines 
 of Philo, concerning the Word, may be found. To this Ob 
 ject he gives the epithets the Son of God, the First- 
 begotten S^n, the Eldest Son, the Word, the Divine Word, 
 the Eternal Word, the Eldest Word, the Most Sacred Word, 
 the First-begotten Word, the Offspring of God as a stream from 
 the fountain, the Beginning, the Name of God, the Shadow of 
 God, the Image (e/x&W) of God, the Eternal Image, the Copied 
 Image (dTteixoviGpa}, the Express Image (/(>xr/)o) of the seal 
 of God, the Branch or Rising Light (dvarolr]}, the Angel, the 
 Eldest Angel, the Archangel of many titles, the Inspector of 
 Israel, the Interpreter of God, a Representative God, a Second 
 God, a God to those creatures whose capacities or attain 
 ments are not adequate to the contemplation of the Supreme 
 Father. . . . To this Word are ascribed intelligence, design, 
 and active powers ; He is declared to have been the Instru 
 ment of the Deity in the creation, disposition, and govern 
 ment of the universe. . . . He is the instrument and medium 
 of Divine communications, the High Priest and Mediator for 
 the honor of God and the benefit of man, the Messenger of 
 the Father, perfectly sinless Himself, the Beginning and 
 Fountain of virtue to men, their Guide in the path of obe 
 dience, the Protector and Supporter of the virtuous, and the 
 Punisher of the wicked. Yet the Word is also represented 
 as being the same to the Supreme Intellect that speech is to 
 the human ; and as being the conception, idea, or purpose of 
 
MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS. 67 
 
 the Creator, existing in the Divine Mind previously to the 
 actual formation of His works." 
 
 The anticipation of a better future, the instinct of expecta 
 tion, without which, as a nation, Israel could not live, was, 
 we are assured, provided for and directed by the Almighty, 
 "through a long series of authoritative announcements, 
 which centred very remarkably upon a coming Person, and 
 fed continuously by the Messianic belief, which was in truth 
 interwoven with the deepest life of the people." The Mes 
 sianic doctrine was unfolded through four progressive stages, 
 three within, and a fourth beyond the limits of the Old 
 Testament Scriptures. In the first stage, which ended with 
 Moses, the personal rank of the Messiah is not defined, 
 though personal characteristics gradually emerge, and the 
 Divinity not expressly asserted is, to minds properly attuned 
 to discover it, implied. Now, in affirming the presence of a 
 Messianic element in the Old Testament, Mr. Liddon is on 
 the side of truth : there is such an element, Divine in its 
 origin and purpose, and progressively expanded beneath the 
 influences of a Providential Will ; but the prophetic intima 
 tions in which it is embodied, and more especially the ear 
 lier ones, are much less direct and definite than Mr. Liddon 
 imagines. To what an extent his zeal blinds him to the 
 greatest difficulties, and causes him to intrude the ideas of 
 dogmatic Christianity into regions where they are utterly 
 out of place, may be gathered from his summary of Penta- 
 teuchal Messianic announcements, among which he confi 
 dently reckons a much disputed and quite improvable 
 interpretation of Gen. xlix. 10. 
 
 " In that predicted victory over the Evil One ; in that 
 blessing which is to be shed on all the families of the earth ; 
 in that rightful sway over the gathered peoples ; in the abso 
 lute and perfect teaching of that Prophet Who is to be like 
 the great Lawgiver while yet He transcends Him, must 
 we not trace a predicted destiny which reaches higher than 
 the known limits of the highest human energy? Is not this 
 early prophetic language only redeemed from the imputation 
 
68 INTIMATIONS IN THE PSALMS 
 
 of exaggeration or vagueness by the point and justification 
 which are secured to it through the more explicit disclosures 
 of a succeeding age? >5 (p. 79). 
 
 But I am concerned with those texts only which are sup 
 posed to notify, more or less clearly, Messiah s Deity. Mr. 
 Liddon descries many such, but in almost every passage he 
 handles he neglects the contexts, and withdraws from their 
 historical and textual surroundings a few words susceptible of 
 an extreme sense. " The promise of a Kingdom to David and 
 to his house for ever (2 Sam. vii. 16), a promise on which, 
 we know, the great Psalmist rested at the hour of his death 
 (2 Sam. xxiii. 5) could not be fulfilled by any mere continu 
 ation of his dynasty on the throne of Jerusalem. It implied, 
 as both David and Solomon saw, some Superhuman Royalty." 
 Now here (1) the utmost meaning is put into the phrase 
 for ever, a phrase which, though it may denote eternity, 
 depends for its precise force on the association in which 
 it is employed, and is often used rhetorically to denote pro 
 longed but limited duration. That David understood it in 
 the limited meaning may be conjectured from verse 19, where 
 he says : " Thou hast spoken of Thy servant s house for a 
 distant time" using a word which indicates mere remoteness 
 (compare the far off, far, 2 Sam. xv. 17 ; Prov. xxv. 25 ; 
 Isa. xiii. 5). (2) The context, verses 14 and 15, shows that 
 the seed of David, in whom the promise was to be fulfilled, 
 was not superhuman (comp. Ps. Ixxxix. 30-33). 
 
 The language of neither the second nor the forty-fifth 
 Psalm is, as a whole, and in strictness, applicable to Christ, 
 although both Psalms contain expressions which may alle- 
 gorically, and by fair accommodation, be applied to Him. 
 Verse 9 of the second Psalm does not suitably portray the 
 method and eifects of Christ s government ; and the warlike 
 attributes extolled in verses 3, 4, and 5 of the forty-fifth, are 
 not befitting the person and character of the Prince of Peace. 
 Both Psalms primarily refer to Solomon, or some other Jew 
 ish monarch, and celebrate, with the license of poetical exag 
 geration, that monarch s dominion and glory. The forty-fifth 
 
OF A FUTURE MESSIAH. GO 
 
 appears to be a nuptial ode on the occasion of a king s mar 
 riage with a king s daughter. There is, therefore, an original 
 historical sense, and a real point of attachment among the 
 personages arid events of Jewish annals. No exposition can 
 be correct which has not the primary historical meaning for 
 its basis. The Messianic signification is secondary, ideal, and 
 suggested. 
 
 The statement, Psalm ii. 7, " Thou art my Son, this day 
 have I begotten Thee" (comp. Exod. iv. 22; 2 Sam. vii. 14; 
 Ps. Ixxxix. 27), cannot possibly intimate that Messiah was an 
 Eternal Person within the Self-existent Substance, and does not 
 prove that " His Sonship is not merely theocratic or ethical, 
 but Divine." St. Paul saw in our Lord s resurrection from 
 the dead the Messianic fulfilment of the Psalmist s words 
 (Acts xiii. 33; with which compare Rom. i. 4). Verse 12 
 is not, in the New Testament, applied to Christ ; and Mi-. 
 Liddon entirely misstates its purport when he says, "All 
 who trust in Him (the Son) are blessed ; all who incur His 
 wrath must perish with a sharp and swift destruction." JLISS, 
 that is, do homage to, the Son; and Offer pure homage, worship 
 purely, are both admissible translations^ though the latter 
 seems entitled to the preference. The Septuagint and the 
 Vulgate have lay hold of instruction. But, whether Son or 
 purely be the better rendering, the anger deprecated is the 
 anger of Jehovah, the trust enjoined is trust in Him. 
 
 The 6th and 7th verses of the forty-fifth Psalm are applied 
 by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews to Christ (i. 8, 
 9), and in them "Messiah is directly addressed as God." 
 NOAV it might be enough to make the very obvious remark, 
 that the Jewish King, of whom the Psalmist was thinking, 
 was not God ; and therefore the word Elohim must either be 
 understood in an inferior sense, or verse 6 must be regarded 
 as a parenthesis describing the Almighty s throne. But there, 
 again, the translation is, in the opinion of competent judges, 
 very debatable. Many of the best Hebrew scholars render 
 thy throne of God, i.e., thy throne, given and protected* by 
 God ; or, according to a not infrequent usage, the name of 
 
70 PEROWNE ON MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS. 
 
 God may be employed to convey the notion of excellence 
 and high distinction, thy exalted throne. Against the 
 Hebraists who dissent from the received translation, the dic 
 tum of Dr. Pusey would have small weight, even if it were 
 recommended by less contumeliousness and more charity than 
 appear in Mr. Liddon s extract. 
 
 Mr. J. J. S. Perowne, an excellent Hebraist, and one who 
 knows how to temper orthodox convictions with fairness, 
 retains, in his work on the Psalms, the vocative rendering, 
 God / but he also remarks : " This rendering seems indeed, 
 at first sight, to be at variance with the first and historical 
 application of the Psalm. Can Solomon, or any Jewish 
 King, be thus directly addressed as God ? We find the title 
 given to rulers, kings, or judges (Ixxxii. 6, 7) : I said, Ye 
 are gods (see our Lord s comment, John x. 35) ; xcvii. 7 ; 
 Exod. xxi. 6. Calvin, indeed, objects that Elohim is only thus 
 used in the plural, or with some restriction, as when Moses is 
 said to be made a God (Elohim) unto Pharaoh (Exod. vii. 1). 
 But the word is evidently used of one person in 1 Sam. 
 xxviii. 13, as is plain from Saul s question, What form is he 
 of ? though our version renders, I saw gods ascending. " 
 
 But, whatever the true translation may be, the context 
 demonstrates that the meaning which Mr. Liddon seeks to 
 establish cannot be the right one. How can a co-equal 
 Person in the Eternal Godhead be said to have a God, and 
 to be by that God " anointed with the oil of gladness above 
 his fellow s " ? Who are His fellows or associates, if He is a 
 necessary Form, &c., in the inmost life of the Self-existent 
 Being ? Mr. Perowne, while " most unhesitatingly admitting 
 that the w^ords of.the Psalm have a meaning which is only 
 fully realized in Christ," comments on verse 7 : " But this 
 Divine King is nevertheless a distinct person from God him 
 self GOD, EVEN THY GOD, peculiar to this Book of the 
 Psalms, instead of * Jehovah thy God. " 
 
 In the language of the seventy-second Psalm, which no 
 New Testament writer has quoted or explained of Christ, 
 there is a strongly ideal element, and the expression of 
 
MR. LIDDON S ARBITRARY DEDUCTIONS. 71 
 
 inspired hopes and aspirations too pure and lofty to be 
 realized in the reign of any one of the historical series of 
 Jewish Sovereigns. But the ideal element was joined to, and 
 grew out of, what was real. The poet s thoughts were engaged 
 upon the accession of a contemporary monarch, to whose reign 
 he looked forward with pious wishes and bright anticipations. 
 We cannot suppose his language to have been simply and 
 purely prophetic, detached from all significance and associa 
 tion in his own times. It is not of the kind to be literalized, 
 and treated as accurate measured description, consciously 
 designed to depict "the character and extent of the Messianic 
 Sovereignty," still less to foretell that He would be " a King 
 immortal, all-knowing, and all-mighty," and therefore, in the 
 highest sense, Divine. 
 
 From the hundred and tenth Psalm, Mr. Liddon makes 
 this deduction : " The Son of David is David s Lord, because 
 He is God ; the Lord of David is David s Son, because He is 
 God Incarnate." The deduction is quite arbitrary. On the 
 expression my Lord (Adoni) no stress can be laid. It is no 
 more than a form of courteous designation and address com 
 monly given to superiors. The Hebrew word employed 
 expresses superiority in the most general sense, and w r hen 
 applied to the Almighty it is nearly always written Adondi, 
 as in verse 5 of the Psalm now referred to. "Jehovah said 
 to my lord," is therefore language which does not touch the 
 question of Christ s Divinity ; and the protection and honor 
 conferred by Jehovah surely do not attest that he on whom 
 they are conferred is by nature Jehovah s equal. It is a 
 poor straining of language to say, "Messiah is sitting on 
 the right hand of Jehovah, as the partner of His dignity." 
 We may waive all inquiry about the authorship of the 
 Psalm, and need not insist upon the probability that by 
 the expression my Lord the poet meant his earthly sover 
 eign. Granting, on the strength of Matt. xxii. 41-45, and 
 parallels in Mark and Luke, that David, looking into the 
 future of his progeny, was inspired to behold the Messiah, 
 his acknowiedgment of Messiah s superiority is no sort of 
 
72 
 
 proof he expected Messiah to be God. Messiah might be 
 David s son, and also David s lord, without being Jehovah, 
 David s God. 
 
 On the Messianic sense of the Psalms, the conclusion 
 arrived at by Dr. Davidson is a good general reply to the 
 method of interpretation adopted by Mr. Liddon, and will 
 commend itself to reverent and reflecting Protestant minds, 
 not governed by orthodox or anti-orthodox theories. " Noth 
 ing should be allowed to stand in the way of the grammatical 
 and historical interpretation, not even the letter of the New 
 Testament, else truth and independence are sacrificed. In 
 that case Scripture is injured or perverted. . . . The dead 
 letter must give way to the living voice within, else God is 
 dishonored. In conformity with a right interpretation, we 
 hold that no direct definite conscious prophecies of Messiah 
 appear in the Psalms. There are unconscious ones the 
 indefinite longings and hopes for coming restoration ideas 
 of future completion and glory in the royal line of David. 
 The New Testament writers quoted and applied such pas 
 sages according to the current sense of their time, without 
 thought of the original meaning. . . . We are not disposed 
 to deny the operation of the Divine Spirit in leading the 
 authors of the Psalms to select poetical images that might be 
 accommodated to the Saviour. A principal point to be kept 
 in view is the ideal nature of poetical pictures sometimes 
 given by these lyric writers. Moments of higher inspiration 
 came over them, when they were transported in spirit to 
 future times, and spake in glowing terms of scenes resplen 
 dent with earthly glory. Starting from the praises of a pres 
 ent monarch, they were rapt in poetic vision, to paint the 
 reign of some majestic one, to whom all the ends of the 
 earth should do homage. These were to them but ideal 
 scenes, the manifestation of far-reaching hopes and yearning 
 desires engendered in minds of transcendent grasp " (Intro 
 duction to Old Testament, vol. ii. pp. 286, 287). 
 
 In the third period, extending from the reign of Uzziah to 
 the close of the Hebrew Canon, " Messianic prophecy reaches 
 
MR. LIDDON S MISINTERPRETATIONS. 73 
 
 its climax ; it expands into the fullest particularity of detail 
 respecting Messiah s Human Life ; it mounts to the highest 
 assertions of His Divinity " (p. 83). The passages supposed 
 to contain the fullest particularity of detail are subjected to 
 Mr. Liddon s usual method, and therefore made to mean any 
 thing and every thing which suits his hypothesis. Sentences 
 and descriptions detached from the contexts, whereby their 
 meaning is restricted and determined, become so many loose 
 phrases, amid which the prior theory of the interpreter may 
 be incased. Fragmentary texts, taken from various places, 
 are ingeniously dovetailed together, and made, by arbitrary 
 combination, to announce or insinuate the doctrine for which 
 a Scriptural dress is sought. By such workmanship it is 
 comparatively easy to clothe in the language of Scripture 
 conclusions which the expositor brings to the study of Scrip 
 ture. , 
 
 How pervadingly the previous conviction underlies and 
 shapes Mr. Liddon s interpretations may be illustrated by 
 two examples, one in which the warping influence is dimly 
 disclosed, the other in which it is glaringly conspicuous. He 
 thus paraphrases Isa. xi. 3 : " He will not be dependent like 
 a human magistrate upon the evidence of His senses ; He 
 will not judge after the sight of His eyes, nor reprove after 
 the hearing of His ears ; He will rely upon the infallibility 
 of a perfect moral insight." The possession of a Superhu 
 man Nature and Divine attributes is here suggested; but 
 when we turn to the words of the prophet in the second, and 
 the earlier part of the third verse, w r e perceive immediately 
 there is no foundation for the suggestion. The Spirit of 
 Jehovah resting on a human nature, gifting it with wisdom, 
 and animating it with the fear of Jehovah, is the avowed 
 source of the righteous judgment ascribed to " the Branch 
 who grows from Jesse s roots." Being guided by the Spirit 
 of God, he will "not judge according to the appearance, but 
 will judge righteous judgment." 
 
 By a reference to Jer. xxxi. 31-35, Messiah is, without any 
 conceivable excuse, confounded with Jehovah. " Such is His 
 
74 THE THIRD PERIOD 
 
 Spiritual Power as Prophet and Legislator, that He will 
 write the law of the Lord, not upon tables of stone, but on 
 the heart and conscience of the true Israel." Now, granting 
 the passage does in a general manner relate to the Messianic 
 period and its attendant spiritual blessings, how can that fact 
 imtimate that the anointed Prophet and Legislator, whose 
 followers are to receive God s blessings, is God himself? 
 The text says, " I (Jehovah) will write my law in their 
 hearts," &c. 
 
 But E pass on to the texts in which prophecy " mounts to 
 the highest assertions of Christ s Divinity." Among these 
 Isa, ix. 6 holds the foremost place, and Mr. Liddon contends 
 the plain literal sense expressly names Christ " the Mighty 
 God." ISTow, the words, " The mighty God," would to both 
 Jewish and Christian apprehensions be a description appro 
 priate to the Supreme Being alone. But in the Hebrew the 
 definite article is not prefixed, and to say the sense requires 
 it to be understood is to assume the very point in dispute. 
 The article, therefore, since it does not appear in the original, 
 and does not necessarily belong to the exact sense, must not 
 be introduced. "Mighty God" is, no doubt, a literal trans 
 lation, but certainly not the only admissible translation. 
 Many of the best authorities are of opinion the word rendered 
 God ought to be taken in a lower and more comprehensive 
 meaning ; and any one who is able to consult a Hebrew Lexi 
 con may readily convince himself their opinion is not destitute 
 of foundation. The presence of a proverbially minute Hebrew 
 letter would establish the translation a mighty hero, which 
 Gesenius and others approve, and which the ancient versions 
 of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion sustain. The Alex 
 andrine MS. of the Septuagint* has the rendering strong 
 
 * This Version, and not the original Hebrew, is the source whence the 
 great majority of the New Testament quotations from the Old are drawn. 
 The Version itself is unquestionably older than any existing Hebrew 
 MS. ; and no known Hebrew MS. dates so far back as the fourth and fifth 
 centuries, to which, in all probability, the Vatican and Alexandrine MSS. 
 of the Septuagint may be respectively assigned. The following extract 
 is from the Article Septuagint in Smith s " Dictionary of the Bible : " 
 
OF MESSIANIC PROPHECY. 75 
 
 potentate, or, dividing the words, strong, a potentate, where 
 the adjective is more probably designed to be the equivalent 
 of the term rendered in the Vulgate and English Versions 
 God. The Vatican MS. differs from the Alexandrine in not 
 having any of the titles given in the Hebrew, and agrees 
 with it in the ascription of one title which the Hebrew does 
 not give. The Vatican reading is simply, "His name is 
 called Messenger of great counsel " (perhaps, " of the great 
 council "). The Septuagint translators do not seem to have 
 considered the passage a prophecy respecting a future birth. 
 Had they regarded the verbs as " perfects of prophecy, hav 
 ing a future meaning," they would probably have rendered 
 them by future tenses, instead of has been born, has been 
 given. The circumstance that no New Testament writer 
 cites a passage so appropriately Messianic favors the sup 
 position that the Vatican reading stood in the Septuagint of 
 apostolic days. 
 
 To return to the particular phrase on which Mr. Liddon 
 builds, Mighty God. If that translation were quite unques 
 tionable, it would not necessarily denote possession of the 
 Divine Nature, but of Godlike strength and qualities. Titles 
 are not, as a rule, definitions of nature, but pertain to offices, 
 qualifications, and achievements. Mighty or heroic God may, 
 as Dr. Davidson explains, be " equivalent to a hero who fights 
 and conquers like an invincible God." Isaac Leeser, in his 
 corrected English Version,* so translates that the definite 
 
 " We do not attribute any paramount authority to the Septuagint on 
 account of its superior antiquity to the extant Hebrew MSS., but we take 
 it as an evidence of a more ancient Hebrew text, as an eye-witness of the 
 texts 280 or 180 years B.C. . . . Thus, the Hebrew will sometimes correct 
 the Greek, and sometimes the Greek the Hebrew ; both liable to err 
 through the infirmity of human eyes and hands, but each checking the 
 other s errors." Some of the differences between the Septuagint and the 
 Hebrew are very broad and material. Quotations in the New Testament 
 often differ both from the Septuagint and the Hebrew. With respect to 
 the Hebrew Text, it should always be remembered that the vowel points, 
 which were not employed till after the fifth Christian century, have the 
 effect, in a multitude of instances, of imposing a particular sense. 
 * Triibner & Co. 
 
76 CERTAIN OLD TESTAMENT EPITHETS. 
 
 article becomes fairly introducible : " Counsellor of the mighty 
 God, of the everlasting Father ; " and in his Notes observes : 
 " The only difficulty in the verse is the word El, which may 
 as well be rendered, with Aben Ezra, powerful as God" 
 Dr. Pusey, as cited by Mr. Liddon, does not deny that in 
 Ezek. xxxi. 11 El is used of Nebuchadnezzar, "Aero, ruler, or 
 mighty one, among the nations ; " and again, in the plural 
 (Ezek. xxxii. 21), strong among the mighty / or most powerful 
 of the strong (Vulgate) ; see also Exod. xv. 11. It is quite 
 possible that in these instances, and in Isaiah ix. 6, the word 
 fully written would have the Yod, that exceedingly small 
 Hebrew letter, whose presence would put an end to conten 
 tions. However, be the correct translation what it may, the 
 context forbids the sense for which Mr. Liddon contends. 
 The prophet, when he wrote of a child s being born, and a 
 son given, who should sit upon David s throne, could not pos 
 sibly have meant that the child and son was the Lord of 
 Hosts. He had no knowledge of the ecclesiastical Triad of 
 later times, and, though his language may be suited to facts 
 and personages beyond the conscious range of his thoughts, 
 it cannot define ideas utterly foreign to his mind. 
 
 The epithets Jehovah is our Righteousness (Jer. xxiii. 5) ; 
 and Immanuel, God with us (Isa. vii. 14 ; Matt. i. 23) are, 
 Mr. Liddon asserts, " descriptive of our Lord s nature, and 
 nof merely appellative." As to the words in Jeremiah, there 
 is room for very great doubt whether the title used is given 
 to Messiah at all. The grammatical construction equally 
 permits the title to be referred to Israel, or to the Righteous 
 Branch which Jehovah promises to raise unto David. The 
 reference to Israel is supported by xxxiii. 15, 16, where 
 Jerusalem is called by the same name, a fact which suffi 
 ciently shows the name is not descriptive of nature, and can 
 furnish no argument whatever for the Divinity of Jesus. 
 The two words, Jehovah Tsidkenu, ought, indisputably, to be 
 connected by the verb substantive ; Jehovah is our Right 
 eousness is the true rendering, and the expression and its 
 application may be compared with the names given to altars 
 
ETC. 77 
 
 (Exod. xvii. 15 ; Judges vi. 24). The Septuagint version is : 
 " This is the name which the Lord shall call him, Josedek 
 (Lord of righteousness}, among the prophets;" the Vulgate 
 both here and in chap, xxxiii. "This is the name which 
 they shall call him, Our righteous Lord." 
 
 With regard to Isaiah vii. 14, it is so very obvious the name 
 Immanuel cannot predicate a personal, in contradistinction to 
 a providential, presence of God, that Mr. Liddon s reference to 
 the text hardly deserves remark. But an ordinarily attentive 
 reader of Isaiah vii. sees at once that the promise made for the 
 encouragement of Ahaz was a promise to be speedily, not re 
 motely fulfilled. A child to be called Immanuel (God with 
 us), in token of Divine guardianship and assistance, was soon 
 to be born (comp. viii. 8). The terms of the promise are also 
 thoroughly and manifestly inapplicable to Christ. The only 
 blessing promised is the deliverance of Judah, implied in 
 the desolation and abandonment of Syria and Israel, the land 
 of whose kings Ahaz was afraid. Nothing spiritual, nothing 
 worthy of our Saviour, nothing suitable to Him is announced. 
 The writer of the first chapter of the First Gospel, or the 
 inserter of the quotation from Isaiah, took the passage in a 
 loose and typical sense, and his application of it is in no 
 respect decisive. The Hebrew word employed is not that 
 which is often used for virgin in the strict sense, but a less 
 exact word, which means no more than a young, marriageable 
 woman (Gesenius, Fuerst, Davidson), and is so translated by 
 the Septuagint four times out of six, though not in Isaiah vii. 
 14, where they may have thought the young woman desig 
 nated to have been unmarried when the prophecy was 
 spoken. It is used in Prov. xxx. 19, which seems to be con 
 nected in sense with verse 20. It has a masculine form " a 
 young man " (1 Sam. xvii. 56 ; xx. 22), a plural derivative 
 from which denotes " youthful age or period" (Job xx. 11 ; 
 xxxiii. 25 ; Ps. Ixxxix. 46 (45) ; Isa. liv. 4). 
 
 Zechariah xiii. 7 does not refer to Christ, and therefore 
 does not " term Him the Fellow or Equal of the Lord of 
 Hosts." Our Saviour did not apply the passage in its original 
 
78 DR. PUSEY S ARGUMENTS. 
 
 sense, or say it was prophetic of Himself (Matt. xxvi. 31 ; 
 Mark xiv. 27). He merely quoted a portion of it, as an ap 
 propriate description of what was then about to take place, 
 the point He had chiefly in view being the dispersion of His 
 disciples, in consequence of His trial and death. The man 
 of my fellowship, to whom Zechariah s words referred, was a 
 Jewish King, " so called by God, He being also King of 
 Israel " (Fuerst) ; the association is in the kingly office, and 
 in that alone. The historical sense appears to be a declara 
 tion of the Divine anger against a bad shepherd or ruler. 
 Perhaps, as Dr. Davidson suggests, " the prophet may refer 
 to Pekah, whose reign was most disastrous to the people of 
 Israel. When the shepherd had been smitten and the sheep 
 scattered, Jehovah would turn His hand toward the poor, 
 weak, afflicted ones, and have compassion on them." The 
 Vatican Septuagint Version is, " Awake, sword, against my 
 shepherds, and against a man who is my citizen, saith the 
 Lord Almighty, smite ye the shepherds, and draw out the 
 sheep." The Alexandrine copy agrees more closely with 
 the Hebrew, but has the rendering, " against a man who is 
 my citizen." 
 
 It is a pity Mr. Liddon has done Dr. Pusey the unkindness 
 of bringing forward one of the weak, untenable arguments, 
 wherein, in his book on Daniel, he has allowed his prepos 
 sessions, or, as he would say, his faith, to dictate to his schol 
 arship.* There is no proof the word rendered my fellow had 
 been "disused, and was revived out of Leviticus." The state 
 ment involves the inadmissible assumption that, between the 
 date of Zechariah and the time when the Book of Leviticus 
 
 * The very unfavorable estimate formed by Ewald, and other learned 
 Hebraists, concerning Dr. Pusey s critical knowledge in the language 
 of which he is a Professor, is, no doubt, caused not so much by deficient 
 scholarship as by the special pleading, and reliance on wretched reason 
 ings, into which his downright uncompromising support of traditional 
 orthodoxy sometimes betrays him. His intellect and attainments are 
 absolutely subservient to the traditionalisms with which his piety is bound 
 up. He is an earnest, saintly man, worthy of all love and respect, except 
 in his capacity as a theologian. 
 
PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH. 79 
 
 received its final editing and emendations, there was a long 
 interval. Whatever may have been the date of the Penta 
 teuch in its earliest shape, all Hebrew scholars are agreed 
 that as it now stands there is no important difference between 
 its language and that of later books written shortly before 
 the return of the Israelites from the Babylonish captivity. 
 This fact points to the substitution of more modern for 
 ancient forms of expression. And if the absence of the 
 word in question between Leviticus and Zechariah proves it 
 had fallen into disuse, what does its absence from the other 
 Pentateuchal books, supposed to be contemporary with Le 
 viticus, and written by the same hand, prove ? It is a puerile 
 forcing of a word which signifies companionship, association, 
 friendship, and not primarily, or directly, identity of nature, 
 to say, " In Leviticus the word is used strictly of a fellow- 
 man, one who is as himself. The name designates one united 
 indissolubly by common bonds of nature, which a man may 
 violate but cannot annihilate. When, then, this title is ap 
 plied to the relation of an individual to God, it is clear that 
 That Individual can be no mere man, but must be one united 
 with God by an Unity of Being." We might as reasonably 
 infer the Lord of Hosts is human, because He calls a man 
 His fellow, as infer the man is of the same Uncreated Nature 
 with the Lord of Hosts. Is it not a preposterous thing 
 gravely to argue that " man of my fellowship " stands for 
 " Divine Being Who is by nature One with Me " ? 
 
 In Zech. ii. 10-13 ; xii. 10, Mr. Liddon discerns a reference, 
 in the clearest language, to " Christ s Incarnation and Passion, 
 as being that of Jehovah Himself." As -to the verses in chap, 
 ii., I must leave the clearness of the reference to those who 
 are able to perceive it, and with regard to xii. 10 the Evan 
 gelist (John xix. 37) has perhaps followed the true reading : 
 " They shall look on Him [not me] whom they pierced." 
 Jehovah is the Speaker, and, if the piercing is physical and 
 literal, the person mourned over would seem to be the per 
 son pierced. But, surely, no prophet of Old Testament days 
 could have spoken about piercing Jehovah, and bitterly la- 
 
80 PROPHECIES OF HAGGAI AND MALACHI. 
 
 menting over Him as though He were dead. " Many He 
 brew MSS., and some old editions, read, look to Him? 
 which agrees with the Evangelist s quotation " (Davidson) ; 
 but, for the reading of the received text, the external author 
 ity is strong. Leeser makes out a consistent sense, by sup 
 posing an ellipsis: "They will look up toward Me [for every 
 one] whom they have thrust through ; " and explains in a 
 note : " The objective case is omitted in the original : whom 
 they have pierced cannot be an apposition to me, because the 
 next clause is, they will lament for him, not me j hence it is 
 clear that the objective every one must be supplied." Fuerst 
 (Lexicon) assigns to the verb a secondary, metaphorical 
 meaning, to revile, to calumniate, and in so doing comes very 
 near the Septuagint translation : " because they have insulted 
 [me]." The spirit of grace and supplication to be poured 
 out upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusa 
 lem would cause them to look up to Jehovah with contri 
 tion, because in the rejection and slaughter of His prophets 
 they had insulted Him. In the New Testament application 
 of the passage, a martyred prophet " is viewed as a type of 
 the higher martyr, Christ." 
 
 By his reference to Hag. ii. 7, 9, Mr. Liddon appears to in 
 dorse the translation, Desire of all nations, and to understand 
 it of the Messiah. But that translation does not quite accu 
 rately express the meaning ; and the application to Christ is 
 indisputably wrong. Only two meanings are admitted by 
 good Hebraists: (1) the desirable or precious things treas 
 ure of all nations / (2) the choice of all nations the noblest 
 and best of att peoples. The Septuagint translation is some 
 what ambiguous, but it expresses one or other of the two 
 meanings just given. There is, therefore, nothing to sustain 
 the statement. " Haggai implies Messiah s Divinity by fore 
 telling that His presence will make the glory of the second 
 temple greater than the glory of the first." Haggai s pre 
 diction is nowhere, in the New Testament, referred to 
 Christ. 
 
 Mai. iii. 1 should not be disjoined from the question with 
 
MR. LIDDON S ARBITRARY CONCLUSIONS. 81 
 
 which the preceding chapter ends : Where is the God of 
 judgment or justice f A judicial advent of the Almighty is 
 foretold, the use of the Hebrew definite article with the 
 otherwise general title, Lord {Adoii), and the proprietorship 
 of the Temple, fixing the sense. The text, therefore, does not 
 "point to Messiah as the Angel of the Covenant, Jehovah, 
 Whom Israel was seeking, and Who would suddenly come 
 to- His temple" (p. 89). The Angel or Messenger of the 
 Covenant, and Jehovah, are evidently distinct persons, the 
 former being denominated (iv. 5) Elijah the prophet, to whom 
 John the Baptist answered (Matt. xi. 14; xvii. 12). "The 
 verse before us asserts that Jehovah would send His messen 
 ger to prepare His way, the Messenger of the covenant 
 they wished ; and immediately after the Lord Himself 
 should suddenly enter Jlis temple, He shall come. But 
 who may abide the day of His corning, &c. ? The coming 
 refers to Jehovah Himself, not to His Messenger who is sent. 
 Jehovah comes to punish, purify, and refine (comp. iii. 17, 18). 
 By connecting the clauses of the verse with one another alter 
 nately, the whole becomes apparent : Behold, I will send 
 My messenger, and he shall prepare the way before Me ; 
 even the messenger of the covenant whom ye delight in ; 
 and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His 
 temple, behold He shall come, saith the Lord of hosts r 
 (Davidson, Introduction, &c., vol. iii. p. 344). If we leave 
 the arrangement of the clauses unchanged, and render the 
 conjunctive particle by its more usual meaning, and instead 
 of even, we can then refer He shall come to the Lord, and 
 obtain with some obscurity the sense which the above trans 
 position more clearly brings out. 
 
 After interweaving texts from the Old Testament in a 
 manner to make them appear to contain and enunciate the 
 dogma he advocates, Mr. Liddon exclaims, " Read this lan 
 guage as a whole ; read it by the light of the great doctrine 
 which it attests, and Avhich in turn illuminates it, the doc 
 trine of a Messiah, Divine as well as Human ; all is nat 
 ural, consistent, full of point and meaning." By " as a whole " 
 
82 STRAINED EXPOSITIONS. 
 
 he means, " as I have selected and packed it." Not a pas 
 sage he quotes in relation to Christ s Divinity will, when 
 legitimately interpreted by its context, bear the meaning he 
 thrusts into it. His appeal to the Old Testament is simply a 
 string of audacious assertions, arrayed in phrases picked 
 from this place and that, just such fragments being torn out 
 of a Psalm or Prophetic book as will serve his purpose. Of 
 this he seems to have a dim consciousness, though he is not 
 at all ashamed of it, and fails to perceive how injuriously it 
 affects his cause. He complains that " it is possible to avoid 
 any frank acknowledgment of the imposing spectacle pre 
 sented by converging and consentient lines of prophecy, and 
 to refuse to consider the prophetic utterances, except in de 
 tail and one by one ; as if, forsooth, Messianic prophecy were 
 an intellectual enemy whose forces must be divided by the 
 criticism that would conquer it." The complaint is highly 
 characteristic, and reveals the mind of one who has sunk the 
 judge and inquirer in the advocate. How can we ascertain 
 the meaning of prophetic utterances otherwise than singly 
 and in detail ? The true sense of each one must be dis 
 covered before we can classify them, or assign to each its 
 place in a scheme embracing the whole. They cannot be 
 fairly blended, or mutually strengthen each other, until each 
 has been ascertained to have a definite and concordant 
 meaning. They cannot acquire by combination a sense dif 
 ferent in kind from that which belongs to each individually. 
 The objection to Mr. Liddon s argument is, that the passages 
 which he imagines his selected fragments to represent have 
 not the definite and concordant meaning required. They are 
 not, for the purpose he has in view, properly cumulative and 
 reciprocally corroborative evidences, but vague, unconnected, 
 and often discordant materials. No doubt if, forgetting the 
 specialities of the Hebrew intellect of Jewish culture and 
 Eastern diction, we look for philosophical ideas and precise 
 guarded expression, we may be tempted to think the wording 
 of prophecy " overstrained and exaggerated," and reasonable 
 interpretation of it " insipid and disappointing." But the 
 
RABBINICAL LITERATURE. 83 
 
 presence in the Old Testament Books of a Messianic element, 
 and of statements designed by God to receive in Christ their 
 highest fulfilment, may be freely and even urgently recog 
 nized, while the obviously truthful confession is not withheld : 
 " It is impossible to suppose that the mystery of the Incar 
 nation was distinctly revealed and clearly understood under 
 the Old Testament dispensation. God does not thus make 
 haste with men " (Perow T ne on Psalm xlv.) . 
 
 To minds filled with the impressions of traditional ortho 
 doxy, rational expositions of Scripture must, for the most 
 part, seem flat and unsavory. Agreement with their prepos 
 sessions is, to such minds, the measure of truth and spiritu 
 ality disagreement well-nigh the sole source of difficulties. 
 Calm investigation and rational judgment are not the instru 
 ments employed in reaching conclusions, and no faultiness is 
 seen in a method of interpretation which proceeds on the 
 supposition that the Sacred writers, while at one moment in 
 the current of ideas belonging to their age, were at the next 
 moment carried quite above and beyond it, and prompted to 
 use language which was to themselves either meaningless, or 
 had a meaning which contradicted their most cherished con 
 victions. It is sophistry and subterfuge to refer to Rabbin 
 ical literature, and say, " In that literature nothing is plainer 
 than that the ancient Jews believed the expected Messiah to 
 be Divine, with a belief notoriously based upon the lan 
 guage of the Prophets and Psalmists." Divine is an ambig 
 uous word, and may signify much less than the proper Deity 
 of the One Uncreated Being. In what sense does Mr. Lid- 
 don use the word? The question is not whether some of 
 the Jews have recognized in Messiah Godlike qualities, or 
 imagined Him to exhibit and exercise some of Jehovah s 
 attributes ; but have they apprehended Him to be truly and 
 properly God, equal to, and in essence the same with, Jehovah ? 
 Assuredly they have not. The Jews have always believed 
 in One God, and One only. To them, the Lord of Heaven 
 and earth has ever been not merely One Nature, but One 
 Individual Being. They have never, either in Old Testa- 
 
84 THE BOOK OF ZOHAR. 
 
 ment or subsequent times, acknowledged a Godhead embrac 
 ing distinctions of Persons, and, if they had ever believed 
 Messiah to be truly God, they must have expected the One 
 Almighty Infinite Spirit would personally clothe Himself in 
 flesh and dwell among men. Can Mr. Liddon affirm they 
 ever did expect this ? Can he produce the testimonies which 
 enshrine such an expectation, and name the document where 
 Jews have taught, or even conjectured, that Messiah and 
 Jehovah are One and the same Being ? If he cannot, the 
 language in which he refers to Rabbinical literature is un 
 warranted and deceptive. He has trusted too implicitly to 
 the representations of Schottgen, on whose " Horce Hebraicce 
 et Talmudicce " well informed and prudent scholars now place 
 a much abated reliance. The enormous improbability that 
 Jews would imagine the Divine Nature to comprise more 
 than One Personal God interdicts an easy credence to the 
 statements of zealous partisans, who descry distinctively 
 ecclesiastical theories in the flighty mysticism of Rabb s by 
 whom Christianity w r as despised. 
 
 Mr. Westcott, in his chapter on " The Jewish Doctrine of 
 Messiah " {Introduction to the Study of the Gospels), does not 
 permit orthodox convictions and desires to beguile him into 
 assertions incapable of proof, and of Schottgen he says : " He 
 has accumulated a most valuable collection of Jewish tradi 
 tions ; but, apart from minor inconsistencies, he exhibits no 
 critical perception whatever of the relative value of the au 
 thorities which he quotes, and often seems to me to misin 
 terpret the real tenor of their testimony. The writers who 
 have followed him have for the most part confirmed his 
 errors." 
 
 The JSook of Zohar, written or compiled in the thirteenth 
 century (Schottgen suspects by a Christian), is one great foun 
 tain of arguments for coincidences and resemblances between 
 Rabbinical opinions and the Church s revelations. Westcott 
 judges Schottgen s deductions from this Kabbalistic com 
 pilation to be unwarranted ; and, in a paragraph on " False 
 Interpretations of Zohar," writes : " Pantheism lies at the basis 
 
NATURE OF JEWISH MESSIANIC HOPES. 85 
 
 of Zohar. At the same time, speculations on the Divine 
 Nature are necessarily so vague, that recent theologians have 
 found in Zohar the whole of Christianity. The two natures 
 of Messiah, and His threefold office, are said to be symbol 
 ized ; and those more abstruse questions, as to the Person of 
 Christ which agitated and divided the Church, are said to be 
 anticipated and decided in the mystical dogmas of Simeon 
 ben Jochai" (the reputed author of Zohar}. 
 
 In the Jewish Messianic hopes and conceptions up to the 
 time of Christ s coming, Mr. Wescott affirms, " The essentially 
 Divine Nature of Messiah was not acknowledged; " and, from 
 his treatment of Rabbinical literature generally, it is clear he 
 regards as not proven all the positions which Dr. Davidson, 
 in the Article before quoted, pointedly denies. The best 
 ascertained results of the evidence appear to be summarized 
 in Dr. Davidson s words : 
 
 " Following out the hints given in the Book of Daniel, 
 some later Jews conceived that Messiah was concealed with 
 the Father, existing before His appearance to men, the Lord 
 and Judge of all. Highest of the creatures of God, he was 
 the Divine Representative, enthroned in surpassing dignity. 
 Sometimes, again, he was considered a great prophet, the 
 Instructor of the peoples ; or the true Adam, reappearing to 
 bring back the paradisiacal state. It is impossible to discover 
 a distinct vestige of the belief among the Jews that he was 
 God or truly Divine. None supposed that he was to be of 
 the same or similar substance with the Father. Why ? Be 
 cause it was contrary to their Monotheism. And we are safe 
 in asserting that no modern Jew interprets the Old Testa 
 ment in a sense involving the Divinity of Messiah s person. 
 . . . It has been supposed that the Word (Jlemra) of 
 Jehovah, in the Targums, or Jewish paraphrases of the Old 
 Testament, is identical with the Messiah ; and therefore the 
 expression has been used for doctrinal purposes. But the 
 alleged identity is baseless. . . . The Word of Jehovah 
 is nothing more than Jehovah Himself, His will going forth 
 into action, His self-revealing agency." 
 
86 THE JEWS NEVER IDENTIFIED 
 
 " The will of God in action, His Word taking effect, was 
 the initiative stage of that speculation to which the Jews, 
 ignorant of second causes or the laws of Nature, were un 
 avoidably led. By degrees, the Word, or Self-revelation of 
 God, became so prominent, that Jehovah himself receded from 
 view, and the operative power virtually took His place, as a 
 Person by whom He was manifested, a Mediator between the 
 Creator and creature. Such is the process by which the 
 mediative element tended to personality, and terminated in 
 an outward agent." 
 
 " In Jewish literature, so far as we know, no identification 
 of the Memra of Jehovah with the Messiah occurs. It might 
 be shown that it is sometimes identified with the Shekinah ; 
 but the latter was only the visible presence of Jehovah, not 
 a person. As to the correspondence of the Memra with the 
 Greek logos in John i. 1, and its denoting the same thing, we 
 believe, with Prideaux, that it is precarious to urge it." 
 
 " When the Jew r s are told that, had their forefathers not 
 been swayed by prejudice, they would have perceived their 
 promised Messiah was to be the Son of God, co-equal with 
 God, and that he was revealed as such in their own Scrip 
 tures, they know the worth of an assertion contrary to their 
 Scriptures." 
 
 The exposition which distils the dogma of Christ s Deity 
 from the Old Testament is remarkably abnormal, and re 
 quires the warrant of another revelation to indorse its pe 
 culiarities. Indubitably, every maxim of reason is inverted, 
 and all acquaintance with human feeling and intelligence is 
 set at nought, when a faith so fundamental and constantly 
 reiterated as the Hebrew faith in God s Unity is assumed to 
 be modified by the darkling insinuations of a few phrases 
 which, if they are not decidedly metaphorical, are decidedly 
 ambiguous, and are made to carry in orthodox commentaries 
 the least probable amongst all their possible senses. And if 
 the authors of the New Testament Scriptures had wished to 
 find, and been satisfied they could find, in the Old, evidence 
 for the Godhead of Jesus, such as later exposition concocted, 
 
MESSIAH WITH GOD. 87 
 
 surely they would have adduced something more pertinent 
 than Isaiah vii. 14 and Psalm xlv. 6, 7. In the last chapter 
 of the Gospel according to Luke, the risen Jesus is related to 
 have explained to two of His disciples, " in all the Scriptures 
 the things concerning Himself; " and again " to have opened 
 the understanding of the apostles, that they might under 
 stand the Scriptures." Is there the faintest token of His 
 having drawn upon a store of Messianic prophecy which 
 " mounts to the highest assertions of His Divinity " ? 
 
CHAPTER IY. 
 
 Brief criticism of the argument entitled, " Our Lord s work in the world 
 a witness to His Divinity." Christ s authority and kingship. 
 Characteristic " originality and audacity " of His teaching and plan. 
 Evidence for the contemplated universality of His kingdom. 
 Difficulties attaching to the supposition that genuine words of Christ 
 are recorded in St. Matt, xxviii. 19, 20. Are the "Synoptical 
 accounts of our Lord s Nativity in essential unison with the Christol- 
 ogy of St. John s Gospel ? " The argument concerning the " Doc 
 trine of the Eternal Word in the Prologue of St. John s Gospel " 
 examined. Strong contrasts between the accounts in the Synoptists, 
 and the last Gospel, of the time and manner in which our Lord s 
 Messiahship was freely made known. The reasonable conclusion 
 from a general view of his Gospel is, that the latest Evangelist did 
 not intend in his Prologue to affirm the absolute Deity of the Logos 
 or Word. 
 
 MK. LIDDON has made a Lecture entitled, " Our Lord s Work 
 in the World a Witness to His Divinity," preliminary to the 
 discussion of the New Testament witness concerning Christ s 
 nature and person. This arrangement is hardly the natural 
 one in a simple search after truth, but for the aims of mere 
 advocacy it has manifest advantages. In dealing with 
 Christianity as a grand fact in the history of mankind, there 
 is room for much striking general statement, wherein the 
 inconveniences of accuracy and attention to details may be 
 avoided, and an impression favorable to the reception of a 
 particular dogma may be produced. Outlined descriptions 
 of the Kingdom of God, of the broader features of Christi 
 anity, and its success in the world, may easily be thrown into 
 a shape adapted to the theory that Christ s proper Deity is 
 the appropriate explanation of every fact, the solution of 
 every difficulty. They may also be easily thrown into other 
 shapes, and made to point to different and less definite con 
 clusions. Creeds, which have far less than Christianity has to 
 
MR. LIDDON S THIRD LECTURE. 89 
 
 make them acceptable to the intellect and religious sentiments 
 of mankind, have spread rapidly, and acquired enduring, 
 extensive, and not easily explicable prevalence. Nothing 
 more than a very disputable opinion is set forth in the sen 
 tence : " The truth which really and only accounts for the 
 establishment in this our human world of such a religion as 
 Christianity, and of such an institution as the Church, is the 
 truth that Jesus Christ was believed to be more than Man, 
 the truth that Jesus Christ is what men believed Him to be, 
 the truth that Jesus Christ is God" (p. 146). If the simpler 
 moral and spiritual truths which compose the main substance 
 of Christ s teaching are fundamental laws of human life, 
 borne witness to by the Spirit of God in the human reason 
 and conscience, then the general language wherein Christ 
 speaks of the Kingdom of God, and the actual triumph of 
 the Gospel, may both be accounted for by recognizing the 
 hand of Our Father in Heaven, and seeing in Christ not 
 His Equal and a sufficient substitute for Him, but His Son, 
 and Servant, and Messenger, furnished by His Spirit to do 
 His work, and to become our Lord, and Guide, and Pattern, 
 in the path which leads to Him. 
 
 There are tw^o or three points in the third Lecture which 
 call for remark ; the rest of its reasonings will become value 
 less if the argument in the succeeding Lectures can be shown 
 
 O O 
 
 to be fallacious. 
 
 Christ s authority and Kingship in the Kingdom of God 
 are spoken of in terms which would be justifiable only when 
 Christ had been proved by the clearest evidence to have 
 claimed absolutely Divine dignity, and to have set Himself 
 before men as the highest and sufficing Object of their adora 
 tion. But, as a matter of fact, He did nothing of the kind. 
 It is assumption and exaggeration of the grossest sort to say, 
 " He deliberately proposes to rule all human thought, to make 
 Himself the Centre of all human affections, to be the Law 
 giver of humanity, and the Object of man s adoration" 
 (p. 116). Where is there the semblance of proof He did so? 
 He knew that he bore God s commission, that God was with 
 
90 CHRIST S AUTHORITY AND KINGSHIP. 
 
 Him, and that His Father s work, in which He was the Instru 
 ment, would be prosperous and indestructible ; but He never 
 claimed to be, by inherent independent right, the supreme 
 Ruler of mankind. His perfect filial dependence His 
 unwavering faith in One greater than Himself His realiz 
 ing consciousness of His Divine mission, and the presence 
 with Him of " His Father and our Father, His God and our 
 God " explain the breadth and boldness of His words, 
 when He speaks without directly naming the One Supreme 
 Fountain of all His lordship and power. Mr. Liddon must 
 be aware, however much his mind may be saturated with 
 expositions which he conceives to be authoritative, that to 
 quote detached magisterial and regal expressions of Christ s, 
 for the purpose of insinuating He knew himself to be God, 
 and wished, with some reserve, to impart the knowledge to 
 His followers, is to twist and misrepresent the whole tenor 
 of His recorded language. The Kingdom is avowedly His, 
 in a subordinate, not in the highest sense ; His Kingship is 
 delegated, not independent and supreme ; " His Father 
 appointed unto Him the Kingdom " (Luke xxii. 29), and gave 
 to Him authority and power (Matt. xi. 27 ; John iii. 85 ; xiii. 
 3 ; xvii. 2, and following verses, which explain xvi. 15). Our 
 Lord speaks continually of the Kingdom of Heaven and the 
 Kingdom of G-od, but rarely calls the Kingdom His own, 
 though, in all but the highest sense, it is so. The expression 
 my Kingdom occurs, I believe, in the language ascribed to 
 Christ, only four times in the Gospels ; once in Luke xxii. 30, 
 and three times in a single verse, John xviii. 36 ; and the 
 expression His (the Son of Man s) Kingdom occurs only 
 twice. The attempt, therefore, to infer Christ s Deity from 
 His claims to Sovereignty is quite futile. If the nine-tenths 
 of His language which are explicit may be allowed to eluci 
 date the other tenth, He is Lord and King under God, and 
 in an acceptation which in no degree suggests His Deity, but 
 implies that, in relation to God, His sovereignty is secondary, 
 official, and conferred. 
 
 Mr. Liddon considers "the formation ot an organized 
 
LAWS, ETC., OF THE CHURCH. 91 
 
 society was of the very essence of the work of Christ ; " and, 
 from the teaching of Christ himself, would fain elicit the lines 
 of a definite and extended organization. A Kingdom of 
 souls, a spiritual Society " whose original laws are for the 
 most part set forth by its Founder in His Sermon on the 
 Mount," and "whose visibility lies in the fact of its being a 
 society of men, and not a society solely made up of incorpo 
 real beings such as the angels " is, of course, very flexible 
 with respect to its " governmental organization," and is the 
 very subject for a daring manipulator of texts. Our Lord s 
 declaration that they who confessed or denied Him before 
 men would be by Him confessed or denied " before His Father 
 in Heaven," and " before the angels of God " (Matt. x. 32, 33 ; 
 Luke xii. 8, 9), is translated into the "insistance with great 
 emphasis upon the payment of homage to His Invisible 
 Majesty, outwardly, and before the eyes of men;" and we 
 are apprised, " He provides His realm with a visible govern 
 ment, deriving its authority from Himself, and entitled on 
 this account to deferential and entire obedience on the part 
 of His subjects. To the first members of this government His 
 commission rims thus : " He that receiveth you receiveth 
 Me" (Matt. x. 40; comp. Luke x. 16). It is the King Who 
 will Himself reign throughout all History on the thrones of 
 His representatives; it is He Who, in their persons, will be 
 acknowledged or rejected. Now, all this extortionate deduc 
 tion, so far as it bears on Mr. Liddon s main purpose, the 
 ascribing of absolute, highest supremacy to Christ, is excluded 
 by the words of immediate context : " and he that receiveth 
 me, receiveth Him that sent me " (see also Mark ix. 37 ; John 
 xiii. 20). The climax is the reception of "the One God and 
 Father," " The Blessed and Only Potentate," Whose great 
 Apostle Christ is. Here, as elsewhere, Christ studiously leads 
 to One higher and greater than Himself, and carefully shuts 
 out the idea which His modern interpreter, by mutilated 
 quotation, inserts. 
 
 In speaking of the originality of our Lord s design and 
 teaching ; of " His isolation in early life ; " and " His social 
 
92 
 
 obscurity," Mr. Liddon unduly expands very insufficient 
 information, and builds with very slight materials. But, 
 granting that our Lord s mind was never cultivated by train 
 ing in the schools of Gentile or Jewish speculation, yet He 
 was profoundly versed in the Canonical and Apocryphal 
 books of the Old Testament, and brought to their study a 
 heart and intellect capable of extracting and assimilating 
 their richest moral and spiritual treasures. To congenial 
 minds inhabited by the Holy Spirit, no kind of truth is so 
 suggestive, and admits of such manifold application, as moral 
 and spiritual truth. To unfold that truth and throw it into 
 new practical forms did not betoken an originality too vast 
 for divinely-aided humanity ; and the vision of an universal 
 faith, and the establishment of such institutions as Baptism 
 and the Lord s Supper, did not express conceptions so unique 
 and transcendent as to necessitate an Uncreated Person. 
 Christ s foresight that His death and resurrection would be 
 springs of life in the society of His followers may be ex 
 plained by prophetic inspiration, without fabricating a Per 
 sonal Incarnation of Deity. The originality of our Lord s 
 plan has, however, too indirect a bearing on the doctrine of 
 His Divinity ; and the plan itself, so far as His own acts and 
 words exhibit it, is too vague a matter to need more than a 
 passing remark. The definiteness and details of organization 
 seem to me to exist solely in subsequent additions ; a starting 
 point is mistaken for a prolific germ, and external accretions, 
 more or less congruous, are not discriminated from the un- 
 foldings of intrinsic, vital growth. But, on this part of his 
 subject, Mr. Liddon, though he strives to contribute to the 
 scope of his argument, commits himself to few precise state 
 ments. His aim is rather to suggest and insinuate, and so 
 predispose the mind of the trustful reader for the reception 
 of what is to follow. Yet an early paragraph of his third 
 Lecture contains an admission in which some readers will see 
 a pregnancy beyond his intention : " Doubtless there were 
 great saints in ancient Israel ; doubtless Israel had prayers 
 and hymns such as may be found in the Psalter, than which 
 
ITS " AUDACITY." 98 
 
 nothing more searching and more spiritual has been since 
 produced in Christendom." 
 
 The " audacity of Christ s plan " is, we are told, " observa 
 ble, first of all, in the fact that the plan is originally proposed 
 to the world, with what might appear to us to be such haz 
 ardous completeness. The idea of the Kingdom of God 
 issues almost as if in a single jet, and with a fully developed 
 body, from the thought of Jesus Christ. Put together the 
 Sermon on the Mount, the Charge to the Twelve Apostles 
 (St. Matt. x. 5-4*2), the Parables of the Kingdom, the Dis 
 course in the Supper-room (St. John xiv., xv., xvi.), and the 
 institution of the two great Sacraments, and the plan of our 
 Saviour is before you. And it is enunciated with an accent 
 of calm unfaltering conviction that it will be realized in 
 human history" (p. 113). Mr. Liddon s notion of " a single 
 jet" must be singular; but perhaps a single jet, when theo 
 logically expounded, signifies an intermittent, varied, and 
 eddying stream. Let any one carefully read and compare 
 the utterances referred to, and he will discover neither haz 
 ardous completeness, nor perfect consonance, but progressive, 
 perhaps fluctuating thought. The " fully developed body " is 
 imported into the thought of Jesus Christ, from ecclesiastical 
 dogmas and developments. Does the injunction (Matt. x. 5), 
 " Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of 
 the Samaritans enter ye "not; but go rather to the lost sheep 
 of the house of Israel" (see also 23d verse), inaugurate the 
 preaching of a world-wide religion ? 
 
 An eagerness to find in Christ s words well-defined predic 
 tions of the universal spread of His religion causes the real 
 meaning to be unconsciously overstepped. When the poor 
 woman anointed Him, our Lord did not " simply announce 
 that the act would be told as a memorial of her throughout the 
 world " (Matt. xxvi. 13 ; Mark xiv. 9), but said conditionally, 
 wherever in the whole world the Gospel should be preached, 
 there her conduct would also be narrated. Knowing that 
 the faith and service He enjoined were the faith and service 
 in which all mankind might find regeneration and communion 
 
94 ANTICIPATED UNIVERSALITY 
 
 with God, Christ, confiding in His heavenly Father s love to 
 imin, no doubt expected the propagation of His religion 
 among the nations of the earth, but the expression of this 
 expectation is a different thing from designed and formal 
 prediction that in every part of the world His Gospel should 
 be preached. The saying (John x. 16), " Other sheep I have, 
 which are not of this fold," &c., does not amount to an 
 announcement that from all the districts of the globe our 
 Lord will gather sheep, and become the One Shepherd of all 
 men. Later opinions and after events cause us to stretch to 
 the utmost the significance of the words ascribed to Him. 
 The true, conscious, original meaning may have been nar 
 rower and less defined than the sense we affix. And if, after 
 the fashion of expositors, we were to be urgent about verbal 
 minutiae, we could not forget that in John xviL 9, 20, our 
 Lord is made to declare, " He prays not for the world, but 
 for His then existing Apostles, and those who, through their 
 word", were believing on Him ; " the true reading having the 
 present participle. We are bound to notice that, in Matt. 
 xv. 24, He is made to say, " I was not sent but to the lost 
 sheep of the house of Israel ; " and again, in xix. 28, is made 
 to promise His Apostles that " when He should sit in the 
 throne of His glory they also should sit upon twelve thrones, 
 judging the twelve tribes of Israel." * In Matt, xxiv., Mark 
 xiii., Luke xxi., the language attributed to Christ himself, 
 though highly figurative and perplexing, imports plainly 
 enough that His second coming, and the end of the world 
 (literally, winding up of the age), were to follow very closely 
 
 * With Protestants who believe that Christ, " not having the Holy 
 Spirit given unto Him by measure," was morally and spiritually perfect, 
 free criticism of the Gospel history is a necessity. If we are to hold to 
 the faith that His character wan spotless and lovely, the Christian percep 
 tion, which His teaching and example have enlightened, must be at lib 
 erty to weed the records concerning Him. For instance, which is, to a 
 venerating and rational mind, the more probable conclusion, that two 
 Gospels preserve a legendary story (Matt. xxi. 18, 19 ; Mark xi. 12-14) ; 
 or that Jesus, under the stimulus of disappointed hunger, cursed a fig-tree 
 for being fruitless at a season when the presence of fruit would have been 
 unwonted 1 
 
95 
 
 after the destruction of Jerusalem, and to take place before 
 the generation which heard His words had passed away : see 
 also Matt. x. 23 ; xvi. 27, 28 ; John xxi. 23 ; and the numer 
 ous passages in the Epistles and Apocalypse, which show 
 bow, in the expectations of the Apostolic age, Christ s second 
 coming was not remote, but very nigh. The apparently con 
 flicting statements, in Matt. xxiv. 14, Mark xiii. 10, where 
 our Lord is represented to have said, " That the Gospel must 
 be first preached unto all nations" (see also Luke xxiv. 47), 
 are explained, (1) by the fact that in Matthew s record a 
 term is used which does not signify world in the modern 
 acceptation, but the regions anciently known to be in 
 habited and civilized ; the Roman Empire seems to be its 
 widest New Testament meaning; (2) by St. Paul s descrip 
 tion of the extent to which, towards the end of his career, 
 he considered the Gospel to have been already diffused 
 (Col. i. 6, 23). 
 
 Matt, xxviii. 19, 20, is a passage too uncertain to be quoted 
 in a controversial work, without some attempt to vindicate 
 its genuineness from the very grave doubts which other por 
 tions of the New Testament compel us to entertain. Mark 
 xvi. 15, which only in part agrees with it, is in that conclud 
 ing section which every scholar knows to be an extremely 
 questionable fraction of the Second Gospel ; and the other 
 Gospels do not in any degree sustain it. The words utter 
 most part of the earth (Acts i. 8) are not determinate. 
 Earth may there have the restricted sense before referred to. 
 Bloomfield, having an eye, I presume, to the after narrative, 
 writes in the spirit of a reconciler : " The expression was 
 probably understood by the Disciples of that part of the East 
 only, namely, Syria. But our Lord, doubtless, meant it of 
 the whole world" And, if any such plain command had been 
 issued by Christ, how could there have been, as Acts x. and 
 xi. demonstrate there was, hesitation, doubt, and surprise 
 regarding the admission of the Gentiles to Christian gifts and 
 privileges? Let any ordinarily intelligent and fair-minded 
 man, whose attention has been called to the subject, read the 
 
96 THE APOSTOLIC BAPTISMAL FORMULA. 
 
 notices of the first preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles, 
 and then ask himself whether it is credible (if the Acts of 
 the Apostles is trustworthy history) that our Lord had, at a 
 most impressive time, and under most impressive circumstan 
 ces, uttered the words which Matt, xxviii. 19, 20, puts into 
 his mouth ? It is simply inconceivable the Apostles should 
 have forgotten such a charge, or have failed to adduce it in 
 a difficulty, which, if it had not totally prevented, it would 
 in a moment have set at rest. Yet there is no trace of recol 
 lection of, or reference to, the grand and solemn commission, 
 in whose exact wording Mr. Liddon finds the occasion for an 
 outburst of declamatory rhetoric (p. 117). It is noticeable, 
 moreover, that St. Paul, when he writes concerning the duty 
 of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles, and the Christian 
 equality of Gentile and Jew, never appeals to the great Mas 
 ter s decisive parting injunction, an injunction on which, if 
 genuine, the duty of teaching all nations must have been felt 
 in large measure to rest. Supposing that injunction to have 
 been really given, the distinction between the Apostleships of 
 the circumcision and the uncircumcision (Gal. ii. 7-9) must 
 have been purely nominal, arbitrary, and unauthorized. 
 
 But this, though sufficient, is not the whole evidence against 
 the genuineness of the passage. The Acts and Epistles con 
 tain several references to Christian Baptism, but no vestiges 
 of the formula, " In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, 
 and of the Holy Ghost." It is, indeed, next to impossible to 
 believe, in the face of Acts viii. 16; xix. 5; Rom. vi. 3; Gal. 
 iii. 27 ; 1 Cor. i. 13-15, that the Christians of Apostolic days 
 used the formula.* Baptism into the Name of Jesus Christ, 
 and into Jesus Christ, is not Baptism after the form pre 
 scribed at the close of the First Gospel. There must have 
 been in the words with which Christian Baptism was at .first 
 administered a distinctly prominent, not to say exclusive, 
 connection with the Name of Christ, and the idea of Christ s 
 
 * To the texts above referred to may be added Acts ii. 38, x. 48; 
 though the use of a different preposition makes the contrast with Matt, 
 xxviii. 19 less clear and certain. 
 
THE ACCOUNTS OF CHRIST S BIRTH. 97 
 
 leadership ; for upon any other supposition St. Paul s remon 
 strance with the sectarian Corinthians " Is Christ divided, 
 was Paul crucified for you, or were ye baptized into the name 
 of Paul ? " would be, in its final clause, pointless and inex 
 plicable. If St. Paul had known that his converts had been 
 baptized " into the Name of the Father," &c., how could fear 
 have crossed his mind, lest " any should say he had baptized 
 into his own name " ? The worst instructed convert from 
 heathenism could scarcely confuse the Names of Father, Son, 
 and Holy Ghost, with the name of a missionary by whom 
 Baptism had been administered. And how, we may well ask, 
 could St. Paul have written, " Christ sent me not to baptize, 
 but to preach the Gospel" (1 Cor. i. 17), if our Lord had, by 
 His own parting directions, sent His Apostles to baptize, no 
 less positively than He sent them to teach? That St. Paul 
 was not one of the original eleven is no satisfactory reply : he 
 could hardly have been ignorant what commission they had 
 received, and his own separate commission, coming from the 
 same Master, and relating to the same work, is not likely to 
 have differed from theirs in an important point. 
 
 The introductory statements of the fourth Evangelist seem 
 to Mr. Liddon perfectly reconcilable with the narratives given 
 by the first and by the third. " The accounts, then, of our 
 Lord s birth in two of the synoptic Evangelists, as illustrated 
 by the sacred songs of praise and thanksgiving which St. 
 Luke has preserved, point clearly to the entrance of a super 
 human Being into this our human world. Who indeed He 
 was is stated more explicitly by St. John ; but St. John does 
 not deem it necessary to repeat the history of His Advent. 
 The accounts of the Annunciation and the Miraculous Con 
 ception would not by themselves imply the Divinity of Christ. 
 But they do imply that Christ is superhuman ; they harmonize 
 with the kind of anticipations respecting Christ s appearance 
 in the world, which might be created by St, John s doctrine 
 of His pre-existent glory. These accounts cannot be forced 
 within the limits, and made to illustrate the laws, of Nature. 
 But, at least, St. John s narrative justifies mysteries in the 
 
 7 
 
98 APPEARANCE OF DISCREPANCIES. 
 
 synoptic Gospels which would be unintelligible without it; 
 and it is a vivid commentary upon hymns, the lofty strains of 
 which might of themselves be thought to savor of exag 
 geration" (p. 249). 
 
 Now, persons who give the subject a calm and impartial 
 attention can scarcely fail to observe that there is, to say the 
 least, a great appearance of discrepancy between the accounts 
 of the Nativity, and the announcement of the Fourth Gos 
 pel, the Logos became Flesh. That announcement agrees 
 with the doctrine which recognizes in Christ no real complete 
 personal humanity; but the plain meaning of the two Synop- 
 tists is, that a human person was brought into existence by a 
 miraculous conception and birth. There is nothing whatever 
 in the synoptical narrative to show the person of Christ to 
 have been superhuman in the sense of being pre-existent, and 
 independent of mortal birth.* The inferences from the Evan 
 gelical Canticles, in the first chapter of the third Gospel, are 
 as ill-grounded as is the inference from the prophetic name 
 Emmanuel, in which Mr. Liddon discovers an intimation of 
 " the full truth, that Christ is the Son of God, as being of the 
 
 * Some prominent points in the diversities entailed by the seemingly 
 diverse conceptions of Christ s person entertained by the Synoptists and 
 the last Evangelist are brought together in the following extract from 
 Dr. Davidson s very instructive and much-needed Introduction to the Study 
 of the New Testament : " In conformity with the doctrine of the incar 
 nate Logos, every thing is avoided in the Fourth Gospel that would favor 
 the idea of Christ s development in knowledge and virtue. He is perfect 
 at first, and all that implies growth is carefully kept out of sight. The 
 traditions that represent Him as a descendant of David, the genealogies 
 in Matthew, His birth at Bethlehem, the adoration of the Infant by the 
 Eastern Magi as King of the Jews, and the miraculous conception, are 
 absent. The fact that Jesus was baptized by John His inferior is also 
 omitted. The Incarnate Word cannot be exposed to the temptation re 
 corded in the Synoptists ; nor need a heavenly voice to attest His Son- 
 ship. . . . The entire account of His passion is also adapted to show that 
 the Word made flesh was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of 
 the world. He does not pray, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass 
 from me ; but The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not 
 drink it 1 nor would He say, Father, save me from this hour/ since He 
 had come for that hour. He knows the traitor from the beginning, and 
 proceeds to the place whither Judas is about to come, to show his obedi- 
 
PROLOGUE OP THE FOURTH .GOSPEL. 99 
 
 Divine Essence" (p. 247). It is simply untrue that in the 
 song of thanksgiving attributed to Zacharias, " the new-born 
 Saviour is the Lord, whose forerunner has been announced by 
 prophecy" (Luke i. 76) ; the Lord, there, is, quite obviously, 
 the Highest, the Lord God of Israel, to Whom the whole 
 Canticle is addressed. 
 
 The prologue of the fourth Evangelist has naturally a con 
 spicuous place in Mr. Liddon s argument. " By the word 
 Logos," he says, " St. John carries back his History of our 
 Lord to a point at which it has not yet entered into the 
 sphere of sense and time. . . At a point to which man can 
 not apply his finite conception of time, there was the Logos 
 or Word. When as yet nothing had been made, He icas. 
 What was the Logos f . . . The term Logos denotes, at the 
 very least, something intimately and everlastingly present 
 with God, something as internal to the Being of God as 
 thought is to the soul of man. In truth, the Divine Logos 
 is God reflected in His own eternal Thought ; in the Logos 
 God is His own Object. This Infinite Thought, the reflec 
 tion and counterpart of God, subsisting in God as a Being or 
 Hypostasis, and having a tendency to self-communication, 
 
 ence to the Father. His enemies fall to the ground when He says, I am 
 He ; and He dies uttering the triumphant cry, It is finished. He does 
 not partake of the paschal supper, because He was himself the true pass- 
 over. . . . Before Pilate, the synoptical King of the Jews is transformed 
 into a Sovereign, whose kingdom is truth. Simon of Cyrene does not 
 appear, because the idea of exhaustion and faintness would be deroga 
 tory. Eli, Eli, lama Sabacthani, is also eliminated from the gospel. 
 No external prodigy enhances the grandeur of His death. No earth 
 quake, no rending of rocks, or of the temple-vail, appears. His body 
 is laid in the tomb by two men of distinction, and embalmed at great 
 cost, contrary to the synoptical account. After His resurrection He 
 presents himself without previous notice to Mary Magdalene, and then 
 to the ten. Angels do not announce Him to the disciples. . . . These 
 observations show that the Gospel was not meant for history. It was 
 composed in another interest than the historical. . . . Speculative con 
 siderations are paramount. There is no human development, no growth 
 of incidents or course of life. The transactions are in the realm of 
 thought. The Word enshrined in His earthly tabernacle flashes out 
 splendor on the people, indicating the eternal and all-embracing light 
 which is to purify the world" (vol. ii. pp. 343-345). 
 
100 
 
 such is the Logos. The Logos is the Thought of God, not 
 intermittent and precarious like human thought, but subsist 
 ing with the intensity of a personal form. . . . What was 
 the relation of the Word to the Self-existent Being? He 
 was not merely naya iw 0eo), along with God (xvii. 5), but 
 TtQog TOV Qsbv (i. 1, 2). This last preposition expresses, beyond 
 the fact of co-existence or immanence, the more significant 
 fact of perpetuated inter-communion.* The Face of the 
 Everlasting Word, if we may dare so to express ourselves, 
 was ever directed towards the Face of the Everlasting Father. 
 But was the Logos then an independent being, existing ex 
 ternally to the One God ? To conceive of an independent 
 being, anterior to creation, would be an error at issue with 
 the first truth of monotheism ; and therefore Osog ty 6 yio /og. 
 The Word is not merely a Divine Being, but He is, in the 
 absolute sense, God. Thus from His eternal existence we 
 ascend first to His distinct Personality, and then to the full 
 truth of his substantial Godhead" (pp. 227-229). 
 
 I have quoted Mr. Liddon at length, because I am quite un 
 able to understand, and would not willingly misrepresent him. 
 He seems to me to be entangled among words, and to have 
 lost his hold upon intelligible ideas. His language makes 
 nrore enigmatical than ever the grand enigma that the Self- 
 existent Nature is One Indivisible Substance enfolding a 
 Plurality of Persons, each of Whom possesses " the totality 
 of the Divine attributes." 
 
 In the beginning, and from all eternity, may be theologi 
 cally, but are not rationally, convertible phrases. Logos is 
 evidently a term of most mutable and difficult, not to say in 
 comprehensible significance ; Word: Infinite Thought; God 
 reflected in His Own eternal Thought / and yet a Person 
 
 * Trpof does not express " immanence " or internal annexation, and the 
 radical signification towards is not invariably retained in the sense. There 
 can be no doubt about the justice of Winer s observation : " Sometimes 
 Trpdf with a noun in the Accusative appears to lose the import of the 
 Accusative, and to signify simply with, particularly before names of per 
 sons, as in Matt. xiii. 56 ; John i. 1 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 6." 
 
DONALDSON S VIEW. 101 
 
 whose distinct personality leaves unimpaired the personality 
 of the Everlasting Father God, Whose Word and Thought 
 he is : who can understand this revelation of the Logos, or 
 follow its Oxford expounder? Must we not conclude either 
 the writer of the fourth Gospel did not know his own mean 
 ing, or used his terms in senses lower than, and different 
 from, the senses assigned by Mr. Liddon ? It is impossible 
 for any man not illumined by light beyond that which reason 
 and Scripture furnish, to speak confidently about the expres 
 sion commonly translated The Word was God Logos is 
 most obscure, and the name God is without the article, while 
 the article is prefixed in the phrase with God, which stands 
 immediately before and immediately after. This omission 
 of the article creates an ambiguity quite unaccountable it 
 the writer had wished to avouch that the Word is absolutely, 
 in the fullest and highest acceptation, God. Winer remarks 
 (Sec. xix. 1) : "The Article could not have been omitted, if 
 John had intended to say that the Logos was 6 0&b<s (the 
 God), as in this passage dzb^ alone was ambiguous. That 
 John designedly omitted the article is apparent, partly from 
 the distinct antithesis, with the God, and partly from the 
 whole description of the Logos." Dr. James Donaldson,* 
 in his " Critical History of Christian Literature," &c., after 
 noticing that no translation into English can exactly repre 
 sent difficulties which the words of the first verse of the 
 fourth Gospel suggest, writes : 
 
 " That John does not assert that the Logos was one, or of 
 the same nature with the God, is plain from his use of Osbg 
 without the article. The unity of the Divine Nature in God 
 and Christ may be a satisfactory explanation of John s state 
 ment, but it is not what John states. The word Osog, as we 
 shall see in treating of Justin Martyr s use of the term, and 
 in many other cases was very widely applied. It was some 
 times applied to man when perfected ; it was applicable to 
 
 * Joint editor with Dr. Roberts of Messrs, darks very serviceable 
 series of translations, " The Ante-Nicene Christian Library." "The His 
 tory of Christian Literature," &c., is published by Macmillan. 
 
102 DAVIDSON S ANALYSIS OF " LOGOS." 
 
 any being possessed of supernatural powers ; especially was 
 it applicable to a being who was worshipped.* And per 
 haps what John meant to do, and certainly what he seems to 
 do here, is to make a very wide general statement that the 
 Logos was Divine. He does not obviate any -of the difficul 
 ties which might arise from the assertion. As far as John s 
 statement goes, we are bound to believe that the Logos is a 
 Divine Being ; but we go beyond John s statement when we 
 either assert that there are two Gods of equal glory and of 
 the same substance, or that there is but one Divine Being, 
 but two persons. John s assertion is of the vaguest and 
 most general nature. ... It seems scarcely possible not to 
 identify the statement in John s introduction with Philo s 
 doctrine. But we are not bound on that account to suppose 
 that John accepted the whole of Philo s doctrine. His words, 
 and the Word was a God, do not state that the Logos was a 
 second God" (vol. ii., Introduction, pp. 41-43). 
 
 Dr. Davidson, in his recent "Introduction to the New Testa 
 ment," judging " the balance of evidence to be clearly against 
 the fourth Gospel s authenticity," naturally sees, in some of 
 its dubious expressions, such an approach to the full Deifica 
 tion of Christ as might be expected from a Christian writing 
 towards the middle of the second century, Avith the purpose 
 of affirming and exalting Christ s pre-existent Being. In his 
 analysis of the Gospel s contents, he says : " The Logos was 
 a concrete person before the world existed, not becoming so 
 at the Incarnation. As reason becomes speech, so when the 
 eternal reason manifests itself, it is as the Logos ; not neces 
 sarily hypostatic, but such in the Gospel. When the Word 
 issued from the Divine Essence, i.e., was begotten, whether 
 from eternity or not, the Evangelist forbears to say. ... It is 
 observable that the appellation the Word does not occur in the 
 
 * In giving reasons for the necessity of "-a fresh definition at Nicaea," 
 Mr. Liddon tells us, " In the Arian age it was not enough to say that 
 Jesus Christ is God, because the Arians had contrived to impoverish and 
 degrade the idea conveyed by the Name of God so completely as to apply 
 that sacred word to a creature " (p. 434). 
 
" THEOS " WITHOUT THE ARTICLE. 103 
 
 speeches of Jesus himself; but that is no argument against its 
 being synonymous with Christ. . . . The Father and the Son 
 are both God ; but the Father alone is absolute God, filling up 
 the whole idea. The Son is a God, not God absolutely ; and 
 does not exhaust the conception " (vol. ii. pp. 325, 327). 
 
 The use of Osog without the article, in looser and inferior 
 senses, is illustrated by John x. 33, 35 ; Acts xii. 22 ; xxviii. 
 6 ; 2 Thess. ii. 4. The difference between a god, and the 
 Almighty Creator, is obvious in these texts ; and readers of 
 the Greek Testament will notice how, in immediate contexts, 
 Oco^ with the article is used to denote the Most High. The 
 speculative, nebulous title, the Word, is not given to Christ 
 in the fourth Gospel after the 14th verse of the first chapter, 
 though the ascription to him of pre-existence and exalted 
 dignity is plain throughout. But if the Evangelist had a 
 firm and coherent conception of the Word s true personal 
 Deity, it is strange that he makes John the Baptist, into 
 whose mouth he puts very explicit testimony to the Person 
 and work of Jesus, declare (iii. 34) Jesus to have been the 
 recipient of the Spirit, in unmeasured gift. How could a 
 Being, " Who is in the absolute sense God," require or receive 
 the Holy Spirit ? We can understand how the visible 
 descent of the Spirit to which the Baptist refers (i. 32, 33), 
 might be, in the Evangelist s view, no more than a miracu 
 lous attestation to John that Jesus was the Messiah and Son 
 of God, but to seek in the gift of the Spirit any qualification 
 for Christ s work as the Messenger of God, or any explana 
 tion of the fact of His speaking the words of God, is incon 
 sistent with the idea of His complete and Essential Divinity. 
 If our Lord s manhood had been " of Itself an individual 
 Being," instead of " a vesture which He folded around His 
 Person," we should still have been at a loss to imagine what 
 office the Spirit could have in endowing or regulating a Na 
 ture already indissolubly linked to the Nature of Very and 
 Eternal God. Was the Logos dormant, and did the Third 
 Person in the Blessed Trinity undertake the work, not only 
 of causing the conception of Christ s Humanity, but of guid- 
 
104 THE HOLY SPIRIT S RELATION TO CHRIST. 
 
 ing and sanctifying that Humanity after its junction with 
 the Second Person of " the mysterious Three Who yet are 
 One ? " If Christ s ministerial endowments, or any portion 
 of His perfect holiness, resulted from the presence with His 
 human nature of God s Spirit, what activity and influence 
 had the Eternal Word, " Who is One in Essence with the 
 First and the Third of the Persons or Subsistences," Who 
 together compose the Indivisible Self-existent Substance? 
 The action of the Holy Ghost, in the enrichment or sanctifi- 
 cation of our Lord s Humanity, is out of harmony with the 
 doctrine of the Incarnate Logos, enunciated at the outset of 
 the fourth Gospel. It would be out of harmony, even on the 
 supposition that Christ had a human person to be enriched 
 and sanctified ; it is far more out of harmony according to 
 the orthodox dogma which Mr. Liddon repeats : " the Person 
 of the Son of Mary is Divine and Eternal." To assume John 
 the Baptist used the words which the Evangelist records, 
 and was mistaken in doing so, would remove the difficulty, 
 but would not altogether accord with the extensive knowledge 
 and full attestation of Christ s heavenly descent and mission, 
 which the speeches ascribed to the Baptist indicate. But, 
 however that may be, the Holy Spirit is, in the Synoptical 
 Gospels, represented as exercising an influence on, and stand 
 ing in a relation to, Christ, quite inconsistent with His imper 
 sonal Humanity and proper Deity. "He was led by the 
 Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil " (Matt, 
 iv. 1 ; Mark i. 12 ; Luke iv. 1) ; and afterwards " returned in 
 the power of the Spirit into Galilee" (Luke iv. 14). Our 
 Lord himself appropriates the words of Isaiah : "The Spirit 
 of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me," &c. 
 (Luke iv. 18) ; and the writer of the first Gospel declares 
 that in Him was fulfilled the promise of God through the 
 same prophet, " I will put My Spirit upon Him," &c. (Matt, 
 xii. 18); Christ also claims to "cast out devils by God s 
 Spirit" (Matt. xii. 28). St. Peter, when proclaiming the 
 Gospel message, puts prominently forward God s having 
 " anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with 
 
CONFLICTING AUTHORITIES. 105 
 
 power " (Acts x. 38). And the teaching of St. Peter on this 
 point is the more important, since to him had been revealed 
 the fact, that Jesus was " the Christ, the Son of the Living 
 God" (Matt. xvi. 16). He was not likely to go astray, or to 
 fall short, in apprehending the true character and dignity of 
 our Lord s Being, and yet he does not hesitate to affirm, 
 " God anointed " Him with " the Holy Spirit and power." * 
 
 There is, therefore, a want of unison between the doctrine 
 which Mr. Liddon believes to be set forth in the beolimino- 
 
 o o 
 
 of the fourth Gospel, and the doctrine which is exhibited by 
 St. Peter and the three earlier Evangelists. The device of 
 a distinction between Christ as God, and Christ as man, is 
 not much to the purpose ; for Mr. Liddon tells us our Lord s 
 Manhood was not personal, but was taken into closest union 
 with his Deity ; and he clings to " the fact, upon which St. 
 John insists with such prominence, that our Lord s Godhead 
 is the seat of His Personality " (p. 259) ; and so we are 
 brought face to face with the conclusion, God led God, and 
 anointed God with God ! Surely, unless we are content to 
 resign our reason and judgment in deference to some higher 
 authority, a choice between the guidance of the fourth Gos 
 pel, and the prior narrations, is here forced upon us. From 
 which are we to collect our dogmatic knowledge of Christ s 
 personal rank? The writer of the last Gospel does more 
 than supplement his predecessors : if the orthodox interpre 
 tation of his language is right, he corrects them, and takes 
 ground which convicts them not merely of reservation, but 
 of ignorance and blundering, on a vital point. For Protest 
 ants, who hold Scripture to be the Divine and sufficient 
 Itule of Faith, there is no way of escape : they must either 
 esteem the Logos doctrine a misty speculation, or depress 
 
 * In Acts i. 2, Jesus is said either to have "commanded," or " chosen" 
 the Apostles, through or by means of the Holy Spirit, where the difficulty 
 attaching to orthodox faith is not removed, but brought into view, by the 
 widely accepted commentary : " Jesus as man is represented as acting 
 by the authority, and with the co-operation of the Holy Ghost." Where 
 was the Infinitely Divine Person, the Logos ? 
 
106 CONTRAST BETWEEN SYNOPTIC 
 
 other portions of the New Testament while they exalt what, 
 they conceive to be a contribution from St. John.* 
 
 And, when we are examining the Scripture testimony re 
 specting Christ s nature, it is scarcely possible for us to pass 
 by unnoticed the strong contrast between the Synoptic and 
 the supposed Johannine accounts of the time and manner in 
 which our Lord s Messiahship was freely made known. In 
 Matt. xvi. 16, Peter s confession, " Thou art the Christ, the 
 Son of the living God," is declared to have been prompted 
 by a revelation from Heaven. The narratives in Mark viii. 
 29 and Luke ix. 20 do not add the words the Son, &c.,t but in 
 them, as well as in the first Gospel, the confession is followed 
 by an injunction from Christ to conceal the fact of His Mes 
 siahship. The fourth Gospel is decidedly at variance with 
 these representations. In the first and third chapters, our 
 Lord s Messianic character and authority are recognized and 
 acknowledged by John the Baptist, with an amplitude, repe 
 tition, and precision, which aggravate to the utmost the dif 
 ficulty involved in the message which the fame of Christ s 
 miracles induced John to send from the prison : " Art Thou 
 He that should come, or do we look for another ? " (Matt, 
 xi. 3 ; Luke vii. 19.) In the first chapter, Andrew tells his 
 brother Simon Peter, " We have found the Messias " (ver. 
 41) ; Philip conveys in \ effect the same information to 
 Nathaniel (ver. 45) ; and from Nathaniel the acknowledg- 
 
 * The Church of England is not in this dilemma, because, by the im 
 position of Articles and Creeds, she practically denies the sufficiency of 
 Holy Scripture as a Kule of Faith, notwithstanding certain well known 
 expressions in her theory. Her weakness is, that she combines two 
 inconsistent and mutually exclusive principles. 
 
 t Mr. Liddon in his first Lecture (p. 10) builds an argument on the 
 supposition that Peter s confession was made in the precise words given 
 by Matthew. To the words which Mark and Luke omit, he attaches 
 very great importance. But how came two Evangelists, one of whom 
 was, according to early tradition, the companion and reporter of Peter, 
 to leave out of their records a statement of great significance, on a sub 
 ject of the highest interest? Whose report is the strictly accurate one ? 
 John vi. 69 differs from all the other accounts, the true reading there 
 being, Thou art the Holy (One] of God. 
 
AND JOHANNIC DOCTRINES. 107 
 
 meiit is extorted, "Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou 
 art the King of Israel" (ver. 49). Arid, on the part of Christ 
 himself, there was no delay, carefulness, or reserve, in advanc 
 ing His pretensions. At the opening of His public life, 
 before John was cast into prison (iii. 24), He acted and spoke 
 unreservedly; expelled the money changers from the Tem 
 ple ; foretold His own death and rising again (chaps, ii. and 
 iii., comp. Matt. xxi. 12, xvi. 21, and parallels in Mark and 
 Luke) ; avowed to Nicodemus His work, office, and Divine 
 Sonship (iii.), and before the earliest period to which Peter s 
 confession of the Messiahship, and the accompanying charge, 
 to tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ, can be referred, 
 declared explicitly to the woman of Sychar, that He was the 
 Messiah (iv. 26), and left her fellow-citizens with the knowl 
 edge that He was indeed the Saviour of the world (ver. 42). 
 Now, no man whose prejudices are sufficiently moderate to 
 permit him to give a verdict according to evidence can deny 
 the serious irreconcilable discrepancy into which diversity 
 of narrative here passes. On the common-sense principle of 
 preferring three witnesses to one, we are unavoidably con 
 ducted to an unfavorable appreciation of the fourth Gospel s 
 historical fidelity, and are confirmed in the suspicion that the 
 writer made many statements from a speculative and ideal, 
 rather than from a properly historical, point of view. But 
 though his idealism may be hazy, and not unfolded with 
 firmness of grasp and entire consistency of detail, he must, 
 nevertheless, be allowed to have had a good general notion 
 of his own sentiments and object; and, if he designed in his 
 prologue to teach, that the Word who arrayed Himself in a 
 human vesture was an Everlasting and Co-equal Person in 
 the Divine Substance, he would not be likely to bring to the 
 front expressions in which Christ himself avows inferiority, 
 subordination, and dependence. It is quite certain, however, 
 he does bring forward such expressions (expressions which I 
 shall hereafter have occasion to quote), and his openly alleged 
 aim is, not to prove Jesus is God, but to produce the belief 
 that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (xx. 31). The am- 
 
108 DESIGN OF THE LATEST EVANGELIST. 
 
 biguity caused by the omission of the article before dsog (i. 1) 
 is not, therefore, the sole reason for concluding the last Evan 
 gelist did not intend to affirm the Word s absolute Deity. 
 The reasonable supposition that he knew, with some degree 
 of exactitude, his own meaning, and did not unwittingly fur 
 nish materials for his own refutation, leads to the same con 
 clusion. And, further, if he aimed at investing the Word 
 as a Personal Being, with the entire attributes of Godhead, 
 he cannot rationally be cleared of " an error at issue with the 
 first truth of Monotheism ; " because reason assuredly, and 
 perhaps dogmatic theology likewise, pronounces to be inad 
 missible the only interpretation of his language which would 
 then satisfy Monotheism; namely, the Word was the God 
 with Whom the Word was. 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 Discussion of texts supposed " expressly to assert the doctrine of Our 
 Lord s Divinity ; " viz., 1 John v. 20 ; Titus ii. 13 ; Romans ix. 5 ; 
 Philippians ii. 6-11. Examination of Mr. Liddon s exposition of 
 passages in the Epistles to the Colossians and Hebrews, and in the 
 Apocalypse. 
 
 AMOXG " the comparatively few texts expressly asserting the 
 doctrine of Our Lord s Divinity " Mr. Liddon reckons 1 John 
 v. 20 ; Titus ii. 13 ; Rom. ix. 5 ; in which he believes Christ 
 to be designated the True God ; the Great God ; and 
 God over all, Blessed for ever. If these epithets were descrip 
 tions of Christ, they would, undoubtedly, proclaim His Deity, 
 but there is not adequate reason for supposing them to refer 
 to Him. Xo person acquainted with Greek will deny that 
 the verbal constructions in the texts in question are ambigu 
 ous, and do not determine whether the titles are to be under 
 stood as descriptions of Christ, or descriptions of the Eternal 
 Father. Not to mention other scholars whose judgment is 
 entitled to weight, Winer, the standard authority on the 
 Grammar of the Greek Testament, pronounces decidedly 
 against the notion that our Lord Jesus Christ is necessarily, 
 or more probably designated, in either of the three texts. 
 All that can be said in behalf of Mr. Liddon s interpretation 
 is, that the wording, simply as such, admits it, and that eccle 
 siastical writers, after A.D. 190, for the most part approve of 
 it. But the only testimony worth attention, Ante-Nicene 
 testimony, is, in the form in which it has come down to us, 
 nothing more than the opinions of a few individuals who had 
 a dogmatic purpose to serve. It is far too scanty and one 
 sided to be considered duly representative of the age, and, 
 in relation to texts employed in controversy, is, in Protestant 
 eyes, peihaps less valuable than the private opinion of Mr. 
 
110 IMPROBABILITY THAT CHRIST IS STYLED 
 
 Liddon. An interpretation which the natural force of lan 
 guage does not demand, and the Scriptures themselves do not 
 show to be probable, is not confirmed by references to two or 
 three Fathers of the third century. 
 
 The Anglican Version of 1 John v. 20 obscures the sense 
 by inserting the word even. The sacred writer teaches : 
 " The Son of God has come, and has given us an understand 
 ing that we may know Him Who is True (literally, the 
 True), and we are in Him Who is True, (being) in His Son 
 Jesus Christ. This is the True God and Eternal Life." The 
 concluding sentence more fully defines the True One, in 
 Whom we are, through being in His Son Jesus Christ.* To 
 be in God is to have a reverent and filial love towards Him, 
 and to be the objects of His approving love; and in this 
 condition faithful Christians are, through being in Christ, that 
 is, through believing in Christ, and being members of that 
 Church or Society in which Christ is, by Divine gift and 
 decree, Lord and Head. The sense is plain enough to 
 unbiassed minds ; indeed, the only consistent method of 
 escaping it is by supposing God to be the unexpressed nomi 
 native to has given / and the True to be a title of Christ, 
 a conjecture advocated by Bishop Burgess, and quoted with 
 approval by Bloomfield. Throughout the Epistle God, and 
 the Son of God, are clearly distinguished, and spoken of as 
 two individuals, persons in the intelligible, and not in the 
 ecclesiastical acceptation. In v. 11 God is declared to be the 
 Giver, and His Son the channel of eternal life : " God has 
 given unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son " (comp. 
 Rom. vi. 23, where the original is in Christ Jesus our 
 Lord}. God, the Father, is Eternal Life (that is, the Author 
 and Source of Eternal life), in the higher and primary sense, 
 and the True God is an epithet which nothing short of imper 
 ative grammatical construction can justify us in understand- 
 
 * The fully expressed meaning undoubtedly is : " That \ve may know 
 the True (God) ; and we are in the True (God)," &c. There is no identi 
 fication of Nature and Substance between the True God and His Son. For 
 the phrase, in God, see 1 John iv. 13-16. 
 
" THE TRUE GOD " IN I JOHN V. 20. Ill 
 
 ing of another than Him (comp. John xvii. 3 ; 1 Thess. 
 i. 9, 10). 
 
 The venturesome allegation, " St. John s picture of Christ s 
 work, in this first Epistle, leads up to the culminating state 
 ment that Jesus himself is the True God and the Eternal 
 Life " (p. 239), will be appreciated as it deserves by careful 
 readers of the Epistle. Mr. Liddon denies that the interpre 
 tation he contends for effaces the distinction between the 
 Father and the Son, "After having distinguished the Trite 
 from His Son, St. John, by a characteristic turn, simply 
 identifies the Son with the True God. To refer this sentence 
 to the Father, Who has been twice called the True, would be 
 unmeaning repetition. ... St. John does not say, This is the 
 Father, but This is the True God. The True God is the 
 Divine Essence, in opposition to all creatures. The question 
 of hypostatic distinctions within that Essence is not here 
 before the Apostle. Our being in the True God depends on 
 our being in Christ, and St. John clenches this assertion by 
 saying that Christ is the True God himself." When the 
 Apostle made his " characteristic turn " from the individual 
 Father to the Divine Essence, Which includes both Father 
 and Son, it is difficult to understand what was before his 
 mind, if the existence of hypostatic distinctions was not. 
 But possibly Mr. Liddon means that the Apostle reckoned 
 on his readers knowledge of a dogma prominent in the 
 Church s oral teaching, and therefore did not feel called upon 
 to elucidate a distinction which was sufficiently familiar and 
 simple to be gathered from the passing allusion of an ambig 
 uous phrase. 
 
 The pronoun (OVTOS) this is sometimes to be joined, not 
 with the nearer, but with the more remote antecedent, a fact 
 illustrated by John vi. 48-50; Acts. iv. 11 ; 2 John, ver. 7. 
 After laying down the general rule, that nearness of position 
 does not decide the pronoun s reference, Winer remarks 
 ( Grammar of the New Testament, &c., Sec. 23) : " In 1 John 
 v. 20, this is the True God refers to God, not Christ 
 (which immediately precedes), as the older theologians, OR 
 
112 "THE GREAT GOD IN TITUS n. 13. 
 
 doctrinal considerations, maintained : for, in the first place, 
 True God is a constant exclusive epithet of the Father ; 
 and, secondly, a warning against idolatry follows, and True 
 God is invariably contrasted with idols" In the earlier part 
 of section 34, Winer again alludes to the text and says : 
 The True stands for God ; the notion is grammatically com 
 plete, and the individual specially meant in Biblical diction 
 is to be ascertained from other passages." 
 
 In Titus ii. 13, our Authorized Version inaccurately puts 
 the, glorious appearing for appearing of the glory / in other 
 respects it answers more truly to the original than the ver 
 sion, "Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the 
 glory of our Great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who gave 
 Himself for us." Mr. Liddon says, u The grammar appar 
 ently, and the context certainly, oblige us to recognize the 
 identity of our Saviour Jesus Christ and our Great God. 
 As a matter of fact, Christians are not waiting for any man 
 ifestation of the Father. And He Who gave Himself for us 
 can be none other than our Lord Jesus Christ " (p. 315). 
 Here the only context to which reference is made is, in its 
 chief feature, strangely misconceived. The text does not 
 speak of any personal manifestation or appearing of God, 
 but of a manifestation of God s glory. Did Mr. Liddon for 
 get that Christ himself had declared (Matt. xvi. 27 ; Mark 
 viii. 38 ; Luke ix. 26) that His coming would be in the glory 
 of His Father ? Did he forget that St. Paul (1 Tim. vi. 14- 
 16) speaks of the appearing of our X/ord Jesus Christ as an 
 event " which in His own times He will show, Who is the 
 Blessed and Only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord 
 of lords, Who only hath Immortality, Whom no man hath 
 seen, nor can see ? " The New Testament Scriptures explic 
 itly announce, the appearing of Christ will be determined by 
 the Father s will, and attended with an exhibition of the 
 Father s glory. There is, then, no sort of warrant for the 
 assertion, " The context certainly obliges us " to identify the 
 Great God with Jesus Christ. The preceding and subse 
 quent parts of the Epistle plainly recognize the distinction 
 
DOES IT EEFER TO CHRIST? 113 
 
 between God and Christ. Only a few sentences further on 
 (iii. 4-6), God our Saviour and Jesus Christ our /Saviour 
 are associated in a manner which forcibly brings out the 
 truth that God is in the principal and absolute, Christ in the 
 secondary and instrumental sense, our Saviour. We may 
 give up all attempts to ascertain the meaning of a canonical 
 writer if it is possible for that writer to call Christ our Great 
 God, and then with an interval of half-a-dozen sentences to 
 tell us of God imparting gifts of grace through Him who is 
 our Great God. Yet Mr. Liddon is able to cite from Bishop 
 Ellicott the opinion that " the subsequent allusion to our 
 Lord s profound Self-humiliation accounts for St. Paul s 
 ascribing to Him, by way of reparation, a title otherwise 
 unusual, that specially and antithetically marks His glory." 
 And while the Bishop is too sound a scholar to hold there is 
 grammatically any thing more than a presumption in favor of 
 this interpretation, he nevertheless, for other reasons, sees in 
 this text a " direct, definite, and even studied declaration of 
 the Divinity of the Eternal Son." Without any disrespect 
 to the Bishop, we may, I think, conclude that in this instance 
 his wishes greatly stimulated his perceptive powers, and 
 prompted him to risk the feeblest of surmises, and the most 
 unfounded of assertions. " The grammatical presumption " 
 arises from the omission of the article before /Saviour ; but 
 the pronoun our (literally of us), gives that name sufficient 
 distinctness, assuming (what it is impossible to deny) the 
 appellation our Saviour Jesus Christ to have usually denoted 
 a person distinguished from God.* " The Saviour of us " 
 would have been more perspicuous, but the article was not 
 indispensable to mark the different individualities of the 
 Great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. Winer, when: 
 stating in- the later editions of his Grammar, his deliberate- 
 
 * When the difference of office or person is well known, the definite 
 article is often omitted in English. If, after visiting some public Insti 
 tution, I were to say, " I saw the governor and chaplain," no one would 
 imagine I meant only one person, though grammatically my words 
 would bear that meaning. 
 
114 
 
 IN ROMANS IX. 5. 
 
 adherence to his previously expressed judgment writes: 
 "Doctrinal conviction, deduced from Paul s teaching, that 
 the Apostle could not have called Christ the Great God, 
 induced me to show that at the same time there is no invin 
 cible obstacle of a grammatical nature to our taking the 
 words, and of our Saviour, &Q., as a second subject. Exam 
 ples, such as I have quoted (Sec. xix. 2), will at once satisfy 
 the impartial inquirer that the article was not necessary 
 before Saviour" The opinion which Winer here repeats, he 
 had already stated by saying : " The article is omitted before 
 Saviour, because the word is made definite by the genitive 
 of us, and the apposition precedes the proper name (Jesus 
 Christ) : of the Great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" 
 Winer adds, " Similar is 2 Pet. i. 1, where there is no pro 
 noun with Saviour / " a text which Mr. Liddon explains to 
 mean (p. 301), "He is our God and Saviour Jesus Christ;" 
 although in verse 2, a part of the same sentence, God and 
 Jesus our Lord are indisputably distinguished from each 
 other. 
 
 Horn. ix. 5 receives a good deal of Mr. Liddon s attention, 
 and in three lengthy notes he defends the mistaken punctua- 
 tion and consequent mistranslation, which stand in our 
 Authorized Version. The older Greek MSS., being almost 
 entirely unpunctuated, are no guides in a case where differ 
 ences of punctuation entail differences of meaning. Any stop 
 of greater length than a comma, after the word flesh, makes 
 the final clause of the verse an independent statement concern 
 ing God the Father. Lachmann, Tischendorf, Jowett, and 
 many other critical editors and expositors, prefer the stopping 
 which awards the ascription of Supreme Deity and Eternal 
 Blessedness to the Almighty ; and suppose the Apostle to 
 have added to the list of Jewish privileges a thankful recog 
 nition of His goodness and power by Whom those privileges 
 had been bestowed He who is God over all (is) blessed for 
 ever. Such a recognition of the Divine bounty and Omnipo 
 tence is a natural and appropriate appendix to the mention 
 of advantages among which Christ s birth in our nature was 
 
THE THOUGHT IN ST. PAUL S MIND. 115 
 
 included. There is nothing in the verbal construction of the 
 verse to settle the application of the final clause. Grammat 
 ically it may be a continued description of Christ, or an 
 independent proposition relating to God. The omission of 
 the verb substantive accords with usage, and presents no diffi 
 culty. In translating Greek into English, the word is has 
 very frequently to be supplied. Assertions about " the nat 
 ural meaning of the passage," and carpings at " anti- theolog 
 ical interest," are utterly misplaced, and in Mr. Liddon 
 peculiarly unbecoming. He may be most profoundly con 
 vinced of the truth of his own views, and the soundness of 
 his own reasonings, but his book is pervaded by prejudg- 
 ments, and he is the last man who should accuse others of 
 bias. As Bampton Lecturer, under voluntary obligation to 
 vindicate a particular dogma, grammatical possibility may be 
 to him proof enough for any interpretation which can be 
 turned to account, and he may quite conscientiously believe, 
 when verbal ambiguity renders two or more senses admis 
 sible, the true sense must be that which best suits his object. 
 But the fact is patent ; men who are, at the very least, his 
 equals in every qualification entitled to respect, unhesitatingly 
 affirm the interpretation which he refuses to allow. 
 
 If there were no other considerations to influence our de 
 cision, the arguments on which Mr. Liddon relies might have 
 some little weight ; but, as the case actually stands, they are 
 singularly insufficient. He thinks the concluding words of 
 the verse must be referred to Christ, in order to complete the 
 antithesis implied in the expression as to the -flesh. The 
 answer is, antithesis, as such, may not have been the leading 
 thought in the Apostle s mind, but simply limitation. By 
 human descent and family kinship, Christ belonged to the 
 Jews. To that extent He was from them, but to that extent 
 only. There was a higher spiritual origin, and a more uni 
 versal relationship, which had no proper connection with 
 privileges distinctively Jewish. The higher and wider as 
 pects of Christ s Being are glanced at through restrictive 
 terms, but not defined. A few lines before the text under 
 
116 POSITION OF THE ADJECTIVE 
 
 discussion, when St. Paul calls the Israelites his kinsmen as 
 to the flesh, he does not complete the antithesis; and again, 
 in 1 Corinthians x. 18, when he speaks of Israel as to the 
 flesh, he does not unfold the idea which the limiting phrase 
 suggests. And in Romans i. 4, where the contrast between 
 the bodily and spiritual parts of Christ s Being is expressed, 
 there is no assertion that He is God over all, blessed for ever, 
 but a description of a very different kind, which clearly dis 
 tinguishes Him from God. " As to the flesh, He is the seed 
 of David; as to the spirit of holiness (that is, His holy 
 spiritual nature), He is mightily show^n to be the Son of 
 God, by the resurrection from the dead." The resurrection 
 of our Lord from the dead is by St. Paul frequently and uni 
 formly attributed to the power of God the Father ; and in the 
 commencing paragraph of the Epistle to the Romans, as 
 well as throughout the Epistle, distinction between God and 
 Christ is unmistakably indicated. 
 
 Another of Mr. Liddon s arguments is, that in the text in 
 question the word blessed is put after the name God, whereas 
 in the doxologies of both the Septuagint and the New Testa 
 ment it precedes the name. On this fact great stress is laid ; 
 but, if the position of the adjective were peculiarly irregular, 
 the New Testament has too many instances of irregular 
 arrangement, for irregularity to be a safe ground of inference. 
 Olshausen, an orthodox and able expositor, considers the posi 
 tion of blessed to be of no importance ; and Winer, who on 
 such a point is no mean judge, says (Sec. Ixi. 3) : " Only an 
 empirical expositor could regard this antecedent position as 
 an unalterable rule; for, when the Subject constitutes the 
 principal notion, especially when it is antithetical to another 
 Subject, the Predicate may and must be placed after it 
 (comp. Ps. Ixvii. 19 Sept.).* In Romans ix. 5, if God isre- 
 
 * Mr. Liddon, if I understand him rightly, objects against Winer s 
 reference to the Septuagint 67th Psalm (Eng. Ver. 68th), that the read 
 ing, not being literally after the Hebrew, is probably corrupt. But both 
 the Vatican and Alexandrine MSS. have the adjective presumed to be 
 interpolated, and variations from the Hebrew Text are very common in 
 the Septuagint. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT USAGE OF THE PHRASE. 117 
 
 ferred to, the position of the words is quite appropriate, and 
 even indispensable, as some critics have pointed out." 
 
 A remark with which Mr. Liddon concludes one of his 
 notes is, I should imagine, quite original, and is certainly 
 unanswerable. He supposes that, if the reading were so 
 altered as almost to compel the reference of the final clause 
 to Christ, the reference would not be disputed. " We may 
 be very certain that, if lit}, narrow Oso^ (God over all), could 
 be proved to be an unwarranted reading, no scholar, however 
 Socinianizing his bias, would hesitate to say that 6 uv 
 tvlopiTog, &c. (lie who is blessed, &c.), should be referred to 
 the proper name which precedes it" (p. 314). 
 
 The reasons against the interpretation for which the Bamp- 
 ton Lecturer contends are, taken together, amply sufficient 
 to decide the doubt which mere verbal construction admits. 
 Already, in the Epistle to the Romans (i. 25), St. Paul had 
 applied to the Almighty the phrase blessed for ever, and in 2 
 Corinthians xi. 31 he gives the same words the same applica 
 tion. The whole phrase is never by any New Testament 
 writer used of Christ, and Christ is never called whoyrpog . 
 There are other words descriptive of blessedness, but that 
 particular word is retained for the One God and Father alone. 
 Mr. Liddon tries to explain this fact by observing : " as 
 regards kv^Qfrpog, the remarkable fewness of doxologies 
 addressed to Christ might account for the omission." But 
 if the sacred writers knew our Lord to be truly God, identi 
 cal in Essence with the Father, why should doxologies 
 addressed to Him be remarkably few, and destitute of a 
 term which common usage had appropriated to God ? The 
 omission would not, in itselfj be decisive against real reasons 
 on the other side, but it outweighs all the pretexts which Mr. 
 Liddon has been able to put forward. 
 
 After the allusion to " the remarkable fewness of doxolo 
 gies addressed to Christ," the passage in a subsequent part 
 of the same Lecture (p. 328), speaking of " thanksgivings 
 and doxologies poured forth to the praise of Jesus Christ, * 
 should not have been permitted to remain. The only texts 
 
118 SUBORDINATION OP CHRIST IMPLIED. 
 
 referred to in justification of that passage are Romans ix. 5, 
 perhaps xvi. 27 ; 1 Timothy i. 12 ; the latter of which is an 
 expression of gratitude to Christ, immediately preceded by 
 the mention of God, and followed at a very brief interval 
 by a formal doxology to the King of the Ages, Incorruptible, 
 Invisible, alone God. 
 
 The description, God over all, cannot be understood of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ without violence to the analogy of St. 
 Paul s doctrine, and inconsistence with his habitual use of 
 language.* In Romans iii. 29, 30, he reminds us the One 
 God is God of both Jews and Gentiles, and so implies His 
 highest dominion over all men ; and, in xi. 36, he asserts the 
 exclusive supremacy of God the Father, by declaring, of 
 (from) Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things. 
 Elsewhere, he calls God the only God, and the Blessed and 
 Only Potentate (Romans xvi. 27 ; 1 Timothy i. 17 ; vi. 15). 
 He tells us " That there is to us (Christians) but One God, 
 the Father, of (from) Whom are all things, and we for Him ; 
 and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and 
 we through him " (1 Cor. viii. 4-6) ; and again that there is One 
 God and Father of all, Who is over all, &c. ; and, yet again, 
 that God is the Head of Christ (Eph. iv. 6 ; 1 Cor. xi. 3). 
 
 A number of other passages might be cited, showing the 
 subordination of Christ, and the consequent improbability 
 that St. Paul would term him God over all ; and almost 
 every page of the Apostle s writings might be appealed to 
 for proof that, in his view, God and Christ were distinct 
 individuals, possessing different natures, and not Forms in 
 One and the same Supreme, Self-existent Essence ; and, 
 although the term Qeog (God), may, without the article, 
 mean less than absolute Deity, yet it is not, in the diction of 
 St. Paul, once given simply, and without qualification, to 
 Christ. The received reading in Acts xx. 28, and also in 1 
 Tim. iii. 16, is generally admitted to be incorrect ; in Titus ii. 
 
 * " Had St. Paul ever spoken of Christ as God, he would many times 
 have spoken of Him as such, not once only, and that by accident." 
 Professor Jowett s Commentary. 
 
IN THE APOSTLE S USUAL LANGUAGE. 119 
 
 13, the Great God is the Eternal Father, and the only other 
 text in which St, Paul has been imagined to assert Christ s 
 Deity in direct terms is Rom. ix. 5. And, in handling this 
 text, Mr. Liddon himself is driven, when he looks at the 
 evidence of the Son s subordination and separate personality, 
 to invoke the subtle distinction between the Father person 
 ally, and the Divine Substance Which is assumed to embrace 
 both Father and Son. St. Paul, he observes, " does not call 
 our Lord o Ini Ttdvxwv Qso^ (the God over all) the article 
 would lay the expression open to a direct Sabellian construc 
 tion.^ St. Paul says that Christ is Ini ndvTwv 0o<^ (God 
 over all), where the Father, of course, is not included among 
 the all things (1 Cor. xv. 27) ; and the sense corresponds 
 substantially with Acts x. 36, Rom. x. 12. It asserts that 
 Christ is internal to the Divine Essence, without denying His 
 personal distinctness from, or His filial relation to, the Father." 
 Now, here, the texts assumed to have a corresponding 
 sense are not parallel. The title Lord is not equivalent to 
 God, except when used of Jehovah, the Almighty One. It 
 is a title which, taken alone, describes dignity, but does not 
 fix the rank and degree of the dignity, and nothing can be 
 clearer than that it does not, in connection with the name of 
 Jesus Christ, denote Deity. The repeated expression, The 
 God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the manner 
 in which St. Paul (1 Cor. viii. ; Eph. iv.) individualizes the 
 One God and the one Lord, prove the term Lord, when 
 applied to Christ, not to mean God. Christ may be, as in 
 Acts x. 36, called Lord of all, that is, of both Jews and 
 
 * In a previous note, Mr. Liddon, after stating that thg text was un 
 derstood in the early Church by Iienaeus, Tertullian, and others, to 
 apply to Jesus Christ, adds : " It seems probable that any non-employ 
 ment of so striking a passage by the Catholics, during their earlier con 
 troversial struggles with the Arians, is to be attributed to their fear 
 of being charged with construing it in a Sabellian sense." After the 
 middle of the second century, controversial wants, and controversial 
 fears, undoubtedly had great influence, and regulated interpretation. 
 
 A far less probable, but not wholly improbable, mode of punctuation 
 and rendering, is : Of whom came Christ according to the flesh, who is over 
 all. God is blessed for ever. 
 
120 VIEWS OF STANLEY AND DR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Gentiles, without being God of all. t In Rom. x. 12, it is very 
 far from evident Christ is designated the same X/ord of all^ 
 being, in that connection, most probably Jehovah, the God 
 of both Jews and Gentiles, " Who is rich in mercy," and " no 
 respecter of persons." The texts, therefore, to which Mr. 
 Liddon refers, do not in any degree sustain his interpretation 
 of Rom. ix. 5; and, as to a difference of meaning between 
 o dsog and Osog, the difference is not a puzzling and imaginary 
 one between the Personal Father and the Divine Essence, 
 but (when the absence of the Article is designed to mark a 
 difference) between the God and a god, God in the absolute 
 and exclusive, and god in an inferior and figurative sense. 
 This distinction rarely appears in modern writings, but the 
 Old Testament Scriptures exhibit many instances of it in the 
 employment of the name Elohim ; and perhaps it may be 
 the key to the meaning of a few New Testament passages, 
 where the want of the article before Osog creates an ambigu 
 ity, and can be explained neither by grammatical rule nor 
 common usage. But a nice discrimination between Deity 
 as an Essence or Nature, and Deity in the Person of the 
 Almighty Father, is purely arbitrary and fanciful. There is 
 no particle of evidence to support it ; and if, in Mr. Liddon s 
 judgment, our Master Jesus Christ could not be, without 
 perilous inaccuracy, styled " the God over all," why does he 
 take advantage of verbal uncertainty to insist that Christ is 
 styled " the great God " and " the true God." The presence 
 of the article unquestionably renders these latter expressions 
 " open to a direct Sabellian construction." 
 
 In his Notes on the Epistle to the Romans, the Bishop of 
 Lincoln (Drt Wordsworth), considers that, in ix. 5, 6 V is 
 a title of Jehovah (comp. Sept., Exod. iii. 14), and should 
 receive a special emphasis. "The words contain a distinct 
 truth, and assert the eternal pre-existence of Christ, and are 
 very appropriately added after the mention of His Incarna 
 tion. He Who came of the Jews, according to the flesh, is 
 no other than o ooV, the BEING ONE, JEHOVAH." 
 
 Dean Stanley, on 2 Cor. xi. 31, remarks : " For the doxol- 
 
GENERAL SENSE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 121 
 
 ogy, introduced by the solemn feeling of the moment, com 
 pare Rom. ix. 5, and i. 25 " intimating, apparently, his 
 concurrence with the opinion that the clause in debate should 
 be regarded as an ascription of praise to the One God, the 
 Father Almighty. He adds : " o wv is used so frequently in 
 the Septuagint, and by Philo, as a translation for JEHOVAH, 
 that the phrase in this passage and Rom. ix. 5, if not used 
 precisely in that sense, at any rate has reference to it." 
 
 If the words are equivalent to Jehovah, the independence 
 of the clause, and the improbability of the conjecture which 
 attaches it to Christ, are increased ; but the New Testament 
 does not furnish one example wherein the words are, with 
 any approach to clearness, a title equalling Jehovah. The 
 more usual construction appears to me to be the true one, 
 and upon the supposition that the passage has peculiarities, 
 the article, though separated, may belong to dso^ and the 
 literal sense may be, The God Who is over all, &c. 
 
 If we are to gather the sense of the New Testament from 
 a thorough, candid, and rational investigation of its contents, 
 I do not see how we can persuade ourselves that 1 John v. 
 20, Titus ii. 13, Rom. ix. 5, are descriptions of Christ, and 
 assertions of his Godhead. If the decisions of an ecclesias 
 tical, extra-scriptural authority are held to impose doctrines, 
 and to supersede rational judgment in the understanding of 
 Scripture, then, of course, the case is different ; but Mr. Lid- 
 don has ventured upon Protestant ground, and appeals to 
 the Bible as the Rule of Faith and document of proof. On 
 this ground he can make out no claim to the texts above 
 referred to. His attempt to claim them merely exposes his 
 weakness, and urgent need of direct evidence on behalf of 
 his dogma, The texts must be carried over to the other side, 
 and added to the list, already an insuperable barrier to the 
 conclusiveness of merely Scriptural arguments for our Lord s 
 Deity, the list which denominates the Almighty Father by 
 exclusive terms, the One God and Father; the only true God; 
 the only God; the Blessed and Only Potentate. 
 
 In commenting on Phil. ii. 6-11, a passage of undoubted 
 obscurity and difficulty, Mr. Liddon contends : 
 
122 THE PHRASE " FORM OF GOD." 
 
 " The force of St. Paul s moral lesson in the whole passage 
 must depend upon the real Divinity of the Incarnate and 
 Self-immolating Christ. The point of our Lord s example 
 lies in His emptying Himself of the glory or form of his 
 Eternal Godhead. Worthless, indeed, would have been the 
 force of His example, had He been in reality a created Being, 
 who only abstained from grasping tenaciously at Divine pre 
 rogatives which a creature could not have arrogated to him 
 self without impious folly" (p. 316). There is considerable 
 confusion of thought here. Passing over, for the moment, 
 the assumption that form of God means " glory of Eternal 
 Godhead," and granting that the being equal to God, or, as the 
 phrase would be better translated, the being like, or as God* 
 carries a corresponding meaning, what room is there for the 
 idea that Christ "abstained from grasping tenaciously at 
 Divine prerogatives "? They were His irrelinquishably. He 
 held them by the indefeasible right of Essential Nature. 
 Did St. Paul think so loosely, and write so inaccurately, as 
 to employ, in suggesting mere suspension of manifested Maj 
 esty, the expressions, emptied himself / deemed it not a thing 
 to be greedily seized, or appropriated? t T ne reality of Deity 
 cannot be emptied out ; for even the Almighty cannot divest 
 Himself of His own inherent perfections. The Apostle did 
 not intend to intimate an abdication of Deity, and his 
 words are ill suited to intimate the veiling of a glory which 
 potentially, and in all its real basis, could not be abandoned. 
 And premising that in relation to Divine mysteries all Scrip 
 ture is true, and all the Canonical writers agreed, are we in a 
 
 * Macknight properly translates, to be like God, and says : " Wliitby 
 has proved in the clearest manner that lea is used adverbially by the 
 Septuagint to express likeness, but not equality, the proper term for which 
 is loov." This latter term does not necessarily, and always, denote 
 equality. 
 
 t This is the more probable meaning of the word rendered in the 
 Authorized Version robbery. If the sense robbery is retained, St. Paul s 
 statement would, from Mr. Laddon s point of view, amount to the truism, 
 that Christ did not think it robbery to show Himself to be what He really 
 
PEOBABLE MEANING OF THIS PHRASE. 123 
 
 position to affirm, Christ " emptied Himself" of his pre-in- 
 carnate glory ? In the fourth Gospel, that glory is declared 
 to have been manifested, and to have shone forth in the sight 
 of His disciples (i. 14; ii. 11). How far the exercise of 
 Divine prerogatives in heaven was affected by the circum 
 stance of Christ s having emptied Himself, and abstained 
 from grasping tenaciously at them, I do not dare to conjec 
 ture. Mr. Liddon, perhaps, could say something upon the 
 topic, starting from the position, " the Son of Man, while yet 
 speaking upon earth, was in heaven " (Johniii. 13) ; but, how 
 ever that may be, if we are to believe the latest Evangelist, 
 we must understand the phrase emptied Himself \ with abate 
 ments. The glory of the super-human nature was exhibited 
 in and through the veil of flesh. The exhibition was no 
 doubt on a different stage, in a modified fashion, and before 
 a new circle of spectators, but we are assured that it took 
 place. Mr. Liddon himself enlarges (p. 232) on the manner 
 in which " St. John s writings " proclaim a showing forth of 
 the Divine glory in the sphere of Christ s earthly life. " The 
 Word reveals the Divine Essence ; His Incarnation makes 
 that Life, that Love, that Light, which is eternally resident in 
 God, obvious to souls that steadily contemplate Himself. . . . 
 The Life, the Love, the Light, are the glory of the Word 
 Incarnate which His disciples beheld, pouring its rays 
 through the veil of His human tabernacle. The Light, the 
 Love, the Life, constitute the fulness whereof His disciples 
 received ; " and were therefore, we may presume, the glory 
 of which our Lord is reported to have said (John xvii. 22), 
 The glory which Thou gavest me, I have given them (comp. 
 verses 5 and 24). 
 
 Mr. Liddon perceives that form of God is not a descrip 
 tion strictly synonymous with God, any more than form of 
 a slave is a description strictly synonymous with slave. He 
 therefore considers u form of God is apparently the mani 
 fested glory of Deity, implying of course the reality of the 
 Deity so manifested." But when the fact has once been 
 avowed, that form does not stand for nature, the sense is 
 
124 FORCE OF THE LANGUAGE IN 
 
 seen to be too uncertain for any "of course" inductions. 
 Granting exalted personal pro-existence to be predicated, and 
 not representative capacity and authority, there is no assign 
 ment of definite, co-equal rank. To say one person is in 
 the form of another is quite obviously a different thing from 
 saying, the two persons are identical in nature, or stand in 
 the same place and condition. Both the phrases employed, 
 form of God, and the being like God, seem to have a pur 
 posed and very significant vagueness. The subject of Christ s 
 pre-incarnate Being and dignity was before the Apostle s 
 mind. If he had been able to aver, and had wished to aver, 
 that Christ was God, he could have done so in simple, straight 
 forward language. The scope of his argument called for a 
 distinct indication of the height from which Christ stooped, 
 in becoming incarnate. There was every motive to assert in 
 terms Christ s Deity, yet St. Paul deliberately avoided the 
 assertion, and was content with the glorification of indefinite, 
 ambiguous circumlocutions. 
 
 The use of the Greek article is too little a matter of rule 
 for any satisfactory argument to be built upon its absence in 
 the passage I am now examining. Its presence is certainly 
 not indispensable to show that the Supreme Being is referred 
 to in Phil. ii. 6, but as certainly it would not be superfluous. 
 If the article had not been omitted before the words form 
 and God, the meaning which Mr. Liddon seeks in the text 
 would have been less occult and more probable. When, in 
 verse 9, the God by Whom Christ is highly exalted is named, 
 the article is prefixed. The form of the God, and the being 
 like the God, would have been, in their Greek shape, expres 
 sions much better suited to imply the dogma of Christ s 
 Essential Deity. As the text stands, room is left for doubt 
 whether St. Paul may not have intended to contrast, in very 
 general terms, a superhuman, spiritual, glorious existence with 
 a humble human existence a Divine form with a servile 
 form. The latter expression does not directly imply Christ s 
 manhood, which is indicated by the subsequent words, " being 
 made in the likeness of men j " and " being found in fashion as 
 
PHILIPPIANS II. 6-11. 125 
 
 a man." The same general conception, presented with yet 
 greater indefiniteness, appears in 2 Cor. viii. 9, where the Apos 
 tle declares that " Christ, though rich, for our sakes became 
 poor." The object in both passages is to inculcate, through 
 Christ s example, a moral lesson of humility, benevolence, and 
 self-denial. The Person and conduct of our Lord are set forth 
 in their ethical aspect, and no well-defined, accurate notion of 
 His p re-incarnate condition and rank can be fairly extracted. 
 We cannot know more of the Apostle s mind than his language 
 distinctly imparts. That he did not design to teach, either di 
 rectly or by implication, the doctrine of Christ s proper Deity, 
 he makes abundantly evident. Jesus Christ and God are, 
 throughout his reasoning, separate individual Beings. There 
 is no hint that One Divine Nature comprised them both. 
 God is said to have " highly exalted Christ, and given Him a 
 Name which is above every Name ; " and in the confession : 
 "Jesus Christ is Lord," a tribute is paid "to the glory of 
 God the Father." The Apostle s words at once recall his 
 positive and perspicuous statement in an earlier Epistle : 
 " To us there is but One God, the Father, and one Lord, 
 Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. viii. 4-6). 
 
 If St. Paul s opinions, when he wrote to the Philippians, 
 had risen to the level of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, he believed 
 Jesus Christ to be personally Very God, lacking no attribute 
 of Godhead ; and he must, in such case, be understood to 
 teach that, because God assumed a vesture of body, soul, and 
 spirit, became as much man as He could without becom 
 ing a human person, and submitted His impersonal Humanity 
 to death upon the Cross "therefore God highly exalted 
 God, and gave God a Name," &c. If to any rational mind 
 this wears a look of absurdity, I am not accountable for the 
 absurdity. I only state what must have been St. Paul s 
 meaning, supposing him to have been able to think consist 
 ently, and to have known Christ to be truly God, " equal to 
 the Father as touching His Godhead." Should it be said, 
 Our Lord s Humanity was exalted, the answer is, there was 
 no human person to exalt ; and, if there had been a human 
 
126 THE PHRASE IN COLOSSI ANS I. 15-17. 
 
 person, how could that person, when taken into inseparable 
 union with Essential Deity, be capable of exaltation at the 
 hands of personally distinct Essential Deity? 
 
 If with some MSS. we read, "the Name which is above 
 every name," the argument will not be affected. Whatever 
 the exaltation and the name are, the fact remains, that the 
 Apostle depicts them not as inalienable attributes of God 
 head, but as gifts bestowed by God. 
 
 The general diction of the Philippian Epistle lends no sup 
 port whatever to the notion that the author saw in Christ a 
 second personal God, or ascribed to Him equality with God. 
 God is the Object of thanksgiving and prayer (i. 3 ; iv. 6). 
 It is He Who, " having begun a good work in us, will carry 
 on that work until the day of Jesus Christ " (i. 6). " Fruit of 
 righteousness is, through Christ, to His glory" (i. 11). He 
 is the Source of salvation, and of the energy in virtue of 
 which our part in the work of salvation is accomplished 
 (i. 28 ; ii. 13). He is the inward Revealer (iii. 15), and the 
 primal Giver of peace (iv. 7, 9). Of Him St. Paul writes : 
 " My God will supply all your need, according to His riches 
 in glory, in (or by) Christ Jesus. To our God and Father 
 be the Glory for ever and ever " (iv. 19, 20). 
 
 The Pauline benedictory salutation (i. 2) does not equalize 
 or identify God and Christ as sources of grace and peace, 
 but by descriptive appellation marks the difference between 
 God our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ. The name 
 Christ (iv. 13) is interpolated, the true reading being, in Him 
 Who strengtheneth me. 
 
 There is in Col. i. 15-17 (comp. 2 Cor. iv. 4) "a magnifi 
 cent dogmatic passage," containing " perhaps the most ex 
 haustive assertion of our Lord s Godhead which is to be 
 found in the writings of St. Paul. The Colossian Church 
 was exposed to the intellectual attacks of a theosophic doc 
 trine, which degraded Jesus Christ to the rank of one of a 
 long series of inferior beings, supposed to range between 
 mankind and the Supreme God. Against this position St. 
 Paul asserts that Christ is the Image of the Invisible God, 
 
127 
 
 The expression, Image of God, supplements the title of the 
 Son. As the Son, Christ is derived eternally from the 
 Father, and He is of One Substance with the Father. As 
 the Image, Christ is, in that One Substance, the exact like 
 ness of the Father, in all things except being the Father. 
 The Son is the Image of the Father, not as the Father, but 
 as God: The Son is the Image of God. The Image is in 
 deed originally God s unbegun, unending reflection of Him 
 self in Himself; but the Image is also the Organ Whereby 
 God, in His Essence, invisible, reveals Himself to His creat 
 ures. Thus the Image is, so to speak, naturally the Creator, 
 since creation is the first revelation which God has made of 
 Himself. Man is the highest point in the visible universe ; 
 in man, God s attributes are most luminously exhibited ; man 
 is the image and glory of God (1 Cor. xi. 7). But Christ is 
 the Adequate Image of God ; God s Self-reflection in His 
 Own thought, eternally present with Himself. As the Image 
 Christ is the TtoaTOTOxoj naar^ xriaewg ; that is to say, not the 
 First in rank among created beings, but begotten before any 
 created beings. That this is a true sense of the expression 
 is etymologically certain " (p. 817). 
 
 We are here carried into the cloudy region of theological 
 metaphysics, where language and understanding part com 
 pany. To all appearance, Mr. Liddon has convinced himself, 
 and would fain persuade others, St. Paul aimed not only to 
 exalt Christ above angels, and to point out His priority to 
 every other creature, but also to assert His Godhead. Yet 
 very little examination is needed to ascertain that the Apos 
 tle s language can by no reasonable construction be made to 
 allege or imply Christ s Deity. The phrases employed are 
 very far from being tantamount to delineations of the Most 
 High ; they clearly bespeak difference and inferiority. The 
 term Image denotes resemblance, without marking the kind 
 and extent of that resemblance. In its most extreme sense 
 it does not signify sameness, and, as St. Paul uses it, the 
 features constituting the likeness are left undefined. Mr. 
 Liddon indulges in the too common practice of interpreting 
 
128 THEOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS. 
 
 Scripture by inflating indefinite epithets. According to his 
 exposition, the title Son displays an identity of Substance 
 with the Father, and the title Image of God an exact like 
 ness to God. The Son has the Father s Uncreated Nature ; 
 the Image is after the closest lines of complete similitude. 
 Now, this is purely arbitrary, a rash and presumptuous 
 stretching of diction, which properly describes not Divine, 
 but human relations. Son of God is, manifestly, an analogi 
 cal. and figurative expression ; and the adjective only -beg otten, 
 which the latest of the Canonical writers joins with it, enlarges 
 the figurativeness, even while giving a degree of uniqueness 
 and intensity to the relation indicated. What is begetting on 
 the part of God, if being alone begotten is the specific diifer- 
 ence which sunders the beloved Son from the many sons, 
 who, in the realm of created life, are begotten and born of 
 God ? It is not from Scripture, rationally interpreted, men 
 have inferred the proposition that the only -begotten Son is, in 
 virtue of His Sonship, a Person within the Incommunicable 
 and Imperishable Essence. They have brought elaborated 
 conceptions to Scripture, and have grafted them on to a few 
 mystic and metaphorical words. The very phrases by which 
 the Sacred writers seem to shun explicitness and precision 
 become, beneath the hands of interpreters, most explicit and 
 precise. For converting Image into a synonym for exact and 
 adequate likeness, there is really no reasonable pretext. No 
 special emphasis is given to the noun, as in Heb. x. 1 ; no 
 defining adjective is used; and St. Paul does not even prefix 
 the Article, and call Christ the Image of God, but an Image, 
 just as he had, in 1 Cor. xi. 7, called man (comp. James iii. 9). 
 The addition to the name of God of the epithet invisible 
 does not strengthen the expression, or render it more expres 
 sive than that which is, in the first Corinthian Epistle, applied 
 to man. Since the Essence of God is invisible, the visible 
 image of God cannot be identical with His Essence. I can 
 not even imagine what sort of distinct, objective personality 
 is to be understood by " God s unbegun, unending reflection 
 of Himself in Himself; His Self-reflection in His Own 
 
" FIUST-BORN," " ONLY-BEGOTTEN," ETC. 129 
 
 thought, eternally present with Himself." The fault may be 
 in my own powers of comprehension, but I strongly suspect 
 Mr. Liddon mistook phrases for ideas. 
 
 The point is not one of much moment ; but Mr. Liddon is 
 somewhat too confident in his affirmation that the original 
 of the Authorized Version, first-born of every creature, means 
 begotten before any created beings. To be first-born among 
 is, doubtless, to be born before ; but we depart from what is 
 " etymologically certain " when we substitute begotten for born. 
 Begetting and bringing forth by birth are, in their human 
 significance, diverse. Neither can be in strictness attributed 
 to the Almighty, but the attribution of the former is less 
 conspicuously figurative than the attribution of the latter. 
 Unconsciously, if not consciously, the Protestant theological 
 dogmatist desires to reduce, as much as may be, the meta 
 phorical aspect of the expressions into which the language 
 of Scripture compels him to thrust his traditional theories 
 concerning Christ s nature, and so he prefers first-begotten to< 
 first-bom. There can be no dispute, however, that the more 1 
 literal and customary meaning of the term employed by St. 
 Paul is first born. New Testament usage sanctions no other 
 meaning. Our Lord is announced to have been originated 
 or produced before all creation. But this is all that is an 
 nounced respecting His origin. The text does not say the 
 birth of the Son, who is Image of the Invisible God, was not 
 some creative process, though that process preceded, and 
 may in unexplained ways have differed from what is com 
 monly called creation : it does not say the Son was an inher 
 ent Form or Person in the Divine Substance, eternally 
 present Avith the Father. Rather, it implies by the words 
 /Son, First-born, Image, the prior and distinct existence of 
 an originating God and Antitype, who, by an act of His 
 own Will and Power, became in some way a Father, and 
 produced a Representative of Himself. Expositors who can 
 discern in the words Son, first-born, only-begotten, a disclosure 
 of identity of nature between God and Christ, are curiously 
 unable to discern the vastly more obvious disclosure, that 
 
 9 
 
130 CREATION OF ALL THINGS. 
 
 God is in some very real sense the originator of Christ, the 
 Cause of Christ s existence. If the Son is verily a neces 
 sary and everlasting Personal Being, comprised in the Divine 
 Essence, equal to, land of One Substance with, the Father, 
 then first - born and only - begotten are thoroughly empty 
 phrases, about the most senseless and unmeaning which could 
 have been devised to express the relations of eternally co 
 existing and Substantially identical Persons in the Godhead. 
 The loose figurativeness of the language is transparently 
 manifest in every thing except in indicating that God was 
 prior, and God the Producer; but Mr. Liddon draws his 
 theology from the metaphor, and excludes from consideration 
 the one simple, intelligible fact, on which the metaphor is 
 based. 
 
 To avoid superfluous discussion, I do not mention some 
 fairly probable explanations of the passage ; but certainly 
 the expression first-born of, all creation most naturally de 
 notes the position and pre-eminence of primogeniture among 
 created beings and things, and cannot be understood as a 
 denial that the Son was created by God. To suppose the 
 Apostle intended to set forth Christ s Deity by calling Him 
 born before, or first-born of, the whole creation, is to invite 
 contempt for the Apostle and his language. It is not thus 
 the Church has proclaimed her dogma, and no man in his 
 senses would dream of teaching Christ s Godhead in such a 
 fashion. The use of TtQazoroxog is illustrated by Exod. iv. 
 22; Jer. xxxi. 9; Rom. viii. 29; Col. i. 18; Heb. xii. 23; 
 Rev. i. 5. 
 
 A man committed to the task of extracting a revelation of 
 our Lord s Deity from the pages of the New Testament is 
 naturally tempted to invest with peculiar and augmented 
 significance the statement (Col. i. 16) that all things have 
 been created in Christ, by Christ, and for Christ. If, with 
 Mr. Liddon, we translate tv in, we give to the first of these 
 expressions a metaphysical and mystic import ; but, whatever 
 creating in Christ may signify, the act of creating must be 
 referred to the Father, Who, in emitting, originating, or 
 
IN, BY, AND FOR CHRIST COL. I. 16. 181 
 
 producing His Son, contemplated and prepared for the pro 
 duction of the Universe. The most accomplished of syste 
 matic theologians would probably shrink from the proposition 
 that Christ himself created all things in Himself. If we 
 translate tv by, it will then undoubtedly point to secondary, 
 instrumental agency. 
 
 With regard to the next expression, by, or through Christ, 
 the preposition therein employed (dm, with the Genitive 
 case) may indeed be used of the principal cause (Rom. xi. 
 36 ; Heb. ii. 10 ; 1 Cor. i. 9 ; and perhaps Gal. iv. 7), but is 
 much more frequently and regularly used of the subordinate 
 cause, when it corresponds to our by means of, through. 
 Nothing can be plainer in St. Paul s writings, and throughout 
 the New Testament, than the ascription of creation to God 
 as the Primary, Principal, ultimately Efficient Cause (Acts 
 xiv. 15, xvii. 24, 28 ; Rom. xi. 86; 1 Cor. viii. 6; Eph. iii. 9). 
 The two or three passages (John i. 3 ; Col. i. 16, 17 ; Heb. i. 
 2), which attribute creation to Christ, attribute it in an infe 
 rior, secondary sense. The statement, " Christ is the One 
 Producer and Sustainer of all created existence," is a very 
 hyperbolical mode of saying, He is the agent through whom, 
 in some manner not explicable by us, God produced and sus 
 tains all things. Taking the statement rigorously and liter 
 ally, it is palpably false, and also unscriptural. Mr. Lid don 
 himself admits : " The Eternal Father is the ultimate Source 
 of all life." 
 
 The third of the expressions, for Christ (^), betokens 
 created things to have a reference to Christ, he being, under 
 God, and by God s gift and appointment, their Lord and 
 Head. In Rom. xi. 36, after the statement, all things are 
 from God, all things are said to be for Him, but it is puerile 
 to contend that the general indication of aim and reference 
 contained in the preposition must have strictly the same 
 force in the two instances. The different Persons, God and 
 Christ, suggest the different ranges of meaning to be 
 assigned. A dogma must be in extremities when its defend 
 ers cling to a possible sense of a single preposition, in a 
 
132 INDEFINITENESS AND VAGUENESS. 
 
 single text. The whole tenor of Scripture proves created 
 Intelligences to be for God, and on account of God (Heb. ii. 
 10), in an acceptation in which they are not for Christ. 
 Glory, thanks, spiritual sacrifices, fruits of righteousness, are 
 " to God and His honor, through (dia) Jesus Christ " (Rom. 
 xvi. 27 ; 1 Cor. xv. 57 ; Col. iii. 17 ; 1 Peter ii. 5 ; Phil. i. 11). 
 We are taught, " The Lord God Almighty is worthy to 
 receive glory, and honor, and power, because He has created 
 all things, and on account of His Will they were and were 
 created " (Rev. iv. 11). The guiding purpose of the Christian s 
 life is " that in all things God may be glorified, through Jesus 
 Christ" (1 Peter iv. 11). Other texts of the same or similar 
 purport might be cited, but these are sufficient, and by their 
 light Mr. Liddon s adventurous exposition of the words for 
 him may be read : " Christ is not, as Arianism afterwards 
 pretended, merely an inferior workman, creating for the glory 
 of a higher Master, for a God superior to Himself. He creates 
 for Himself; He is the End of created things, as well as 
 their immediate Source ; and, in living for Him, every creature 
 finds at once the explanation and the law of its being. For 
 He is before all things, and by Him all things consist 
 (p. 319). 
 
 The words adduced in the final sentence are no extenua 
 tion of what precedes. The Apostle does not introduce 
 them as a reason or an explanation : And he is before, &c. 
 They affirm priority of existence, and imply pre-eminence 
 in relation to created things.; and, by stating that all things 
 stand together or consist (tv) in Christ, they to some extent 
 expand, without illuminating, what had before been said ; 
 namely, that all things were created in Christ. It is impos 
 sible to determine conclusively the particular shade of signifi 
 cance which the writer intended to attach to the verb consist. 
 The subject transcends the domain of definite conceptions, 
 and the language is vague. But Mr. Liddon has no right to 
 depart from the meaning which he had just previously given 
 to the preposition w. In verses 16 and 17, one of the two 
 translations, by him, and in him, should be kept to. The 
 
OF THE APOSTOLIC LANGUAGE. 133 
 
 former will denote instrumental agency ; the latter will lift 
 our thoughts into a dim ideal region, but will point back to 
 the One Infinite Mind Whose wisdom and power created all 
 things in Christ, and caused all things to stand together in 
 him. 
 
 The 18th and following verses of the first chapter to the 
 Colossians, Mr. Liddon passes with scantiest comment. He 
 is, no doubt, able to reconcile them with his dogma in a man 
 ner quite satisfactory to himself, but they have, to say the 
 least, an appearance of incongruity with the position, that 
 the greatness ascribed to Christ is due to his being Very and 
 Eternal God. When He is magnified by the title First-born 
 from the dead, His Divine Person is not the Object in view ; 
 and yet, since there is no other person than the Divine, the 
 first-born of all creation, and the first-born from the dead, must 
 be personally one and the same. In verse 19, the nomina 
 tive to the verb was well pleased is not expressed ; but our 
 Translators rightly supplied the ellipsis from the remoter 
 antecedent (ver. 12), and the import of the language ill 
 accords with the doctrine of our Lord s Con- substantial, Co- 
 eternal, Co-equal Deity. 
 
 The word (nli^^a) fulness, which is used in Col. i. 19, is 
 used again ii. 9, where the fulness of the Godhead is said to 
 dwell in Christ bodily. Mr. Liddon expounds the latter text 
 thus : 
 
 " The entire cycle of the Divine attributes, considered as a 
 series of powers or forces, dwells in Jesus Christ ; and this 
 not in any merely ideal or transcendental manner, but with 
 that actual reality which men attach to the presence of ma 
 terial bodies which they can feel and measure through the 
 organs of sense ; " and in a note he adds : " In this passage 
 the pleroma must be understood in the metaphysical sense 
 of the Divine Essence, even if in Col. i. 19 it is referred to 
 the fulness of Divine grace. Contrast, too, the permanent 
 fact involved in the present dwells of the one passage, with 
 the historical aorist, was well pleased of the other." The 
 adverb bodily has its best explanation in our Lord s Human- 
 
134 THE 
 
 ity, and signifies in bodily form. The meaning really, sub 
 stantially, is not inadmissible, but finds stronger support in 
 the authority of orthodox interpreters than in reason and 
 philology. The expression fulness of the Godhead is not 
 distinguishable from fulness of God. The word translated 
 Godhead is not that which in Rom. i. 20 stands for the 
 Divine Nature, but a term to which Godship would perhaps 
 be the more exact English equivalent. It is, however, idle 
 to imagine the author of the Epistle to have had a distinction 
 of this sort in view. If we bring in the nice discriminations 
 and verbal minutiae of scholastic theology, it is erroneous to 
 affirm that the Divine Essence abides in Christ. He is inte 
 rior to the Divine Essence, and the precise statement of His 
 Deity demands the announcement : He is the fulness of the 
 Godhead, in a bodily form. Apart from the Divine Essence, 
 there is, according to the theory Mr. Liddon maintains, no 
 personal Christ in whom the Divine Essence can dwell. But 
 the attempt to wring a dogma out of a trivial difference in 
 phraseology is manifestly foolish. The fulness said to dwell 
 in Christ, reasonably viewed by the light of Scripture, con 
 sists in the plenitude of exalted endowments of power and 
 dominion, grace and sanctity, communicated from the Divine 
 Nature of God to the human nature of Christ. Whether 
 they were bestowed through the channel of a pre-existent 
 spiritual Being or imparted to the human nature directly by 
 the Spirit of God as the title, the Christ (or Anointed), and 
 some texts of Scripture already appealed to (Matt. xii. 18; 
 Luke iv. 18 ; John iii. 34; Acts x. 38), would lead us to con- 
 dude is not here of practical moment ; in either case God 
 vas their Source and Giver. There is nothing to sustain the 
 assertion that all the fulness of the Godhead was incommu 
 nicable to any creature, and specifically different in kind from 
 all the fulness which the Father was well pleased should 
 dwell in Christ (i. 19), or from all the fulness of God unto 
 (f/s ) which the Apostle prayed Christians might be filled 
 (Eph. iii. 19). By phrases so nearly identical the same writer 
 cannot, without extra Scriptural light, be seen to convey con- 
 
IN COL. I. 19 ; II. 9. 185 
 
 ceptions so totally dissimilar as are the influential presence of 
 God in created persons, and the Incarnation of entire Per 
 sonal Deity within the elements of an impersonal Humanity. 
 In John i. 16, we are said to have received of Chrises ful 
 ness, and the contemplated end of Christian progress is the 
 " coining unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature 
 of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. iv. 13). In neither of these 
 passages can the fulness of Christ mean " the Divine Essence," 
 or " the Divine Attributes, considered as a series of powers 
 or forces." And the immediately subjoined context (Col. ii. 
 10), "And ye are filled full (or have your fulness) in Him," 
 does not strengthen the opinion that fulness of the Godhead 
 denotes essential, inherent qualities of the Divine Nature. 
 The very close connection of the noun and verb is concealed 
 from the English reader, owing to our Translators having 
 rendered the latter are complete ; but in the Greek the noun 
 is a derivative from the verb, and the two are as nearly allied 
 as ^.YG fulness and to fill in our own language. Christians 
 are made full from the fulness that is in Christ, but certainly 
 do not share the absolute perfections of the Godhead. The 
 fulness is denominated fulness of the Godhead, not because 
 it is the cycle of the Almighty s Essential, Incommunicable 
 Properties, but because it flows from God, and is God s gift. 
 Professor Moses Stuart, the great American champion of 
 Mr. Liddon s dogma, freely acknowledged this in his Fifth 
 Letter to Channing. " In Eph. iii. 19, the Apostle exhibits 
 his fervent wishes that the Christians of Ephesus might be 
 filled witli all the fulness of God. By comparing this ex 
 pression as applied to Christ in Col. i. 19, ii. 9, with John i. 
 14, 16, and Eph. i. 23, it appears evident that by the fulness 
 of God is meant the abundant gifts and graces which were 
 bestowed on Christ, and through Him upon His disciples." 
 The results of holiness which God has abidingly and com 
 pletely effected in Christ, He (according to the theology of 
 the Colossian and Ephesian Epistles) designs, through Christ, 
 gradually to effect in His other spiritual, rational offspring. 
 " The measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," even 
 
136 EQUIVALENCE OF " IMAGE " AND 
 
 " all the fulness of God," is the height to which our Heav 
 enly Father s loving wisdom will lift His obedient children, 
 by the stages of long-continued progress. 
 
 The distinction between God and Christ, though not pre 
 sented in the Epistle to the Colossians with all the definite 
 clearness which appears elsewhere in the New Testament, is 
 nevertheless marked in a fashion not easily reconcilable with 
 the assumption that the writer, in exalting our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, intended to equalize Him with God. In the opening 
 sentences, the Deity is designated " God our Father," and 
 " God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ : " in iii. 17, the 
 precept is given, " Do all things in the name of the Lord 
 Jesus, giving thanks to God, the Father, through Him ; " and 
 in iv. 3 there is an exhortation to pray that God would open 
 a door for speaking the mystery of Christ; the mystery 
 " wherein are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowl 
 edge " (ii. 3). If St. Paul was inspired to believe, with an 
 uniform and steady faith, that Christ is a Person or Form 
 within the Essence of the Divine Nature, this language, and 
 the general style of his references to God and Christ through 
 out the Epistle, are very perplexing, and by no means cal 
 culated to exhibit and propagate his faith. 
 
 By what rational method Mr. Liddon can have reached 
 the following conclusion, I am utterly unablt) to conceive : 
 " Although throughout this Epistle the title Logos is never 
 introduced, it is plain that the Image of St. Paul is equivalent 
 in His rank and functions to the Logos of St. John. Each 
 exists prior to creation ; each is the One Agent in creation ; 
 each is a Divine Person ; each is equal with God, and shares 
 His essential Life ; each is really none other than God." The 
 Logos and Image may approximate nearly, though the 
 former is a step in advance, and to each an existence prior 
 to creation generally may be ascribed ; the rest of the descrip 
 tion is due to Mr. Liddon s traditional faith and lively imagi 
 nation. 
 
 The Prologue of " St. John s Gospel," and the opening 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, are, in Mr. Liddon s 
 
CHRIST S DEITY IN HEBREWS i. 5-14. 137 
 
 opinion, the only passages in the entire compass of the New 
 Testament which are adequately parallel to the " exhaustive 
 and magnificent dogmatic passage in the Epistle to the Col- 
 ossians." The speculative Christology with which the fourth 
 Gospel commences has been already alluded to, and also that 
 application of words from the 45th Psalm, by which " Christ 
 is expressly addressed as God" (Heb. i. 8). But the doctrine 
 deduced from a misapplied and perhaps mistranslated phrase * 
 is set aside by the plain sense of the subsequent context : thy 
 God hath anointed thee,~&c. 
 
 The language of the writer to the Hebrews dilates remark 
 ably under Mr. Liddon s manipulation. " Christ in His cru 
 cified, but now enthroned, Humanity, is seated at the right of 
 the Majesty on high (i. 3) ; He is seated there, as being Heir 
 of all things (ver. 2) ; the angels themselves are but a por 
 tion of His vast inheritance. The dignity of His titles is indic 
 ative of His essential rank (ver. 4)." How can Christ s being 
 seated at the right hand of God intimate He is God ? Do 
 not the very terms in which His exalted position is de 
 scribed show Him not to be interior to the Divine Majesty, 
 but exalted by It ? How does Christ become Heir of all 
 things ? in virtue of inherent Deity, or by the decree of 
 " His Father and our Father, His God and our God " ? The 
 author of the Epistle tells us, God constituted or appointed 
 Him Heir of all things. How can the supreme rank of 
 Essential Godhead be indicated by the statement, "He 
 became so much better than the angels, as He hath inherited 
 (or obtained) a more excellent name than they" ? Mr. Lid- 
 don himself admits the reference is to the exaltation of our 
 Lord s Humanity. The superior excellence of Christ s Name 
 is enforced and illustrated in verse 5 by an application of 
 language which Christians, possessing the knowledge that 
 Christ is Eternal God, cannot readily apply to His Divine 
 
 * Dr. Davidson repeats in his " Introduction to the New Testament " 
 his opinion that the sense of the Hebrew is, "Thy God s or Divine throne 
 i* for ever and ever." Isaac Leeser also renders, in Psalm xlv. : " Thy 
 throne, given of God." 
 
138 CHRISTOLOGY OF THE 
 
 Essence : Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee 
 (see also v. 5). And again I will be to him, as, or for (sig), 
 a Father, and he shall be to Me as, or for (sig), a Son (comp. 
 2 Cor. A T i. 18). If it is said, begetting in time (this day} 
 refers to Christ s assumption of human nature, or to His 
 resurrection in that nature, then the Sonship is no token of 
 Deity, and does not unveil an Uncreated Entity. The present 
 Bishop of Lincoln (Dr. Wordsworth), in his Article, " Son of 
 God" (Smith s Bible Dictionary), expounds the passage with 
 his accustomed decision and lucidity : " But, in a still higher 
 sense, that title (Son) is applied by God to His only Son, 
 begotten by eternal generation (see Ps. ii. 7, as interpreted 
 in the Epistle to the Hebrews, i. 5 ; v. 5) ; the word to-day, 
 in that passage, being expressive of the act of God, with 
 Whom is no yesterday nor to-morrow." To-day, therefore, 
 in Divine phraseology addressed to men, excludes any definite 
 particular time. The wonder is that a word so superfluous 
 and misleading should have been introduced, but its presence 
 may remind us of the difference between Divine and human 
 diction. 
 
 Verse 13 raises the question, to what personal Being is 
 the language addressed, Sit thou on my Tight hand, till I 
 make thine enemies thy footstool ? Is it addressed by God 
 to Co-equal, Consubstantial God, or is it addressed to the 
 impersonal Humanity in which one of the Forms, Dis 
 tinctions, or Persons of the Godhead arrayed Himself? This 
 is a point which must be settled before inferences are drawn. 
 If the writer of the Epistle imagined Deity was accosting 
 Deity, his credit for spiritual discernment and common sense 
 is impaired; if he believed the man Christ Jesus was 
 accosted, his inspiration did not develop orthodox apprehen 
 sions of Personality, and his language does not contribute to 
 establish the dogma that Christ is, in the most absolute sense, 
 Divine. 
 
 On the expression, " This day have I begotten thee," Mr. 
 Liddon bestows no attention. He understands the term the 
 Son of God, or the Son, to refer to our Lord s only personal 
 
EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 139 
 
 nature, the pre-incarnate, and seeks the full sense of the term 
 in the imagery of the third verse. " That the Son is One 
 with God, as having streamed forth eternally from the 
 Father s Essence, like a ray of light from the parent fire with 
 which it is unbrokenly joined, is implied in the expression, 
 effulgence of His glory. That He is both personally distinct 
 from, and yet literally equal to, Him of Whose Essence He 
 is the adequate imprint, is taught us in the phrase, imprinted 
 image of His Substance* By Him, therefore, the universe 
 was made (ver. 2) ; and at this moment all things are pre 
 served and upheld in being by the fiat of His almighty word 
 (ver. 3) " (p. 322). 
 
 Now, in this commentary, ideas are interpolated, and facts 
 are misrepresented. There is nothing implied or taught 
 about eternal streaming forth, and unbroken junction. The 
 figurative delineation might have been invested with a more 
 definite, special, and exclusive character by the use of the 
 article ; but " the Son in or by (tv) whom God has spoken," 
 is called only an emanation, &c., an impression, &c. The 
 writer of the Epistle was sufficiently master of Greek to 
 know how to express in that language clear and precise 
 thoughts, with clearness and precision. He tried to set forth 
 what in his conception was our Lord s most intimate relation 
 to God, and he employed, in its vaguest form, very vague 
 and figurative diction. The implication and the teaching of 
 unity and equality, as well as personal distinctness, may be 
 
 * Mr. Liddon quotes the Greek of the expressions, effulgence, &c., im 
 printed image, &c., without translating. Person in the Authorized Version 
 is certainly incorrect ; substance is a better translation, but the word em 
 ployed carries no assurance that the writer had the particular conception 
 Essential Nature, rather than the more general conception Being, in his 
 thoughts. The same word occurs (iii. 14) in the phrase "beginning of 
 our confidence ; " and again (xi. 1) in the badly rendered phrase, "faith is 
 the substance," c. On the two expressions from which Mr. Liddon 
 argues, Conybeare and Howson give the following notes : 
 
 (1.) "Not brightness (A.V.), but emanation, as of light from the sun. 
 The word and idea occur in Philo." 
 
 (2.) " Literally impression, as of a seal on wax. The expression is used 
 by Philo concerning the Eternal Word." 
 
140 CHRISTOLOGY OF THE 
 
 quite manifest to Mr. Liddon, but from ordinary understand 
 ings they are impenetrably hidden. 
 
 In the statement, "by Him (Christ), therefore, the universe 
 was made," advantage is taken of verbal ambiguity. The 
 literal translation of the text is, through whom also He ( God} 
 made the ages, where it is not at all probable the word ages 
 signifies the universe, though it is perhaps possible, but still 
 very unlikely, the word signifies worlds ; that is, the present 
 and future abodes of mankind. A reference to Heb. xi. 3 by 
 no means settles the question, the sense being there also 
 undetermined. The more radical and closely connected 
 senses of the word, period of duration, age, dispensation, 
 appear in the Epistle, and more especially in vi. 5 and ix. 26, 
 in the latter of which the usual and proper term for world 
 occurs in the expression foundation of the world. Professor 
 Stuart, in the first of his " Essays on Words relating to Fu 
 ture Punishment," writes : " I had myself, before I gave the 
 topic an extended and minute investigation, been accustomed 
 to suppose that in Heb. i. 2, xi. 3, the universe must be meant, 
 particularly because the plural number is there employed; 
 but a minute inquiry into the grounds of such a rendering 
 has convinced me of my mistake." The plural number is 
 employed in ix. 26, at the end of the ages. 
 
 Mr. Liddon again avails himself of verbal ambiguity when 
 he says : " All things are preserved and upheld in being by 
 the fiat of His (Christ s) almighty word." The phrase word 
 of His power may possibly refer to the power of the Son, 
 but more naturally and probably refers to the power of the 
 Infinite Father. The dubious construction of the Greek is 
 exactly represented in the Anglican Version. 
 
 On the ground of a misapplied and mistranslated quotation 
 from Psalm xcvii. 7, Mr. Liddon speaks of " the honors which 
 the heavenly intelligences themselves may not refuse to pay 
 Christ, even when He is entering upon His profound Self- 
 humiliation (ver. 6)." We need not inquire how the heav 
 enly intelligences could need the injunction, let all the 
 angels of God worship Him. Whether their intelligence 
 
EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 141 
 
 was, or was not, equal to the task of discerning the Almighty 
 and Self-existent Substance through the veil of human flesh, 
 is a question beyond the range of our knowledge. The error 
 in the application of the Psalmist s words, " worship Him, all 
 ye gods (elokim)" is obvious to every reader of the 97th 
 Psalm. Some suppose a Septuagint reading of Deuteronomy 
 xxxii. 43, preserved in the Vatican MS., but probably spu 
 rious, is the source of the quotation ; but this supposition does 
 not help the matter, since in Deuteronomy xxxii. the Messiah 
 is not, directly or indirectly, alluded to. There is but one 
 conclusion which a rational judgment can sanction, the 
 Canonical writer applied an Old Testament passage erro 
 neously. 
 
 A similar decision must be given respecting the citation 
 in verses 10-12, which Mr. Liddon uses as a testimony to 
 " Christ s relationship of Creator both to earth and heaven." 
 Reference to the 24-27 verses of the 102d Psalm demonstrates 
 that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was mistaken. 
 The afflicted Psalmist s plaintive entreaty is poured forth to 
 God, the One God whom the Jews worshipped, and not to 
 Messiah. 
 
 But it may be urged, these citations from the Jewish 
 Scriptures are at any rate evidence of what the writer of 
 the Epistle himself thought concerning Christ s nature and 
 dignity. Opinions enforced by palpably bad reasons are not 
 generally of much value, but the citations, when compared with 
 the language which pervades the Epistle, are rather proofs 
 the writer did not think deeply, and knew too little of his 
 theme to treat it consistently. If he believed that Christ, in 
 His pre-incarnate and alone personal Being, was addressed 
 in the language he had just quoted from the 102d Psalm, 
 how could he with consistency immediately add (ver. 13), 
 referring to the beginning of the 110th Psalm, " To which of 
 the angels said He (God), at any time, Sit thou on my right 
 hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool"? How 
 could he, conformably with the doctrine of Christ s Personal 
 Co-equal Godhead, describe Him in the terms made use of 
 
142 CHRISTOLOGY OF THE 
 
 in ii. 10-13 verses? How also, if he had grasped the con 
 ception that Christ is Very and Eternal God, could he have 
 written (ii. 18; iv. 15; v. 7) of our Lord s having suffered, 
 being tempted, tempted in all points like as we are ; and 
 having offered up prayers and supplications, &c. ? God can 
 not be tempted by evil (James i. 13), and the elements of a 
 created Humanity, which Christ drew around his Divine 
 Person, could not, in any real sense, expose the Self-existent 
 Infinite Spirit to the temptations of finite creatures. " Temp 
 tations endured by Almighty God " is language akin to 
 blasphemy ; but, if Christ s temptations were not endured by 
 Almighty God, by what person were they endured? If 
 His " prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears," 
 were not offered up by Almighty God, by what person were 
 they offered up ? 
 
 In Heb. iii. 2, " Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of 
 our profession," is said to have been faithful to Him who 
 appointed Him, and His superiority to God s servant Moses 
 is illustrated (ver. 6) by the fact that He is over God s house 
 as a son. The English Version misleads by translating his 
 own house / the original is, Sis (God s) house. Whose house 
 Christians are (comp. 1 Cor. iii. 16; vi. 19; 2 Cor. vi. 16). 
 
 It is impossible to reconcile the language respecting our 
 Lord s priesthood according to the Order of Melchisedec, in 
 the fifth chapter, and five chapters next ensuing, with any 
 sort of clear, intelligent faith in His Deity. Mr. Liddon sees 
 " a superhuman Personality more than hinted at in the terms 
 of the comparison which is instituted between Melchisedec 
 and his Divine Antitype. History records nothing of the 
 parents, of the descent, of the birth, or of the death of 
 Melchisedec ; he appears in the sacred narrative as if he had 
 no beginning of days or end of life. In this he is made like 
 unto the Son of God, with His Eternal Pre-existence and 
 His endless days. This Eternal Christ can save to the utter 
 most, because He has a Priesthood that is unchangeable, since 
 it is based on His Own Everlasting Being" (p. 338). Argu 
 ments of this kind only provoke a smile. The description 
 
EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 143 
 
 given of Melchisedec (vii. 3) is singularly fanciful and exag 
 gerated. He is said explicitly to be " without father, without 
 mother," to have " neither beginning of days nor end of life ; " 
 and then the perpetuity of His priesthood is described by 
 exactly the same phrase by which (x. 12) the perpetuity of 
 Christ s session at the right hand of God is described. And 
 why, in quoting Heb. vii. 24, 25, are the important words, 
 " Them that come unto God, through Him," omitted ? Is it 
 because they distinguish between Christ and God, in a manner 
 unsuited to Mr. Liddon s deductions ? 
 
 But the errors into which the writer of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews has fallen do not call for the supposition that, on 
 the subject of Christ s pre-incarnate rank, his thoughts were 
 so utterly ignorant and confused as to render the general 
 prevailing tone of his language not indicative of the opin 
 ions to which his mind inclined. A few perverted and incon 
 sistent interpretations of the Old Testament Scriptures 
 certainly do not justify us in pronouncing him altogether 
 speculative, visionary, and unreasonable. In addition to the 
 evidence already adduced, I think the subjoined passages 
 sufficiently reveal that their author did not hold, or intend to 
 impart, the theory, Christ is Essential and Consubstantial 
 God, in Xature One with, and Equal to, the Father. 
 
 " How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through 
 the Eternal Spirit (perhaps, Holy Spirit) offered Himself 
 without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead 
 works to the service of the living God" (ix. 14). "Ye are 
 come to the general assembly and church of the first-born 
 (TTOCGTOTOXOCW,) who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the 
 Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and 
 to Jesus, mediator of a new covenant" (xii. 23, 24). 
 
 " May the God of peace, Who brought again from the 
 dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep by 
 the blood of an everlasting covenant, make you perfect in 
 every good work, to do His will ; w r orking in you that which 
 is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ " (xiii. 20, 
 21). The Greek admits the rendering, " The Shepherd of 
 
144 FAILURE OF MR. LIDDON s APPEAL 
 
 the sheep, great by the blood," &c., but the other rendering 
 is, I think, to be preferred. 
 
 Mr. Liddon conceives that, in the statements of the first 
 chapter of this Epistle, " We recognize a Being, for Whose 
 Person, although It be clothed in a finite Human Nature 
 (iii. 2), there is no real place between humanity and God " 
 (p. 323). Assertions of this kind prompt the inquiry, What 
 do we know of the intermediate terms of the series interven 
 ing between earthly humanity and God? But experience 
 shows that ignorance of the grounds on which his proposition 
 ought to rest need never hinder a man from affirming an 
 orthodox conclusion to be contained in Scripture. If, having 
 first derived our dogma from other sources, we come to the 
 reading of the Epistle fully convinced such a Being "as Mr. 
 Liddon discovers is, and must be, depicted, then, doubtless, 
 we shall recognize him ; but unbiassed, reasonable investiga 
 tion will not lead to the recognition. The general tone and 
 scope of the sacred writer are, according to all ordinary rules 
 of apprehension, plainly at variance with the assumption of 
 his belief in the proper Deity of Jesus Christ. Mr. Liddon 
 is thoroughly persuaded that in various portions of the New 
 Testament the Divine prerogatives (that is, true Deity) of 
 Christ are explicitly asserted, and therefore does not speak 
 ironically when he says, " While the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 lays even a stronger emphasis than any other book of the 
 New Testament upon Christ s true Humanity, it is neverthe 
 less certain that no other book more explicitly asserts the 
 reality of His Divine prerogatives." 
 
 Now, a careful examination of the passages in the Epistles 
 to the Philippians, Colossians, and Hebrews, to which Mr. 
 Liddon appeals, does something more than show the failure 
 of his appeal to evoke the response he seeks. It throws sus 
 picions of the gravest kind upon his doctrine, and raises dif 
 ficulties which admit of no solution, short of denial that the 
 Scriptures, rationally understood, are a true and sufficing 
 Rule of Orthodox Faith. A really candid, logically minded 
 investigator feels himself driven, however reluctantly, to one 
 
TO THE EPISTLES QUOTED. 145 
 
 of two conclusions: either Orthodoxy has taught for doc 
 trines unwarranted and extra-Scriptural speculations, or the 
 Canonical writers were directed by a controlling inspiration 
 of concealment, preparative to the Church s mission as the 
 living and authoritative Revealer and Teacher, through 
 Which, to the end of time, the light of dogma was to be 
 dispensed. According to one of these conclusions, Mr. Lid- 
 don s doctrine may be true and tenable, and on the ground 
 on which it is tenable I leave it quite unchallenged. I only 
 contend that in Scripture alone it has no adequate logical 
 basis, and cannot possibly be deduced by methods of rational 
 interpretation. Assume there is in the Church an authority 
 co-ordinate with, and in some respects superior to, Scripture, 
 and, so far as I am concerned, the controversy is at an end. 
 I do not wish to enter upon the question whether the claims 
 of Church authority can be satisfactorily vindicated. Mr. 
 Liddon exposes himself to criticism by not avowing that he 
 interprets from the ground of ecclesiastical light and preroga 
 tive, not from the ground of reason. He Avants to be thought 
 rational when he is ecclesiastical, but the two conditions are 
 different ; the latter is held by many to be the nobler and 
 more enlightened condition, but it is specifically distinct from 
 the former. 
 
 There can be no doubt the writers of the Epistles named 
 above designed to exalt Christ, and to avouch His superiority 
 to angels, and to all the productions of any creative or ad 
 ministrative energy which they supposed the Father to have 
 exercised through Him. If they had dared to proclaim, and 
 had desired to proclaim, His Godhead, surely (looking at the 
 subject from the reasonable, and not the ecclesiastical point of 
 view) they would have done so. They would not, when the 
 topic was specially before their minds, have wrapt their faith 
 in figurative phrases, and have shunned giving simple and dis 
 tinct utterance to the thought which lay nearest their hearts. 
 Men who are convinced Christ is God are not apt to be reticent 
 or ambiguous when discoursing of His dignity. Approxima 
 tions on this subject may be fairly construed as evidences the 
 
 10 
 
146 CHRISTOLOGY OF THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 writers could not do more than approximate. They might be 
 moving in the direction of the doctrine ultimately laid down 
 by the Church, but their thoughts were still in the nature of 
 guesses and speculations; and conscious lack of knowledge 
 restrained them from definite allegations. If the New Testa 
 ment contains no statements which, in their rational meaning, 
 amount to negation of Christ s Deity (a point to be hereafter 
 examined), microscopic germs of the doctrine of His Deity 
 may perhaps be discernible in the vague, obscure, metaphorical 
 expressions which Mr. Liddon seizes upon, and expands ; but, 
 on the most favorable supposition, the doctrine itself, in a 
 developed, intelligible, precise shape, is absent. We must 
 seek for it as a revelation, beyond the limits of Scripture, and 
 then bring it to Scripture, as a key of knowledge, and a clew 
 to meanings which unaided reason oould never detect. 
 
 The Christology of the Apocalypse is treated with Mr. 
 Liddon s accustomed heedless rhetoric, and readiness of 
 assumption. " The representation of the Person of our 
 Saviour in the Apocalypse is independent of any indistinct 
 ness that may attach to the interpretation of the historical 
 imagery of that wonderful book. In the Apocalypse, Christ 
 is the First and the Last ; He is the Alpha and the Omega ; 
 He is the Beginning and the End of all existence (Rev. i. 8 ; 
 ii. 8; xxi. 6; xxii. 13). He possesses the seven spirits or 
 perfections of God (iii. 1). He has a mysterious Name which 
 no man knows save He himself (xix. 12). His name is writ 
 ten on the foreheads of the faithful (iii. 12 ; comp. ii. 17) ; 
 His grace is the blessing of Christians (xxii. 21) " (p. 243). 
 
 Out -of the four texts included in the first of the above 
 references, there is only one (ii. 8) in which it is certain 
 Christ is the speaker. Hengstenberg, who fancies the diction 
 of the Apocalypse to have been framed with the intention 
 of exhibiting Christ s " equality to God in power and glory" 
 ( Commentary on Apocalypse, Eng. Trans, vol. i. p. 107) is 
 of opinion that, in i. 8, xxi. 6, xxii. 13, Christ in His personal 
 distinctness is not the speaker, but " God in the undivided 
 Unity of His Being, without respect to the difference of 
 
CHRISTOLOGY OF THE APOCALYPSE. 147 
 
 Persons ; " an opinion which the contexts in the two former 
 instances sustain, though in the latter the speaker is doubtful. 
 There is, therefore, only inadequate warrant for the announce 
 ment " Christ is the Alpha and Omega ; He is the Beginning 
 and End of all existence." In i. 8, the speaker is shown by 
 the true reading to 1 be the Lord God the Almighty, and the 
 words beginning and end are very doubtful ; the descriptive 
 clauses with which verse 11 commences must also be omitted. 
 Christ is called the first and the last, and to these epithets in 
 i. 17, and ii. 8, is appended the statement, He was dead and 
 is alive, a statement which could not rationally be made of 
 a Person Who is the Almighty s Equal in nature, power, 
 and glory. And the titles the first and the last are not, 
 even if synonymous with the Alpha and the Omega, the 
 beginning and the end, necessarily predications of Supreme 
 Deity. Jesus Christ is "the First and the Last, the Begin 
 ning and the End," in relation to the Church, in which He 
 is the Foundation and the Head (1 Cor. iii. 11 ; Eph. i. 22, 
 ii. 20, iv. 15) ; and the Faith, of which He is Author and 
 Finisher (Heb. xii. 2). The titles may be suitably applied 
 both to the Lord God, and to Christ, but the significance in 
 each application will be determined by the nature, attributes, 
 and offices of the Being described. That our Lord Jesus 
 Christ is, under His Father, and by His Father s ordination, 
 the commencement and consummation of the Church, is un 
 questionably the teaching of the New Testament. When 
 Scripture proof shall have been presented that Christ is not 
 the highest originated spirit, the noblest and most lavishly 
 enriched production of His Father s Wisdom, Will, and 
 Might, it will be time enough to argue that comprehensive 
 designations assigned to Him have the same exclusive and 
 singular force which they have when assigned to the Al 
 mighty. 
 
 Christ is called (iii. 14) the beginning of the creation of 
 God, a most inexcusable and dangerous appellation, if St. 
 John knew Him to be severed by the immeasurable chasm 
 of Self-existence from all the creatures of God \ for the 
 
148 CHRISTOLOGY OF THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 phrase cannot fairly be denuded of its simple, prima facie 
 sense, the first created Being. 
 
 Where is the warrant for transforming the seven S2)irits 
 into the seven perfections of God? The writer of the Apoc 
 alypse begins his address to the seven Churches (i. 4) with 
 the pious aspiration " Grace and peace be unto you from 
 the Almighty, and from the seven spirits which are before 
 His throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the 
 first-born of the dead." In iii. 1, the possession of the seven 
 spirits of God, and of the seven stars or angels of the seven 
 Churches (i. 20), is ascribed to Christ. The 5th verse of 
 chap. iv. symbolizes the seven spirits by seven lamps of fire 
 burning before the throne ; and the 6th verse of chap. v. says 
 the seven horns and seven eyes of the Lamb (the Lord 
 Jesus) are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the 
 earth. There is here no justification for surmising the spirits 
 to be attributes or perfections of the Almighty. The only 
 motive for such a surmise is the desire to transfer to Christ 
 essential properties of the Divine Nature. If the writer did 
 not mean to indicate seven separate, created ministering 
 spirits, he meant to typify the varied operations of the One 
 Holy Spirit. The latter was more probably his purpose. Dr. 
 Davidson remarks : " Seven spirits are said to be before the 
 throne of the Almighty, meaning the seven highest spirits ; 
 an idea taken from the Zoroastrian religion into the Jewish, 
 as we see from Zechariah (iv. 2-10), but modified in the 
 Hebrew conception, so that in the Apocalypse the seven 
 spirits represent the One Spirit of God" (Introduction to 
 N~eio Testament, vol. i. p. 337). The prerogative of Christ 
 in the distribution of the Holy Spirit s gifts is indisputable, 
 but such prerogative is assuredly no proof of His Deity. It 
 appertains to the regency and delegated control which the 
 One God and Father has bestowed. 
 
 A comparison of passages shows the reference to Christ s 
 " mysterious Name " (xix. 12) to be quite irrelevant to Mr. 
 Liddon s object. From ii. 17, we learn that to him who 
 overcometh Christ will " give a white stone, and on the stone 
 
CHRI3TOLOGY OF THE APOCALYPSE. 149 
 
 a name written which no one knoweth saving he that re- 
 ceiveth it." In iii. 12, Christ is made to say, " Upon him that 
 overcometh I will write the Name of my God, and the name 
 of the city of my God, and my new Name." Again, in xiv. 1, 
 the hundred and forty-four thousand are introduced, who (ac 
 cording to the true reading) have " the Lamb s Name, and His 
 Father s Name, written on their foreheads." These texts 
 evince that we are not at liberty to argue from the reception 
 and bearing of a name, to the possession of a nature. Christ 
 is denominated the Word of God, and is said to have " on 
 His vesture, and on His thigh, a name written, King of kings, 
 and Lord of lords " (xix. 13 and 16; comp. xvii. 14) ; expres 
 sions which leave no doubt the writer proposed to attribute 
 to Christ a very high exaltation, and to assign Him a special 
 nearness to God, but they do not rise to the height which the 
 doctrine of Christ s Essential Godhead requires. That doc 
 trine, though mysterious, and beyond the reach of reason, is, 
 nevertheless, capable of very simple, unequivocal statement; 
 and no man who held it would (unless designedly reserved) 
 resort to cloudy periphrasis, vague imagery, and inferential 
 metaphors. Mr. Liddon finds no difficulty whatever in put 
 ting a plain assertion of Christ s Godhead into at least half-a- 
 dozen different shapes, and there is no ground for conjecturing 
 poverty of language prevented the Apocalyptic Seer from 
 doing the like. 
 
 When quoting the passage ascriptive of the titles, " King 
 of kings, and Lord of lords," Mr. Liddon connects with it a 
 reference to 1 Tim. vi. 15, and rightly, if the titles are not 
 Names of God " written upon " Christ, inasmuch as a com 
 parison of the texts brings into view the wide difference 
 between the Almighty Father and the glorified Jesus, the 
 Prince of the kings of the earth (i. 5). Christ may be, sub 
 ject to the Most High, King of kings, &c., but He is not 
 The Blessed and only Potentate Who alone hath Immortality. 
 The difference of the descriptions is more instructive than 
 their partial agreement. With regard to the " mysterious 
 name," Dr. Davidson says : 
 
150 CHRISTOLOGY OF THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 " The new name is the unutterable name, yet the name 
 does not imply that the nature of Jehovah belongs to Mes 
 siah. It is an old Rabbinic tradition, that the appellation 
 Jehovah belongs to three things, the Messiah, the righteous, 
 and Jerusalem ; which is proved by Jer. xxiii. 6 ; Isa. xliii. 
 7 ; Ezek. xlviii. 35. It is highly probable that the Apocalyp- 
 tist alludes to this tradition, because the faithful are repre 
 sented as having the name of God, and that of the New 
 Jerusalem, and the new name of Messiah, written on their 
 foreheads, which name is Jehovah. Besides, the angel Meta 
 tron, in Jewish doctrine, is also called Jehovah, showing 
 that the title is given to creatures" (Introduction to New 
 Testament, vol. i. p. 333).* 
 
 When Mr. Liddon writes : " His (Christ s) grace is the 
 blessing of Christians (xxii. 21)," I presume he wishes his 
 readers to draw the inference Christ is God, but the inference 
 is groundless. No truthful expositor of Scripture will deny 
 Christ s function as the channel and minister of favor and 
 spiritual blessings from God; and since God has invested 
 Him with authority, and made Him Head of the Church, the 
 wish that favor and blessing from Him may be with Chris- 
 
 * " The Metatron in Jewish conception was one of the three highest 
 angels, who was permitted to sit in the divine chamber and write down 
 the virtues of the Israelites. His name is like that of his Master, i e., 
 Shaddai (Mighty One; Almighty). The distinction made between him 
 and other angels is, that he sits with God in the innermost apartment, 
 while the rest hear the divine command before the veil. Hence he is 
 called Prince of the Face, i.e., who stands before God. . . . The relation 
 of the Metatron to the Shekinah is fluctuating. . . . He may have been 
 a kind of Mediator, the revealer of Jehovah, the investiture of the She 
 kinah ; but he was never thought of as properly Divine. Instead of par 
 ticipating in God s Essence, he was His instrument. While explaining 
 the Angel of Jehovah by Metatron, later Jews, far from making him 
 Jehovah s fellow, God eternally proceeding from the unseen Creator, 
 have believed that he was a created angel of exalted rank " (Dr. David 
 son, Theological Review, January, 1870). 
 
 Mr. Westcott, in treating the same subject (Introduction to the Gospels), 
 coincides with Dr. Davidson in judging " Schottgen s arguments rest 
 ing on the convertibility of the terms /Shekinah, Metatron, &c., with Messiah, 
 to be unwarranted." 
 
CHRISTOLOGY OF THE APOCALYPSE. 151 
 
 tians was a most natural and pious wish for Apostles to 
 express ; but where in these facts is the excuse for the deduc 
 tion Christ is God, and therefore the Supreme Independent 
 Sour.ce of spiritual gifts ? Scripture nowhere exhibits Him 
 in such a character, and, if Mr. Liddon were in the habit of 
 looking to contexts, he would have observed that in the con 
 cluding paragraph of the Apocalypse, God and the Lord 
 Jesus are mentioned in a manner which strongly marks their 
 distinct individualities. 
 
 Mr. Liddon sees the climax of Apocalyptic significance in 
 " the representation of Christ in His wounded Humanity 
 upon the throne of the Most High. The Lamb, as It had 
 been slain, is in the very centre of the court of heaven (v. 6) ; 
 He receives the prostrate adoration of the highest intelli 
 gences around the throne (v. 8), and, as the Object of that 
 solemn, uninterrupted, awful worship (v. 12), He is associated 
 with the Father, as being in truth one with the Almighty, 
 Uncreated, Supreme God (v. 13; comp. xvii. 14)." Now, in 
 vii. 17, the Lamb is represented as being in the midst of the 
 throne ; and in xxii. 1 and 3 verses, " the throne of God 
 and of the Lamb " is mentioned ; but the association with 
 God upon His throne is illustrated and explained by the 
 language of ii. 26, 27 ; iii. 21 : " He that overcometh and 
 keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power 
 over the nations (or Gentiles), and he shall rule them with 
 a rod of iron, as earthen vessels are shattered ; as I also have 
 received of my Father." " To him that overcometh will I 
 grant to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame, 
 and have sat down with my Father on His throne." Mr. 
 Liddon seems to have neglected these texts, feeling, perhaps, 
 they were not suited to elucidate his argument, though he 
 would be the last to question the accuracy, wisdom, and pro 
 found meaning of the language which St. John has ascribed 
 to our Lord. 
 
 With respect to " the prostrate adoration of the highest 
 intelligences round the throne," it should be borne in mind 
 the chorus of praise to the Lamb " The Lion of the tribe 
 
152 CHRISTOLOGY OF THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 of Judah and the root of David " (v. 5) is in connection 
 with the opening of a book which he receives from the hand 
 of God. The association with God in the reception of pros 
 trate homage appears only in chap. v. ; elsewhere such hom 
 age is limited to the Lord God Almighty, and injunctions 
 are given to worship Jlim. The terms of the new song in 
 which the worthiness of the Lamb is celebrated virtually 
 exclude the idea of His Godhead : " Thou art worthy to take 
 the book, and to open the seals thereof; for thou wast slain, 
 and hast redeemed unto God by thy blood from out of every 
 kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation, and hast made 
 them a kingdom and priests unto our God (comp. i. 6), and 
 they shall reign upon the earth." Again, in v. 12, " Worthy 
 is the Lamb that was slain to take (or receive) the power, 
 and riches, and wisdom," &c. ; and in v. 13, and elsewhere, 
 He that sittetli upon the throne is clearly distinguished from 
 the Lamb. There is no trace of identity, or unity of nature, 
 and a very manifest separation of persons. 
 
 Few men who had read the revelation of St. John care 
 fully through would have ventured to affirm, even in Uni 
 versity Sermons on our Lord s Divinity, that Christ is therein 
 represented " as being in truth one with the Almighty, Uncre 
 ated, Supreme God." If a theologian can bring himself to 
 the conviction Christ is, in the Apocalypse, on a level with 
 the Lord God Almighty, argument will, of course, be unavail 
 ing ; he is clothed in armor of prepossession which neither 
 facts nor reasoning can penetrate. 
 
 Besides the texts to which allusion has already been made, 
 the following will help to throw light on the Apocalyptist s 
 estimate of our Lord s Person, and on his ascription of an 
 unrivalled supremacy to God, as the One Uncreated Source 
 and Possessor of Majesty and power. 
 
 " A revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him," 
 &c. (i. 1). "Jesus Christ hath made us a kingdom and 
 priests unto His God and Father" (i. 6). 
 
 In iii. 12, the glorified Saviour repeatedly uses the expres 
 sion my God, an expression which, according to the true read 
 ing, he also uses iii. 2. 
 
CHPJSTOLOGY OF THE APOCALYPSE. 153 
 
 In xv. 3 and 4, we find " The song of Moses, the servant 
 of God, and the song of the Lamb," addressed to the Lord 
 God Almighty, Who is called alone Holy. 
 
 The distinction between our God and His Christ (or 
 Anointed), is marked in xi. 15 ; xii. 10. The separate indi 
 vidualities are also seen in xii. 17 ; xiv. 4 and 12 ; xx. 6 ; 
 xxi. 22. 
 
 Among Christians versed in the traditional dogmatic an 
 alysis of the Divine Nature, recognition of distinct Person 
 alities in God and Christ, may, without risk, be couched in 
 language which, when taken alone, is almost necessarily open 
 to misconstruction. But the New Testament Scriptures 
 addressed recent converts with a view to their edification, 
 and, by Protestant supposition, address also all Christians as 
 long as the world shall last, for the very purpose of affording 
 doctrinal proof and verification ; yet neither guarding expla 
 nation nor unambiguous avowal is provided to shelter the 
 separate personal designations of God and Jesus Christ 
 from the invasions of imperfect knowledge and hostile 
 thought. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Illuminative action of the Holy Ghost, and presumed resulting unity of 
 Apostolic doctrine. The "incidental expressions implying a high 
 Christology in St. James s Epistle," considered. Supposed evidence 
 favorable to the dogma of Christ s Godhead, in St. Peter s Missionary 
 Sermons. Difficulty involved in the constant ascription of our 
 Lord s Resurrection to the power of the Almighty Father. How 
 far are John ii. 19, x. 18, able to bear out the summary assertion, 
 " Christ raises Himself from the dead ?" Argument from the Mis 
 sionary Sermons continued. Argument from St. Peter s General 
 Epistles. " St. Jude s implications that Christ is God." Rational 
 statement of the evidential purport of the documents referred to in 
 this Chapter. 
 
 THE full recognition of Christ s Godhead by the Apostles 
 Mr. Liddon refers to the enlightening influences of the Holy 
 Spirit imparted subsequently to Christ s ascension. 
 
 " The Holy Spirit (St. John xiv. 26 ; xv. 26 ; xvi. 13, 14, 
 15) was to bring the Words and Works and Character of 
 Jesus before the illuminated intelligence of the Apostles. 
 The school of the Spirit was to be the school of reflection. 
 But it was not to be the school of legendary invention. 
 Acts, which, at the time of their being witnessed might have 
 appeared trivial or commonplace, would be seen, under the 
 guidance of the Spirit, to have had a deeper interest. Words, 
 to which a transient or local value had been assigned at first, 
 would now be felt to invite a world- wide and eternal mean 
 ing. These things understood not His disciples at the first 
 (St. John xii. 14-16), is true of much else besides the entry 
 into Jerusalem. Moral, spiritual, physical powers which, 
 though unexplained, could never have passed for the product 
 of purely human activity, would in time be referred by the 
 Invisible Teacher to their true source ; they would be re 
 garded with awe as the very rays of Deity.* 
 
 * Mr. Liddon seems here to forget that our Lord, in connection appar 
 ently with a contemplated increase of His own power (the power of 
 
INSTRUCTIVE OFFICE OF THE SPIRIT. 155 
 
 " Thus the work of the Spirit would but complete, system 
 atize, digest, the results of previous natural observation. 
 Certainly it was always impossible that any man could say 
 that Jesus Vas the Lord but by the Holy Ghost. The inward 
 teaching of the Holy Ghost alone could make the Godhead 
 of Jesus a certainty of faith as well as a conclusion of the 
 intellect. But the intellectual conditions of belief were at 
 first inseparable from natural contact with the living Human 
 Form of Jesus during the years of His earthly Life. Our 
 Lord implies this in saying, Ye also shall bear witness, 
 because ye have been with Me from the beginning. The 
 Apostles lived with One Who combined an exercise of the 
 highest miraculous powers with a faultless human character, 
 and Who asserted Himself, by implication and expressly, 
 to be personally God. The Spirit strengthened and formal 
 ized that earlier and more vague belief which was created 
 by His language ; but it was His language which had fallen 
 on the natural ears of the Apostles, and which was the ger 
 minal principle of their riper faith in His Divinity" (pp. 271- 
 72). 
 
 When a portion of St. John xvi. 13 is quoted as the very 
 words of Jesus himself, we are naturally led to ponder the 
 reason given for the Spirit s being a guide in all the truth : 
 he will not speak from himself ; but whatsoever he shall hear, 
 he will speak. Is this language properly applicable to the 
 Third of the Co-equal Persons in the Divine Substance, or 
 likely to have been used by the Second ? 
 
 Essential Godhead ?) through His going to the Father, is said by the 
 Fourth Evangelist to have declared : " He that believeth on me, the 
 works that I do shall he do also ; and greater than these shall he do, 
 because I am going to the Father," &c. (John xiv. 12 ; comp. St. Matt. 
 xxi. 21). The writer of the Acts regards both Christ and the Apostles 
 as the Almighty s instruments in miraculous works, God wrought through 
 Him and through them (ii. 22; xv. 12; 6ta, with the genitive case in both 
 instances). That any of Christ s first followers saw, or were at all dis 
 posed to see, in His miracles tokens of His personal Deity, is an idea not 
 rationally deducible from the language of Scripture. That the Church, 
 after the Apostles days, may have been led by the Spirit to discern and 
 teach more than the Scriptures reveal, I do not deny. 
 
156 
 
 When, again, the expression of St. Paul (1 Cor. xii. 3), N~o 
 man can say that Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Ghost, is 
 appropriated, what excuse is there for insinuating that the 
 expression intimates the Godhead of Jesus ? The acknowl 
 edgment of Christ s Lordship is, by the Apostle, opposed to 
 the assertion, Jesus is accursed, an assertion which no man 
 divinely inspired can make ; and, in verses 5 and 6, the same 
 Lord and the same God are as clearly distinguished as are 
 the ministrations or services in the Church over which the 
 former presides, and the spiritual operations of which the 
 latter is the source. The immediate context demonstrates 
 Lord and God not to have been in the writer s intention 
 synonymous, and further the first Epistle to the Corinthians 
 contains apparently invincible testimony St. Paul did not 
 believe Christ to be God. 
 
 But detailed criticism of the flaws and assumptions which 
 disfigure the extract I have made is superfluous. I am con 
 cerned only with the more prominent features of Mr. Lid- 
 don s method and argument. His statement invites us to look 
 for the signs of completeness, system, and mental digestion 
 in the pages of the New Testament, regarding the great 
 topic upon which he discourses. The premise that Scripture 
 sets forth with practical explicitness all necessary Christian 
 doctrine binds the orthodox Protestant to the estimate which 
 is here advanced respecting the work of the Spirit. 
 
 In conformity with this estimate, therefore, Mr. Liddon 
 detects implications and assertions of Christ s Deity in the 
 Epistles of SS. James, Peter, and Jude. 
 
 " The engrafted word (James i. 21) is the very substance 
 and core of the doctrine ; it is He in Whom the doctrine 
 centres ; it is the Person of Jesus Christ Himself Whose 
 Humanity is the Sprout, Shoot, or Branch of Judah, engrafted 
 by His Incarnation upon the old stock of humanity, and 
 sacramentally engrafted upon all living Christian souls . . 
 St. James s doctrine of the Engrafted Word is a compendium 
 of the first, third, and sixth chapters of St. John s Gospel ; 
 the word written or preached does but unveil to the soul the 
 
CHRISTOLOGY OF ST. JAMES S EPISTLE. 157 
 
 Word Incarnate, the Word Who can give a new life to 
 human nature, because He is Himself the Source of Life " 
 (p. 289). A glance at the context ought to have suppressed 
 this reckless empty verbiage. From verses 17 and 18, we 
 learn that the Father of Lights, the Giver of every good and 
 perfect gift, begat us of His own will, by the word (logos) 
 of truth. The word is just afterwards described as the 
 engrafted or implanted word, which is able to save our souls, 
 and we are exhorted to be doers of it, and not self-deceiving 
 hearers only. Incontestably, the implanted word is the mes 
 sage and teaching of God, in the Gospel. That St. James s 
 few words are a compendium of the first, third, and sixth 
 chapters of the latest Evangelist is a discovery of great 
 originality and magnitude, but unfortunately altogether 
 incapable of verification. 
 
 To the compendious allegation, St. James " appears to apply 
 the word Lord throughout his Epistle to the God of the Old 
 Testament and to Jesus Christ, quite indifferently," exception 
 may be taken. The Epistle has throughout a markedly 
 Hebraistic complexion. The author s mind is possessed by 
 the language and tone of the Old Testament, to which he 
 continually refers. We cannot be sure, therefore, that by 
 the denomination Lord simply, he ever means other than the 
 Almighty God. The strong probability no doubt is, that 
 when he mentioned the coming of the Lord (v. 7, 8), he had 
 in view the expected coming of Christ ; but even there his 
 thoughts may have been directed to a visitation of God, and 
 his phraseology may have been employed in the Jewish rather 
 than the distinctively Christian meaning. When he adduces 
 the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord (v. 10) as 
 examples of suffering and patience, he evidently alludes to 
 the divinely commissioned teachers of the earlier Covenant ; 
 and when he enjoins prayer, and the anointing of the sick 
 in the Name of the Lord, since it is certain the prayer was 
 to be addressed to the Most High, and not to Christ, the pre 
 sumption is, that, in verses 14 and 15, the word Lord is put 
 for God. In verse 12 of the first chapter of the Epistle, the 
 
158 DIFFERENT BASES IN SCRIPTURE 
 
 Lord is interpolated, and the connection in which verse 7 
 stands shows Lord to be there a title of God. An attentive 
 reading of the Epistle leads us to conclude Jesus Christ is 
 not called simply Lord until the last chapter, and perhaps is 
 not so called there. But, if he had been, the fact would have 
 carried no sort of indication of his Godhead. Believing St. 
 James s teaching to harmonize completely with St. Paul s, 
 Mr. Liddon should have remembered St. Paul s fundamental 
 and unconditionally avowed position ; to Christians there is 
 one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 
 viii. 4-6 ; Eph. iv. 6 ; 1 Tim. ii. 5). The title God of course 
 includes the title Lord, but there is a pitiable violation of 
 reason and evidence involved in the inference, God and 
 Christ are in nature and dignity identical, because each is 
 denominated Lord. If the Scriptures teach any thing unam 
 biguously to a docile and intelligent mind, they teach that 
 Christ s lordship and the Almighty s Lordship rest on different 
 bases. The former, whatever may be its extent, is derived, 
 imparted, and subordinate ; the latter is absolutely underived, 
 independent, and supreme. God has made Jesus both Lord 
 and Christ (Acts ii. 36), has highly exalted him, and given him 
 a name which is above every name, &c. (Phil ii. 9). St. Paul, 
 who uniformly attributes the resurrection of Christ to the 
 power of God the Father, declares that to this end Christ 
 both died and lived, that He might have lordship over both 
 dead and living (Rom. xiv. 9). That our Lord s dominion, 
 however vast and transcendent, is distinguished from the 
 dominion of the Almighty, by derivation and bestowal, is a 
 Scriptural truth which may indeed be explained away, but 
 cannot be denied. And, even to minds tied and bound by 
 predeterminations, the constant want of reference to the 
 ground of inherent eternal Godhead must appear most 
 puzzling. How does it come to pass that Evangelists and 
 Apostles, under the completing and systematizing tuition of 
 the Spirit, ascribe to donation and investiture the empire 
 and the might which, by the hypothesis of Christ s proper 
 Deity, attach to His Essential Personal Being no less than 
 
FOR CHRIST S LORDSHIP AND GOD S. 159 
 
 to the Being of the Everlasting Father? It the doctrine of 
 Christ s Personal Divinity was an item in the primitive Gos 
 pel message, and if the Scriptures contain the faith originally 
 delivered to the saints, it is an utterly inexplicable thing that 
 our Lord s power and lordship should not often be annexed 
 to His Ineffable Unoriginated Nature, from which they would 
 inevitably and inalienably flow. 
 
 The true reading of iv. 12 most probably is: One is the 
 Lawgiver and Judge, Who is able to save and to destroy ; 
 and Mr. Liddon supplies the following commentary : " Espe 
 cially noteworthy is St. James s assertion that the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, the Judge of men, is not the delegated representative 
 of an absent Majesty, but is Himself the Legislator enforcing 
 His own laws. The Lawgiver, he says, is One Being with 
 the Judge Who can save and can destroy ; the Son of Man, 
 coming in the clouds of heaven, has enacted the law which 
 He thus administers." There is here a purely gratuitous, 
 and totally improbable assumption. The One Lawgiver and 
 Judge is Almighty God, in Whom alone the prerogatives of 
 judgment and legislation ultimately and independently reside. 
 The most exalted estimate of Christ s prerogative is that, 
 through Him, the precepts of God are communicated (John 
 vii. 16, 17 ; viii. 26, 28 ; xii. 49, 50 ; xiv. 10, 24), and through 
 Him as a delegate and representative the function of judg 
 ment is exercised. His own teaching, as understood by His 
 Apostles, was, He is ordained by God the Judge of quick 
 and dead (Aets x. 42) ; through Him God will judge the 
 secrets of men (Rom. ii. 16) ; and so His judgment-seat is 
 the judgment-seat of God (comp. Rom. xiv. 10, where the 
 correct text is judgment-seat of God, with 2 Cor. v. 10). To 
 Him the Father has given all judgment, and has given Him 
 authority to execute judgment also / not because He is the 
 Original Lawgiver, and in nature one with, and equal to, the 
 Father; but because He is the Son of Man (John v. 22, 27). 
 From the Old Testament, the Apostle James would certainly 
 learn that the One Lawgiver and Judge is the Lord of Hosts ; 
 and nothing in the Gospel (presuming always that the New 
 
160 ACCESS TO GOD THROUGH CHRIST 
 
 Testament sufficiently exhibits the Gospel) would so modify 
 his knowledge as to warrant the supposition his language 
 was intended to denote any other than God Most High. 
 The fundamental agreement of SS. Paul and James would, 
 we may fairly conclude, cover the doctrine which the former 
 proclaims (Acts xvii. 31), " God has appointed a day, in which 
 He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom 
 He hath ordained ; having given assurance to all men, in 
 raising Him from the dead." 
 
 Those who yield themselves to obey the messages of God 
 sent to mankind in and through Christ are at once the ser 
 vants or slaves of God, and the servants or slaves of Christ. 
 In serving their Master, Christ, they become acceptable ser 
 vants of God, bringing forth the fruit of righteousness, which 
 is through Jesus Christ to His glory (Rom. xiv. 18; Phil. i. 
 11). The pervading Scriptural conception is, that, in keep 
 ing the sayings and following the example of our Lord, we 
 render service to God. Until the revelation dispensed through 
 the post- Apostolic Church, concerning Christ s Person, has 
 engrossed our minds sufficiently to supersede the rational 
 meaning of the revelation given in the New Testament, we 
 must look upon the service of God as the higher end to be 
 reached in, and by means of, the service of the Captain of 
 OUT salvation the Son by whom God has in these last times 
 addressed and instructed us. Indisputably, the Apostles 
 write as if they designed to lead us through Christ, up to 
 our God and Father. Only the supernaturally aided insight 
 of the Church, disclosing truths practically new, can detect 
 a design to equalize God and Christ as Objects of Christian 
 service. The habitual sequence of Apostolic thought, from 
 whatever point of view the Christian s standing was sur 
 veyed, was : Ye are Christ s and Christ is Q-ods ; the Head 
 of Christ is Q-od (1 Cor. iii. 23 ; xi. 3) ; through Christ toe 
 have access to the Father ; He brings us unto God (Eph. 
 ii. 18 ; 1 Tim. ii. 5 ; Heb. vii. 25 ; 1 Pet. iii. 18). Mr. Liddon, 
 however, does not weigh evidence ; he loses sight of every 
 thing but the exigencies. of the tenet he has undertaken to 
 
THE PERVADING SCRIPTURAL IDEA. 161 
 
 uphold, and without misgiving gravely observes : " St. James, 
 although our Lord s own first cousin, opens his Epistle by 
 representing himself as standing in the same relation to 
 Jesus Christ as to God. He is the slave of God, and of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 In a similar style of extortionate deduction and exaggerat 
 ing perversion we are told : " St. James hints that all social 
 barriers between man and man are as nothing when we 
 place mere human eminence in the light of Christ s. majestic 
 Person ; and when He names the faith of Jesus Christ, he 
 terms it with solemn emphasis, the faith of the Lord of 
 Glory, thus adopting one of the most magnificent of St. 
 Paul s expressions, and attributing to our Lord a Majesty 
 altogether above this human world." ^N"ow, it is hard to 
 understand what valid pretext there is for affirming the 
 Apostle places mere human eminence " in the light of Christ s 
 majestic Person," when he rebukes an unchristian deference 
 to worldly distinctions of rank and wealth. The influence 
 of our Lord s ethical teachings, which have descended to us 
 through the First Gospel, is clearly traceable in St. James s 
 Epistle, and the motive of his language may be more prob 
 ably found in Christ s precept, all ye are brethren (Matt, 
 xxiii. 8), and in the primary Christian duties of brotherly 
 love and humility. 
 
 In James ii. 1, the appellation Lord is not repeated before 
 the words of glory. The Greek is, literally, the faith of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ of Glory, and to this literal rendering the 
 Vulgate Version adheres. It is far from certain our Author 
 ized Version has, by inserting the Lord, conveyed the true 
 sense, though the construction which joins glory with Lord 
 is, I think, to be preferred. There is no justification, how 
 ever, for Mr. Liddon s peremptory assertion, the words must 
 be so joined. He ought to have been well aware that, of 
 glory frequently has been, and may quite fairly be, construed 
 with the faith. Macknight renders the faith of the glory 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, remarking that in so doing he 
 follows the Syriac translation. Mr. Liddon s aim is, I pre- 
 11 
 
162 " LORD " NOT NECESSARILY MEANS GOD. 
 
 sume, to suggest supremacy in the realm, and authority in the 
 apportionment of glory ; but the phrase on which he builds 
 is, by the pretty general verdict of interpreters, both ancient 
 and modern, best understood as a Hebraism for glorious 
 Lord. He himself admits, " of glory may be an epithetal 
 genitive, such as constantly follows the mention of the Divine 
 Name ; " but if it is equivalent to glorious, its explication as 
 applied to Christ would seem most naturally to be, Who has 
 been glorified, and it would refer to His exaltation and in 
 vestiture with glory (1 Tim. iii. 16; 1 Pet. i. 21). 
 
 But whatever rendering is given to the phraseology in 
 question, when we turn to " one of the most magnificent of 
 St Paul s expressions " (1 Cor. ii. 8), we discover a context 
 utterly at variance with the inference of St. Paul s intention 
 to put God and the Lord of Glory on one level of Un 
 created Nature and Dignity. The connection of thought 
 may possibly be, that Christ is the Lord of our glory, spoken 
 of in the earlier portion of the same sentence ; but at any 
 rate there is no excuse for the innuendo, Lord means God, 
 and the Lord of glory is synonymous with the God of Glory 
 (Acts vii. 2), or with the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 the Father of Glory (Eph. i. 17). That " our Lord s Majesty 
 is altogether above this human world," is a circumstance 
 which has no decisive bearing on the point at issue ; namely, 
 the origin of His majesty, and its quality in relation to the 
 Majesty of the Eternal One. 
 
 "A few passing expressions of the lowliest reverence dis 
 close the great doctrine of the Church respecting the Person 
 of her Lord, throned in the background of the Apostle s 
 thought. And if the immediate interests of his ministry 
 oblige St. James to confine himself to considerations which 
 do not lead him more fully to exhibit the doctrine, we are 
 not allowed, as we read him, to forget the love and awe which 
 veil and treasure it, so tenderly and so reverently, in the in 
 most sanctuary of his illuminated soul." The doctrine is too 
 far in the background, and too closely veiled, for the eyes of 
 the most inquisitive rational discernment, though its position 
 
THE REAL SENTIMENTS OF ST. JAMES. 163 
 
 of inaccessible obscurity admirably harmonizes with the ex 
 istence of an authoritative Church, inspired to bring to light 
 hidden things, and prohibit reason from the exposition of the 
 Sacred Writings. An immovable conviction that St. James 
 must have held the doctrine, notwithstanding all he says, or 
 does not say, is the only explanation of the statement : " St. 
 James s recognition of the doctrine of our Lord s Divinity is 
 just what we might expect it to be, if we take into account 
 the immediately practical scope of his Epistle. Our Lord s 
 Divinity is never once formally proposed as a doctrine of the 
 faith, but it is largely, although indirectly, implied. It is 
 implied in language which would be exaggerated and over 
 strained on any other supposition. It is implied in a reserve 
 which may be felt to mean at least as much as the most 
 demonstrative protestations;" in other words, it is most 
 impressively inculcated by not being specified. 
 
 What the sentiments of St. James really were, and whether 
 he held the Godhead to be an Entity comprising co-equal 
 Forms or Persons, one of Whom Jesus Christ is, may be 
 gathered, not merely from the entire absence of formal prop 
 ositions of a dogma which specially needed positive enuncia 
 tion, but also from expressions and statements which present 
 the Almighty Father as the One Supreme Object of prayer, 
 and faith, and devout regard. The customary separate men 
 tion of God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, with which the 
 Epistle opens, is in itself an indication of separate individu 
 ality, and seemingly not in accordance with the idea that 
 both the Persons named are truly God, being included in one 
 and the same Divine Nature. Prayer for wisdom is to be 
 directed to God ; and religion, pure and undefiled, is before, 
 the God and Father (i. 5, 27). God has chosen the poor in 
 the world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which 
 He has promised to them that love Him (ii. 5 ; comp. i. 12). 
 Faith that there is One God, or that One is the G-od, is com 
 mended (ii. 19), without a word of precautionary instruction 
 showing One not to mean One Person, but One Substance 
 comprehending Equal Persons. We are reminded : With 
 
164 CHRISTOLOGY OF THE ACTS 
 
 the tongue bless we the Lord and Father, and therewith 
 curse we men who are made after the similitude of God 
 (iii. 9). Attachment to a sinful world is contrasted with de- 
 Action to God, and God is recognized as the source of grace 
 and mercy (iv. 4-8). Throughout tne Epistle there is not 
 the faintest trace of an indication of the writer s knowing 
 more than One personal God, Whom he denominates the 
 G-od and Father ; the One God; the Lord and Father ; the 
 Lord of Sdbaoth (Hosts), (v. 4). 
 
 On the two stages of St. Peter s recorded teaching, repre 
 sented respectively by his missionary sermons in the Acts of 
 the Apostles, and by his general Epistles, Mr. Lid don expa 
 tiates largely, infusing into the Apostle s language senses 
 quite foreign to a reasonable interpretation. St. Peter is 
 admitted to have spoken "of our Lord s Humanity with 
 fearless plainness." 
 
 " But this general representation of the Human Nature by 
 Which Christ had entered into Jewish history is interspersed 
 with glimpses of His Divine Personality Itself, Which is 
 veiled by His Manhood. Thus we find St. Peter in the Porch 
 of Solomon applying to our Lord a magnificent title, which 
 at once carries our thoughts into the very heart of the dis 
 tinctive Christology of St. John. Christ, although crucified 
 and slain, is yet the Leader or Prince of Life (Acts iii. 15). 
 That He should be held in bondage by the might of death 
 was not possible (ii. 24). The heavens must receive Him 
 (iii. 21) ; and He is now the Lord of all things (x. 36). It 
 is He Who from His heavenly throne has poured out upon 
 the earth the gifts of Pentecost (ii. 33). His Name spoken 
 on earth has a wonder-working power; as unveiling His 
 Nature and office, it is a symbol which faith reverently 
 treasures, and by the might of which the servants of God 
 can relieve even physical suffering (iii. 16; iv. 10). As a 
 refuge for sinners, the Name of Jesus stands alone ; no other 
 Name has been given under heaven, whereby the one true 
 salvation can be guaranteed to the sons of men (iv. 12). 
 Here St. Peter clearly implies that the religion ot Jesus is 
 
AND OF ST. PETER. 165 
 
 the true, the universal, the absolute religion. This implica 
 tion, of itself, suggests much beyond, as to the true dignity 
 of Christ s Person. Is it conceivable that He Who is Him 
 self the sum and substance of His religion, Whose Name 
 has such power on earth, and Who wields the resources and 
 is invested with the glories of heaven, is notwithstanding in 
 the thought of His first apostles only a glorified man, or only 
 a super-angelic intelligence ? Do we not interpret these early 
 discourses most naturally, when we bear in mind the measure 
 of reticence which active missionary work always renders 
 necessary, if the truth is to win its way amidst prejudice 
 and opposition ? And will not this consideration alone ena 
 ble us to do justice to those vivid glimpses of Christ s Higher 
 Nature, the fuller exhibition of Which is before us in the 
 Apostle s general Epistles ? " (p. 293.) 
 
 Now this quotation is a sample of the sophistical pleading, 
 the overstrained deduction, and the intrusion of extraneous 
 ideas, which too generally characterize Mr. Liddon s exegesis. 
 When we calmly examine the several texts to which he appeals, 
 we find contexts which, for the most part, bar out the inter 
 pretation he strives with such pertinacity to introduce. The 
 title Leader or Prince does not betoken the position of 
 Deity, in the possession and bestowal of life, but the function 
 of Guide and Chieftain in the way which leads unto life. It 
 is employed in Heb. ii. 10 ; xii. 2 ; and we should especially 
 compare Acts v. 31, where St. Peter uses the same title, and 
 preaches that God has exalted Christ to be a Leader and a 
 Saviour. A commentary which exhausts the range of admis 
 sible significance may be found in the words : the gift of God 
 is eternal life in Christ Jesus Our Lord (Rom. vi. 23) ; God 
 has given unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son (1 
 John v. 11). St. Peter prefaced his application of the title by 
 proclaiming that the God of the Patriarchs had glorified His 
 servant Jesus, the holy and righteous Man whom the Jews 
 had denied, and to whom they had preferred a man who was 
 a murderer. The human character of our Lord was evidently 
 in the mind of the Apostle, when he rapidly contrasted 
 
166 MISSIONARY SERMONS OF ST. PETER. 
 
 Christ s moral purity and excellence with the guiltiness of 
 Barabbns, thereby giving a sharper edge to the accusation ; 
 ye killed the Leader of Life, whom God has raised from the 
 dead. The nature in which our Lord underwent death was 
 certainly not His Divine Nature ; but the description Leader 
 of Life is immediately conjoined with the fact of His death, 
 and followed by the oft-repeated declaration (see Acts ii. 24 ; 
 iv. 10; v. 80 ; x. 40), "God raised Him from the dead," a 
 declaration which defies comprehension on the nypothesis of 
 Christ s being accounted Very and Eternal God. If we do 
 not take the standing ground of a Church authority not 
 amenable to reason, we must perceive in the fact of Christ s 
 resurrection by the Almighty Father s power, as in the fact 
 of His being anointed by God with the Holy Ghost (x. 38), 
 an implication He is not absolutely God. The human soul 
 and spirit of Jesus, when withdrawn through death from the 
 flesh, were, according to the Church s teaching, indissolubly 
 joined to a Personal Deity possessing the undiminished 
 attributes of Godhead ; what necessity and what room were 
 there, then, for the intervention of another Personal Deity in 
 bringing about the resumption of the flesh ? If the Petrine 
 Christology agreed with the traditionally Johannine, and if 
 the Logos is, in the full and perfect sense, God, how came 
 the Logos to be quiescent, and, so to speak, handled by 
 another, in the great event of His resurrection? When 
 attempts are made to put the Church s dogma concerning 
 Christ s Person on the basis of reasonable deductions from 
 Scripture, this question may be quite reverently, and is sure 
 to be persistently, pressed. Definitions which the language 
 of the Sacred Writings is said to prompt and certify force 
 the inquiry upon us, and, after human words have been ap 
 plied with confident exactness to the most mysterious of sub 
 jects, we have no right to shield ourselves, under the plea 
 of inscrutable mystery, from the direct consequences of our 
 own verbal propositions. The ascription of Christ s Resur 
 rection to the might of His own inherent co-equal Godhead is 
 what reason, starting from the doctrine of His Deity, com- 
 
DID CHRIST RAISE HIMSELF? 167 
 
 pels us to expect ; but Scripture disappoints reason, by making 
 the Resurrection an act of the Almighty Father. This is a 
 point about which steady faith and intellectual honesty can 
 not afford to shuffle. If, on the one hand, interpretation 
 belongs to a province as much beyond reason as is the most 
 recondite subject-matter of Divine revelation, then we are 
 bound to confess the fact, and to recognize in the Church s 
 dogmatic instruction not the rational expansion and defini 
 tion of clearer intellectual apprehension, but supplementary 
 revelation, completing and rendering operative an otherwise 
 defective Rule of Faith. Orthodox exposition is, in that 
 case, not to be judged by the intellect, but to be accepted 
 submissively, as given from Above through the instrumen 
 tality of the Church. But if, on the other hand, interpreta 
 tion is within the sphere of rational judgment and research, 
 then the constant Apostolic assertion that the Almighty 
 Father raised Christ from the dead is pregnant with sugges 
 tions adverse to the doctrine of Christ s proper, personal 
 Deity. 
 
 Mr. Liddon indeed, relying on John ii. 19, x. 18, summa 
 rily asserts, in his Fourth and Seventh Lectures, " Christ raises 
 Himself from the dead ; " and thus sets two statements in the 
 Fourth Gospel against about twenty unequivocal passages in 
 the Acts and the Epistles. The Synoptic Gospels, moreover, 
 contain no hint that our Lord ever spoke the words, Destroy 
 this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. If He had 
 spoken those words, there would have been as much of truth 
 as falsehood in the charge, which is in Matt. xxvi. 60, and 
 Mark xiv. 57, imputed to false witnesses. But what is of 
 far more consequence is the fact that the explanatory clause, 
 He spoke of the temple of His body, &c., added by the fourth 
 Evangelist (ii. 21), is in itself improbable and unsuitable, and, 
 judging from the applications of Old Testament language in 
 Acts ii. 27-32, xiii. 33-57, the Scripture which the disciples 
 believed, did not harmonize with the opinion : " fhrist raised 
 himself from the dead." Neander and Ewald, in their Lives 
 of Christ, though they both hold St. John to have been the 
 
168 CHRIST S RESURRECTION 
 
 author of the Gospel which bears his name, set aside the 
 Evangelist s exposition as being only an accommodation of 
 words whose original and designed import was different. An 
 instance ot similar departure from the sense of the speaker 
 quoted is, Neander thinks, observable in John xviii. 9 ; and 
 his own view of " the most natural and apparent interpreta 
 tion of the words, Destroy this temple, &c.," is substantially 
 conveyed in Ewald s statement of Christ s " precise meaning 
 in that riddle," " Your whole religion, as it rests on this 
 temple, is corrupt and perverted; but He also is present, who, 
 when it passes aw^ay, as it must pass away, will easily restore 
 it again, in far higher Majesty, and thus is able to accomplish 
 not merely a common miracle, as you ask, but the very high 
 est miracle." 
 
 With respect to John x. 18, the brief expression, I have 
 power to take my life again, is entitled to no weight against 
 the multitude of concurring texts which explicitly affirm 
 Christ to have been raised from the dead, by the Father. 
 And, further, whatever power may be ascribed to Christ in 
 any portion of the New Testament, that power is not said to 
 be essentially inherent, independent, and self-originated, but 
 imparted by, and derived from, the Father, and is therefore 
 not the power of One Who is by nature God, but of one 
 who is exalted and aggrandized by God. 
 
 It is difficult to believe Mr. Liddon could have imagined 
 he was helping his argument, when, citing Acts ii. 24, he 
 said "that Christ should be held in bondage by the might of 
 death, was not possible ; " and added in a note, " This impos 
 sibility depended not merely on the fact that prophecy had 
 predicted Christ s resurrection, but on the dignity of Christ s 
 Person, implied in the existence of any such prophecy 
 respecting Him." The supposed glimpses of Divine Person 
 ality vanish the moment we examine the passage in which 
 the words cited stand : " Jesus the Nazarite, a man proved 
 unto you (to be) from God, by miracles, and wonders, and 
 signs, which^God did through Him in the midst of you, ye 
 have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain ; 
 
169 
 
 whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, 
 because it was not possible that He should be holden of it ; " 
 then follows a quotation from the 16th Psalm, together 
 with an intimation that, with prophetic foresight of Christ s 
 resurrection, David prayed to God, " Thou wilt not leave my 
 soul in Hades, neither wilt Thou suffer Thy holy one to see 
 corruption " (comp. Acts xiii. 35-37). The human nature 
 of Jesus, and the power of God acting upon it, are exclusively 
 and conspicuously present in the passage. How is "the 
 dignity of Christ s Person" (by which Mr. Liddon means 
 His Godhead) implied in the existence of a prophecy that 
 God would not leave Him in Hades, nor suffer His flesh to 
 see corruption; and, in the fulfilment of the prophecy, 
 announced by St. Peter, This Jesus hath Gfod raised up ?* 
 
 The context, again, dispels the insinuation Mr. Liddon 
 seeks to convey through the words, whom the heavens must 
 receive until the times of restitution of all things (iii. 21). I 
 do not see what is gained by putting a special emphasis 
 on must, since that word is no more specially emphatic than 
 two or three other words in the sentence. The Apostle 
 exhorts his hearers to repentance and conversion, " that their 
 sins may be blotted out ; that so times of refreshing may 
 come from the face of the Lord, and He may send Jesus 
 Christ, whom the heavens must receive" &c. The language 
 
 * The reading of the Hebrew in Psalm xvi. 10 is debated. On the 
 whole, the evidence seems to me to favor the Received Text : Thy holy one. 
 But in the matured and final judgment of Dr. Davidson, " The proper 
 reading is holy ones or saints ; not the singular, Thy holy one ; showing that 
 it refers to the pious generally. Suffering His pious ones not to see the grave 
 is to deliver them from the peril of death" (Introduction to Old Testament, vol. 
 ii. p. 279). This decision is re-stated inan Article on English Versions 
 of the Bible (Theological Review, April, 1866). "Thine holy one is not the 
 textual but the marginal reading. The former is, Thy holy or pious ones, 
 which we know to be the reading of the Masorah, and the true one." The 
 Septuagint has the singular. Whether the Hebrew term, translated by 
 the Septuagint corruption, is rightly translated, is very doubtful, and 
 reference to the Lexicons shows that Dr. Davidson has strong reasons 
 for affirming, "The word does not mean corruj)tion, but the grave ; and 
 therefore the rendering in Acts ii.27 is incorrect." Mr. J. J. S. Perowne 
 translates, to see the pit, conceding that the grace is indicated. 
 
170 CHRIST S GODHEAD NOT THE DOCTRINE 
 
 of Moses is then applied to Christ : " A prophet shall the 
 Lord your God raise up unto you from among your brethren, 
 as He raised up me," &c. ; and, after a general reference to 
 the Old Testament prophecies, the discourse concludes with 
 the statement, " Unto you first, God having raised up His 
 servant (naig), sent Him to bless you in the turning away 
 every one of you from your iniquities." There is here no 
 glimmer of Deity veiled by Manhood. 
 
 In the verse just quoted, and also in Acts iii. 13, iv. 27, 
 30, servant is the correct rendering, and should be substi 
 tuted for son, and child, in the English Version. When 
 applied to David, Acts iv. 25, the word is rightly rendered, 
 and in Matt. xii. 18 our translators have given the true sense. 
 The point is not a disputed one. Archbishop Trench, and 
 other most orthodox scholars, candidly admit the Authorized 
 Version is wrong in not translating naig Qsov servant of 
 God, " whenever in the New Testament it is used of 
 Christ." 
 
 Acts x. 36 does not assert Jesus Christ to be " Lord of all 
 things," but far more probably Lord or Master of all persons, 
 both Jews and Gentiles ; and the title stands in a passage 
 referring to " the word which God sent unto the children of 
 Israel, preaching good tidings through Jesus Christ." God 
 is also said "to have anointed with the Holy Ghost and with 
 power Jesus of Nazareth, who went about doing good, and 
 healing all who were oppressed by the devil, because God 
 was with Him. When the Jews had slain Him, God raised 
 Him up on the third day, and He commanded His Apostles 
 to preach that He has been appointed by God Judge of 
 quick and dead." If words and apparent connection of 
 thought can indicate the absence of a particular idea, we 
 may be sure the idea of Christ s Godhead was not in the 
 Apostle s mind when he called Christ Lord of all. 
 
 In adducing Acts ii. 33, Mr. Liddon really mutilates a text 
 by omitting the part which does not fit his purpose. To say, 
 " it is Christ Who from His heavenly throne has poured out 
 upon the earth the gifts of Pentecost," may suggest Christ 
 
TAUGHT BY ST. PETER. 171 
 
 is God, but St. Peter s recorded language suggests nothing 
 of the kind. " This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we 
 all are witnesses ; therefore, being exalted by the right hand 
 of God, and having received of the Father the promise of 
 the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this which ye see and 
 hear." What pretenc^ do these words afford for discerning 
 an implication that Christ is God ? He is exalted by God s 
 right hand, and receives from God the gift (see also i. 4) 
 which He is said to have poured forth on His first disciples. 
 Whatever may be the office of Christ in the distribution of 
 spiritual gifts to His Church, St. Peter saw in God the pri 
 mary and ultimate Giver of the Holy Ghost (Acts viii. 20 ; 
 xi. 17). 
 
 The manner in which Mr. Liddon expatiates on the Name 
 of Christ is another instance of stilted exposition and 
 neglected context. "The nature and office unveiled" by 
 the name, Jesus Christ the Nazarite, are assuredly not the 
 nature and office of absolute Deity ; and the whole account 
 (iii. 6-16) abundantly evinces that the wonder-working 
 potency associated with the Name of Christ was not the in 
 trinsic might of Christ s actual Godhead, but a potency 
 imparted by the God Who had raised and glorified His ser 
 vant Jesus. The miracles wrought by the hands of the 
 Apostles, whether coupled with the employment of Christ s 
 name or not, were wrought by God (xix. 11), and the infer 
 ence to which* Mr. Liddon invites unwary and prepossessed 
 readers is dissipated by the recorded Apostolic prayer en 
 treating God to " stretch forth His hand for healing, and for 
 the doing of signs and wonders, through the Name of His 
 holy servant Jesus" (iv. 30). 
 
 When Mr. Liddon says: "As a refuge for sinners the 
 Name of Jesus stands alone," &c., he manifestly endeavors 
 to put upon St. Peter s language an extreme significance, 
 regardless alike of the textual connection of the w r ords to 
 which he appeals, and of that "proportion of the faith" 
 which Scripture exhibits. The noun salvation and the verb 
 to save are frequently used in the New Testament of safety 
 
172 CHRISTOLOGY OP THE 
 
 and deliverance from temporal and bodily evils, as danger, 
 infirmity, sickness, death; and this primary and natural 
 meaning the context would lead us to affix in Acts iv. 12. 
 The English Version darkens the sense by translating the 
 same verb differently in the 9th and 12th verses. To repre 
 sent the original accurately, one expression, either made 
 whole, or saved, should have been employed in both cases. 
 If in the 9th verse we render, by what means he is saved, we 
 are guided to the sense of saved in the 12th verse, and per 
 ceive it to refer primarily, if not exclusively, to physical 
 soundness. Any other or higher sense is secondary, and is 
 not the more probable and natural meaning. Mr. Licldon s 
 argument proceeds upon an assumption which many eminent 
 and orthodox commentators have seen to be untenable. 
 
 But granting that St. Peter in almost consecutive sen 
 tences used the same verb in different senses, and passed 
 from the lower to the higher and more comprehensive im 
 port, what ground is there for the momentous inferential 
 interpretation which Mr. Liddon imposes ? Where, in the 
 New Testament, is Jesus set before us as the ultimate Source 
 of our safety, and the highest Object of our faith and wor 
 ship ? Invariably God is above and beyond Him, and He is 
 depicted as being only ministerially, instrumentally, and, in 
 virtue of the Almighty Father s gifts and appointment, the 
 Captain of our salvation. The fact is an eminently plain 
 one, and some of the ample evidence which illustrates it has 
 been already quoted in the course of this examination. Jesus 
 Christ is not " Himself the sum and substance of His relig 
 ion " in any acceptation which interferes with the supreme 
 devotion of heart and life to the service of our Heavenly 
 Father. If reason and common sense are not banished from 
 the office of expounding the Sacred Writings, God is " the 
 sum and substance of Christ s religion," in a loftier, deeper, 
 and broader sense than Christ himself is. Repentance, faith, 
 hope, love, obedience, prayer, and thanksgiving are, in their 
 highest forms and aspects, directed towards God. St. Peter 
 gave his view of the subject in few words, when he described 
 
FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. 173 
 
 Christians as those who, through Christ, believe on God Who 
 raised Him from the dead, and gave Him glory; that their 
 faith and hope might be toward God (1 Pet. i. 21) ; and 
 again, when he taught that Christians, as a holy priesthood, 
 offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God, through Jesus 
 Christ (ii. 5). 
 
 It seems a disingenuous and unworthy proceeding to infuse 
 into one text of dubious wording a meaning which can draw 
 no support either from the immediate context, or from other 
 portions of Scripture. The words from which Mr. Liddon 
 deduces so largely " neither is there salvation in any 
 other ; for there is no other Name under Heaven given 
 among men, whereby we must be saved " do not, when 
 spiritually understood, exclude the Name and working of our 
 Father in Heaven ; they do not elevate Christ to an equality 
 with God, but relate to God s grand gift to men, in Christ, 
 and are, if reasonably interpreted, in perfect agreement with 
 St. Paul s doctrine " There is One God, and one Mediator 
 between God and men, a man, Christ Jesus, who gave Him 
 self a ransom for all " (1 Tim. ii. 5). 
 
 The Epistles of St. Peter are pronounced by Mr. Liddon 
 to " exhibit Christian doctrine in its fulness, but incidentally 
 to spiritual objects, and without the methodical completeness 
 of an oral instruction. Christian doctrine is not propounded 
 as a new announcement ; the writer takes it for granted as 
 furnishing a series of motives, the force of which would be 
 admitted by those w r ho had already recognized the true 
 majesty and proportions of the faith." 
 
 Now, here, the real status of ecclesiastical tradition and 
 authority with reference to the dogmas of Orthodoxy is 
 hinted at, though not adequately acknowledged. Mr. Lid 
 don does not boldly relieve himself from the fatal obligation 
 of proving that the doctrine he advocates is consistent with 
 a reasonable interpretation of the Apostle s language, and he 
 is constrained, after the usual fashion, to fabricate a sem 
 blance of reasoning, by inflating texts and extorting in 
 ferences. 
 
174 CHRISTOLOGY OF THE 
 
 From the expression the Spirit of Christ in them (1 Pet. 
 i. 11) we have the large induction : " The prophets of the 
 Old Testament were Christ s own servants, His heralds, 
 His organs. He Who is the Subject of the Gospel story, and 
 the living Ruler of the Church, had also, by His Spirit, been 
 Master and Teacher of the prophets. Under His guidance 
 it was that they foretold His sufferings. It was the Spirit of 
 Christ Who was in the prophets, testifying beforehand the 
 sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow " 
 (p. 295). This exposition may doubtless claim the approval 
 of a host of Orthodox commentators, whose theology is so 
 much a theology of inference from isolated and ambiguous 
 phrases ; but, far more probably, the Spirit of Christ here 
 means the prophetic spirit anticipating Christ, the Spirit of 
 God, pointing to Christ and Christ s religion. Before any other 
 explanation can be rationally accepted, proof is needed that 
 Christ was, by the instrumentality of the Holy Ghost, the 
 Inspirer of the Old Testament. The very name, Christ, or 
 Anointed, by which our Lord is designated, seems to connote 
 the action of the Holy Spirit upon Him, and is, so far, dis 
 cordant with the idea St. Peter was thinking of His pre- 
 incarnate condition, or designed to inculcate that He spoke 
 by the Holy Ghost through the prophets. The Scriptural 
 point of view respecting prophetic inspiration is indubitably 
 that of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews : " God, Who 
 spoke in time past to the Fathers in (or by) the prophets, hath, 
 at the last of these days, spoken unto us in (or by) a Son." 
 
 Mr. Liddon says : " Here, XQIGTOV (of Christ) is clearly a 
 genitive of the subject." The clearness is limited to his own 
 assertion. On the primary import of the Greek genitive, a 
 large diversity of significations is engrafted, and in the New 
 Testament the objective genitive is, at the least, as frequent 
 as the subjective. The Spirit of Christ, in the few instances 
 where it or some convertible phrase is used, neither neces 
 sarily nor probably denotes the Spirit imparted by, and issu 
 ing from, Christ. The Spirit of His Son (Gal. iv. 6), which 
 God sends forth into Christian hearts, is equivalent to the 
 
FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. 175 
 
 effect of that influence which "forms Christ in us" (iv. 19), 
 "conforms us to His image" (Rom. viii. 29), and through 
 which " Christ dwells in our hearts by faith " (Eph. iii. 17). 
 In a word, the Spirit of Christ, without which no man can 
 truly belong to Christ, is Christ s temper and disposition of 
 mind, and results from " the indwelling presence of the Spirit 
 of Him who raised Jesus from the dead " (Rom. viii. 9-11). 
 It is the product of " the law of the Spirit of Life " in those 
 who are in Christ Jesus (verses 1 and 2). 
 
 If, in Phil. i. 19, the genitive were undoubtedly subjective 
 in the words, the /Spirit of Jesus Christ, the text would do 
 no more than point to Christ as the Head of the Church, 
 exercising functions and dispensing gifts bestowed upon Him 
 by the Father. 
 
 In 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18, the reference is manifestly to the 
 underlying spiritual meaning of the Old Testament, as 
 opposed to the letter ; and the expressions, the Spirit of the 
 Lord, and the Lord is the Spirit, have no bearing on the 
 question whether the Holy Ghost is ever said to be sub 
 jectively Christ s, in a manner which would imply Christ s 
 Godhead. 
 
 According to Mr. Liddon, 1 Pet. i. 7, 8, testifies " it is the 
 Person of Jesus in Whom the spiritual life of His Church 
 centres ; " yet the previous verses (3-5) leave no room for 
 doubt that the Church s spiritual life centres more truly and 
 profoundly in Him w T ho stands related to Christ as God and 
 Father, and by Whose power Christians are kept through 
 faith unto salvation : " Blessed be the God and Father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, Who, according to His great mercy, hath 
 begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ from the dead," &c. 
 
 The minds of the first Christian converts must have been 
 very thoroughly imbued with the dogma of our Lord s 
 Deity, before they could have seen in the words, which 
 things angels desire to look into (1 Pet. i. 12), the pregnant 
 significance Mr. Liddon detects. 
 
 " If the Christ of St. Peter had been the Christ, we will 
 
176 DOES ST. PETER DESIGNATE 
 
 not say of a Strauss, or of a Renan, but the Christ of a 
 Socinus, nay, the Christ of an Arius, it is not easy to under 
 stand what should have moved the Angels with that strong 
 desire to bend from their thrones above, that they might 
 gaze with unsuccessful intentness at the humiliations of a 
 created being, their peer or their inferior in the scale of 
 creation. Surely the Angels must be longing to unveil a 
 transcendent mystery, or a series ot mysteries, such as are 
 in fact the mystery of the Divine Incarnation and the 
 consequences which depend on it in the kingdom of grace. 
 St. Peter s words are sober and truthful, if read by the light 
 of faith in an Incarnate God ; divorced from such a faith, 
 they are fanciful, inflated, exaggerated " (p. 296). 
 
 Since the " things " referred to are said to have been 
 announced by the first heralds of the Gospel, we may 
 gather from the " unsuccessful intentness " of the angelic 
 gaze, that angels in heaven have a feebler insight into 
 Divine mysteries than saints upon earth. That St. Peter 
 believed the work of man s redemption and spiritual ad 
 vancement to merit the attentive observation, and engage 
 the deep interest and active ministry of angels, will hardly 
 be denied, and his faith quite explains his language. The 
 fancifulness, inflation, and exaggeration are the illusions 
 of his modern expositor. 
 
 From the Bampton Lecturer s point of view, no aspect of 
 Christ s work can be mentioned without some implication of 
 His perfect Divinity. The exhibition of His suffering Man 
 hood implies His Godhead. After noticing some passages in 
 which " St. Peter lays especial stress both on the moral signifi 
 cance and on the atoning power of the Death of Jesus Christ," 
 Mr. Liddon argues, " Certainly this earnest recognition of 
 Christ s true Humanity as the seat of His sufferings is a most 
 essential feature of the Apostle s doctrine ; but what is it 
 that gives to Christ s Human acts and sufferings such preter 
 human value ? Is it not that the truth of Christ s Divine 
 Personality underlies this entire description of His redemp 
 tive work, rescuing it from the exaggeration and turgidity 
 
CHRIST " THE WORD OF GOD " ? 177 
 
 with which it would be fairly chargeable if Christ were 
 merely human or less than God?" (p. 298.) 
 
 The reprehensible neglect of context which mars Mr. Lid- 
 don s exegesis, and discredits the theology he defends, so far 
 as that theology is made to lean upon Scripture, has led him 
 into the error of imagining the logos or word of the Living 
 and Enduring God (1 Pet. i. 23) to be the Person of Christ. 
 But logos is often used for the spoken or written Word, 
 the message of God, and there is every reason to conclude 
 that in the phraseology of St. Peter it is synonymous with 
 the otjiAa or " icord of the Lord " mentioned in the quotation 
 from Isaiah in the immediately consecutive verses, the 
 Word which has been preached in the Gospel. In the ex 
 pression translated milk of the word (ii. 2), an adjective 
 derived from logos is used, and the term logos occurs in ii. 8, 
 where the better rendering is, who stumble, obeying not the 
 word; and again, in iii. 1, if any obey not the word, they 
 may without a word, &c. 
 
 In conjecturing the Petrine personal Christ to be the 
 Logos, Mr. Liddon finds an explanation of the subjection of 
 angels and authorities unto Him, and remarks : " He is not 
 said to have been taken up into heaven, but to have gone up 
 thither, as though by His Own deed and will." The Apos 
 tolic statement is : " Baptism doth now save us (not the 
 putting away filth from the flesh, but the answer of a good 
 conscience towards God) through the resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ, who is on the right hand of God, having gone into 
 heaven ; angels and authorities and powers being subjected 
 unto Him" (iii. 21, 22). A fact is here stated simply, with 
 out allusion to the mode of its accomplishment. Does Mr. 
 Liddon wish, by taking advantage of open verbal construc 
 tion, to bring this statement into conflict with St. Peter s 
 constant and explicit teaching, "God raised Jesus from the 
 dead and exalted Him " ? 
 
 And, as to the subjection of angels, &c., on the supposition 
 that Christ is truly God, it is unmeaning to say they have 
 been, or are, made subject unto Him, such language being 
 
 12 
 
178 CHRISTOLOGY OF THE 
 
 suitable only to the position of one whom Cod has exalted, 
 not to the everlasting indefeasible supremacy of God Him 
 self. 
 
 The doxology (1 Pet. iv. 11) is not directed to Jesus Christ, 
 but to " the God Who is in all things to be glorified through 
 Jesus Christ." The unscrupulous eagerness with which Mr. 
 Liddon, in the face of probability, appropriates ambiguous 
 language, is the reverse of convincing. 
 
 Whether the Second Epistle, traditionally inscribed with 
 St. Peter s name, is really an Apostolic composition, is very 
 problematical ; but Mr. Liddon assumes its genuineness, and 
 works up fragments of it into his pleadings. " St. Peter s 
 second Epistle, like his first, begins and ends with Jesus. Its 
 main positive theme is the importance of the higher practical 
 knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (i. 2, 3, 8 ; 
 ii. 20; iii. 18). . . . The prominence given to the Person of 
 Christ, in this doctrine of a knowledge of which His Person 
 is the Object, leads up to the truth of His real Divinity. If 
 Jesus, thus known and loved, were not accounted God, 
 then we must say that God is in this Epistle thrown utterly 
 into the background, and that His human messenger has 
 taken His place." There is, for the minds of candid and 
 thoughtful readers, no sort of hint anywhere in the Epistle, 
 that the writer accounted the Person of Christ to be God, or 
 held the subsequently promulgated paradox of Plurality in 
 Unity, and Unity in Plurality. 
 
 The uncertain meaning of the words (2 Pet. i. 1) which 
 Mr. Liddon renders Our God and Saviour Jesus Christ has 
 been already noticed. The Greek is susceptible of his ver 
 sion, but the clearly separate individualities of G-od, and 
 Jesus our Lord, in the next verse, seem quite decisively to 
 prescribe the sense of our God and of our Saviour Jesus 
 Christ. The Codex Sinaiticus * reads of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ, which is perhaps the original Text, 
 
 * I depend on Mr. F. H. Scrivener s most useful little volume, " A 
 Full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus with the Received Text of the 
 New Testament" [Bell and Daldy]. 
 
SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. 179 
 
 and is certainly a description so often repeated, that its 
 employment is a characteristic of the Epistle (i. 11; ii. 20 ; 
 iii.2,18). 
 
 In his anxiety to show that " Christ s power is spoken of 
 as Divine," Mr. Liddon altogether misapprehends the purport 
 of expressions in i. 3. The pronoun His there refers to 
 God, Whose " Divine power is said to have given unto us all 
 things that belong to life and godliness, through the knowl 
 edge of Him (i.e., Jesus Christ) who hath called us by His 
 own glory and excellence." An exhortation is added, to the 
 end Christians may not be " idle nor unfruitful as regards the 
 knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ" (ver. 8). Escape from 
 the pollutions of the world is joined with the knowledge of 
 the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (ii. 20) ; and the Epistle 
 closes with an exhortation to grow in grace and knowledge 
 of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The balance of 
 probability, therefore, strongly inclines to the opinion, that 
 in the expression, the knowledge of Him who hath called us, 
 &c. (i. 3), our Lord Jesus Christ is referred to, and not, as 
 Mr. Liddon conceives, " The Eternal Father." 
 
 The following extract consists mainly of assumptions and 
 gratuitous affirmation : 
 
 " Christ s power is spoken of as Divine ; and through the 
 precious things promised by Him to His Church (must we 
 not here specially understand the Sacraments ?) Christians 
 are made partakers of the Xature of God (i. 3, 4). To Christ, 
 in His exalted majesty, a tribute of glory is due, both now 
 and to the day of eternity (iii. 18). Throughout this Epistle 
 Jesus Christ is constantly named where we should expect to 
 find the Name of God. The Apostle does not merely pro 
 claim the Divinity of Jesus in formal terms ; he everywhere 
 feels and implies it." In i. 4, very great and precious prom 
 ises are mentioned, and the reasonable evidence these 
 promises are the Sacraments is on a par with the evidence, 
 " Jesus Christ is, throughout the Epistle, constantly named 
 where we should expect to find the Xame of God." The 
 mental condition to which one of these conclusions is prob 
 able is, no doubt, profoundly receptive of the other. 
 
180 CHRIST S PERSONAL RANK, 
 
 The point is unimportant, but there is room for great 
 doubt whether the tribute of glory at the end of the Epistle 
 is to the day of eternity. The exact phrase used in the 
 original is without articles, does not occur elsewhere in the 
 New Testament, and is a difficult one to translate literally, 
 but diwv signifies a period of time of undefined duration, an 
 age, and not eternity, and the more probable sense is " to 
 the day of the age ; " i.e., until the beginning or the ending 
 of whatever era the age may be. The doxologies (1 Pet. iv. 
 11; v. 11) both have dicov in the plural, and in the former 
 instance, certainly, reduplicated (ages of ages, or ages beyond 
 ages). To take for granted that the term simply, and in the 
 singular, means eternity, is to presume on the reader s igno 
 rance or carelessness. 
 
 The proclamation of Christ s Deity in "formal terms" is 
 utterly wanting in St. Peter s Epistles, and a diffused feeling 
 and implication of the dogma can be detected by those alone 
 who have learned through evidence, perfectly apart from the 
 Apostle s language, what convictions must have filled his 
 mind. Whether he had departed from the standing ground 
 of Hebrew Monotheism, or was inspired to allot to Christ a 
 personal existence within the Eternal Uncreated Essence, 
 may be inferred from the fact that he never once calls Christ 
 God, but distinguishes between Him and God in a manner 
 which not merely reserves, but suppresses the truth, if Christ 
 be really God. 
 
 The Eternal One is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ (1 Pet. i. 3) ; to Him prayer is to be directed (i. 17) ; 
 and a principal feature of the faith attained through Christ 
 is to believe that God raised Christ from the dead, and gave 
 Him glory (i. 21). Any ability we possess is to be esteemed 
 and employed as God s gift, so that in all things He may be 
 glorified through Jesus Christ (iv. 11). They who are called 
 to suffer according to God s will are to commit their souls 
 to Him as to a faithful Creator (iv. 19) ; all are to humble 
 themselves under His mighty hand, that He may in due time 
 exalt them; casting all their care upon Him because -He 
 
ACCORDING TO ST. PETER. 181 
 
 careth for them (v. 6, 7) ; and the Apostle s petition for his 
 afflicted brethren was, that, " after they had suffered awhile, 
 the God of all grace, who had called them unto His eternal 
 glory in Christ, would Himself perfect, stablish, and strengthen 
 them" (v. 10). Apart from express revelation, the natural 
 conclusion of the first Christians would have been that the 
 Being who was known on earth as Jesus of Nazareth was 
 less than God, and, with such a conclusion, St. Peter s teach 
 ing, whether in the Missionary Sermons or the Epistles, con 
 tains not a word at variance. The latent significance, the 
 subtle implications, the diffused underlying conviction of 
 Christ s Veritable Deity, may be descried by minds ecclesi 
 astically illuminated, but are totally shrouded from merely 
 rational intelligence. 
 
 In commenting on the Epistle which bears the name of St. 
 Jude, Mr. Liddon takes for granted Christ is called " our 
 only Sovereign and Lord Jesus Christ" (ver. 4). But the 
 translation is very questionable. Winer pronounces against 
 the opinion that grammatical construction confines the de 
 scription to one Person, and considers two different Subjects 
 may be referred to, since the word Lord, being made definite 
 by the pronoun our, does not require the article. Conceding, 
 as we must, the name God in the Received Text to be an 
 interpolation, the probability still is, two Persons, God and 
 Jesus Christ, are indicated : the only Sovereign and our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. We may justly ask for better warrant than 
 ambiguous wording, before we conclude that Christ is called 
 our only Sovereign and Lord. From the term rendered 
 Sovereign (which, though sometimes applied to God, may 
 mean no more than Ruler, Master), no inference can be 
 drawn, but the adjective only appears to restrict the title 
 to the One God and Father. In verses 20 and 21, Mr. 
 Liddon discerns these intimations : " The life of Christians 
 is fashioned in devotion to the Blessed Trinity. It is a 
 life of prayer ; their souls live in the Holy Spirit as in an 
 atmosphere. It is a life of persevering love, whereof the 
 Almighty Father is the Object. It is a life of expectation ; 
 
182 CHRISTOLOGY OF JUDE S EPISTLE. 
 
 they look forward to the indulgent mercy which our Lord 
 Jesus Christ will show them at His coming. Christ is the 
 Being to Whom they look for mercy ; and the issue of His 
 compassion is everlasting life. Could any merely human 
 Christ have had this place in the heart and faith of Christians, 
 or on the judgment-seat of God?" 
 
 The excessive strain here put upon words is too palpable 
 to need remark, and the question at issue is not whether the 
 writer of the Epistle believed in a merely human Christ. 
 Mere Humanity and absolute Godhead are not a pair of 
 alternatives, one of which must be chosen. There is between 
 Humanity and God an unknown range of superhuman Ex 
 istence ; and all the peculiar endowments of office, power, 
 and majesty with which the Almighty has invested Christ, 
 are, for genuine Protestants, to be measured neither by our 
 guesses, nor by the necessities of traditional dogmatics, but 
 by the statements of Scripture, so far as those statements are 
 sufficiently plain and concordant to justify definite conclu 
 sions. 
 
 The final sentence of the Epistle is, in its true reading, 
 inconsistent with the notion that in the heart and faith of 
 the writer Jesus Christ occupied the place of God. " Unto 
 Him Who is able to keep you from falling, and to present 
 you faultless and joyful in the presence of His glory ; unto 
 the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, 
 be glory, majesty, dominion, and power, both now and 
 throughout all the ages." 
 
 There is a perfectly amazing one-sidedness, and consequent 
 inconclusiveness, in the method of Mr. Liddon s argument. 
 He neglects implications directly and obviously against the 
 doctrine he advocates, and argues as though that doctrine 
 were too amply demonstrated to be seriously questioned, and 
 might be assumed as a standard whereby to regulate inter 
 pretation. Beneath all his semblances of evidence, there 
 lurks the assumption that evidence is superfluous, and that, 
 write what they may, the Sacred Writers must be in har 
 mony with the framers of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds 
 
CHRIST S DEITY NOT IN LATEST EPISTLES. 183 
 
 Scripture is indeed illuminating, but only to the initiated ; it 
 is conclusive, but then it must be studied with the bias of a 
 previous invincible conviction, and by the light of a revela 
 tion external to itself. 
 
 That SS. James, Peter, and Jude entertained a very high 
 conception of the Person and offices of Jesus Christ, whom 
 God had " raised from the dead, and clothed with glory " 
 (1 Pet. i. 21), arid who had, when on earth, "received from 
 God the Father honor and glory" (2 Pet. i. 17), there can be 
 no doubt ; but they nowhere hint, even indirectly, " Jesus is 
 God Incarnate." If they believed Christ to be God they 
 have strangely repressed their faith, and have most ingen 
 iously withheld both avowal and intimation of a doctrine 
 which Christians in subsequent times have never really be 
 lieved without frequently and earnestly proclaiming. Grant 
 ing the competency of ecclesiastical tradition, and the inspired 
 voice of a revealing Church, to make it a probable, or even a 
 certain conclusion, that these earthly companions of our Lord 
 conceived Him to be an Essential Form of Omnipotent Self- 
 existent Deity, still the fact remains, their faith does not 
 appear in their Epistles. Nothing is gained by attempts to 
 erect the Church s teaching on false grounds ; on the contrary, 
 faith is shaken, honest perception is blunted, and interpreta 
 tion is degraded into a series of crafty contrivances to hide 
 natural meaning and exhibit an ecclesiastical sense. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Dissection of the reasoning by which Mr. Liddon endeavors to show that 
 Christ s Deity "is bound up with St. Paul s whole mind," and is 
 implicitly taught throughout his Epistles. In reality the Bampton 
 Lecturer refuses to take the point of view which St. Paul s writings, 
 and other New Testament Scriptures, incessantly present. Doctrine 
 of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist. Mistaken deductions 
 from the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians. Some additional 
 imaginary implications of a Christ Divine in the sense maintained 
 by the Lectures. Adverse testimony of St. Paul exhibited, and an 
 appeal made from the ground of that testimony to the honesty, in 
 tellectual conscientiousness, and common sense of Orthodox Protest 
 ants. Catholic Churchmen not liable to this appeal. 
 
 THE most irreclaimably biassed interpretation could collect 
 from St. Paul s discourses and Epistles but few expressions 
 which can be made to wear the semblance of either announc 
 ing in terms, or plausibly suggesting, that our Lord Jesus 
 Christ is Unproduced Eternal God, in Essential Being the 
 same as, and equal to, the Almighty Father. The Pauline 
 texts which Mr. Liddon supposes directly to assert, or clearly 
 to imply, Christ s Deity, have been already examined, and 
 shown not to be fairly open to the construction he assigns. 
 But, in handling St. Paul s language, he builds, with much 
 pretension, on a mass of indirect testimony, which, viewed in 
 the shadow of his own prepossessions, seems to him to prove 
 the doctrine of Christ s Deity was " bound up with St. Paul s 
 whole mind;" and "irresistibly to imply a Christ Who is 
 Divine." In attempting to draw out and illustrate the mean 
 ing which so deeply underlies the Apostle s writings, and is 
 so wonderfully absent from the surface of his words, Mr. Lid 
 don expends pages of passionate rhetoric, the major part of 
 which (regarded as argument, and not as mere declamation) 
 is redeemed from being absolutely silly, only by being elo- 
 
CHRISTOLOGY OF PAUL S DISCOURSES. 185 
 
 quent and sincere. In language frequently reiterated in sub 
 stance, though varied in form, the conclusion is pressed upon 
 us, that "the doctrine is inextricably interwoven with the 
 central and most vital teaching of the Apostle ; " and that, 
 " taking St. Paul s teaching as a whole, it must be admitted 
 to centre in One Who is at once and truly God as well as 
 Man" (p. 324). 
 
 I shall not follow minutely every sentence of rapacious 
 deduction from materials which are admitted to be unpro- 
 nounced, while they are held to be potently cumulative. My 
 readers will by this time have learned to know the method, 
 and appreciate the worth, of the reasonings I am reviewing. 
 Wherever any prominence is given to the offices of Jesus 
 Christ, and our relation to Him as the God-exalted Ruler and 
 Saviour of mankind, there Mr. Liddon detects the slightly 
 veiled presence of the dogma he is bent on finding, and 
 triumphantly proclaims the inference, " Christ must be God." 
 The antidote to his very real, though undesigned sophistry, 
 may, in most instances, be discovered in the immediate con 
 texts of the passages he produces. 
 
 What inference, bearing helpfully on his theme, Mr. Liddon 
 imagines can be extracted from that " Sermon of St. Paul s 
 from the steps of the Areopagus, which, at first sight, might 
 seem to be Theistic rather than Christian," is not easily dis 
 cernible. The sermon, he reminds us, " though insisting 
 chiefly on those Divine attributes which are observable in 
 nature and Providence, ends with Jesus. . . . The certainty 
 of the coming judgment has been attested by the historical 
 fact of the resurrection of Jesus ; the risen Jesus is the future 
 Judge" (Acts xvii. 18-31). 
 
 The Apostle preached with great emphasis and clearness 
 One living and true Lord of heaven and earth, the Creator, 
 Ruler, Sustainer, and Father of all mankind, and finished his 
 discourse by declaring, " God now commands all men every 
 where to jepent, because He has appointed a day in which 
 He will judge the world in righteousness by a Man whom 
 He hath ordained ; having given unto all men assurance in 
 
186 
 
 raising Him from the dead." If this language be in perfect 
 harmony with the persuasion, "Jesus Christ is God," what 
 conceivable words can be out of harmony with that persua 
 sion ? 
 
 The Apostle s address to the Presbyters on the strand of 
 Miletus (Acts xx. 18-36) "moves incessantly round the 
 Person of Jesus. He protests that to lead men to repent 
 ance towards God, and faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ 
 (ver. 21), had been the single object of his public and private 
 ministrations at Ephesus." How does this intimate that in 
 St. Paul s conception Jesus Christ was God? The phr:..se- 
 ology rather excludes the intimation. The supreme devotion 
 of heart and mind are claimed for God, and belief is demanded 
 with reference to the office and work of the beloved Son and 
 Servant whom God had raised from the dead, and made both 
 Lord and Christ. The repentance and faith referred to are 
 a comprehensive description of Christian belief and conduct ; 
 and, measured only by the hints which his farewell address 
 at Miletus supplies, the Apostle s teaching would appear to 
 have been of a very undogmatic and practical kind. 
 
 The discreditable though possibly unconscious tendency 
 to strain and inoculate every turn of expression is displayed 
 in the paraphrase of verse 24 in the same discourse : " The 
 Apostle counts not his life dear to himself, if only he can com 
 plete the mission which is so precious to him, because he has 
 received it from the Lord Jesus." The recorded words are : 
 " That I may finish my course, and the ministry which I have 
 received from the Lord Jesus, to bear witness of the gospel 
 of the grace of God," where the special preciousness of 
 the mission is, certainly, as fairly ascribable to its subject- 
 matter as to its reception from the Lord Jesus. No doubt it 
 was prized by the Apostle on both grounds. 
 
 In referring to verse 28, Mr. Liddon injudiciously clings to 
 the wrong reading, which seems to affirm, " God purchased 
 the Church with His Own Blood." To sustain the phrase, 
 blood of God, the concurrence of all ancient MSS. would 
 scarcely suffice, whereas, in fact, a majority of the MSS. 
 
CIRCUMSTANCES OF PAUL S CONVERSION. 187 
 
 whose antiquity carries weight have the reading, The Church 
 of the Lord, which He hath purchased with His own blood. 
 Though Mr. Liddon himself adopts the erroneous wording, 
 he briefly indicates in a note the condition of the external 
 evidence. If Church of God were undoubtedly genuine, we 
 might still, I think, with a very high degree of probability, 
 regard Christ as an unexpressed nominative to has pur 
 chased ; unexpressed, because so very obvious. To use the 
 passage at all as a proof text, in arguing for the dogma of 
 our Lord s Divinity, is among the absurdities which grow on* 
 of abundant conviction and scanty evidence. 
 
 The circumstances which accompanied, and immediately 
 succeeded St. Paul s conversion, are touched in Mr. Liddon s 
 accustomed fashion ; and fragments of the narratives in Acts 
 xxii. and xxvi. are duly marshalled and manipulated to intro 
 duce the query, " Who can fail to see that the Lord, Who, in 
 His glorified manhood, thus speaks to His servant from the 
 skies, and Who is withal revealed to him in the very centre 
 of his soul (Gal. i. 15, 16), is no created being, is neither saint 
 nor seraph, but in very truth the Master of consciences, the 
 Monarch Who penetrates, inhabits, and rules the secret life of 
 spirits, the King Who claims the fealty, and Who orders the 
 ways of men ? " 
 
 The utter groundlessness of the induction, that Jesus the 
 Nazarite, the glorified Master of Christians, who appeared to 
 Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, and sent him forth 
 to preach the Gospel, is, in Attributes and Essence, Veritable 
 Deity, will be manifest to every reader who calmly peruses 
 the narratives quoted. The w^ords of Ananias, to whom also 
 a vision of Christ had been vouchsafed, and of whose coming 
 Paul had received an entranced foresight (Acts ix. 10-12), 
 place the subject in the true light, and show how baseless is 
 Mr. Liddon s strained and stilted exposition. " The God of 
 our fathers hath chosen thee to know His will, and to see 
 the Just One, and to hear a voice from His mouth, because 
 thou shalt be a witness for Him unto all men, of what thou 
 hast seen and heard" (xxii. 14, 15). The perpetually recur- 
 
188 DOES PAUL ANYWHERE PROCLAIM 
 
 ring Scriptural conceptions of God s distinct supremacy, and 
 our Lord s inferiority and instrumentality, are, surely, more 
 present here than the ideas Mr. Liddon cannot " fail to see." 
 
 In the appearance of Jesus to Paul, there was nothing to 
 betoken our Lord to be either uncreated or super-angelic. He 
 appears as a spiritual and glorious Being, clothed with author 
 ity and a mission from the Most High. If a suggestion as to 
 the mode of our Lord s appearance is designed, it is scarcely 
 accurate to say, " He speaks to His servant from the skies," 
 the truer account would seem to be, He came from the skies 
 to speak to His servant." 
 
 I cannot perceive the relevancy of the reference to Gal. i. 
 15, 16 : It pleased God . . . to reveal His Son in me. Com 
 bine that statement as you will with the records of St. Paul s 
 conversion, visions, and conduct, how can the conclusion be 
 reached, Christ is the Supreme and Divine " Master of con 
 sciences, the Monarch Who penetrates, inhabits, and rules 
 the secret life of spirits," &c. ? 
 
 To what purpose is the remark, " St. Paul s popular teach 
 ing is emphatically a preaching of Jesus Christ (Acts ix. 
 20, xvii. 3, 18, xxviii. 31 ; comp. Acts v. 42 ; 2 Cor. iv. 5) " ? 
 Doubtless it is so, but the fact of Christ s filling a place of 
 peculiar emphasis and prominence is very far indeed from 
 proving Christ to be God. In what sense does the Apostle 
 preach Christ ? and on what doctrine concerning Christ does 
 he insist ? Does he anywhere, in a single phrase of clear, 
 unequivocal meaning, proclaim, " Christ is God " ? Does he 
 anywhere put Him on an equality with God ? Does he any 
 where, even in the later Epistles and the strongest passages, 
 represent Him as being greater than God-appointed, God- 
 endowed, God-exalted ? His whole Apostolic labor was a 
 devoted spiritual service of God, in the Gospel of His Son 
 (Rom. i. 9) ; the faith he seeks to establish, and to which he 
 gives the promise of justification, is faith in Him Who raised 
 up Jesus our Lord from the dead (iv. 24 ; x. 0, 10) ; the peace 
 he announces is peace with God, through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, through whom we have access into the grace wherein 
 
THAT " CHRIST IS GOD " ? 189 
 
 we stand (v. 1, 2); the very core of the Gospel was, in his view, 
 the overflowing grace of God, and God s gracious gift in the 
 man Christ Jesus, abounding unto mankind (v. 15-17) ; his 
 thanksgivings habitually went up to God for the grace given 
 in Christ Jesus ; and his ground of Christian assurance was 
 that faithful is the God Who calls us into the fellowship of 
 His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Cor. i. 4, 9). The com 
 pany of believers is God s husbandry, and God s building ; 
 the true ministers of the Church, who lay the one foundation, 
 Christ Jesus, are laborers of God ; and the climax of Christian 
 privilege and security is expressed in the formula, Ye are 
 Christ s and Christ is God^s (1 Cor. iii. 9, 11, 23 ; comp. Eph. 
 ii. 18-20). The Church is the Body of Christ, but it is a Body 
 in which God supremely governs, and sets the various mem 
 bers according to His own Avise Will (1 Cor. xii. 18, 27, 28). 
 The dominion of Christ is declared to be an imparted and 
 delegated dominion ; to be at length delivered up to the God 
 and Father, to Whom the Son shall be Himself subject, that 
 God may be all in all (xv. 24-28). He who establishes us 
 with respect to Christ, and anoints us, is God (2 Cor. i. 21). 
 Of the crucified Christ, whom the Apostle gloried in preach 
 ing, he could announce that, though He was crucified through 
 weakness, yet He is alive through the power of God (xiii. 
 4) ; an announcement in which language is strangely used, 
 if Christ be, Himself, personally God. When the Apostle 
 claims a superhuman origin for his Apostleship, he sees a 
 height yet beyond the Master, Jesus Christ, even God, the 
 Father, Who raised Christ from the dead (Gal. i. 1 ; comp. 
 Eph. i. \) ; and when he states most pregnantly the purpose 
 for which Christ became our Redeemer, he tells us that pur 
 pose was in fulfilment of the Will of our God and Father 
 (Gal. i. 4). The spiritual blessings which Christians receive 
 in Christ are ascribed to the God and Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ ; to Him St. Paul s prayers for gifts of wisdom, 
 enlightenment, and spiritual strength are directed ; and to 
 Him the endless tribute of glory in the Church, and in Christ 
 Jesus, is acknowledged to be due (Eph. i. 3, 17, 18 ; iii. 
 14-21). 
 
190 DOES PAUL BY IMPLICATION 
 
 The list of texts denoting the Apostle s " emphatic preach 
 ing of Jesus Christ " not to have been a preaching which 
 either expressly affirmed or tacitly implied Christ s Deity 
 might be easily extended. Turns of thought and diction out 
 of keeping with faith in any Godhead but the Father s meet 
 us at every step, in closest connection with statements which 
 proclaim the dignity and offices of Christ. 
 
 The dogma of our Lord s Deity being assumed to be 
 recognized and fixed in St. Paul s mind, his remarkable mode 
 of inculcating it is felt to be a problem which calls for some 
 attempt at solution. Putting, for the moment, all evidence 
 on the other side out of the account, if the Apostle s 
 thought and teaching moved so continually round the Person 
 of an absolutely Divine Christ, his rare use of ambiguous 
 expressions, which even the resolute faith and cultivated 
 ingenuity of centuries have been able plausibly to isolate 
 and enlist, and his entire abstinence from clear and definite 
 avowals of Christ s Deity, become to the eye of reason con 
 vincingly indicative that, either purposely or under constraint 
 of inspiration, he withheld the tenet which the Church after 
 wards made the centre of her dogmatic system. 
 
 Mr. Liddon, indeed, argues : " Our Lord is always the 
 Apostle s theme ; but the degree in which His Divine glory 
 is unveiled varies with the capacities of the Jewish or 
 heathen listeners for bearing the great discovery. The doc 
 trine is distributed, if we may so speak, in a like varying 
 manner over the whole text of St. Paul s Epistles. It lies in 
 those greetings (commencements of all the Epistles, see also 
 2 Cor. xiii. 13 ; 2 Thess. ii. 16) by which the Apostle associ 
 ates Jesus Christ with God the Father, as being the source, 
 no less than the channel, of the highest spiritual blessings. 
 It is pointedly asserted, when the Galatians are warned that 
 St. Paul is an Apostle not from men, or by man, but by 
 Jesus Christ and God the Father. It is implied in the bene 
 dictions which the Apostle pronounces in the Name of Christ 
 without naming the name of God (Rom. xvi. 20, 24; 1 Cor. 
 xvi. 23 ; Gal. vi. 18 ; Phil. iv. 23 ; 1 Thess. v. 28). It under- 
 
TEACH CHRIST S DEITY ? 191 
 
 lies those early Apostolical hymns, sung, as it would seem, in 
 the Redeemer s honor. ... It alone can explain the appli 
 cation of passages, which are used in the Old Testament of 
 the Lord Jehovah, to the Person of Jesus Christ ; such an 
 application would have been impossible unless St. Paul had 
 renounced his belief in the authority and sacred character of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures, or had explicitly recognized the truth 
 that Jesus Christ was Jehovah Himself visiting and redeem 
 ing His people" (p. 327). 
 
 A little examination detects the unsoundness of this rea 
 soning. The benedictory greetings do not involve the sup 
 position ; Jesus Christ, " being the source no less than the 
 channel of the highest spiritual blessings," is God. Accord 
 ing to the teaching of Scripture, He is not, as the Almighty 
 Father is, the original primary source of any spiritual bless 
 ing whatever, but, in virtue of the Father s gifts, the second 
 ary and instrumental source. His whole function between 
 God and us is ministerial, and He can bestow nothing which 
 He has not Himself first received from the One God and 
 Father Who is over all (Matt, xxviii. 18; Acts ii. 36, v. 31 ; 
 Phil. ii. 8-11; Eph. i. 20-22). There is but one way in 
 which the language of Scripture can be rationally harmo 
 nized ; namely, by starting from the position to which a mul 
 titude of texts lead, that Christ is made of God the Channel, 
 and is furnished by God to be the Dispenser, of gifts of 
 grace. Hopeless confusion is introduced, and every dictate 
 of sound reasonable interpretation suffers violence, when 
 unexplained association is dilated into antagonism with ex 
 plicitly avowed recipiency and subordination. The exalta 
 tion and the endowments, of which the Canonical penmen 
 held Christ to have been the recipient, fully account for 
 every expression which points to Him, either as a source or 
 a channel of grace and peace, and at the same time leave 
 uncrossed the numerous statements which exhibit the unri 
 valled, unapproachable supremacy of the Father, as the One 
 Independent, Self-sufficing Fountain of every good and 
 perfect gift. Taking into view the whole of the New. Testa- 
 
192 
 
 ment phraseology bearing on tlie point, the natural, prob 
 able, and amply sufficient meaning of the expression grace or 
 favor of our Lord Jesus Christ is the loving approval 
 attaching to faithful discipleship, together with all the bless 
 ings of which the great High Priest and Apostle of our 
 profession is the minister to those who are heirs of God and 
 joint-heirs with Christ (Rom. viii. 17). 
 
 I am not inclined to dispute whether, in the passages re 
 ferred to, Christ is contemplated as a Dispenser and Channel 
 of grace ; but an expositor less ready than Mr. Lid don is to 
 clutch at a possible meaning of an ambiguous phrase might 
 object that, in the great majority of the texts adduced, the 
 Greek will bear the translation from God, the Father of us, 
 and of the Lord Jesus Christ / and that some proximate 
 contexts (2 Cor. i. 3 ; Eph. i. 3 ; Col. i. 3) tend to sustain the 
 translation. But, without taking exception to the generally 
 received and more probable rendering, the immediate con 
 texts above mentioned, Blessed be the God and Father of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, do seem conclusively to shut out the 
 idea that, in associating Christ with the Father in benedictory 
 salutations, the Apostle was impelled by the underlying 
 thought, or proceeded on the tacit assumption, of Christ s 
 Deity. With regard to Gal. i. 1, one thing which the Apos 
 tle there " pointedly asserts " is, God the Father raised Jesus 
 Christ from the dead ; but the words, Who raised Him from 
 the dead, being opposed to the desired inference, do not ap 
 pear in Mr. Liddon s quotation. St. Paul having pronounced 
 his Apostleship not to be from men as the commissioning 
 source, nor through any man as an intermediate authority, 
 it seems not improbable his fully expressed meaning would 
 be, " but through Jesus Christ, and (from) God the Father." 
 
 The phrase, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, is, to Mr. 
 Liddon s mind, vastly pregnant with acceptable significance. 
 In his delineation of " the implied Christology of the Epis 
 tles to the Corinthians," he concludes with the exclamation, 
 "Would St. Paul impart an Apostolical benediction? In one 
 Epistle he blesses his readers in the Name of Christ alone ; 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF ASSOCIATED NAMES. 193 
 
 in the other he names the Three Blessed Persons ; but the 
 grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is mentioned not only before 
 the fdloioship of the Holy Ghost, but even before the love of 
 God" (I Cor. xvi. 23; 2 Cor. xiii. 14). If such exceedingly 
 weak pleading was pardonable in a University pulpit, it 
 should not have been allowed to appear in print. Did the 
 thought never strike Mr. Liddon, that, presuming the arrange 
 ment of the latter benediction to have a designed and special 
 purpose, the purpose might have been to ascend from more 
 diffused and general forms to a more concentrated and par 
 ticular form of spiritual blessing. The fellowship of the 
 Holy Ghost is the highest result, and the most precious 
 inward individual realization of all that the favor of Christ 
 and the love of God can bestow. 
 
 When Mr. Liddon caught at the concluding benediction of 
 the first Corinthian Epistle, he should have observed how, 
 to the pious wish for the presence of Christ s favor, St. Paul 
 adds the words, My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. 
 Are we absurdly to infer the Apostle s possession of super 
 human capacity and dignity ? He might appropriately have 
 written, " The love of God be with you all in Christ Jesus." 
 
 But association of names, and the mention, under identical 
 terms, of attributes and relations whose force and extent 
 vary with the persons indicated, are the poorest arguments 
 for equality of rank and nature. Are the holy angels put on 
 a level with Christ and with the Father, when, in Luke ix. 
 26, the glory of the Son of Man, and of the Father, and of 
 the holy angels, is spoken of in one and the same sentence ? 
 Do the angels of God acquire a Divine dignity by the asso 
 ciation in Rev. iii. 5 ? (Comp. Matt. x. 32 ; Luke xii. 8 ; 
 Mark viii. 38.) Did the Apostles, presbyters, and brethren 
 equalize themselves with the Holy Ghost in authority, when 
 they wrote it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us? 
 (Acts xv. 28.) Did St. Paul intend to suggest the parity of 
 those he named, when he used the adjuration, 2 charge thee 
 before God, and Christ Jesus, and the elect angels ? (1 Tim. 
 v. 21.) The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in describ- 
 
 13 
 
194 THE EARLY APOSTOLIC HYMNS. 
 
 ing the gloriousness of the heavenly Jerusalem, names to 
 gether, "God the Judge of all ; spirits of just men made 
 perfect ; and Jesus, Mediator of a new covenant " (xii. 23, 
 24) ; but what sane person would imagine these inhabitants 
 of heaven to be compeers, because they are grouped in a 
 recital of celestial attractiveness and splendor? The remark 
 able fact that spirits of just men are " mentioned even be 
 fore " Jesus the Mediator merits Mr. Liddon s thoughtful 
 observation. Again, in Rev. xiv. 10, the revelation imparted 
 by angelic lips to St. John not only joins the angels with 
 the Lamb as spectators of the fiery torments of the wicked, 
 but also significantly mentions the presence of the angels 
 " even before " the presence of the Lamb.* 
 
 The early Apostolical hymns to which Mr. Liddon refers are 
 supposed to be contained in 1 Tim. i. 15; iii. 16; 2 Tim. ii. 
 11-13; Titus iii. 4-7; Eph. v. 14; and students, who have 
 not yet acquired the faculty of seeing anywhere and every 
 where whatever they may wish to see, can decide for them 
 selves what doctrine "underlies" these fragmentary anthems. 
 In 1 Tim. iii. 16, the corrupted reading, God, too little de 
 fensible even for Mr. Liddon s appropriation, must of course 
 be cancelled. 
 
 The specimens cited of " the application to the Person of 
 Christ of passages which are used in the Old Testament of 
 the Lord Jehovah," are Joel ii. 32, in Rom. x. 13 ; and Jer. 
 ix. 23, 24, in 1 Cor. i. 31. 
 
 In taking for granted St. Paul applies the words of Joel to 
 Christ, Mr. Liddon treads in the steps of numerous orthodox 
 commentators, who, having such slender materials in Scrip 
 ture for the concoction of the Church s dogma, are actuated 
 by an unconscious bias, and build upon doubtful surmises as 
 though they were indubitable facts. Candid examination of 
 St. Paul s argument shows there is by no means adequate 
 
 * According to the reading adopted in Dean Alford s Revised Version 
 (1 Thess. iii. 2), Timothy is denominated & fellow-worker with God. But, 
 doubtless, the Dean never guessed his amended text and translation 
 might involve the Deification of Timothy. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT TEXTS APPLIED TO CHRIST. 195 
 
 ground for averting he intended the words of Joel to desi< r - 
 n;ite Christ. The prophet s language is most likely quoted 
 in its true original sense, and designates Jehovah. Looking 
 carefully to the preceding and subsequent contexts of Horn, 
 x. 13, we soon perceive Mr. Liddon should have put conjec 
 tural opinion in the place of confident assertion. Verse 11 
 repeats in part a quotation just previously made (ix. 33) 
 from Isaiah xxviii. 10, and relates to Christ, the foundation- 
 stone in the spiritual Zion. The same Lord of all in verse 
 12 (comp. Rom. iii. 29, 30 ; and, amending translation, ix. 5) 
 is the Supreme God Who raised Christ from the dead (ver. 
 9) ; Who lays the foundation-stone in Zion ; is rich in mercy 
 (Eph. ii. 4), and no respecter of persons (Acts x. 34). The 
 promise (ver. 13) is to all of every nation who call upon His 
 Name; that is, acknowledge and serve him. Verse 16 no 
 tices parenthetically the unbelief of the Jews, and in the 
 ensuing verses there is a reference to the Gentiles, and their 
 case is contrasted with that of the Jews. The issue of the 
 exposition Mr. Liddon indorses is, that the foundation-stone 
 laid by Jehovah is Jehovah himself! The passage is not 
 altogether free from obscurity, and may therefore be snarled 
 over by predetermined theologians ; but to extort the infer 
 ence " Christ is Jehovah " is certainly to make controversial 
 convenience, and not probability, the standard of interpre 
 tation. 
 
 To connect Jer. ix. 23, 24, with 1 Cor. i. 31, for an argu 
 mentative purpose, is quite beyond the license of even theo 
 logical special pleading. The words of Jeremiah, according 
 to the Septuagint Version, which here agrees with the extant 
 Hebrew Text, are, " Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, 
 &c., but let him that glorieth glory in this, to understand and 
 to know that I am the Lord, Who doeth mercy, and justice, 
 and righteousness upon the earth, because in these things is 
 my pleasure, saith the Lord." If St. Paul really had this 
 portion of Jeremiah in view, and remembered its original 
 sense, the natural connection of his thought would have 
 been that God s goodness and mercy were exercised in send- 
 
196 GRATUITOUS ASSUMPTION 
 
 ing Jesus Christ to become unto us the channel of wisdom 
 and righteousness, &c. (see 1 Cor. i. 30), and that therefore 
 the only ground of boasting is in God, Who enriches us, 
 through Christ, with every spiritual blessing. 
 
 It is strange that the phraseology, " Jehovah visiting and 
 redeeming His people," did not recall to Mr. Liddon s mind 
 the words, and hath raised up a horn of salvation for us, in 
 the house of His servant David. If Christ is the horn of 
 salvation, then Jehovah visited and redeemed His people by 
 providing another, not by coming Himself (Luke i. 68, 69 ; 
 comp. vii. 16) ; and, further, the verb translated visited is 
 properly looJced upon, and does not, when applied to God, in 
 any degree convey the idea of Personal presence, as distin 
 guished from Providential observation and care. From Luke 
 ii. 29-31, we learn that Simeon, inspired by the Holy Ghost, 
 saw in Christ the God-prepared Salvation or Saviour. The 
 ecclesiastical meaning may be, "Jehovah raised up and 
 prepared Himself," but it is not the natural meaning, nor can 
 we accept it, without confessing the incompetence of reason 
 rightly to understand what is apparently the plainest lan 
 guage of Scripture. 
 
 In a rush of irrelevant declamatory questions, Mr. Liddon 
 sophistically argues that, because in the provinces of judg 
 ment, justification, and redemption, Christ is certainly more 
 than mere man, therefore He is God. The conclusion does 
 not follow from the premises, and if we calmly consult in 
 their entirety the passages embodying the expressions on 
 which Mr. Liddon depends, we see that the Apostle believed 
 Christ to be removed from, and subordinate to, absolute 
 Deity, no less assuredly than he believed Him to be removed 
 from, and superior to, ordinary Humanity. There is a feeble, 
 unreflecting rationalism running in the wake of an assump 
 tion, involved in the question, " If Jesus Christ be more 
 than man, is it possible to suggest any intermediate position 
 between Humanity and the throne of God, which St. Paul, 
 with his earnest belief in the God of Israel, could have 
 believed Him to occupy?" (p. 329.) We are not called 
 
AND SPURIOUS RATIONALISM. 197 
 
 upon to suggest any thing, but to accept in its plain, natural 
 sense language of the Sacred Scriptures which freely and 
 often ascribes Christ s dignity, Offices, and powers, to the 
 Almighty s gift and appointment. Such language denotes 
 how, in the hearts and thoughts of the Canonical writers, 
 Christ did occupy an intermediate position between Human 
 ity and the throne of God. It solves Mr. Lid don s difficulty, 
 and exposes the futility of the argument by which he per 
 sistently strives to enforce the alternative, " if Christ be not 
 mere man, He must be Very God." The presupposition 
 involved in texts which exalt Christ and His functions, with 
 out alluding to the ground of His exaltation, is not His 
 Deity, but His recipiency from Deity (explicitly avowed in 
 other texts) of peculiar dominion, authority, and endow 
 ments. Mr. Liddon s knowledge is not only more extended 
 and precise than that of the Apostles, but runs upon a dif 
 ferent line. Their language, reasonably apprehended, inti 
 mates that they held Christ to fill, in virtue of conferred 
 qualifications, a unique and exceptional position of spiritual 
 Headship and Mediation between God and man. But Mr. 
 Liddon perceives the idea of such a position to be inad 
 missible. He is able to gauge the capabilities of possible 
 Being, between man and the Self-Existent One, and, in the 
 absence of revealing statements, and in the face of oppos 
 ing implications, he can deny that any place exterior to 
 the Unoriginated Substance may be consistently found for 
 Christ s Person. It is in vain Apostles discriminate our 
 Lord from God, in a manner which implies the actual division 
 of separate individual existence : it is in vain they indicate 
 Christ s derivation, origination, and dependence : it is in vain 
 they refer Christ s lordship and capacity to the Father s decree, 
 the Father s action, and the Father s gifts : it is in vain St. Paul 
 affirms, with repetition, emphasis, and in the most exclusive 
 terms, the Divine Unity. Mr. Liddon pronounces, " If Christ 
 be not God, St. Paul cannot be acquitted of assigning to Him 
 generally a prominence which is inconsistent with serious loy 
 alty to monotheistic Truth." The Apostle earnestly believes 
 
198 ENFORCEMENT OF A FALSE ALTERNATIVE. 
 
 in One Divine Nature, and imparts his belief in unequivocal 
 terms ; he earnestly believes also- (according to Mr. Liddon s 
 hypothesis), that Christ is mysteriously internal to, and com 
 prised in, the One Divine Nature ; but he imparts his belief 
 by utterly abstaining from explanation and avowal, and by 
 repeatedly employing language which means rationally noth 
 ing, if it does not mean, Christ is individually, and in the 
 real ordinary acceptation of the words, distinct from God, 
 inferior to God, and a recipient of sovereignty and endow 
 ments at God s hands. I have already stated this more than 
 once in substance, but Mr. Liddon s repetition, in various 
 guises, of the same vicious argument, compels repetition on 
 my part. He resolutely ignores the obvious Scriptural solu 
 tion of what appears to him a difficulty; and,. having taken 
 for granted the point to be proved, proceeds on the assump 
 tion that the allusions which magnify our Lord, and give 
 prominence to His Person, offices, and claims, in the work 
 of redemption, and the government of the Church, must of 
 necessity involve His Supreme Divinity. Whatever Apos 
 tles may have written, or left unwritten, Mr. Liddon s reason 
 decides, God could not have produced Christ, and have 
 qualified Him by pre-incarnate and incarnate endowments 
 for the place Scripture assigns Him. The Omnipotent One 
 cannot, in the profoundly cognizant philosophy of Mr. Lid- 
 don, be conceived to have appointed any Being next to Him 
 self, who is not also Himself. The limits and methods of 
 Creative might, the extent to which the Great Parent can 
 inspire and inhabit His highest rational and spiritual offspring, 
 are so exhaustively exhibited in man, and in the scanty knowl 
 edge which the Scriptures communicate respecting angels, 
 that Mr. Liddon can definitively mark the boundary, and say 
 where the manifestation of Divinity in dependent Being 
 terminates, and where the Self-existent Independent Sub 
 stance comes Personally forth in the entirety of Its attributes, 
 to fold around Itself the vesture of created Form. 
 
 " There is no room in St. Paul s thought for an imaginary 
 being like the Arian Christ, hovering indistinctly between 
 
DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST. 199 
 
 created and Uncreated life ; since, where God is believed to 
 be so utterly remote from the highest creatures beneath His 
 throne, Christ must either be conceived of as purely and 
 simply a creature with no other than a creature s nature 
 and rights, or He must be adored as One Who is for ever 
 and necessarily internal to the Uncreated Life of the Most 
 High" (p. 310). 
 
 The doctrine of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, 
 which Catholics, as opposed to Protestants, so deeply cherish, 
 implies and encourages faith in the tenet, which is Mr. 
 Liddon s theme. He is therefore quite consistent in assuming 
 the literalness of the phraseology employed by St. Paul 
 (1 Cor. x. 16 ; xi. 27, 29). " The broken bread and the cup of 
 blessing are not picturesque symbols of an absent Teacher, 
 but veils of a gracious yet awful Presence ; the irreverent 
 receiver is guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord, Which 
 he does not discern" (p. 830). 
 
 Among the difficulties which, from the Protestant point 
 of view, encumber this exposition, is the fact of its taking 
 for granted the existence, on the subject of the Eucharist, 
 of precise and explicit oral teaching to which the Acts and 
 Epistles do not in any way allude. Before the terms, Body 
 and Blood, could be understood to signify an actual though 
 invisible presence of Christ s Incarnate Person, a vast amount 
 of preliminary instruction, of a unique and not easily com 
 prehensible kind, would be requisite. The marvel is that 
 the Corinthians, being sufficiently familiar with the dogma 
 of the Real Presence, to accept in this sense St. Paul s words, 
 should have fallen into so shockingly irreverent a fashion of 
 celebrating the central, highest, and overwhelmingly awful 
 act of Christian worship. The more simple and natural 
 meaning of the Apostle s words is, undoubtedly, the figura 
 tive, symbolical meaning, which Mr. Liddon repudiates. 
 
 What conceivable point is there in the following remark 
 and references ? " In the allusions to the Three Most Holy 
 Persons, which so remarkably underlie the structure and 
 surface-thought of the Epistle to the Ephesians, Jesus Christ 
 
200 PURPORT OF THE EPHESIAN EPISTLE. 
 
 is associated most significantly with the Father and the Spirit 
 (i. 3, 6, 13; ii. 18; iii. 6 ; coinp. iii. 14-17)." In citing from 
 the first of the texts referred to, Mr. Lidclon warily omits the 
 title God. The words, the God and Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ (i. 3), and also the words, the God of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, the Father of glory (i. 17), do, doubtless, con 
 tain a most significant association, displaying the subject, as 
 well as the filial, relation in which Christ stands to the 
 Almighty King. That our Lord is the beloved of God ; that 
 Christians are sealed with the Holy Spirit ; and that, through 
 Christ, both Jews and Gentiles have introduction or access by 
 One Spirit unto the Father, are announcements from which 
 no ordinary process of deduction can elicit the inference, 
 Christ is internal to the Uncreated Life of the Most High. 
 But Mr. Liddon s estimate of " the allusions to the Three 
 Most Holy Persons " in the Ephesian Epistle is more guarded 
 than that of a deservedly eminent contemporary elucidator 
 of Holy Writ. Dean Alford, in teaching How to study the 
 New Testament, says, " The whole Epistle to the Ephesians 
 is a magnificent apostolic comment on the doctrine of the 
 Holy Trinity, as the Divine Persons are concerned in the 
 work of our redemption. Those who deny that doctrine 
 must either set aside this Epistle altogether, or must tear out 
 of it all meaning and coherence." Yet the Epistle not only 
 calls the Almighty Father the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 but proclaims also, that " there is one Lord, one faith, one 
 baptism, One God and Father of all, Who is over all, and 
 through all, and in all" (iv. 5, 6). But the measure in which 
 the holding of the Church s doctrine, when unaccompanied by 
 a frank recognition of the Church s dogmatic authority, can 
 warp and bias earnest, able minds, is painfully visible in Or 
 thodox Protestant comments on the Sacred jBook. Their 
 authors set aside perspicuous and exact information; they 
 strip language of all probable meaning ; they wrest thought 
 out of all coherence, and then, with amusing effrontery, 
 charge upon others the very kind of outrages of which they 
 themselves are guilty. No exposition of the Epistle to the 
 
TEXTS FROM COLOSSIANS AND PHILIPPIANS. 201 
 
 Ephesians can be faithful and consistent, which does not 
 recognize, along with our Lord s highly exalted dignity, His 
 separation from, and inferiority to, the Self-existent One, 
 the sole ultimate Supremacy, and originating Energy of God, 
 as the Giver of grace, and the primary Sovereign Ruler in 
 all the arrangements and dispensations of creation and redemp 
 tion, are so uniformly conspicuous throughout the Epistle, 
 that it is astonishing how even the prejudices of theological 
 training, hardened by the corroborating assent of numbers, 
 can be blind to them. In this as in every other New 
 Testament document, the God and Father, to Whom we 
 are admonished to give thanks, in the name of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ (v. 20), appears to be the only God with Whom 
 the writer was acquainted. 
 
 Some detached texts from the Colossian and Philippian 
 Epistles are made to swell the inferential argument, by deduc 
 tive processes which I need not again particularize. The 
 treatment of two texts, however, deserves special notice. 
 On the ground of Col. ii. 3 (i. 19 ; ii. 9 being referred to as 
 confirmatory), we are informed : " In the Epistle to the 
 Colossians, Jesus Christ is said to possess the intellectual as 
 well as the other attributes of Deity." Now, even as the 
 text is commonly read, we are quite at liberty to translate : 
 in which (mystery) are hid all the treasures of wisdom and 
 knowledge. But the words of the Father and of the Christ 
 are of very doubtful genuineness. Of God, Father of Christ, 
 and of the God of Christ, are the better readings from the 
 more ancient MSS. Dean Alford strikes out the doubtful 
 words, and reads simply of God, leaving no choice but to 
 join the relative pronoun with mystery, and render in which, 
 or wherein ; for the mere grammatical possibility of referring 
 the relative to God need not be considered. On the whole, 
 therefore, probability is heavily against Mr. Liddon s inter 
 pretation of the passage, to say nothing of the strain 
 involved in the identification of all the treasures of wisdom 
 and knowledge with the intellectual attributes of Deity. 
 
 The other text is Phil. ii. 10, wherein Mr. Liddon con- 
 
202 MR. LIDDON S INDISPENSABLE ASSUMPTION. 
 
 ceives it to be "expressly said that all created beings in 
 Heaven, on earth, and m hell, when Christ s triumph is com 
 plete, shall acknowledge the Majesty even of His Human 
 Nature." Now, as everybody is aware, this text, read in the 
 original, has in the Name, &c., and it is for from certain 
 in the Name of Jesus means at the Name. The Apostle s 
 meaning may have been, that, in the Name of Jesus as Lord 
 and Leader, the whole race of Man, both in Heaven, on 
 earth, and in Hades, should worship God (comp. Rom. xiv. 
 11). In Col. i. 20, God is said to reconcile unto Himself all 
 things, on earth, and in heaven, through Christ, an apos 
 tolic statement, the exact sense of which is difficult to pene 
 trate. But whether in virtue of the exaltation and the Name 
 bestowed by the Father, Christ was Himself to receive the 
 homage of the hosts who people the seen and unseen realms ; 
 or was to be their Leader and Master in the adoration of the 
 Blessed and Qnly Potentate; His God and their God, 
 is a point about which, while attention is directed to one 
 text alone, discussion is sure to be inconclusive and unprofit 
 able. Mr. Liddon s argument is palpably weak, because, 
 influenced by a pardonable anxiety to restrict the phrase, 
 God highly exalted Him, &c., to Christ s human nature, he 
 has made that nature Personal, whereas his own repeated 
 definitions affirm our Lord s human nature to have no indi 
 vidual personal Being, but to be folded as a garment round 
 a Divine Person. 
 
 Returning again to the indispensable assumption that a 
 Christ not truly God can fill no exceptional special place and 
 office between man and God, Mr. Liddon exclaims in a 
 triumphantly defiant strain : " Substitute, if you can, through 
 out any one of St. Paul s Epistles, the name of the first of 
 the saints, or of the highest among the angels, for the Name 
 of the Divine Redeemer, and see how it reads. Accept the 
 Apostle s implied challenge. Imagine for a moment that 
 Paul was crucified for you ; that you were baptized in the 
 name of Paul ; that wisdom, holiness, redemption, come 
 from an Apostle who, saint though he be, is only a brother 
 
PAUL S " IMPLIED CHALLENGE." 203 
 
 man.* . . . Why is it that, when coupled with any other 
 name, however revered and saintly, the words of Paul re 
 specting Jesus Christ must seem not merely strained, but 
 exaggerated and blasphemous?" (p. 339.) 
 
 The paltry fallaciousness of this, and much more of the 
 like kind, needs no detailed exposure. The argument does not 
 touch the point at issue, but dmply amounts to the inquiry, 
 Why can you not substitute for a Being whom God has sent 
 and qualified, and highly exalted for the accomplishment of 
 a particular purpose, some man, or some ange 1 , whom God has 
 not so sent and qualified and exalted ? And the proximate 
 context of one passage irom which Mr. Liddon draws (1 
 Cor. i. 13) involves intimations utterly at variance with his 
 deduction. How could the divided Corinthians have used 
 the names of Paul and Apollos, and Cephas, and Christ, in 
 distinctive party cries, if they had been taught to believe in 
 Christ s Godhead ? Would the most ordinary intelligence, 
 and the least particle of reverent feeling, have allowed pro 
 fessions of attachment and discipleship to Apostles and 
 Evangelists to be associated and balanced with professions 
 of attachment and discipleship to Christ ? Would not the 
 declaration I am of Christ have been at once, and justly, 
 felt to condemn and silence every factious watchword ? St. 
 Paul s " implied challenge " does not hint that Christ is God. 
 The evidence desiderated from the Canonical Writings is defi 
 nite acknowledgment, or, at the very least, plainly probable 
 implication of Christ s Deity. Mr. Liddon meets the require 
 ment by practically ignoring the passages which definitely 
 ascribe Christ s sufficiency to the Father s plan and gifts, and 
 by dragging inferences, more desperate than ingenious, out of 
 vague and elastic materials. The process is only a variety 
 
 * The turn here given to 1 Cor. i. 30, if not the result of inadvertence, 
 is something worse. The Apostle wrote : " Of God are ye in Christ Jesus, 
 who has become wisdom to us from God," &c., the preposition implying 
 sent from. 
 
 A just perception of the origin and meaning of much of St. Paul s 
 language is shown in a remark of Professor Jowett, on Gal. i. 1 : " The 
 whole work of Christ, in all its parts, becomes an attribute of God." 
 
204 DOES CHRIST AS AN OBJECT OF FAITH 
 
 of the familiar isolation, packing, straining, neglect of con 
 texts, and intrusion of senses. Obscure, ambiguous, plastic, 
 and figurative phrases are laid under contribution, and thus 
 arguments are fabricated to show "A Divine Christ is 
 implied in St. Paul s account of Faith ; " and, again, " in his 
 account of Regeneration ; " and that " the doctrine of our 
 Lord s Divinity is the key to the greatest polemical struggle 
 of the Apostle s whole life, the controversy with the Juda- 
 izers." Neither man nor angel having received a commission 
 and endowments resembling those which God is expressly 
 said to have bestowed on Christ, the Apostolical diction will, 
 confessedly, fit neither man nor angel, and therefore, " my 
 brethren, what becomes of this language, if Jesus Christ be 
 not truly God?" (p. 348.) In the minds of those already 
 convinced beyond all doubt and misgiving that Christ is 
 truly God, Mr. Liddon s pleadings will perhaps create satis 
 faction ; but in the minds of those who study the Apostle s 
 words, and seek with open-mindedness to ascertain his mean 
 ing, they will create amazement. 
 
 Is one unprepossessed searcher of the Apostle s writings 
 likely to be persuaded by wily manipulation of clauses, rent 
 from the thought involved in closely adjacent expressions, 
 that St. Paul entertained the dogma of Christ s Godhead, 
 because he sets forth Christ as an Object of faith? It is 
 the chicanery of polemics, and not sound reasoning, to start 
 from the tacitly assumed or loosely stated premise, "God 
 alone is the Object of Christian faith." In the highest sense 
 He is so ; but is there no lower sense, and may not the Messiah, 
 and the One, Mediator between the One God and mankind, 
 have an altogether exceptional standing, and unwonted 
 claims ? The truly pertinent question is, Does the Apostle 
 avow or enjoin belief in Christ as God? Reasonable expo 
 sition can find no such avowal or injunction. Only by 
 marvellously distorting inferences, and remorseless scorn for 
 context, can the conclusion be made decently plausible : 
 " In the spiritual teaching of St. Paul, Christ eclipses God, 
 if He is not God; since it is emphatically Christ s Person, 
 
IMPLY CHRIST S GODHEAD? 205 
 
 as warranting the preciousness of His work, which is the 
 Object of justifying faith. ISTor can it be shown that the 
 intellect and heart and will of man conld conspire to give 
 to God a larger tribute of spiritual homage than they are 
 required by the Apostle to give to Christ" (p. 344). 
 
 Texts, which must regulate rational interpretation, clearly 
 conduct to a conclusion totally different from the preced 
 ing. The condensed summary of St. Paul s testimony, both 
 to Jews and Greeks, " Repentance toward God, and faith 
 toward our Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts xx. 21), plainly im 
 plies the supremely higher faith and duty, of which the One 
 God and Father is the Object. And the Roman Christians 
 are taught to regard themselves as "being justified freely 
 by God s grace, through the redemption that is in Christ 
 Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation, through faith 
 in (by?) his blood, &c., that God may be just, and the Justi- 
 fier of him who is of faith in Jesus " (Rom. iii. 24-26). 
 
 The commencing words of Romans v., duly read in their 
 connection with verse 24 of the previous chapter, show tat, 
 in St. Paul s mind, justifying faith was faith " on Him who 
 raised Jesus our Lord from the dead," in strict keeping with 
 another lucid statement in the same Epistle (x. 9) " If 
 thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt 
 believe in thine heart that God raised Him from the dead, 
 thon shalt be saved." The saints, and faithful brethren also, 
 at Colossa3, are instructed to reckon themselves " raised with 
 Christ in their baptism, through the faith in the operation of 
 God, Who raised Him from the dead" (Col. ii. 12). 
 
 Faith in Jesus as God s Son and Messenger, and by God s 
 edict, and in virtue of God s endowments, our Redeemer, 
 Teacher, and Example here, and in his exaltation at God s 
 right hand, the earnest of our glory hereafter, is confessedly 
 among the items of a full Pauline faith in the Almighty 
 Father, and the Almighty Father s methods. And this faith 
 agrees with the doctrine dictated in those Canonical docu 
 ments which Mr. Liddon more particularly prizes. Charac 
 teristic features of Christian faith and knowledge are, that 
 
206 EXTRA-SCRIPTURAL PRESUMPTION. 
 
 " Christ came forth from, .and was sent by, the Father " 
 (John xvi. 27 ; xvii. 25) ; and that " Jesus is the Christ, or 
 Messiah, the Son of God" (John xx. 31 ; 1 John v. 1). If 
 belief in Christ has the promise of everlasting life, it is in 
 consequence of the loving purpose and will of Him Who 
 gave and sent Christ (John iii. 16 ; vi. 40 ; 1 John iii. 23) ; 
 and Jesus Himself is recorded to have said : " This is the 
 work of God, that ye should believe in Him whom He sent." 
 " Believe (or, ye believe) in God, believe also in me " (John 
 vi. 29; xiv. 1). The very statements which magnify Jesus 
 most are, unless interpretation be dominated by distinct 
 extra- Scriptural disclosure of His Deity, singularly inconso 
 nant with the conception of His Deity. But, in the Lectures 
 I am examining, argument is supposed to have prepared for 
 the assertion, 
 
 "It would, then, be a considerable error to recognize the 
 doctrine of our Lord s Divinity only in those passages of St. 
 Paul s writings which distinctly assert it. The indirect evi- 
 dei^ce of the Apostle s hold upon the doctrine is much wider 
 and deeper than to admit of being exhibited in a given num 
 ber of isolated texts ; since the doctrine colors, underlies, in 
 terpenetrates, the most characteristic features of his thought 
 and teaching. The proof of this might be extended almost 
 indefinitely" (p. 348). 
 
 Why not quite indefinitely? The presumed "evidence" 
 is put together without regard to contexts, logic, or common 
 sense. 
 
 Before quitting the subject of St. Paul s testimony, can 
 dor and honesty require us to examine searchingly some 
 prominent features which, from Mr. Liddon s stand-point, ar* 
 more prudently evaded than discussed. My use of the seem 
 ingly positive witness which the New Testament furnishes 
 against the dogma of our Lord s proper Deity has hitherto 
 been allusive and incidental, rather than detailed and direct. 
 I have had occasion to expose the weakness of the defences, 
 rather than actively to assail the position defended. But 
 there are texts in the writings of St. Paul which have no 
 
THE PROTESTANT AND THE CATHOLIC GROUND. 207 
 
 rational significance at all, if they do not exclude the doc 
 trine for which Mr. Liddon contends. I argue, of course, 
 from the Protestant ground, that Holy Scripture contains a 
 Revelation addressed to the human intelligence, and is a suf 
 ficient Rule for the instruction of the human mind in matters 
 of Faith, as well as of practice. From the Catholic ground, 
 that Scripture is only a subordinate factor in a complex 
 Rule, and is constructed by Divine Wisdom to be valueless 
 in relation to the mysteries of the Faith, apart from the 
 Church s authoritative interpreting voice, merely logical 
 deductions have manifestly no place, and merely rational 
 conclusions no weight. The weakness of Mr. Liddon s book 
 results from the fact of his not avowedly standing upon the 
 Catholic ground, but writing as though reason could follow 
 the steps, and reach the decisions of ecclesiastical inspiration, 
 in ascertaining the sense of documents which are themselves 
 adapted by inspiration to veil their meaning from every gaze 
 but that of divinely illuminated ecclesiastical insight. I dis 
 claim the notion that, in criticising his pleas, I am dealing 
 with the broad and comprehensive question, whether his 
 doctrine is true or fhlse ; I deal only with the narrow and 
 partial question, whether it can or cannot be proved from 
 Scripture, by proofs which the human understanding can 
 comprehend and accept. My clerical brethren will readily 
 perceive the wide difference between the two questions ; and 
 signs are not wanting that educated laymen are awakening 
 to perceive capability of Scripture proof to be no necessary 
 credential of the profound mysteries on which the Orthodox 
 presentation of Christian faith and worship turns. 
 
 But, descending from the higher Catholic level, to Protest 
 ant principle, and the intelligence common to man ; if the 
 dogma of Christ s Godhead had been broached in St. Paul s 
 days, and he had wished to deny it, his formal negative 
 might, indeed, have been more pointed in shape, but scarcely 
 more positive in substance, than some expressions which he 
 has actually employed. Of course, a theory has been elabo 
 rated to explain away the opposition, so palpable to the 
 
208 PAUL S POSITIVE TESTIMONY 
 
 unsuppressed intellect, between Church dogma and Apo- 
 tolic teaching. The distinctive form of St. Paul s Christol- 
 ogy leads him, Ave are apprised, to insist upon the truth of 
 our Lord s Humanity, and to dwell upon Christ s Manhood 
 as the Instrument of Mediation between God and Man. 
 
 " It is as Man that Christ is contrasted with our first par 
 ent ; and it is in virtue of His Manhood that He is our Me 
 diator, our Redeemer (1 Tim.ii. 5, 6), our Saviour from Satan s 
 power, our Intercessor with the Father (Heb. ii. 14; v. 1). 
 Great stress, indeed, does St. Paul lay upon the Manhood of 
 Christ, as the instrument of His mediation between earth 
 and heaven, as the channel through which intellectual truth 
 and moral strength descend from God into the souls of men, 
 as the Exemplar wherein alone human nature has recovered 
 its ideal beauty, as entering a sphere wherein the Sinless One 
 could offer the perfect world-representing sacrifice of a truly 
 obedient Will. So -earnestly and constantly does St. Paul s 
 thought dwell on our Lord s Mediating Humanity, that to 
 unreflecting persons his language might at times appear to 
 imply that Jesus Christ is personally an inferior being, exter 
 nal to the Unity of the Diviae Essence. Thus he tells the 
 Corinthians, " that Christians have one Lord Jesus Christ as 
 well as One God (1 Cor. viii. 6). Thus he reminds St. Tim 
 othy that there is One God, and One Mediator between God 
 and man, the Man Christ Jesus, Who gave Himself a ran 
 som for all (1 Tim. ii. 5, 6). Thus he looks forward to a day 
 when the Son Himself also, meaning thereby Christ s sacred 
 Manhood, shall be subject to Him That put all things under 
 Him, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. xv. 28). It is at 
 least certain that no modern Humanitarian could recognize 
 the literal reality of our Lord s Humanity with more explic- 
 itness than did the Apostle, who had never seen Him on 
 earth, and to whom He had been made known by visions 
 which a Docetic enthusiast might have taken as sufficient 
 warrant for denying His real participation in our flesh and 
 blood" (pp. 305-307). 
 
 But this limitation of obnoxious texts to our Lord s medi- 
 
209 
 
 ating Manhood admits of no justification. To the unbiassed 
 expositor it must seem purely arbitrary, and nothing better 
 than an expedient for reconciling with a foregone dogmatic 
 conclusion language of which the simple natural meaning is 
 adverse. And the expedient is not reinforced by bold affir 
 mations about the " Apostle s general teaching," and specious 
 concessions that "particular texts, when duly isolated from 
 that teaching, may be pressed with plausible eifect into the 
 service of Arian or Humanitarian theories." The particular 
 texts in question lose none of their prima facie rational sig 
 nificance, when studied in the closest connection with their 
 contexts ; and their sense is, besides, too specific and complete 
 for any isolation to affect it. When we examine them, the 
 perverse sophistry of the pleading which seeks to shun their 
 force becomes very evident. 
 
 " None other is God except One. For though there be 
 that are called gods, whether in heaven or upon earth (as 
 there be gods many, and lords many), yet to us there is One 
 God, the Father, of (from) Whom are all things and we for 
 (unto) Him, and One Lord, Jesus Christ, through Whom are 
 all things, and we through Him" (1 Cor. viii. 4-6). 
 
 Now here, in the reference to the heathen gods and lords, 
 there is an allusion to the division into greater and lesser 
 deities, the imaginary superhuman powers, celestial and ter 
 restrial, of the idolatrous pantheon. In that classification the 
 lords were, doubtless, inferior to the gods, and were supposed 
 to hold intermediate places and offices between the gods 
 and mankind ; they were often only deified creatures. The 
 Apostle, therefore, introduces the distinction between the 
 One God, and the One Lord, of Christians, in a manner which 
 must inevitably have taught the Corinthians to deem Christ 
 external, and inferior, to the Godhead, unless they were in 
 possession of some secret and explicit oral teaching which 
 adequately neutralized the subtle and designed inaccuracy of 
 the Written Word. And, besides, the Apostle s language is 
 in itself a direct, unconditional declaration, " there is no God 
 but One, namely, the Father" 
 
 14 
 
210 THE " ONE GOD " AND " ONE LORD." 
 
 Mr. Liddon feels the opposing weight of the text, and in 
 a note to p. 306 has condescended to quibble as follows : 
 " Here, however, (1) Lord, as contrasted with God, implies 
 no necessary inferiority, else we must say that the Father is 
 not Lord;* while (2) the clause, through Whom are all 
 things, and we through Him, which cannot be restricted to 
 our Lord s redemptive work without extreme exegetical arbi 
 trariness, and which certainly refers to His creation of the 
 Universe, placts Jesus Christ on a level with the Father 
 Compare the position of dia (through) between tj (of or 
 from) and sig (for), Rom. xi. 36 (compare Col. i. 16). Our 
 Lord is here distinguished from the One God as being Human 
 as well as Divine." This is indeed the weakest of shuffling 
 evasions. Lord, though in itself a lower, and by no means 
 exclusive designation (see Matt. xv. 27 ; xxi. 30 ; xxvii. 63 ; 
 Luke xvi. 3, 5, 8; xix. 33; John xii. 21; xx. 15; Acts x. 4; 
 xvi. 16, 19, 30; xxv. 26; Rev. vii. 14), is, when used of the 
 Almighty, equivalent to God, simply because it is so used ; 
 but God is the supreme title of dominion, and covers all 
 imaginable rights and claims of Lordship. 
 
 The fact of all things being mstrumentally through Christ 
 does not put Him on a level with the Father, from Whom 
 are all things, but allots Him, so far as a brief expression can, 
 a distinctly secondary inferior position, by implying He was 
 the ministerial channel, and not the original Source and Pos 
 sessor of creative power. In w T hat sense and manner the 
 Apostle believed Christ to have been the Father s Instrument 
 
 * The argument that the title Lord, being often applied to the Father, 
 is not necessarily inferior to God, though contemptible enough, is, in form, 
 a shade better than that which Bloomfield borrowed from Dr. Pye Smith : 
 " The Deity of Christ can no more be denied because the Father is here 
 called the One God, than the dominion of the Father can be denied be 
 cause the Son is called the One Lord." Bloomfield continued : " By this 
 mode of expression it is intimated that Father and Son ai*e one God, and 
 one Lord, in the Unity of the Godhead." Exactly so, to those whom 
 carelessness or prepossession qualifies to receive the intimation ; but, then, 
 by what other mode of expression, short of formal negation, could it be 
 intimated that the Father and Son are not " one God, and one Lord, in the 
 Unity of the Godhead " 1 
 
CREATION PLAINLY ASCRIBED TO GOD. 
 
 in creation (if, indeed, the text refers to creation generally), 
 we cannot say. Perhaps his ideas on the subject were no 
 clearer than our own ; but, when we are interpreting his 
 language, we have no warrant to deny, in the teeth of his 
 words, that Christ was an Instrument, because to our under 
 standings creation, through instrumental agency, appears 
 incomprehensible or unlikely. The case stands thus: with 
 unmistakable clearness and abundant frequency, creation is, 
 in Scripture, ascribed to God. In a very few phrases of some 
 what obscure meaning, instrumental constructive action seems 
 to be also ascribed to Christ. That the Omnipotent Father 
 is the primary Fountain of Creative Energy, Will, and Might, 
 is, therefore, indisputably a revelation contained in Scripture. 
 If Mr. Liddon admits the Father s having made Christ His 
 Instrument in the work of creation, and then contends that, 
 because the power of the Highest was exerted through Christ, 
 therefore Christ is on a level with the Highest, his reasoning 
 needs no refutation. 
 
 The assertion, " The One Lord is distinguished fron the One 
 God, as being Human as well as Divine," is purely gratui 
 tous. If Christ is really God, His Humanity is not the seat 
 of His distinct personality, and does not annul or lower His 
 Deity. Evidence of the greatest weight and strength is ne 
 cessary to render feasible the conjecture ; St. Paul s language 
 to the Corinthians was the utterance of a sincere man, whose 
 fully expressed faith would have been, "to us there is One 
 God and One Lord Who is both God and Man" The addi 
 tional proposition imports a new and confusing element, 
 which, in the absence of cogent proof, only blind prejudice 
 will be content to accept. 
 
 A text parallel to that just examined is Eph. iv. 6, the 
 sense of which undoubtedly is, " God is the God and Father 
 of all in every conceivable respect, exerting power over all, 
 acting through all, and dwelling in all" (Winer). The way 
 in which the Apostle s language divides Him from the one 
 Lord would seem to have been devised for the very purpose 
 of misleading and bewildering the intellect, if they are both 
 
212 THE "ONE MEDIATOR" U A MAN," ETC. 
 
 enclosed in the same Nature, and bound together by insepa 
 rable unity of Being. But the text has been, by theological 
 dogmatists, explained to imply the existence and activity of 
 the whole Trinity, in the following fashion : " Over all as Fa 
 ther; through all by the Word; and in all by the Holy 
 Ghost," a commentary which strikingly exhibits the effect 
 of the later and extra-scriptural stages of Revelation in 
 irradiating the earlier, and bringing hidden things to light. 
 
 The restricting of the description a man Christ Jesus 
 icho gave Himself a ransom for all (1 Tim. ii. 5, 6) to 
 our Lord s Mediating Humanity is mere caprice, exercised in 
 subservience to dogmatic exigency. Elsewhere Mr. Liddon 
 insists the doctrine of Christ s Godhead is requisite to " re 
 deem from exaggeration the New Testament representations 
 of the effects of His Death." It is needless to inquire 
 whether this way of putting the case is empty verbal struct 
 ure, or the expression of real ideas. To me it appears to 
 be mainly the former, but it is among the accredited methods 
 of showing how the Canonical writers mean what they 
 do not say. With genuine theological readiness to con 
 struct from his own ignorance and draw upon his own imagi 
 nation, Mr. Liddon asks, in his final Lecture, " How was a 
 real reconciliation between God and His creatures to be 
 effected, unless the Reconciler had some natural capacity for 
 mediating, unless he could represent God to man no less 
 truly than man to God ? " (p. 478.) St. Paul, then, we must 
 presume, contemplated only one side of this natural capacity 
 when he declared to Timothy, there is one God and one Me 
 diator between G-od and men, a Man, Christ Jesus, who gave 
 Himself a ransom for all. But is it not in the highest 
 degree improbable that St. Paul should, in such a passage, 
 omit all reference to our Lord s Divine Personal Being, and 
 with misguiding inexactness style Christ s Humanity Him 
 self f He writes of the One individual God of all mankind, 
 and the one individual Mediator between God and mankind, 
 and he calls the Mediator a Man. It may be argued : if 
 Christ s pre-existence be admitted, the fact of His Humanity 
 
THE " INVISIBLE ONLY GOD." 213 
 
 does not exclude His possession of another nature, and Mr. 
 Liddon does remark (p. 312) that the phrase "was manifested 
 in the flesh (1 Tim. iii. 16) at least implies that Christ ex 
 isted before this manifestation." Whether the phrase really 
 carries the asserted implication is very debatable, even if we 
 leave out of our reckoning the important circumstance that 
 the reading, which was manifested, instead of who was mani 
 fested, is found in the Latin Vulgate, and is otherwise not 
 devoid of authority. But, granting the implication of pre- 
 existence, the fact remains, in their simple, primary, una 
 dulterated import, the words there is One God and one 
 Mediator, &c., do exclude the Mediator from the Unity and 
 Nature of Deity. If St. Paul intended Timothy to infer the 
 One Mediator was God or God-man, there is nothing he may 
 not have intended, and no connection is traceable between 
 his language and his thoughts : One may be the negation of 
 unity ; God may mean Man, and Man may mean God. 
 
 In this same First Epistle to Timothy are two other pas 
 sages which remarkably illustrate the extreme latency and 
 reserve of Scriptural inspiration on the topic of Christ s 
 Deity. One of these passages precedes, by only a few sen 
 tences, that already discussed, and is a doxology, wherein 
 the Almighty is styled Incorruptible, Invisible, Alone God 
 (i. 17). And, in conjunction with this doxology, we cannot 
 fail to notice how the previous verse contains the statement : 
 that in me Jesus Christ might shoio forth all long-suffering, 
 &c., a statement from which it might be argued that Christ 
 Jesus was believed to wield the prerogatives of Divinity, and 
 so was, in the deeper thought of the Apostle, identified with 
 God. But the immediately subsequent recognition of the 
 Invisible Only God forbids the argument, and indicates that, 
 in the mind of the Apostle, Christ was not elevated to the 
 height of Godhead. 
 
 The second passage to which I refer is, what Mr. Liddon 
 justly considers to be, " the richest and most glorious of the 
 doxologies occurring in St. Paul s Epistles : " " Till the ap 
 pearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in His Own times 
 
214 
 
 He will show, Who is the Blessed and only Potentate, the 
 King of kings, and Lord of lords, Who only hath immor 
 tality, dwelling in light unapproachable, Whom no man hath 
 seen, nor can see ; to Him be honor and power eternal " 
 (vi. 15, 16). 
 
 If the announcement, whose direct force is met with capri 
 cious conjectures about exclusive reference to our Lord s 
 mediating Manhood, is read in connection with these clox- 
 ologies which mark the opening and closing thoughts of the 
 writer \vhen composing the Epistle, there is no legitimate 
 escape from concluding the Apostle to have meant in all 
 plainness and sincerity just what he said, when he reminded 
 Timothy : there is one God, and one Mediator between God 
 and men, a man, Christ Jesus. 
 
 Mr. Liddon s treatment of 1 Cor. xv. 28 is of a kind which 
 would be denounced with unmeasured severity if it were 
 employed in heterodox instead of orthodox advocacy. Pre 
 suming the Apostle s faith to have been that which the 
 Church afterwards set forth, the natural sense of the expres 
 sion, the Son Himself, would be, the Divine Son Who is 
 " The Father s Equal, in that He is partaker of His Nature ; 
 the Father s Subordinate, in that the Equality is eternally 
 derived." To make the expression point exclusively to 
 Christ s Sacred Manhood is to indulge in very easy but 
 perfectly unwarranted assumption. It points to Christ s 
 entire Incarnate Being, and the connection in which it stands 
 evinces, as far as words can evince, that the Apostle held 
 that Being to occupy in relation to God not only a place of 
 economical orderly subordination, but a place of essential, 
 natural inferiority. That our Lord s Humanity is the sole 
 subject of the objectionable verb which bespeaks inferiority 
 may be " the opinion of St. Augustine, St. Jerome, Theo- 
 doret," and, after them, of a long array of commentators who 
 have sacrificed common sense and consistency to a contro 
 versial purpose. But repetition does not change assertion 
 into proof, and, if the Apostle wrote as a reasonable man to 
 reasonable men, he designated Christ s Person in Its com- 
 
OF I COR. XV. 28. 215 
 
 $ 
 
 pleteness, and not merely the enveloping created elements, 
 which never had an individual existence apart from the 
 Divine Personality. The mental confusion springing out of 
 theological definitions when they are not aids to a submis 
 sively receptive faith is to be seen in the fact that a clear, 
 honest, and unreserving thinker, as St. Paul is supposed by 
 Protestants to have been, can be imagined to have known 
 Christ s Person to be wholly Divine, and yet to have written, 
 in a number of passages, as though the Manhood were, in 
 distinction from the Divinity, a Personal Agent and Sub 
 ject. Mr. Liddon is not altogether blind to the dilemma, 
 and seeks immunity through jugglings Avhich tell their OAVH 
 tale. He starts boldly from a misinterpreted text : " A writer 
 who believed our Lord to be literally God (Rom. ix. 5) could 
 not have supposed that, at the end of His mediatorial reign 
 as Man, a new relation would be introduced between the 
 Persons of the Godhead. The subordination (xara ra^iv) of 
 the Son is an eternal fact in the inner Being of God. But 
 the visible subjection of His Humanity (with which His 
 Church is so organically united as to be called Christ, 1 Cor. 
 xii. 12) to the supremacy of God will be realized at the close 
 of the present dispensation" (p. 306). How can Christ reign 
 as Man when he possesses no Personal Manhood? And 
 what visible subjection can there be of a Humanity linked 
 indissolubly to Essential Godhead ? unless, indeed, Mr. Lid 
 don will go so far as to affirm the Son Himself to be a sub 
 lime personification of " the Church organically united with 
 Christ s Humanity." No cleverly raised dust of verbiage 
 can hide the fact that, in the Apostle s meaning, God, in 
 verse 28, is the individual God and Father to Whom, 
 according to verse 24, the Son will deliver up the Kingdom. 
 "Whatever obscurity may surround St. Paul s summarily 
 announced anticipation, this much at least is clear, he held 
 Christ s dominion to be conferred, and returnable, after its 
 purposes should have been accomplished, to Him Who con 
 ferred it : " God hath put all things under Him : then cometh 
 the end when He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to 
 the God and Father." 
 
216 
 
 The uniformly pervading conception which penetrates and 
 shapes all the New Testament representations of Christ s 
 Royalty distinctly reappears. Christ is highly exalted, dele 
 gated, divinely equipped, and sustained by the Father, and 
 therefore, in His loftiest elevation and most exceptional 
 capacities, is not God, or God s Equal, but God s Instrument, 
 ruling under and for God. During the Mediatorial reign the 
 Father retains His singular and unapproachable Sovereignty. 
 " In saying all things are put under Christ, it is manifest that 
 He (God) is excepted Who did put all things under Him " 
 (ver. 27). The notion of some inscrutable Equality of Na 
 ture, combined with eternal derivation (whatever that may 
 be) and formal subordination, is manifestly not what lay 
 behind and prompted the Apostle s words, presuming always 
 his words were designed to impart and reveal, and not, for 
 the Church s sake, to reserve and conceal, his mind. 
 
 The absolute superiority of God, together with the real and 
 intelligible, and not merely formal and verbal inferiority of 
 Christ, are clearly implied in two other passages of the first 
 Corinthian Epistle, Ye are Christ s and Christ is God s (iii. 
 23). The head of every man is Christ, and the head of 
 Christ is God (xi. 3). 
 
 The Unity of God is incidentally affirmed by St. Paul 
 (Rom. iii. 30 ; Gal. iii. 20) ; and in Rom. xvi. 25-27 there is 
 a form of doxology, sharply distinguishing between Jesus 
 Christ, and Him Who is able to establish us according to the 
 Gospel, the Only Wise God. 
 
 St. Paul s Epistles contain the designation, five times re 
 peated (Rom. xv. 6 ; 2 Cor. i. 3 ; xi. 31 ; Eph. i. 3 ; Col. i. 3), 
 the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, a designation 
 not easily explicable if St. Paul knew that Christ was Him 
 self God. The same designation is found in the writings of 
 another Apostle (1 Pet. i. 3). St. Paul also speaks of The 
 God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory (Eph. i. 
 17). 
 
 Do not the often recurring phrases, God the Father ; God 
 our Father / our God and Father, when taken together with 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF EPH. V. 22; GAL. IV. 14. 217 
 
 the texts which have in the last few pages been under con 
 sideration, and with the fact of St. Paul s never in one single 
 passage calling Christ God* overwhelmingly denote the 
 Apostle to have known no God but the Father, however 
 lofty his conceptions may have been of Christ s Person, dig 
 nity, and dominion ? 
 
 And, further, can we, after largest allowance for exaggera 
 tion, incidental to earnestness and rapid style, reconcile with 
 the Apostle s presumed faith in Christ s Godhead the form 
 of the injunctions in which he exhorts wives to obey their 
 husbands? Could a believer in the superlative claims of 
 Christ s Godhead have written : " Wives, submit yourselves 
 to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is 
 the head of the wife, even as Christ is the Head of the 
 Church. But as the Church is subject to Christ, so let the 
 wives also be to their husbands, in every thing " ? (Eph. v. 
 22-24.) Would not reverence and sound discretion forbid 
 Mr. Liddon, or any other orthodox divine, to use such lan 
 guage ? 
 
 Again, the Apostle reminds the Galatian Christians how 
 they did not despise him, but received him as an angel of 
 God, as Christ Jesus (Gal. iv. 14). After every allowance, 
 this language must appear distasteful and unseemly to a mind 
 inhabited by the orthodox faith. Is it likely St. Paul would 
 have used such phraseology, if he had himself believed, and 
 had instructed the Galatians to believe, " Christ Jesus is truly 
 God " ? Assuming the Galatians to have been taught the 
 Lord Jesus is the Great God and God blessed for ever, with 
 what respect, veneration, adoration, may we imagine they 
 
 * I think I am now fairly entitled to affirm this, notwithstanding the 
 ambiguity of Eom. ix. 5 ; Tit. ii. 13. If these texts could be perfectly 
 isolated, grammatical construction would leave the question whether they 
 refer to the Father, or to Jesus Christ, open ; and the considerations aris 
 ing from habitual Pauline thought and language are conclusively against 
 the latter reference. After a survey of St. Paul s writings, the attempt 
 to erect two ambiguous expressions into explicit declarations of Christ s 
 Godhead, is seen to be ridiculous, unless we start from some postulate 
 which removes the work of interpretation from the hands of reason. 
 
218 CONCLUSIONS FROM ST. PAUL S 
 
 would have received Him ! Did they accord to the Apostle 
 a reception which, even in the greatest heat of composition, 
 and the freest exaggeration of Eastern rhetoric, might be, 
 without palpable falsehood and irreverence, compared to the 
 reception they would have accorded to One Whom they held 
 to be God Almighty ? 
 
 Taking St. Paul s teaching as a whole, and bringing to the 
 study of it unprejudiced rational investigation, a conclusion 
 contrary to the doctrine Mr. Liddon advocates seems inevit 
 able. The Bampton Lectures do not, after the manner of 
 some older treatises on the same side of the controversy, 
 indulge freely in abuse of those who differ ; but the bitterness 
 which assumes denial of Christ s Deity to issue from enmity 
 to Him and His Gospel, and from a disposition to cavil at 
 and reject Scripture testimony concerning Him, is not en 
 tirely absent. It is, however, as a rule, strangely misapplied, 
 and comes with a very ill grace from expositors whose dis 
 tinctive tenet compels them habitually to do violence to the 
 plain force of Scripture language. From the ground of St. 
 Paul s writings, an appeal may be justly made to the honesty, 
 intellectual conscientiousness, and common-sense of all Prot 
 estants who, being persuaded the Apostle knew, and designed 
 to promulgate, truth as it is. in Jesus, claim him as a witness 
 for the Divinity of Jesus. If Mr. Liddon ever preaches from 
 any of that class of Pauline texts which are prima facie 
 adverse to the Church s dogma, does he not find it needful, 
 first of all, to explain away the apparently obvious sense and 
 implication, and to show " unreflecting " hearers how the 
 Apostle could not have really meant what he seems to say ? 
 Does he not feel the necessity of furnishing from his own 
 resources the information which the Apostle withholds, and 
 the judicious caution which the Apostle lacks ? Would he, 
 without resorting to defensive and modifying explanation, 
 employ, as the Apostle does, phraseology which distinguishes 
 sharply between the One God and the One Lord? Would 
 he assert the Unity of the Godhead, using seemingly exclu 
 sive and contrasting terms, in the very same sentences which 
 
TEACHING AS A WHOLE. 219 
 
 refer to and name Jesus Christ ? If St. Paul s language had 
 not the sanctity of Canonical authority, and were now for 
 the first time introduced, would it not be denounced as dan 
 gerous, heretical, and even pointedly counter to the eccle 
 siastical definitions of faith ? Is it at all such language as 
 might be expected to issue from the mind and pen of a truth 
 ful, and ordinarily prudent, orthodox man? Would any 
 orthodox preacher be contented simply to draw it together, 
 and recite it, without fencing, neutralizing comments ? The 
 circumstance that in Apostolic days the doctrine of Christ s 
 Deity was a novel doctrine, " a great discovery to be borne 
 by the capacities of Jews and heathens," did not make its 
 lucid avowal the less, but the more needful, and rendered 
 every apparently conflicting statement doubly perilous. If 
 Mr. Liddon were restricted to St. Paul s diction, could he 
 make the dogmatic trumpet give a certain sound ? Could 
 he frame explicit unambiguous inculcation that our Lord is 
 truly God? The exact defining phrases of ecclesiastical 
 theology are all extra-Scriptural, and have, in truth, been 
 devised to supply the deficiencies of the Canonical phrase 
 ology. Not to mention more scholastic and abstract terms, 
 the appellation God the Son occurs nowhere in the Script 
 ures. Yet given the position, " Christ is indeed. God," and 
 that appellation arises by natural, inevitable suggestion, and 
 is sure to be often substituted for the Scriptural Son of God, 
 which, if not emptied of intrinsic meaning, cuts away the 
 attributes of eternity and independent, Self-contained Sub 
 sistence. 
 
 Protestants, who accept the Church s definitions respecting 
 Christ s Person, have therefore clearly no right to upbraid 
 their brethren who reject them. Men who dare not repeat, 
 without supplementary and guarding additions, numerous, 
 simple, and distinct Scriptural utterances ; men who have 
 learned from experience the inadequacy of Scripture terms 
 for the due expression of an Orthodox faith, lay themselves 
 open to well-merited and not stinted retort, when they 
 venture to charge their opponents with hostility to Gospel 
 
220 FUNDAMENTAL FAULTINESS OF PROTESTANTISM 
 
 truth, and unwillingness to be guided by the Sacred 
 Writings. 
 
 The increasing body of Protestants, whose consciences 
 a rational understanding of the Scriptures they diligently 
 search teaches to deny the proper Deity of Christ, do not 
 fancy they possess materials enabling them to differentiate 
 with exactitude Christ s pre-incarnate nature from the nature 
 of all other spiritual intelligences ; but they believe, on the 
 strength of testimony which many of them, in common with 
 their Orthodox brethren, hold to be inspired and revealing, 
 that our Lord s Being is, in its every aspect, originated, de 
 rived, produced, subordinate, and dependent ; and, therefore, 
 indubitably not the Eternal, Self-existent Essence, what 
 ever else it may be. The Bible, they conceive, instructs them 
 to affirm with unhesitating confidence, " Christ is not Very 
 God ; " and, adhering consistently to Protestant principle, 
 they attach little importance to the ecclesiastical revelation 
 which would rectify their error by superseding their intellect, 
 and showing them how the letter and manner of Scripture 
 are more mysterious and supernatural than any matter whicli 
 Scripture contains. The fundamental faultiness of Protest 
 antism in relation to the tenets of Nicene theology is, doubt 
 less, the notion that the Word of God in the Bible is directly 
 addressed to the reason and the heart of all who will with 
 devout care study it. But the Catholic Churchman knows 
 that the Bible is the Church s Book, and that, withdrawn 
 from the Church s light, its revelations cannot be read aright. 
 The reserved and concealed meaning of the inspired penmen 
 the inspired Church draws forth. In the Spirit they speak 
 mysteries, in the Spirit also the Church interprets. 
 
 And this rule of interpretation is singularly exemplified in 
 the instance of those particular texts of St. Paul, which are, 
 Mr. Liddon concedes, liable to be pressed with plausible effect 
 into the service of erroneous theories. Rationally, according 
 to the customary laws of thought and language, there is no 
 excuse whatever for eliminating the apparently plain sense of 
 St. Paul s words, by imagining he was anxious to insist on so 
 
AS TO THE NICENE THEOLOGY. 221 
 
 recondite a truth as the reality of our Lord s Manhood, or 
 anxious duly to recognize a doctrine so hard to understand 
 and retain as the derivation of Christ s Sonship from the 
 Person of the Father. 
 
 The discourses of St. Paul, preserved in the Acts ot the 
 Apostles, can hardly be pronounced, even by the most pene 
 trating of ecclesiastically minded commentators, to exhibit 
 our Lord s Deity more convincingly than do the Pauline 
 Epistles ; but then the Acts, being a Canonical document, its 
 records were moulded by the characteristic inspiration of 
 secretiveness and reserve, and may therefore contain no 
 samples of the Apostle s ordinary manner of preaching. 
 Starting from the Church s assurance that the dogma of our 
 Lord s Godhead was always a most vital, prominent part ot 
 the faith delivered to the saints, we must surmise St. Paul s 
 oral teaching to have been in general marked by such a vivid 
 and earnest inculcation of the dogma, that his hearers, through 
 dwelling upon it disproportionately, were exposed to peril 
 from specious heresies which controverted the reality of 
 Christ s Human Nature, and were also liable to forget how a 
 Divine and Necessary Being, comprised in the Self-existent 
 Substance and lacking no attribute of Deity, was, neverthe 
 less, derived, and relatively subordinate. To the Protestant 
 mind this surmise wears an air of arbitrariness ; but it aids 
 the Catholic to discern the descent through the Church of 
 the grand truth of St. Paul s oral teaching, while his Epistles 
 are seen to guard against once attractive errors, which por 
 tions of his oral addresses were wrested to sanction. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The title Son as expressive of relationship to God. Supposed indications 
 in the Old Testament of a Divine Sonship internal to the Being of 
 God. Synoptists use of the title Son of God. Mr. Liddon s 
 attempt to show that the Son is identical with the Logos or Word, and 
 that the two descriptions complete and guard each other. The 
 expanded title, Only-begotten Son. Weakness of Mr. Liddon s posi 
 tion metaphysically. His view of the bearing of the miracles upon 
 the question of Christ s Person. His deductions from the Self-as 
 sertion exhibited in the first or Ethical stage of our Lord s teaching. 
 Difficulties connected with our Lord s exposure to temptation, 
 &c. Mr. Liddon s arbitrary, evasive treatment of a troublesome 
 saying reported by two Evangelists. Inferences drawn from the 
 authoritativeness of Christ s teaching. Did He ratify the Penta 
 teuch as a whole ? 
 
 IN a note (p. 10), illustrating the use of the title sons, in the 
 Old Testament, to express relationship to God, Mr. Liddon 
 says : 
 
 " The singular, My Son, The Son, is used only in prophecy 
 of the Messiah (Ps. ii. 7, 12; and Acts xiii. 33; Heb. i. 5; 
 v. 5), and in what is believed to have been a Divine manifes 
 tation, very probably of God the Son (Dan. iii. 25). The 
 line of David being the line of the Messiah, culminating in 
 the Messiah, as in David s One perfect Son, it was said in a 
 lower sense of each member of that line, but in its full sense 
 only of Messiah, I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be 
 to Me a Son (2 Sam. vii. 14 ; Heb. i. 5 ; Ps. Ixxxix. 27). The 
 implication of the title to collective Israel in Hos. xi. 1 is 
 connected by St. Matthew (ii. 15) with its deeper force as 
 used of Israel s One true Heir and Representative. Com 
 pare, too, the mysterious intimations of Prov. xxx. 4 ; Ecclus. 
 Ii. 10, of a Divine Sonship internal to the Being of God." 
 
 These statements are perhaps worthy of a few remarks. 
 The Hebrew being confessedly ambiguous, and the Septua- 
 
TITLE U SON" IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 223 
 
 gint and Vulgate Versions, together with some of the best 
 modern Hebraists, being against the translation, J\/iss the 
 /Son, it is not the part of either sound scholarship or prudence 
 to insist that Ps. ii. 12 refers to the Messiah. 
 
 Until the phrases, God the Son, and a Son of God, shall 
 have been shown to be interchangeable, there cannot be the 
 faintest reasonable pretence for thinking a manifestation of 
 God the Son is described in Dan. iii. 25. Does Mr. Liddon 
 imagine Nebuchadnezzar, or the writer who relates his words, 
 to have had any conception of such a manifestation ? 
 
 In quoting for a controversial purpose 2 Sam. vii. 14, 
 Heb. i. 5, it should in fairness be remembered the exact force 
 of the Hebrew, the Septuagint, and the New Testament 
 Text, is: "I will be to Him as (or for) a Father, and He 
 shall be to Me as (or for) a Son." Mr. Liddon wishes his 
 readers to see an averment of Paternity and of Sonship of 
 the strictest, closest kind, but overlooks the circumstance 
 that in the language, accurately rendered, such a sense does 
 not exist. Even in its English shape, the text does not 
 amount to, " I am His Father, and He is My Son." 
 
 How the full significance of Ps. Ixxxix. 26, 27, can ally 
 itself advantageously with the requirements of Mr. Liddon s 
 theme, I am not at all able to perceive. The words spoken 
 through the Psalmist are, " He shall cry unto Me, Thou art 
 my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. Also, I 
 will make Him My First-born, higher than the kings of 
 the earth." (See likewise the preceding and subsequent 
 contexts.) 
 
 If the first Evangelist has, in his application of Hos. xi. 1, 
 brought out the real intention of that passage, the fact may 
 be taken as an additional symptom of the total incapacity 
 of reason to understand the utterances of inspiration. The 
 prophet s words must be quite wrenched away from their 
 context, and from all the ostensible train of his thought, 
 before they will bear the sense imposed in Matt. ii. 15.* The 
 
 * Such an application of Old Testament phraseology as that in Mat 
 thew ii. ] 5 is quite in the style of second and third century Christian 
 
224 
 
 difference by no means suffices to prove the Evangelist 
 quoted either inexactly, or from a faulty text ; but the Sep- 
 tuagint Version, which in all probability was made from a 
 Hebrew Text older than that in use when the first Gospel 
 was written, reads : out of Egypt I called his children. 
 
 If intimations of a Divine Sonship internal to the Being 
 of God are contained in Prov. xxx. 4, Ecclus. li. 10, their 
 mysteriousness is most unquestionable ; but here, again, we 
 should bear in mind how in Proverbs the Vatican Septuagint 
 reads, what is the name of his children f instead of what is 
 his son! s name? The Alexandrine MS. has, what is the name 
 of his child (rexvov) ? 
 
 A man who is able to discover in the expression, the 
 Lord, the Father of my lord, in the last chapter of Eccle- 
 siasticus, an intimation of a duality of Co-equal Persons in 
 the Almighty Nature, may be expected to cling to his dis 
 covery with much tenacity. The expression is obscure, 
 which, assuming the inspiration of the book, is, so far, an argu 
 ment that it was designed to contribute through the Church 
 to the revelation of deep Christian mystery. 
 
 Mr. Liddon contends : 
 
 " In the Synoptic Gospels Christ is called the Son of God 
 in a higher sense than the ethical or than the theocratic. 
 In the Old Testament, an anointed king or a saintly prophet 
 is a son of God. Christ is not merely one among many 
 sons. He is the Only, the Well-beloved Son of the Father. 
 His relationship to the Father is unshared by any other, 
 and is absolutely unique. It is indeed probable that of 
 
 writings, but hardly in keeping with the generally superior caution and 
 insight of the Evangelists. Is it not due to the Evangelists that we 
 should ascribe any manifestly erroneous use of Old Testament expres 
 sions, not to them, but to editors and transcribers whose copyings were 
 anterior to the oldest Manuscripts and Versions now extant ? That the 
 best Text of the present day faithfully represents the Evangelical narra 
 tives in their first form, may be, to Orthodox apprehensions, a wholesome 
 belief for the multitude, but will not commend itself to the minds of 
 men who have attentively considered the subject, a subject about 
 which there is either strange ignorance, or most conscientious lying for 
 God, on the part of not a few popular theological writers. 
 
AS USED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 225 
 
 our Lord s contemporaries many applied to Him the title 
 Son of God only as an official designation of the Messiah ; 
 while others used it to acknowledge that surpassing and 
 perfect character which proclaimed Jesus of Nazareth to 
 be the One Son, Who had appeared on earth, worthily 
 showing forth the moral perfections of our Heavenly Father. 
 But the official and ethical senses of the term are rooted in 
 a deeper sense, which St. Luke connects with it at the 
 beginning of his Gospel. The Holy Ghost shall come 
 upon thee, so ran the angel-message to the Virgin-mother, 
 1 and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee : there 
 fore also that Holy Thing Which shall be born of thee shall 
 be called the Son of God (St. Luke i. 35). This maybe 
 contrasted with the prediction respecting St. John the Bap 
 tist, that he should be filled with the Holy Ghost even from 
 his mother s womb (i. 15). St. John then is in existence 
 before his sanctification by the Holy Spirit; but Christ s 
 Humanity Itself is formed by the agency of the Holy Ghost" 
 (p. 247). 
 
 The precise reason assigned in the third Gospel for calling 
 Christ the Son of God is, that an immediate direct action of 
 Divine power took the place of God s customary working 
 through the established laws of human paternity. Accord 
 ing to St. Luke, Christ is the Son of God, because the Al 
 mighty, in a miraculous and exceptional way, caused His 
 conception in the Virgin s womb. In virtue of His miracu 
 lously produced human nature, He is in a special manner 
 God s Son. Yet, in his fifth Lecture, a few pages before the 
 passage last quoted, Mr. Liddon strenuously argues the Son 
 identical with the Logos or Word : 
 
 " The Word is also the Son. As applied to Our Lord, the 
 title Son of God is protected by epithets which sustain and 
 define its unique significance. In the Synoptic Gospels, 
 Christ is termed the well-beloved Son. In St. Paul He is God s 
 own Son (Rom. viii. 3 and 32). In St. John He is the Only- 
 begotten Son, or simply the Only-begotten. This last epithet 
 surely means, not merely that God has no other such Son, 
 
 15 
 
226 RELATION OF THE TITLES 
 
 but that His Only-begotten Son is, in virtue of this Sonship, 
 a partaker of that incommunicable and imperishable Essence 
 Which is sundered from all created life by an impassable 
 chasm. If St. Paul speaks of the Resurrection as manifest 
 ing this Sonship to the world (Acts xiii. 32, 33 ; Rom. i. 4 : 
 compare, on the other hand, Heb. v. 8), the sense of the word 
 Only-begotten remains in St. John, and it is plainly defined 
 by its context to relate to something higher than any event 
 occurring in time, however great or beneficial to the human 
 race. . . . Each of these expressions, the Word, and the 
 Son, if taken alone, might have led to a fatal misconception. 
 . . . The bare metaphors of Word and Son, taken sepa 
 rately, might lead divergent thinkers to conceive of Him 
 to Whom they are applied, on the one side as an impersonal 
 quality or faculty of God, on the other, as a concrete and per 
 sonal, but inferior and dependent being. But combine them, 
 and each corrects the possible misuse of the other. The 
 Logos, Who is also the Son, cannot be an impersonal and 
 abstract quality ; since such an expression as the Son would 
 be utterly misleading, unless it implied at the very least the 
 fact of a personal subsistence distinct from that of the Father. 
 On the other hand, the Son, who is also the Logos, cannot 
 be of more recent origin than the Father, since the Father 
 cannot be conceived of as subsisting without that Eternal 
 Thought or Reason Which is the Son. Nor may the Son be 
 deemed to be in any respect, save in the order of Divine sub 
 sistence, inferior to the Father, since He is identical with the 
 eternal intellectual Life of the Most High. Thus each meta 
 phor re-enforces, supplements, and protects the other. Taken 
 together, they exhibit Christ before His Incarnation ns at 
 once personally distinct from, and yet equal with the Father ; 
 He is That personally subsisting and Eternal Life, Which 
 was with the Father, and was manifested unto us (1 St. 
 Johni.2)." (Pp. 233-235.) 
 
 With whatever ingenuity, and clothing of graceful diction, 
 this kind of speculation is presented, its factitious and 
 baseless character cannot be concealed. Before we can truth- 
 
" SON" AND "LOGOS." 227 
 
 fully allege the terms Word and Son to be mutually sustain 
 ing, supplementary, and guarding, the former must be shown 
 to suggest lucid and definite ideas. Are not words put for 
 things in a very shallow and foolishly pretentious way, when 
 the Personal Son is defined to be " that Eternal Thought or 
 Reason without Which the Father cannot be conceived of 
 as subsisting ; " and. again, is affirmed to be " identical with 
 the Eternal Intellectual Life of the Most High." If the 
 Father is personally God, and the Son also personally God, 
 t\i;i clearly the Eternal Thought, or Reason, or Intellectual 
 Life of the Most High, is double. As the case stands, the 
 designation Logos is so vague that the pre -conceptions of any 
 unflinching dogmatist or random theorist may be thrust into 
 it. No hint is given by the Evangelist why Christ is called 
 the Word, and Christ is not recorded to have ever called Him 
 self by that name.* In handling such a term, nothing can 
 be grasped by the intellect, and the theological spinner 
 draws either from independent knowledge or an active imagi 
 nation, the materials of his web. The fact that so much of 
 
 * Mr. Liddon sees in this fact an argument for the accurately histori 
 cal character of the last Evangelical narrative. " If St. John had been 
 creating a fictitious Jesus designed to illustrate a particular theosophic 
 speculation, he would have represented our Lord as announcing His Div 
 inity in the terms in which it is announced in the Prologue to the Gos 
 pel." But does this conclusion follow ? The Evangelist may have moulded 
 and amplified selected facts and sayings, to suit an honestly entertained 
 theory, and yet may have felt himself debarred by existing beliefs and 
 documents from putting his own speculations explicitly into the mouth of 
 Jesus. If, moreover, we do not, in submission to the Church, exclude all 
 really inquisitive criticism, we have no right to assume that the matter of 
 the Fourth Gospel generally is in unison with its Prologue understood 
 as the majority of Christians understand it. Whether the work of the 
 latest Evangelist is a consistent whole, and whether its details are recon 
 cilable with the Synoptic records, are questions which must, from the 
 Protestant ground, be decided by free and patient inquiry. Our knowl 
 edge about the earliest forms of Christian literature is very scanty, and 
 we cannot extricate our slender materials from the gloom of a dim twilight. 
 We may, of course, easily construct after the pattern of our own fixed 
 opinions, and weave scraps and fragments into an artificial and imposing 
 chain ; but our duty is to pronounce, with tolerant diffidence, a verdict 
 true, according to such evidence as we possess. 
 
228 
 
 the weight of Mr. Lid don s edifice is made to rest on an epi 
 thet, which is applied to Christ only in the first fourteen 
 verses of the Gospel which the Church pronounces to be St. 
 John s, is very significant. The Word of Life (1 John i. 1) 
 and the Word of God (Revelation xix. 13) are titles to which 
 it is comparatively easy to affix a meaning, the offices of 
 Christ in proclaiming the doctrines of life, and the messages 
 of God, being adequately explanatory. But no thoughtful 
 man, who is careful to have ideas behind his words, will 
 venture to speak confidently about the never-repeated and 
 extremely opaque expression, commonly translated, the Word 
 was God. To Mr. Liddon this one expression is indispen 
 sable, and prolific of meaning, the maxims of his exegesis 
 apparently inculcating, not only that the Canonical docu 
 ments have a peculiar organic unity, but also that the key to 
 vital doctrine is supplie d by the rarest and darkest phrases 
 of a single writer. 
 
 That the designation Son of God is sufficiently distinctive 
 to be an indication of Divinity, or to " suggest the reproduc 
 tion in the Son of all qualities of the Father," sober judg 
 ment will shrink from affirming in the face o such texts as 
 Matt. v. 9, 45 ; Luke xx. 36 ; Rom. viii. 14, 19 ; ix. 26. And 
 the protecting, sustaining, defining epithets, beloved, own, 
 only-begotten, to which Mr. Liddon points, do not help his 
 argument, to say nothing of the fact that the application of 
 the last named to Christ is confined to the Fourth Gospel 
 and the First Epistle of John (John i. 14, 18; iii. 16, 18; 
 1 John iv. 9), documents in both of which Christ is desig 
 nated the Son, and the Son of God, with great frequency. 
 What is, upon every reasonable interpretation of Scripture 
 language, so fatally against Mr. Liddon s dogma, is the con 
 stant employment of the word Son, to denote our Lord s 
 relationship to God. The track of Old and New Testament 
 usage, along its whole extent, demonstrates filial relationship 
 to the Almighty to have been ascribed to beloved and favored, 
 but created and dependent, beings. The very last way of 
 teaching a Jew to esteem a particular personage in very truth 
 
THE EPITHET " ONLY-BEGOTTEN." 229 
 
 God would have been to call him Son of God. To say 
 Sonship implies identity of Nature is, moreover, to press the 
 loose analogy furnished by the conditions of human life be 
 yond the limits which reverence and common sense prescribe. 
 Neither in its simpler forms, nor in its Johannine expansion, 
 only-begotten Son, does the filial title warrant raids of pre 
 sumptuous fancy into recesses of the Divine Nature. 
 
 Mr. Liddon leans on the term only-begotten, and, after 
 remarking with Tholuck, that in Luke vii. 12; viii. 42; ix. 
 38 ; Heb. xi. 17,* it signifies " that which exists once only, 
 that is, singly in its kind," he leaps to the conclusion, " God 
 has one Only Son Who by Nature and necessity is His Son." 
 But this is obviously nothing better than blindly rash, not to 
 say irreverent, deduction. The very utmost the term can 
 indicate is that the mode of Christ s origination or produc 
 tion was, in some sense, unique, not certainly that the Divine 
 Nature includes arrangements for an ineffable reproduction, 
 doubling, and propagation of Itself in the entirety of Its 
 attributes. And Mr. Liddon must be conscious that, in 
 terpreted rationally, and by the light the Bible itself seems 
 to afford, the term probably means, in any application which 
 is not very definitely physical and literal, well-beloved, specially 
 dear. The Hebrew word corresponding to only, only -begotten, 
 is frequently rendered, in the Septuagint Version, beloved 
 (Gen. xxii. 2, 12, 16; Jer. vi. 26; Amos viii. 10; Zech. xii. 
 10; Prov. iv. 3). In Ps. xxii. 20, xxxv. 17, Fuerst and 
 Gesenius take the word to denote life or soul, life being at 
 once most dear, and to its possessor the only thing of its kind. 
 The Septuagint Translators render, in these two instances, my 
 only-begotten; the Anglican, my darling, with the marginal 
 alternative my only one. In Judges xi. 34, and Ps. xxv. 16, 
 the Greek Version has only-begotten. 
 
 Looking at these facts, we see there is no firm ground for 
 the confident assurance Mr. Liddon feels about the sense of 
 
 * The only places, besides the five previously referred to, in which 
 the wo|jl occurs in the New Testament. Since St. Luke uses the adjec 
 tive, the fact of his not applying it to our Lord is the more noticeable. 
 
230 ORTHODOX USE OF 
 
 that adjective which is, in its literal and primary meaning, 
 only-begotten. It may be equivalent to beloved, dearest; 
 certainly, Isaac was not in strictness Abraham s only or only- 
 begotten son (Heb. xi. 17), but had brothers older and younger 
 (Gen. xvi. 15 ; xxv. 2). Our Lord being styled in the synopti 
 cal Gospels the beloved Son (comp. Col. i. 13), the question 
 naturally arises, whether the epithet applied to Him in the 
 Fourth Gospel, and the First Epistle of John, is to be under 
 stood in harmony with the other Scriptures, or regarded as 
 a supplementary and higher title, a step onwards, in the 
 progressive revelation of our Lord s Person. On the word 
 begotten no stress can be legitimately laid, because the very 
 writings which call Christ only-begotten say Christians are 
 begotten of God. (John i. 13 ; 1 John iii. 9 ; iv. 7 ; v. 1, 18.) 
 Granting, however, that our Lord s Sonship is solitary and 
 exceptional, still it is Sonship, and the reality of the filial rela 
 tion is, we must confess, rather intensified than lowered by the 
 Johannine epithet. And does not Sonship, just in proportion 
 to its reality, suggest posteriority, derivation, and some sort 
 of dependence. The difficulty with which Mr. Liddon fails 
 to cope is the reconciliation of Sonship with necessary Co 
 existence, Co-eternity, and equality of Attributes. When he 
 admits, "The Son is in the order of Divine Subsistence infe 
 rior to the Father," and again, " From the Father, Christ 
 eternally receives an equality of life and power, and there 
 fore, as being a recipient, He is so far subordinate to the 
 Father" (p. 323), we may justly challenge him to give to 
 his words a meaning which shall be intelligible, and at the 
 same time not discordant with his dogma. If Christ is ab 
 solutely God, we simply darken counsel by words without 
 knowledge, when we call Him a recipient, subordinate, and 
 begotten. He has received nothing which could have been 
 imparted, and nothing which could have been withheld. His 
 existence is in no way whatever dependent on the Personal 
 Father s power and Will, but He is, equally with the Father, 
 everlastingly and necessarily comprised in , the Self-existent 
 Substance. The Divine Nature cannot be contemplated as 
 
" WORDS WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE." 231 
 
 having ever existed without Him. But, when sameness of 
 Substance, Co-equality, Co-eternity, and Necessary existence 
 have been predicated, recipiency, derivation, origination, 
 sonship, begottenness, inferiority, are terms conspicuously 
 inapplicable, and divorced from every comprehensible idea. 
 The employment of them puts an end to reasoning, the 
 common ground of rational understanding being deserted, 
 and words no longer available symbols for the conveyance 
 of thought. As a metaphysical tenet, the doctrine Mr. Lid- 
 don maintains necessitates perfectly contemptible shuffling 
 and inanity. If the question were pressed, How can Self- 
 existent Being either impart or derive " equality of life and 
 power? " the answer would be, the impartation and derivation 
 were eternal, "the Son was generated eternally." And if 
 (assuming the generation was some actual process) we were 
 closely to inquire what is meant by " generated eternally," 
 as distinguished from generated in time, the final response 
 must be, not generated at all, in any mode man s under 
 standing can conceive or human words describe. We do not 
 cover, but rather lay bare the emptiness of our defining lan 
 guage, when we put a procedure supposed to be real back 
 ward, and backward to infinity. The introduction of that 
 "unknown quantity" Eternity is, indeed, manifestly only a 
 verbal refuge from the contradiction involved in a Sonship 
 which leaves the Father and the Son the Originator and 
 the Originated, enclosed in the same Unbegun, Undivided 
 Essence, and yet awards to each Personal Being and posses 
 sion of the totality of the Divine Attributes. The Orthodox 
 enunciation of the Deity of God s Only-begotten Son is, in 
 its metaphysical phases, a hopeless puzzle, from which merely 
 rational minds must always retreat in compassion and 
 despair. 
 
 Convinced that a reasonable interpretation of our Lord s 
 sayings supports the Church s traditional faith, Mr. Liddon 
 declares boldly : " The Apostles lived with One Who asserted 
 Himself, by implication and expressly, to be personally God " 
 (p. 27 2). But for this declaration, as for so many of Mr. 
 
232 CHRIST S RECORDED MIRACLES 
 
 Liddon s propositions, there exists only the slenderest and 
 most imperfect basis just enough to excuse the adhesion 
 of an honest and strongly biassed mind, trained from child 
 hood in a particular school of prevalent Christian thought, 
 but nothing more. Arguments against Orthodoxy, resting 
 on similarly insufficient grounds, would be righteously re 
 ceived with derisive indignation, and be too speedily and 
 effectively refuted ever to reappear. 
 
 Before entering upon "the very heart of our great subject, 
 and penetrating to the inmost shrine of Christian truth," 
 the question, namely, " what position did Jesus Christ, either 
 tacitly or explicitly, claim to occupy in His intercourse with 
 men?" Mr. Liddon devotes a few pages to the consideration 
 of Christ s miracles, in which he discerns not merely eviden 
 tial value, but " physical and symbolic representations of 
 Christ s redemptive action as the Divine Saviour of mankind." 
 He not only descries the more general indications of redemp 
 tive power, but, with piercing and consistent ecclesiastical 
 intuition, detects foreshadowings of the central vitalities of 
 the Church s system, the Holy Sacraments. 
 
 " The drift and meaning of such a miracle as that in which 
 our Lord s EpTipliatha brought hearing and speech to the deaf 
 and dumb is at once apparent when we place it in the light 
 of the sacrament of Baptism (St. Mark vii. 34, 35). The 
 feeding of the five thousand is remarkable as the one miracle 
 which is narrated by all the Evangelists ; and even the least 
 careful among readers of the Gospel cannot fail to be struck 
 with the solemn actions which precede the wonder-work, as 
 well as by the startling magnificence of the result. Yet the 
 permanent significance of that extraordinary scene at Beth- 
 saida Julias is never really understood until our Lord s great 
 discourse in the synagogue of Capernaum, which immediately 
 follows it, is read as the spiritual exposition of the physical 
 miracle, which is thus seen to be a commentary, palpable to 
 sense, upon the vital efficacy of the Holy Communion : com 
 pare St. John vi. 26-59; and observe the correspondence 
 between the actions described in St. Matt. xiv. 19, and xxvi. 
 
IN THEIR RELATION TO HIS DEITY. 233 
 
 26 " (p. 157). Discussion of these views is quite needless, 
 they occur in the Bampton Lecturer s argument, and I repro 
 duce them in his own words. 
 
 No reasoner worthy of the name would see in our Lord s 
 miracles proofs of His Deity. Faith in His Deity no doubt 
 entails a most willing admission of the reality of preternatu 
 ral incidents in His earthly life; but unquestioning accept 
 ance of those incidents, though it accords with, certainly 
 does not entail, the belief that He is God. Scripture never 
 puts forward the idea of His Godhead to account for the 
 wonders wrought by Him ; and to His Apostles, and other 
 earliest followers, miraculous powers of vast extent were 
 given. Our Lord s own view of the source of His miracu 
 lous powers may be gathered from the records on whose in 
 fallible inspiration and minute accuracy Mr. Liddon s mind 
 reposes. (See Matt. xii. 28 ; Luke xi. 20 ; John x. 25 ; xi. 
 41, 42 ; xiv. 10, 12.) How completely the Apostles and first 
 disciples views were in unison with their Great Master s 
 may be learned from Acts ii. 22 ; x. 38 ; and Matt. ix. 8 ; 
 Luke vii. 16 ; xxiv. 19 ; John iii. 2 ; vi. 14, 15 ; ix. 16, 33 ; 
 xi. 22. Our Lord s habit of prayer to God, attested by nu 
 merous passages in the Gospels, and particular expressions of 
 prayer and thanksgiving which he is related to have em 
 ployed, are, assuredly, not in accordance with the idea He 
 wrought His miracles in virtue of independent, underived 
 energy. If He had claimed to possess such energy, that 
 habit and those expressions would have seemed incongruous, 
 but as the case actually stands they are weighty indications 
 He did not possess other than conceded powers. (See Matt, 
 xiv. 23 ; Luke vi. 12 ; xxii. 31, 32, and many similar texts : 
 Matt. xi. 25, 26 ; Luke x. 21 ; Matt. xxvi. 39-43, 53 ; John 
 xii. 27, 28 ; xiv. 16; and xvii. throughout.) Yet, without dis 
 tinctly affirming the inference of Christ s Divinity, from the 
 miraculous element in the Gospel narratives, Mr. Liddon 
 pertinaciously suggests the inference may legitimately be 
 drawn. 
 
 "The Gospel narratives describe the Author of Christian- 
 
234 
 
 ity as the Worker and the Subject of extra ordinary miracles; 
 and these miracles are such as to afford a natural lodgement 
 for, nay, to demand as their correlative, the doctrine of the 
 Creed. That doctrine must be admitted to be, if not the 
 divinely authorized explanation, at least the best intellectual 
 conception and resume of the evangelical history. A man 
 need not be a believer in order to admit that, in asserting 
 Christ s Divinity, we make a fair translation of the Gospel 
 story into the language of abstract thought ; and that we 
 have the best key to that story when we see in it the doc 
 trine that Christ is God, unfolding itself in a series of occur 
 rences which on any other supposition seem to wear an air 
 of nothing less than legendary extravagance" (p. 160). 
 
 Now if the Sacred Writings had failed to intimate that 
 Christ s miracles were wrought by conferred power, and ii 
 they had clearly propounded the doctrine of His Divinity, 
 and the doctrine had involved no special difficulties of its 
 own, we might speak of it as " the best intellectual concep 
 tion and resume, of the evangelical history." In matter of 
 fact, however, the position that Christ is verily God is not 
 only not clearly propounded, but is loaded with intrinsic 
 difficulties, and makes the Evangelical history teem with 
 perplexities. Will Mr. Liddon commit himself to an avowal 
 that the supernatural incidents of the Gospel story are, in 
 the light of human experience and probability, more reasona 
 bly explained by the assumption, Christ is the Almighty, than 
 by the assumption, the Almighty furnished Christ with ex 
 ceptional powers, and wrought through Him ? Is the best 
 intellectual conception that which, without stringent neces 
 sity, presumes an intervention utterly new in kind, rather than 
 one augmented and extended in degree? But criticism is 
 wasted on arbitrary and audacious conjectures. I leave my 
 readers to think over them, and estimate them at what they 
 are worth. 
 
 In the larger portion of his Fourth, and in a few para 
 graphs about the middle of his Fifth Lecture, Mr. Liddon, 
 pursuing his peculiar method, picks over, and deduces from, 
 
ETHICAL TEACHINGS. 235 
 
 our Lord s own teaching as represented in the Gospels, and 
 more especially in that Gospel which bears the name of St. 
 John. He prudently avoids reference to any presumed order 
 in the events and sayings of the several histories, and con 
 tents himself with the general assertion that there are, in 
 Christ s teaching, two distinct stages or levels, the former of 
 which, exhibited in the Sermon on the Mount, is mainly 
 ethical, and concerned with primary, fundamental, moral 
 truth. Intellects and hearts which have not irrevocably 
 succumbed to the Church s dogmatic claims will probably 
 recognize in the following eloquent summary of our Lord s 
 wonderful Sermon something more exalted and matured than 
 merely " broad and deeply laid foundations of His spiritual 
 edifice : " "A pure and loving heart ; an open and trustful 
 conscience ; a freedom of communion with the Father bf 
 spirits ; a love of man as man, the measure of which is to be 
 nothing less than a man s love of himself; above all, a stern 
 determination at any cost to be true, trim with God, true 
 with men, true with self, such are the prerequisites for gen 
 uine discipleship ; such the spiritual and subjective bases of 
 the new and Absolute Religion; such the moral material 
 of the first stage of our Lord s teaching" (p. 163). 
 
 And, in this first stage of our Lord s teaching there are 
 two characteristics, the one negative and the other positive, 
 both of which Mr. Liddon conceives to be at variance with 
 the supposition of His being less than Divine. The negative 
 characteristic is, that, while in the words, " be ye therefore 
 perfect even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect " 
 (Matt. v. 48), our Lord proposes the highest standard, and 
 enforces absolute morality, He makes no confession of indi 
 vidual shortcomings, or of personal unworthiness thus to 
 teach. 
 
 " Conscious of many shortcomings, a human teacher must 
 at some time relieve his natural sense of honesty, his funda 
 mental instinct of justice, by noting the discrepancy be 
 tween his weak, imperfect, perhaps miserable self, and his 
 sublime and awful message. He must draw a line, if I may 
 
236 IS A PERFECT MAN IMPOSSIBLE? 
 
 so speak, between his official and his personal self; and in 
 his personal capacity he must honestly, anxiously, persist 
 ently associate himself with his hearers, as being before God, 
 like each one of themselves, a learning, struggling, erring 
 soul. But Jesus Christ makes no approach to such a dis 
 tinction between Himself and His message. He bids men 
 be like God, arid He gives not the faintest hint that any 
 trace of unlikeness to God in Himself obliges Him to accom 
 pany the delivery of that precept with a protestation of His 
 own personal unworthiness " (p. 163). 
 
 Now, to this artificial and vapid pleading, it might be a 
 sufficient answer to say that, admitting fully the substantial 
 authenticity and practical sufficiency of Christ s recorded 
 sayings, we do not possess more than digests and fragments 
 of His discourses. The Sermon on the Mount can hardly be 
 imagined to have been delivered as a continuous whole, and 
 in just the form in which it has descended to us. The 
 parables, and ot],ier speeches, may also have had verbal set 
 tings of which we know nothing, and therefore we are in no 
 condition to affirm Christ may not at some time have used 
 language of a kind to shoAV that His moral perfection did not 
 result from inability to sin, but from faithful devotedness, 
 resignation, and love, to the Heavenly Father, owing to whom 
 He lived (John vi. 57) ; by Whom He was sent ; Who was 
 ever with Him ; Whose Spirit was upon Him, and of Whom 
 He himself declared, the Father abiding in me doeth the 
 works (John xiv. 10). 
 
 Mr. Liddon tacitly assumes a perfect man to be impossible, 
 and the Creator unable to produce a morally unblemished 
 human creature whose sanctity shall not be stimulated by a 
 sense of sin. He takes for granted the Almighty would not, 
 and indeed could not, elevate His human offspring by show 
 ing forth in one man the true idea of human nature, the pure 
 relationship of the human spirit to the Divine, the sacred 
 possibilities which Divine inspiration and fully realized fel 
 lowship with God can develop and mature. An exceptional 
 man, an extraordinarily endowed man, a created Being who 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRIST S TEMPTATION. 237 
 
 should be formed and furnished to bear high commission and 
 office from the Almighty, and to be the channel of a world 
 wide and regenerating impulse, the Master, Example, 
 Redeemer, and Leader, in the way to Sis Father and our 
 Father, His God and our God, such a Being, with inveter 
 ate and reiterated assumption, Mr. Liddon excludes from iVe 
 range of likelihood, and forces the alternative : if Christ is 
 not ordinary, sinful man, he is absolute impeccable God. But 
 if we are to approach the New Testament in the capacity of 
 learners, no assumption can be more illegitimate ; none can 
 be less suggested or sustained by Canonical witness; none 
 can be more out of keeping with recorded facts and aspects 
 of our Lord s life, and the avowed conceptions of the Sacred 
 Writers concerning Him. 
 
 What was the meaning of our Lord s temptation, if, being 
 Very God robed in a human vesture, he was utterly incapable 
 of sin? We can understand how a celestial spirit, or the 
 most God-possessed of mankind, can feel the force of tempta 
 tion, and be, in the resistance of temptation, a pattern to 
 other creatures liable to be tempted ; but Christ s temptation 
 by the Devil was a deceptive and paradoxical farce if His 
 personal moral perfection was the perfection of the Self- 
 existent and infinitely Holy Nature. The author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, who preaches that Christ is " able to 
 succor us, having been tempted Himself, tempted in all 
 points like as we are, yet without sin ; and that He learned 
 obedience by the things which He suffered" (ii. 18 ; iv. 15 ; 
 v. 8) ; can be acquitted of gross irreverence only by being 
 convicted of ignorance. Is it not something beyond the 
 extreme of platitude and simplicity, for a writer, if he knew 
 our Lord to be absolutely God, to tell us that He was not 
 only holy, but harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners 
 (Heb. vii. 26) ? 
 
 Is St. Peter s description of Christ s sinlessness compatible 
 with a conscious and devout perception of Christ s Deity ? 
 " He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth ; when 
 He was reviled He reviled not again, when He suffered He 
 
238 CHRIST S EXPOSURE TO TEMPTATION. 
 
 threatened not, but committed (Himself, or them) to Him 
 Who judges righteously" (1 Peter ii. 22, 23). We repeat 
 this description (as we do Scripture language in general 
 when it is not directly practical and devotional), without 
 reflection, because it was written by an inspired Apostle ; 
 but is it such as an Orthodox believer could spontaneously 
 employ ? 
 
 And if the force which initiated and upheld the holiness 
 manifested through our Lord s human garb was the force of 
 Essential, Personal Godhead, what was the meaning of His 
 earnest prayer, " Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup 
 from me ; nevertheless not my will, but Thine be done " ? 
 (Luke xxii. 42-44; Matt. xxvi. 39-44; Mark xiv. 35-39.) 
 What veritable, honest import was there in the cry from the 
 Cross : " My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? " 
 (Matt, xxvii. 46; Mark xv. 34), if "in Jesus the place of any 
 created individuality at the root of all thought and feeling 
 and will is supplied by the Person of the Eternal Word," 
 Who is in very deed God, lacking no attribute of Deity ? 
 However craving may be our anxiety to show that the Gos 
 pels teach what the Catholic Church has taught, is it fair 
 and truthful to empty this language of its natural suggestions 
 and rational significance? Granting, for argument s sake, 
 our Lord can be reasonably understood to have had, as the 
 Church has decreed, a human will without a human person, 
 yet what was that will as a conflicting power in presence of 
 the boundless energy of the Will of the Divine Personality ? 
 How could the struggles of human fears, human weakness, 
 and human volition, produce in a Co-equal Person of the 
 Eternal Uncreated Essence " the prayers and supplications, 
 the strong crying and tears " (Heb. v. 7), oifered up in the 
 garden of Gethsemane? Why, too, does an Evangelist 
 relate the appearance of an angel from Heaven strengthen 
 ing Christ, in his hour of agony (Luke xxii. 43), if in Christ 
 an impersonal Humanity clad Personal, Self-existing Omnip 
 otence ? Something more than a string of glib and fluent 
 assertions concerning the explicitness, variety, and vividness 
 
HIS SINLESSNESS NOT IMPARTED. 239 
 
 of the testimony borne by Scripture and the Church to the 
 reality and truth of our Lord s Manhood, is necessary before 
 any impartially reflecting mind can feel that these questions 
 are properly met. It is easy to say, the subject is mysterious 
 and many-sided (in the Church s view it is most emphatically 
 so), but the point as to which Protestants require to be 
 assured is, that some sides and mysteries are not of purely 
 human manufacture. Before we can justly infer Christ s 
 freedom from sin to have resulted from intrinsic, infinite 
 holiness of Being, we must at the least correct the Synoptic 
 narratives, and deny that our Lord put on appearances which 
 were false, and uttered words which could have no rational 
 meaning. Suppose Him to have been in His Own Person 
 the Father s Equal, and possessed of the Divine attributes 
 in their entirety, what is signified by the Father s forsaking 
 Him ; and, if such desertion had been possible, what differ 
 ence could it have made? But suppose Him to have been 
 the offspring of the Father s Will and Power, and Wisdom, 
 and to have been dependent on the Father, then, though 
 mystery may shroud the details of His Being, His prayers 
 and cry upon the Cross are seen to be natural, and full of 
 appropriate, pathetic meaning. 
 
 If, therefore, we had the right (as we have not) to 
 assume that Christ never ascribed His sinlessness to imparted 
 strength, still the indirect evidence afforded by His tempta 
 tions, His prayers, and His explicitly proclaimed reception of 
 the Holy Spirit, would enjoin the inference that His holiness, 
 like His miracles, followed from the anointing and gifts of 
 God. The difficulties attending this aspect of the Church s 
 theory are handled, without being at all relieved, in assevera 
 tions on the " consistency of our Lord s real Human Will with 
 the Impersonality of His Manhood. 
 
 "The regenerate man s lower nature is not a distinct per 
 son, yet it has what is almost a distinct will, and what is thus 
 a shadow of the Created Will which Christ assumed along 
 with His Human Nature. Of course in the Incarnate 
 Christ, the Human Will, although a proper principle of 
 
240 HARMONY OF CHRIST S WILL. 
 
 action, was not, could not be, in other than the most abso 
 lute harmony with the Will of God. Christ s sinlessness is 
 the historical expression of this harmony. The Human Will 
 of Christ corresponded to the Eternal Will with unvarying 
 accuracy ; because in point of fact God, Incarnate in Christ, 
 willed each volition of Christ s Human Will. Christ s Human 
 Will then had a distinct existence, yet Its free volitions were 
 but the earthly echoes of the Will of the All-holy. At the 
 Temptation, It was confronted with the personal principle of 
 evil ; but the Tempter without was seconded by no pulse of 
 sympathy within. The Human Will of Christ was incapa 
 ble of willing evil. In Gethsemane It was thrown forward 
 into strong relief as Jesus bent to accept the chalice of suf 
 fering from which H s Human sensitiveness could not but 
 shrink. But from the first It was controlled by the Divine 
 Will to which It is indissolubly united, just as, if we may 
 use the comparison in a holy man, pnssion and impulse are 
 brought entirely under the empire of reason and conscience. 
 As God and Man, our Lord has two Wills ; but the Divine 
 Will originates and rules His action ; the Human Will is bu-t 
 the docile servant of that Will of God which has its seat 
 in Christ s Divine and Eternal Person. Here, indeed, we 
 touch upon the line at which revealed truth shades off into 
 inaccessible mystery " (p. 262). 
 
 In his First Lecture, Mr. Liddon appears to see the ex 
 planation of Christ s freedom from sin in His miraculous 
 conception : " Christ s Manhood is not unreal, because It is 
 sinless ; because the entail of any taint of transmitted sin is 
 in Him cut off by a supernatural birth of a Virgin Mother ; " 
 and, even in his sweeping and rapid deduction from totally 
 insufficient materials, though the impression he is aiming to 
 produce is unmistakably manifest, he has, notwithstanding, 
 enough of discreet caution left, to be content with the 
 expressed conclusion, " This consciousness of an absolute 
 sinlessness in such a Soul as that of Jesus Christ points to a 
 moral elevation unknown to our actual* human experience. 
 It is, at the very least, suggestive of a relation to the Per- 
 
WITH THE WILL OF GOD. 241 
 
 feet Moral Being altogether unique in human history" 
 (p. 166). 
 
 But is there not a saying of Christ s reported by two Evan 
 gelists,* which is, when fairly interpreted, a disclaimer of 
 absolute, independent perfection? (Mark x. 17, 18; Luke 
 xviii. 18, 19.) When called Good Master, Jesus answered, 
 Why callest thou me good? none is good except One, that is 
 God Are not these words, in their simple, natural meaning, 
 the meaning in which those who heard must have apprehended 
 them, an assertion clearly discriminating between Christ and 
 God, and announcing goodness in its highest and widest 
 sense to be predicable of none except the One infinitely good 
 God ? Mr. Liddon thrice refers to these words of our Lord, 
 and each time obtrudes a most arbitrary and baseless exposi 
 tion, constructed on purpose to parry the plain force of lan 
 guage. In a note to his First Lecture, he remarks, Christ 
 " is not denying that He is good ; but He insists that none 
 should call Him so who did not believe Him to be God." 
 In his Fourth Lecture, he couples the saying in question 
 with the exposure of unreality and self-deception. " A dis 
 ciple addresses Him as Good blaster. The address was in 
 itself sufficiently justifiable, but our Lord observed that the 
 speaker had used it in an unreal and conventional manner. 
 In order to mark His displeasure, He sharply asked, Why 
 callest thou me good ? There is none good but One, that is 
 God. " The Seventh Lecture presents again the same 
 choice evasion : " The rebuke to the rich young man im 
 plies not that Jesus Himself had no real claim to be called 
 Good Master, but that such a title, in the mouth of the per 
 son before Him, was an unmeaning compliment." 
 
 These repeated references betray a solicitude to provide 
 readers with a soothing interpretation of a troublesome text, 
 
 * I omit reference to Matt. xix. 17, on account of the variety of read 
 ing in good MSS. The true text there very possibly is, Why askest 
 thou me concerning ivhat is good? There is One Who is good. But if y &c. 
 For another noticeable affirmation of the Divine Unity, see Mark xii. 
 29-34. 
 
 16 
 
242 CHRIST S REFUSAL TO BE CALLED GOOD. 
 
 but what reasonable extenuation is there for the manner in 
 which Mr. Liddon strives to shut out the inference that 
 offends him? Doubtless, our Lord does not repudiate His 
 own claims to real moral goodness ; but He does, by the 
 plainest implication, disown the possession of that particular 
 kind of goodness which He ascribes to the One God. His 
 meaning, as determined by the demands of dogma, and the 
 light of ecclesiastical inspiration, I do not scrutinize ; but, as 
 seen by the light of common intelligence and reason, His 
 language seems necessarily to suggest : He is not God, and 
 is not good with the self-originated, Self-sustained, Infinite 
 Goodness which belongs to God. 
 
 What supposition can be, to the eye of reason, more 
 thoroughly unfounded and capricious than the supposition of 
 Christ s words being a covert requisition for faith in His Own 
 Godhead ? He points from Himself to God. And, for lay 
 ing an expository emphasis on thou, there is no semblance 
 of decent pretext, either in the structure of the sentence, or 
 in the context. The pronoun thou is not expressed in the 
 original, otherwise than through the inflection of the verb 
 a strong indication no special stress upon it was designed. 
 The customary mode of marking emphasis is the separate ex 
 pression of the pronoun, and examples of emphasis and sup 
 pressed antithesis, thus marked, are familiar to every student 
 of Greek Testament grammar. (See Winer, Sec. xxii. 6.) 
 The really emphatic word is, by every rule of probability, the 
 pronoun me, and the antithesis is between Christ s goodness 
 and God s. That the young ruler s address was unreal, con 
 ventional, and the utterance of unmeaning compliment, is 
 exactly the reverse of the conclusion deducible from St. 
 Mark s record that, Jesus, beholding him, loved him ; and from 
 the fact that he could not, without being very sorrowful, 
 neglect to comply with Christ s requirements. 
 
 The other, or positive characteristic of the first stage of 
 Christ s teaching consists in its tone of authority, and in the 
 strongly marked contrast between His attitude and that of 
 the ordinary expounders of the Jewish Code : " He taught 
 
HIS TONE OF AUTHORITY AS TEACHER. 243 
 
 the people as one having authority to teach, and not as their 
 Scribes " (Matt. vii. 29). 
 
 " He takes up instinctively a higher position than He assigns 
 to any who had preceded Him in Israel. He passes in review, 
 and accepts or abrogates, not merely the traditional doctrines 
 of the Jewish Schools, but the Mosaic law itself. His style 
 runs thus : It was said to them of old time, . . . but I say 
 unto you (Matt. v. 21, and other verses). . . . The prophets 
 always appealed to a higher sanction : the prophetic argu 
 ment addressed to the conscience of Israel was ever, Thus 
 saith the Lord. How significant, how full of import as to 
 His consciousness respecting Himself is our Lord s substitute, 
 1 Verily, verily, I say unto you. What prophet ever set 
 himself above the great Legislator, above the Law written by 
 the finger of God on Sinai ? What prophet ever undertook 
 to ratify the Pentateuch as a whole, to contrast his own 
 higher morality with some of its precepts in detail, to imply 
 even remotely that he was competent to revise that which 
 every Israelite knew to be the handiwork of God ? What 
 prophet ever thus implicitly placed himself on a line of 
 equality, not with Moses, not with Abraham, but with the 
 Lord God Himself? So momentous a claim requires expla 
 nation if the claimant be only human. This impersonation 
 of the source of moral law must rest upon some basis : what 
 is the basis on which it rests?" (p. 167). 
 
 As to the authoritative manner of Christ s teaching, the 
 dignity of His character, and office, and endowments, as the 
 Anointed and Messenger of God, quite sufficiently explains 
 it, without resorting to the hypothesis that he is Himself 
 God. The speeches ascribed to our Lord in the Fourth 
 Gospel disclose a point of view widely different from Mr. 
 Liddon s, while they account for the didactic tone which he 
 misinterprets. " My doctrine is not mine, but His That sent 
 Me. If any one wishes to do His Will, he shall know of the 
 doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak from 
 myself" (John vii. 16, 17). "I do nothing from myself; but, 
 as the Father taught me, I speak these things. Ye seek to 
 
244 CHRIST S CLAIM TO REVISE AND RATIFY 
 
 kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have 
 heard from God" (viii. 28, 40). "I have not spoken of 
 myself; but the Father Who sent me, He has given me a 
 commandment what I shall say, and what I shall speak; 
 whatsoever I speak, therefore, as the Father has said unto me, 
 so I speak" (xii. 49, 50). "All things which I have heard 
 from my Father, I have made known unto you" (xv. 15). 
 Other statements of similar force might be quoted from the 
 Gospel, in which Orthodox theologians imagine there is a 
 consistent presentation of the Word as the personal Christ, 
 and as being, in the full and absolute sense, God ; but these 
 are enough to show the gratuitousness of Mr. Liddon s infer 
 ences from the mode in which Jesus Christ delivered His 
 precepts. 
 
 But with no guide except the contents of the Sermon on 
 the Mount, the straining, perversion, and confusion involved 
 in Mr. Liddon s reasoning are easily seen. Giving him, as his 
 argument requires, the benefit of the doubtful translation, 
 "to them of old time," what does he conceive Christ to have 
 accepted, what to have abrogated? In referring to some of 
 the Ten Commandments, was our Lord s object to show 
 they were inherently wrong and defective, or that Jewish 
 legislators had been for centuries engrafting upon them 
 unspiritual, narrowing, and corrupting interpretations? If 
 His teaching was aimed against Rabbinical misconceptions 
 and falsehoods ; if He designed only to correct and counter 
 mand the superimposed blunders of human traditions, then, 
 certainly, He neither " set Himself above the Law written by 
 the finger of God on Sinai," nor " placed Himself on a line 
 of equality with the Lord God Himself," and the whole form 
 of His sayings betokens Him to have been dealing with the 
 prescriptive explanations of men, and not with the eternal 
 principles of rectitude, which the Commandments, rightly 
 understood, embodied. His meaning was not antithetical 
 and annulling, " God taught them of old time, but I teach 
 you," and, if His meaning was not this, what " impersona 
 tion 7 " was there of " the source of moral law," and what 
 
OLD TESTAMENT TEACHING. 245 
 
 validity is there in Mr. Liddon s reasoning? Christ, no 
 *doubt, opposed His own precepts to a long-current mass of 
 legislation and commentary. In Matt. v. 22, 28, 32, 34, 39, 
 44, the I is, as the Greek and context indicate, antithetical 
 and emphatic, but there is, probably, a yet more pointed 
 antithesis between the men of earlier generations who went 
 no deeper than the letter, and those whom Christ was teach 
 ing to read the spirit of all injunctions truly Divine. It was 
 said to them of old time, but I say to you. One section 
 of His discourse (Matt. v. 39-42) seems to have a special 
 adaptation to the relations in which the Jews stood to their 
 Roman conquerors. 
 
 Mr. Liddon was too eager to be duly observant when he 
 connected the formula " Verily, verily, Zsay unto you," with 
 the Sermon on the Mount. The doubling of the asseverative 
 word in our Lord s Discourses is peculiar to the Fourth 
 Gospel, and when, in the Sermon on the Mount, the word is 
 used singly, it, and not the unexpressed personal pronoun, is 
 evidently intended to carry the stress (Matt. v. 18, 26; vi. 2, 
 5, 16). I may add that, in the whole range of instances 
 (between seventy and eighty) in which the single or dupli 
 cate verily occurs joined with I say unto you, there is riot 
 one where the pronoun Tis separately expressed, or designed 
 to be emphatic. 
 
 Whence is evidence producible for the innuendo that Christ 
 undertook to ratify the Pentateuch as a whole, or that He 
 put the stamp of His approval on the notion of its being, in 
 its entirety, the handiwork of God ? We know how in His 
 judgment all the Law and the Prophets hang upon the two 
 great commands, to love God supremely, and to love our 
 neighbors as ourselves (Matt. xxii. 37-40 ; Mark xii. 29-34 ; 
 compare Luke x. 25-28). Can any system of exegesis, pre 
 tending to be rational and legitimate, gather under these 
 commands either the letter or the spirit of the unsifted mass 
 of Pentateuchal enactments ? Does not Christ Himself con 
 trast a permission given in the Mosaic statutes (Deut. xxiv. 
 1) with the law and purpose of God expressed in the consti- 
 
246 ALL OF SCRIPTURE NOT GOD S WORD. 
 
 tution of human nature? (Matt. xix. 4-8; Mark x. 4-9.) 
 Was the maxim, Thou shall hate thine enemy (Matt. v. 43),* 
 a precept of Jehovah, because it unavoidably sprang out of, 
 if it was not formally laid down in, passages of the Penta 
 teuch (see Exodus xxxiv. 12 ; Dent. vii. 2 ; xxiii. 3-6 ; xxv. 
 17-19) ? Can we really receive into our souls the inesti 
 mable light which the Bible sheds on the Divine Nature and 
 character, and then believe Exodus xxi. 20, 21, xxxii. 9, 10, 
 to be in any sense God s words ; or the entire body of civil 
 and ceremonial rules and injunctions contained in the Penta 
 teuch to be, without exception, His handiwork ? If we can 
 not, are we not acting unfaithfully, and dishonoring our 
 Heavenly Father s Adorable Name, when either in peevish 
 anger and alarm, or in the selfish supineness of lazy acquies 
 cence, we repeat, and endeavor to propagate among the sim 
 ple, our hobbling crotchet : every sentence of the Bible is 
 identical with the Word of God. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Mr. Liddon s view of the second stage of our Lord s public teaching 
 depends almost entirely on materials peculiar to the Fourth Gospel. 
 These materials discussed in detail, and shown neither to warrant 
 Mr. Liddon s deductions, nor to contain the presumed dogmatic 
 revelations of Christ s Co-equality and Essential Oneness with the 
 Father. No consciousness of Eternal Being is unveiled in John viii. 
 58, and there is no justification for coupling that text with Exodus 
 iii. 14. 
 
 FOR his view of the second stage of our Lord s public 
 teaching, Mr. Liddon depends almost exclusively on state 
 ments attributed to Christ in the " Gospel according to 
 John ; " taking for granted these statements are really 
 Christ s, and reported by the Evangelist with verbal exacti 
 tude. The great characteristic of this stage he considers to 
 be self assertion, and his argument is framed to sustain the 
 hypothesis, that our Lord s pretensions were so enormous, 
 His self-assertion so energetic, comprehensive, and persistent, 
 as to reduce us to the dilemma of either confessing His God 
 head, or denying His possession of ordinary moral virtues. 
 
 The evidence from which this dilemma is extracted begins 
 with a mosaic composed of detached fragmentary sayings, 
 arranged without regard to context, and in neglect of every 
 thing but the advocacy of a foregone conclusion. And these 
 artificially clustered fragments are dilated and amplified by 
 paraphrastic touches, lest readers should fail to instil due 
 meaning into the brief, metaphorical, undefined, and abstract 
 terms of the original. 
 
 We are reminded, Christ " speaks of Himself as the Light 
 of a darkened world" (John viii. 12; see also ix. 5 ; xii. 46), 
 
248 FORMS OF CHRIST S SELF-ASSERTION. 
 
 but we are not reminded, He applies precisely the same 
 description to His disciples (Matt. v. 14).* 
 
 The text, " I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, no 
 man cometh unto the Father but by me " (John xiv. 6), is not 
 only inflated as preconceptions dictate, but torn asunder in 
 order that it may be the more effectively manipulated. The 
 final clause, being a broad practical explanation of the pre 
 ceding epithets, ought not to be dissociated from them ; and 
 there is, to most minds, a great difficulty in perceiving how 
 the suggestion that Christ is God can be contained in the fact 
 that He is our Conductor to God. In the same discourse, 
 also, only five verses previously, our Lord is made to distin 
 guish himself from God, when demanding faith in Himself 
 as God s Messenger : " Ye believe in God, believe also in 
 me ; " words which Mr. Licldon paraphrases : " He encour 
 ages men to trust in Him as they trust in God," but which, 
 clearly, ought to be read by the light of the statements : 
 " The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself; 
 the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father s Who 
 sent Me " (verses 10 and 24) ; " this is life eternal, that they 
 may know Thee, the Only True God, and Jesus Christ whom 
 Thou hast sent" (xvii. 3). 
 
 " Life is resident in Him in virtue of an undefined and eter 
 nal communication of it from the Father" (John v. 26). Life, 
 in the passage referred to, is far more probably the power 
 of distributing spiritual and eternal life to mankind. The 
 Father, the sole primary Source and Giver of this life, has 
 granted to the Son also to be a source and giver. But, 
 admitting the other interpretation, the communication of 
 the life is not said to have been eternal, and is defined in 
 this important particular; it is a concession and gift, the 
 Father hath given to the Son, and, as a gift, obliterates the 
 ideas of Co-equality and Self-existence. In the very same 
 
 * If our Lord had said, I am the salt of the earth, the properties and 
 effects of salt would, doubtless, have been thought to betoken how in 
 applicable the metaphor was to a creature, how exclusively suited to the 
 Omnipresent and All-preserving Creator. 
 
FORMS OF CHRIST S SELF-ASSERTION. 249 
 
 chapter too (verse 44), Christ is represented as speaking of 
 the only God, an exclusive designation which the English 
 Version mistranslates God only. In the following chapter 
 (vi. 57), the sustenance of our Lord s life by the Father is 
 acknowledged in a very unequivocal way : " As the living 
 Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that 
 eateth me shall live by me ; " where " by " is equivalent to 
 on account of, owing to, and the dependence of a Christian s 
 spiritual life on Christ is paralleled with the dependence of 
 Christ s life on the Father. 
 
 A few phrases illustrative of Christ s self-assertion are 
 culled from the highly figurative and intensely cloudy dis 
 course comprised in John vi. 32-63. To say, " My Father 
 giveth you the true bread from Heaven ; the bread of God 
 is He which cometh down from Heaven and giveth life unto 
 the world ; I am the Bread of Life, the Living Bread which 
 cometh down from Heaven and giveth Life unto the world ; 
 I am the Bread of Life, the Living Bread which cometh 
 down from Heaven " (verses 32, 33, 48, 51), is to use language 
 into which vast significance may be put, but which contains 
 no hint of Deity. When the explanatory clauses are added, 
 " the Bread that I will give is my flesh ; except ye eat the 
 flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no 
 life in you, for my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is 
 drink indeed " (verses 51, 53, 55), phraseology perfectly 
 incomprehensible is employed, unless we sw T eep away its 
 whole literal, natural meaning, and take license to think what 
 we will, from the thoroughly emancipating announcement, 
 " It is the Spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth noth 
 ing: the words that I speak unto you are spirit and life" 
 (ver. 63).* 
 
 " John iv. 14 points to a living water of the Spirit, which 
 Christ can give, and which will quench the thirst of souls 
 
 * Dr. Schenkel, in his " Sketch of the Character of Jesus," remarks : 
 " The omission in the Fourth Gospel of the institution of the Lord s Supper 
 is explained by the circumstance that, from his dogmatic point of view, 
 the Evangelist could attach thereto only a relatively slight importance, in 
 
250 FORMS OF CHRIST S SELF-ASSERTION. 
 
 that drink it." That text, no doubt, relates to the gift of 
 God (ver. 10), bestowed in and through Christ, and offers no 
 excuse for the insertion of ideas about Christ s Godhead. 
 Jesus Himself, and His teaching, were the gift of God ; the 
 living water was the doctrine of God which Jesus taught, 
 and all the spiritual blessings annexed to a sincere reception 
 of the doctrine. To hear Christ s words, and to believe on 
 the Father Who sent Him, is to have the living water 
 (v. 24). 
 
 In verses 23 and 24 of John iv. it is noteworthy the Per 
 sonal Father is identified with the God Who is a Spirit, in a 
 manner quite foreign to the notion that the Nature and 
 Name of God cover any Form or Person besides the Father. 
 
 Protestants who have learned to substitute an intelligent 
 loyalty to their Great Master, for an indiscriminating adhe 
 sion to every scrap of Evangelical testimony respecting Him, 
 will probably hesitate before they see His exact words in 
 John iv. 22 ; or again, in x. 8, with which compare Matt. v. 
 17-19. *The latter of the two texts is a self-assertion Mr. 
 Liddon cites, but he adroitly dilutes it by the addition which 
 I italicize : " All who came before Him He characterizes as 
 having been, by comparison with Himself, the thieves and 
 robbers of mankind." 
 
 The opening verses of John xv. are treated unfairly by 
 leaving out the important sentences : " My Father is the 
 husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, 
 He taketh away ; and every branch that beareth fruit, He 
 cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit. Now ye are clean 
 through the word which I have spoken unto you." To fill in, 
 ad libitum, the more allegorical, and pass over the plainer, 
 simpler expressions, is not to expound, but to distort. The 
 superiority and Divine activity of " the God and Father " are 
 
 consistency with his declaration that faith in the Saviour is the true eat 
 ing and drinking of His body and blood (John vi. 35, 47, 51)." 
 
 Certainly, the exposition which couples the Discourse in John vi. with 
 the doctrine of a real presence of Christ s Human Nature in the Ploly 
 Eucharist is only ecclesiastically, not rationally, sound. 
 
251 
 
 prominent, if the passage is not mutilated and perverted for 
 the sake of Orthodox conceptions. Nothing short of an ine 
 radicable persuasion that Jesus is God can dispose a rational 
 mind to find in the passage the faintest indications of His 
 Godhead. 
 
 " He promises that all prayer offered in His Name shall be 
 answered : If ye ask any thing in My Name, /will do it (xiv. 
 14)." This text ought, undoubtedly, to be read in close con 
 nection with the two preceding verses, and refers to miracu 
 lous powers, even greater than those Christ had exhibited, 
 which were to be vouchsafed to His disciples in consequence 
 of His going to the Father. Our Lord did not direct that 
 prayer should be offered to Himself; and the avowed object 
 of His action was the Father s glory (ver. 13) ; and in verse 
 16, He is made to say, " I will ask the Father, and lie shall 
 give you" &c. The Apostolical view of spiritual gifts as dis 
 pensed by Christ may be gathered from Acts iii. 33. 
 
 " He contrasts Himself with a group of His countrymen 
 as follows : Ye are from beneath, I am from above : ye are 
 of this world, I am not of this world (viii. 23)." Granting 
 Jesus here points to heavenly origin as well as to heavenly- 
 mindedness, what semblance of an intimation is there that 
 He is Almighty God, in Essence the Equal of the Father Who 
 sanctified and sent Him (x. 36) ? In xv. 19, He declares His 
 disciples are not of the world ; and again, in xvii. 14 and 16, 
 He twice affirms : they are not of the world, as lam not of the 
 world. The expression not of (tx) the world, therefore, car 
 ries no implication of Deity. But men would perhaps be 
 less inclined to infuse their own conceptions into verse 23, if 
 they looked a little carefully at the words of verse 38. " I 
 speak that which I have seen with My Father; and ye do 
 that which ye have seen with your Father " (the devil, see 
 ver. 44). The extreme freedom of this language ought to 
 teach us caution, and to show the folly of intruding precise 
 meanings amongst vague and figurative words. In what 
 sense was the Devil the Father of the Jews ? In what sense 
 were they " of (tx) him," and how had they, by sight or hear- 
 
252 IS CHRIST THE LORD OF DEATH ? 
 
 ing, learned from him ? Surely not in any literal natural 
 sense. 
 
 " Christ claims to be the Lord of the realm of death ; He 
 will Himself wake the sleeping dead ; all that are in the 
 graves shall hear His voice (v. 28, 29 ; vi. 39). He proclaims : 
 I am the Resurrection and the Life (xi. 25)." The obscu 
 rity of the sense in v. 21-30 is ill-suited to any such brief and 
 positive exposition. It is very far indeed from being certain 
 a bodily resurrection is there referred to. The now is, of 
 verse 25, appears to point distinctly to spiritual resurrection 
 from the moral and metaphorical " death of sin." 
 
 When vi. 39 is interpreted through the dogma that a resur 
 rection of the material body will be the lot of the whole 
 human race, the connection of verses 37 and 39 either 
 entails narrow and Calvinistic notions of salvation, or, pre 
 suming the Father s gift to cover all mankind (see xvii. 2), 
 entails belief in universal salvation, because " all whom " the 
 Father gives will come to Christ, and, of the entire gift, 
 nothing will be lost, but the whole will be raised up at the 
 last day. If Mr. Liddon is not prepared to oifer a clearly 
 denned and consistently Orthodox exposition, he does not, 
 from the Protestant point of view, understand the text suffi 
 ciently well to justify reference to it for purposes of proof 
 and illustration. 
 
 There is enough of uncertainty whether spiritual or bodily 
 life and resurrection are intended in xi. 25, to preclude infer 
 ences. As the divinely sent and qualified Leader in the way 
 to God ; as the Teacher of awakening truths which, when 
 they are practically believed, conduct to eternal life, Christ 
 might, in the freedom of Eastern diction, have justly denom 
 inated Himself the Resurrection and the Life. When men 
 charge the sayings ascribed to Him in the " Gospel according 
 to John " with either broad literalism, or with the subtle 
 accuracies or inaccuracies drawn from scholastic theology, 
 they only show they have not studied the Fourth Evangelist 
 with attention enough to understand his style, and elicit 
 coherent, generally applicable rules of interpretation. Their 
 
THE HONOR DUE TO CHRIST. 253 
 
 guiding maxim is the re-enforcement of Orthodoxy, and, 
 beneath that most pliable of canons, metaphors become, as 
 convenience may demand, either most metaphorical, or sin 
 gular combinations of pregnancy and precision. Their rule 
 may be very discreet, and productive of excellent results, but 
 it can have no claim to be rational, except as it follows in 
 the train, and echoes the voice, of a Church instinct with 
 Divine inspiration, and commissioned authoritatively to 
 expound and reveal. 
 
 Assigning to the particle x#cog (as) the utmost possible 
 exactness and stretch of literal significance, and absolutely 
 ignoring the fact, attested throughout the Christian Scrip 
 tures, that the first Christians did not honor the Son with the 
 same kind and degree of honor with which they honored the 
 Father, Mr. Liddon asserts: "our Lord encourages men to 
 honor Him as they honor the Father " (John v. 23) ; and 
 again, a few pages further on, assures his readers that, by our 
 Lord s words, " the obligation of honoring the Son is defined 
 to be just as stringent as the obligation of honoring the 
 Father ; " and yet again, in a note, remarks : " if the honor 
 paid to the Son be merely relative, if He be merely honored 
 as an Ambassador or delegated Judge, then men do not 
 honor Him as they honor the Father " (p. 182). 
 
 Now, when a scholar interprets in this fashion, if, in the 
 judgment of charity, we admit his honesty, we cannot 
 think he displays his intelligence. Mr. Liddon must know 
 that the word on which he builds is frequently used in 
 the latest Gospel to signify a general and proportionate 
 resemblance, rather than exact likeness and equality in 
 degree. Chapter xvii. affords examples in which he would 
 certainly deny identity in kind, manner, and extent, to be 
 indicated. In verse 11, Christ prays that those whom the 
 Father has given Him " may be one, as He and the Father 
 are ; " and in verse 22, He is made to say, " the glory 
 which Thou gavest Me, I have given them, that they may 
 be one as we are one." Verse 16 recounts the declaration, 
 " they are not of the world, as I am not of the world ; " 
 
254 DOES CHRIST CLAIM 
 
 verse 18, " as Thou hast sent Me into the world, I also have 
 sent them into the world ; " and verse 23, " Thou hast loved 
 them, as Thou hast loved Me." In xv. 9, 10, we read : 
 " As the Father hath loved Me, I also have loved you ; con 
 tinue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments ye 
 shall abide in my love, as I have kept the Father s com 
 mandments and abide in His love ; " and in xx. 21, " as 
 the Father hath sent Me, I also send you." Will Mr. Lid- 
 don strain the xadmg in these examples, after the same puerile 
 unscholarly fashion in which he strains it in v. 23 ? I do not 
 press him with the circumstance, that one or two of the 
 examples differ from the text he tortures, in having xal after 
 x#ooi, , and being thereby greatly increased in strength and 
 precision, as descriptions of corresponding manner. In trans 
 lating, I have neglected the true force of xca as virtually a 
 comparative particle in the second member of the sentence. 
 Indubitably, xadwg alone has not necessarily the sense Mr. 
 Liddon affixes. It may mean, in proportion as, since, inas 
 much as ; and, for the later meaning, Bloomfi eld s " Lexicon of 
 the New Testament" rightly refers to John xvii. 2 ; Rom. i. 28 ; 
 1 Cor. i. 6 ; Eph. i. 4 ; Phil. i. 7. (See also Winer s remarks, 
 Grammar of New Testament, Sec. liii. 8.) An exposition 
 which hinges on the conjunction as is simply contemptible, 
 and justly subjects the expositor to the suspicion of deliber 
 ately counting on the prejudices, the inattention, and the 
 ignorance of his readers. A reference to the context puts 
 the folly of Mr. Liddon s explanation in a clear and strong 
 light. In the course of the speech, whence the text impart 
 ing its revelation through that very luminous and precise 
 word xadcog is picked out, the Evangelist reports the follow 
 ing statements : 
 
 " The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth 
 the Father doing ; for whatever things He doeth, these also 
 doeth the Son in like manner. For the Father loveth the 
 Son, and showeth Him all that Himself doeth ; and He will 
 show Him greater works than these^ that ye may marvel. 
 The Father judgeth no man, but hath given all judgment 
 
THE HONOR DUE TO GOD ? 255 
 
 unto the Son. As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath 
 He given to the Son to have life in Himself; and hath given 
 him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the 
 Son of Man. I can of myself do nothing ; as I hear, I judge, 
 and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, 
 but the will of Him that sent Me. If I bear witness con 
 cerning Myself, my witness is not true. There is another 
 that beareth witness concerning Me, and I know that the 
 witness which He witnesseth concerning Me is true " (John 
 v. 19-32). 
 
 Now, if these words have any rationally ascertainable 
 meaning, and were not designed either to deceive and bewil 
 der, or with reserving foresight to furnish a riddle for the 
 Church s Divine light to solve, can we imagine they were 
 spoken by One Who knew Himself to be, in Nature and 
 Attributes, the Eternal, Self-existent Father s Equal ? 
 
 The more probable rendering of the verse which Mr. Lid- 
 don isolates and misinterprets is : " That all men may honor 
 the Son, since^ or in proportion as, they honor the Father. 
 He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father 
 Who sent Him," exalted Him, and made Him worthy of 
 honor. 
 
 We are reminded that, in Christ s teaching, " to love Him 
 is a necessary mark of the children of God : If God were 
 your Father ye would have loved Me " (John viii. 42). The 
 rest of the verse, w T hich Mr. Liddon omits, ought to be added : 
 " For I came forth, and am come from God ; for I came not 
 of Myself, but He sent Me." According to the Bampton 
 Lecturer s dogma, the personal I, here, and elsewhere in 
 Christ s speeches, can only denote the Divine Personality 
 Which is of the Adorable, Incorruptible Essence, identical 
 in Nature and Perfections with the Almighty Father. But, 
 upon this supposition, the language becomes hopelessly 
 inscrutable to reason, and evidently meant for the ecclesias 
 tical as distinguished from the rational mind. Love for our 
 Lord Jesus Christ is, doubtless, a characteristic of the true 
 children of God. Hatred to Christ may with truth be said 
 
256 DEMANDS FOR LOYE AND OBEDIENCE. 
 
 to involve hatred to God (John xv. 23), but what bearing 
 have these facts on the notion, " Christ is God " ? The first 
 Epistle of Jolm emphatically teaches that to love our -breth 
 ren is a necessary mark of the children of God, and affirms : 
 "if any one say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he 
 is a liar ; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath 
 seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not seen ? " 
 (iv. 20.) 
 
 The self-assertion contained in the statement, " If ye love 
 Me, keep My commandments " (John xiv. 15), does not, 
 even when with Mr. Liddon we have made my emphatic, 
 transcend the claims of a Teacher conscious of a divinely 
 given commission and endowments, and conscious al^o that 
 grievously false teaching prevailed around Him. The dis 
 course which supplies the statement just quoted supplies 
 also a reason for remembering and obeying Christ s words, 
 " The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father s Who 
 sent Me" (ver.24). 
 
 " The most representative document of the second stage 
 of our Lord s teaching is the Discourse in the supper-room," 
 given in the 13th and four following chapters of the latest 
 Evangelist.* "His subject in that Discourse is Himself. 
 Certainly He preaches Himself in His relationship to His 
 redeemed ; but still preaches, above all and in all, Himself. 
 All radiates from Himself, all converges towards Himself. 
 The sorrows and perplexities of His disciples, the mission 
 and work of the Paraclete, the mingling predictions of suf 
 fering and of glory, are all bound up with the Person of 
 Jesus, as manifested by himself. In those matchless words 
 all centres so consistently in Jesus, that it might seem that 
 Jesus alone is before us ; alone in the greatness of his supra- 
 mundane glory ; alone in bearing His burden of an awful, 
 fathomless sorrow" (p. 172). 
 
 This is rhetorical, but is it true ? Any one who will with 
 
 * I include chapter xvii. in the Discourse, since, if the record is really 
 historical, the prayer of Christ must have been addressed aloud to God in 
 the Disciples hearing, for their instruction. 
 
" MY FATHER IS GREATER THAN I." 25 < 
 
 attentive care study the language attributed to Christ in 
 the Discourse referred to cannot fail to perceive the uniform 
 prominence of the Father s supremacy, the Father s glory, 
 and the Father s imparted gifts. The highest self-assertion 
 bespeaks dependence on Him, and falls very short of claim 
 ing equality and identity of Nature with Him. The self- 
 proclamation culminates in the claim to have come forth from 
 God (xvi. 27, 30 ; xvii. 8) ; the admission of that claim is the 
 comprehensive aspect of Christian faith. In terms not alto 
 gether perspicuous, but still practically clear as against the 
 conclusion, " the Son is Himself God," the relation of the Son 
 to the Father is intimated to be similar to that of the disci 
 ples to the Son (xiii. 20 ; xiv. 20 ; xv. 9, 10, 15 ; xvii. 22). 
 
 In xiv. 28, Christ s inferiority to the Father, and conse 
 quent exclusion from the One Self-existent Substance, is 
 explicitly avowed. " If ye loved me, ye would rejoice that 
 I go unto the Father, for my Father is greater than I." The 
 manifest truth of the Father s superior greatness should 
 have taught the disciples to rejoice in the advantage and 
 honor which their Great Master would gain by going to God. 
 There is nowhere in the Gospels the smallest particle of evi 
 dence the Apostles apprehended Jesus to be in very truth 
 God and the Father s Equal. His assurance that the Father 
 was greater than Himself was therefore, undoubtedly, not 
 intended to correct an erroneous opinion, or to disclose an 
 unsuspected fact. It was intended to remind the Apostles, 
 by calling their attention to a most incontrovertible truth, 
 that, in the desire to retain Him for what they believed to 
 be their own profit, His exaltation and aggrandizement were 
 being somewhat selfishly and unlovingly forgotten. The 
 acknowledged pre-eminence of the One God and Father, as 
 compared with the greatness of Christ, being so palpable, 
 reference to it at once suggested and enforced the thought 
 that in departing to Him Christ would be a gainer. Reason 
 ably understood, the text will carry no other meaning. Its 
 whole rational significance turns on the implication that the 
 inferiority of Jesus to the Father is the broad and actual 
 
 17 
 
258 SIMPLE TRUTHS STYLED "STUPID TRUISMS." 
 
 inferiority of receptiveness and dependence, not the narrow 
 and nominal inferiority of such relative ineffable subordina 
 tion, as may consist with sameness of Essence, and equality 
 of Godhead. 
 
 Mr. Liddon, with the highest capacity for a style of expo 
 sition which descries what is latent and overlooks what is 
 obvious, observes : the best of men would be " guilty of 
 something worse than a stupid truism," if he should announce 
 that God was "greater" than himself. 
 
 "Would he not seem to imply that he was not really a 
 creature of God s hand ? Would not his words go to suggest 
 that the notion of his absolute equality with God was not to 
 be dismissed as altogether out of the question ? Should we 
 not peremptorily remind him that the life of man is related 
 to the Life of God, not as the less to the greater, but as the 
 created to the Uncreated, and that it is an impertinent irrever 
 ence to admit superiority of rank, where the real truth can 
 only be expressed by an assertion of radical difference of 
 natures ? And assuredly a sane and honest man, who had 
 been accused of associating himself with the Supreme Being, 
 could not content himself with admitting that God was 
 greater than himself. Knowing himself to be only human, 
 would he not insist again and again, with passionate fervor, 
 upon the incommunicable glory of the great Creator ? " 
 (p. 200). 
 
 Simple truths which might, on account of their simplicity, 
 be stigmatized as " stupid truisms," are not unfrcquent in the 
 Fourth Gospel, but, granting the words in question do obliquely 
 imply Christ to be more than man, that does not impair their 
 explicit assertion, He is less than God, or establish a rational 
 likelihood that greater than I is equivalent to in one or two 
 points slightly my superior. If our Lord were the uncreated 
 Father s Equal, and lacked no attribute of Godhead, how 
 could the Father s excelling greatness illustrate His gain in 
 going to the Father? It might have been profitable to Him 
 to have manifested again in Heaven the inalienable splendors 
 of Deity which had for a while been shrouded upon earth, 
 
PATRISTIC ARGUMENTS. 
 
 but the resumption of those splendors could not have been 
 depended upon, or have been enhanced by, the comparative 
 greaterness, "in the order of the Divine Subsistence," of the 
 merely Co-equal, Con substantial Father. 
 
 Since all proof is wanting that our Lord s Apostles ever 
 suspected Him of associating Himself with God, or were 
 disposed to pervert His words, after the manner of His Jew 
 ish foes, there is no fair pretext for imagining that, in speak 
 ing to them, He would shape his language with a view to 
 malevolent and absurdly false calumnies. Sane and honest 
 men are not sensitively alive to foolish falsehoods which 
 they know their friends do not believe ; and, if ridiculous 
 charges are noticed, the simplest expression of simple truth 
 is more dignified than repeated asseverations and "passionate 
 fervor." 
 
 In days when the intellect was less sceptical, and faith in 
 mysteries more facile than now, the Father s superiority to 
 the Co-equal Son was felt to be perplexing, and Mr. Liddon 
 directs his readers to Suicer s summary of Patristic arguments 
 " against the Allan abuse " of John xiv. 28. " The (jist^ovor^g 
 of the Father is referred by SS. Athanasius, Gregory Nazi- 
 anzen, Chrysostom, Basil, arid Hilary, to His being the Un- 
 begotten One ; by SS. Cyril, Augustine, Ambrose, and Leo, 
 to the Son s humiliation as incarnate." 
 
 The former of these Patristic opinions brings no relief. 
 Persons afflicted with common sense, and a determination to 
 attach meanings to the phrases employed about sacred sub 
 jects, will conjecture that the difference between Unbegotten 
 and begotten is tantamount to the difference between Inde 
 pendence and dependence, Producer and produced, Creator 
 and creature. 
 
 The latter opinion, which makes the phrase under discus 
 sion describe only diversity of condition, is nothing better 
 than an elusive supposition, involving the utterly unsupported 
 assumption that the Apostles knew Jesus to be God. If they 
 did not know Him to be God, the saying, " My Father is 
 greater than I, because He is in glory, and I am in humilia- 
 
260 CHRIST EXCLUDES HIMSELF 
 
 tion," would, for them, have come under that category of 
 exceedingly plain truth which Mr. Liddon calls "stupid 
 truism." But the explanatory expansion is purely arbitrary, 
 unless the Church has received a revelation outside the Canon 
 of Scripture, with which all Canonical statements must be 
 reconciled. 
 
 The text (John xiv. 28) can hardly be denied to be full of 
 the perilous semblance of direct antagonism to ecclesiastical 
 dogma, which so remarkably characterizes the higher Scriptu 
 ral teaching concerning Christ s Person. The methods and 
 experience of commentators in handling this and other pas 
 sages illustrate the duty of remorselessly subordinating the 
 obstructive, as well as the exceedingly obscure, and at best 
 merely germinal enunciations of Holy Scripture, to the fully 
 ripened and openly pronounced definitions of the Church. 
 What unaided intellectual insight, what weary gropings of 
 reason, could ever have convinced truthful and pious minds 
 that latent claims to absolute Deity, and Essential Equality 
 with the Almighty Father, do not jar with the announcement, 
 My Father is greater than I! 
 
 The concluding section of that " most representative Self- 
 assertion " which Mr. Liddon brings into court consists of a 
 prayer to God, the whole tone and wording of which appear 
 to be directly at variance with the supposition of there hav 
 ing been in our Lord s mind any reserved, underlying con 
 sciousness of proper, actual Deity. In His intercourse with 
 the Almighty, some expressions betraying clearly His real 
 Personal Rank might naturally be expected. But He not 
 only prays that those whom the Father had given Him may 
 be, by the Father, kept in safety, sanctified, and united, but 
 He prays also that He Himself may be glorified, and, using 
 terms the most exact and definite, excludes Himself from the 
 One Godhead in the statement: "This is Life Eternal, that 
 they may know Thee, the Only True G-od, and Jesus Christ 
 whom Th6u hast sent" (xvii. 3). Combine this statement 
 with the many others of the Discourse in the supper-room, 
 which imply receptivity, inferiority, dependence, and then 
 
FROM THE GODHEAD, IN JOHN XVII. 3. 261 
 
 let reason, reverence, and common sense decide whether the 
 combination does not impart to all simplicity, intensity, and 
 definiteness, by intimating the Father to be the Only True 
 God, and Jesus Christ not to be, in the highest and absolute 
 sense, God at all. Arid, more especially, combine it with the 
 enunciation of the Father s pre-eminent greatness. Why is 
 the Father greater than the Son ? Because the Father is the 
 Only True God, and not one of two or more Forms, Persons, 
 or Subsistencies, each of Whom is enfolded with Him in the 
 Unity of the same Nature, and is Co-equal, Co-eternal, Con- 
 substantial with Himself. Unless it can be shown (as indubi 
 tably it cannot) that other portions of the Fourth Gospel 
 aver, in unambiguous terms, Christ to be truly and essentially 
 God, the very document in which Mr. Liddon most confides 
 ought to have warned him against the suicidal folly of trying 
 to build the grandly distinctive dogma of the Catholic Church 
 on the treacherous Protestant basis of reasonably expounded 
 Scripture. 
 
 The legitimate, natural, and most plain meaning of John 
 xvii. 3 is, however, battled against and disguised by devices 
 of unblushing and laborious ingenuity. After quoting the 
 verse in a note (p. 237), Mr. Liddon argues : 
 
 " But here a Sociman sense is excluded. (1) By the con 
 sideration that the knowledge of God and a creature could not 
 be Eternal Life; (2) By the plain sense of verse 1, which places 
 the Son and the Father on a level : What creature could 
 stand before his Creator and say, Glorify me, that I may 
 glorify Thee ? (3) By verse 5, which asserts our Lord s pre- 
 existent glory. It follows that the restrictive epithets only, 
 true, must be held to be exclusive, not of the Son, but of false 
 gods, or creatures external to the Divine Essence." 
 
 With what scornful intolerance would this wriggling sophis 
 try be trampled under foot, if it were employed against a 
 doctrine of Orthodoxy ! (1) Christ is spoken of as the Am 
 bassador through whom the Father communicates His will, 
 makes known His messages of mercy, and establishes His 
 kingdom. The knowledge of our Lord in this function, 
 
262 THE FATHER " THE ONLY TRUE GOD." 
 
 added to the knowledge of the Only True Q-od Who sends 
 Him (compare ver. 8), is declared to be the subjective con 
 dition and pledge of Eternal Life. The exclusive restriction 
 immanent in the epithets only, true, is wholly unaffected by 
 the association of Christ in the official capacity with which 
 the Almighty had invested Him. Each of the Beings named 
 is to be recognized according to the terms of their respective 
 designations, in His own proper character, the Father as 
 being the Only True God, and Jesus Christ as being the 
 Father s Messenger. 
 
 (2) The sapient assertion, " The plain sense of verse 1 
 places the Son and the Father on a level," would appear to 
 have originated in the not very pardonable error of under 
 standing the glorification of the Father by the Son to be the 
 same in kind with the glorification of the Son by the Father; 
 but the processes referred to cannot be identical or similar. 
 The Only True God glorifies His Servant Jesus (Acts. iii. 
 13 ; 1 Peter i. 21), by raising Him from the dead, exalting 
 Him to Heaven, and giving Him to be Head over all things 
 in the Church (Eph. i. 22). This glorification cannot be 
 reciprocated in kind ; but the Father is glorified by the Son, 
 in the accomplishment of human salvation, in the realization 
 of that reconciliation of man to Himself, in which He has 
 made the Son His Instrument, the Pattern Image and First 
 born among many brethren (Rom. viii. 29), the Captain of 
 the salvation of the many sons brought unto glory (Heb. ii. 
 10). The mode in which the Son was to glorify the Father 
 is intimated, not obscurely, in the immediate context of the 
 verse now in question : " Since Thou hast given Him power 
 over all flesh, in order that He should give eternal life to as 
 many as Thou hast given Him." From verse 4 we learn that 
 the Son had already glorified the Father on the earth, by fin 
 ishing the work which the Father had given Him to do. And 
 when the different natures of the glorifying processes on the 
 parts of the Creator and the creature are remembered, there is 
 seen to be nothing unbefitting in supposing even an ordinary 
 human creature to stand before his Creator and say, " Glorify 
 
PRESUMED REVELATION OF DEITY. 263 
 
 me, that I may glorify Thee." The highest end and duty 
 of the Christian s existence in this world is to glorify God, and 
 the same (more perfectly attained and accomplished) will 
 be the end and duty of his existence in the world to come. 
 When the- loving and obedient child of God looks trustfully 
 forward 1 j the delights and employments of the Heavenly 
 Home, v*hat more suitable petition can ascend from his heart 
 and lips, than " Glorify me, that I may glorify Thee " ? 
 
 (3) The reference to " our Lord s pre-existent glory" in 
 verse 5, certainly does not denote that glory to be the inher 
 ent, irrelinquishable grandeur of Consubstantial, Self-subsist 
 ing Godhead. On the contrary, the glory is acknowledged 
 to be a gift and boon from the Father. Consider, in conjunc 
 tion with verse 5, the language of verses 22 and 24, and the 
 utter unreasonableness of attempting to identify the conferred 
 glory with the Majesty of true Deity will be manifest. Theo 
 logians are rarely aware of the strength of their own edu 
 cational and professional leanings, but no unsophisticated 
 mind would ever have conjectured that John xvii. 3 does not 
 shut out the meaning, " Thee, the Only True God, and Jesus 
 Christ, the True God Whom Thou hast sent." 
 
 In forging his defensive weapons, Mr. Liddon naturally 
 dwells on John xiv. 23, and contends that Jesus virtually 
 proclaims His own Deity when He associates Himself with 
 God, in the saying, 
 
 " If a man love me, he will keep my words ; and my Fa 
 ther will love him, and TFtf will come unto him, and make 
 Our abode with him. Reflect : Who is this Speaker That 
 promises to dwell in the soul of man ? And with whom 
 does He associate Himself ? It may be true of any eminent 
 saint that God speaks not to him as to one outside Himself; 
 that God is in him ; that he feels himself with God ; that he 
 draws from his own heart what he tells us of the Father; 
 that he lives in the bosom of God by the intercommunion of 
 every moment. But such an one could not forget that, fa 
 vored as he is by the Divine Presence illuminating his whole 
 inner life, he still lives at an immeasurable distance beneath 
 
264 DOES CHRIST PROCLAIM 
 
 the Being Whose condescension has so enriched him. In 
 virtue of his sanctity, he would surely shrink with horror 
 from associating himself with God ; from promising, along 
 with God, to make a dwelling-place of the souls that love 
 himself; from representing his presence with men as a bless 
 ing co-ordinate with the presence of the Father ; from attri 
 buting to himself oneness of will with the Will of God ; from 
 implying that, side by side with the Father of spirits, he was 
 himself equally a ruler and helper of the life of the souls of 
 men" (p. 178). 
 
 Now if the doctrine " Christ is God " had any well-marked 
 and adequate Biblical sanction ; if there existed any indica 
 tions of its having been so familiar as to be the natural 
 explanation of obscure and exceptional expressions, then, 
 unquestionably, the text Mr. Liddon handles so vigorously 
 might be fairly quoted as harmonizing and corroborative. 
 But, unsupported and counterbalanced, it has no argumenta 
 tive weight, and the language of the near context (ver. 20), 
 to say nothing of other passages in the last Gospel, might 
 teach us to be cautious how we inject meanings into such 
 phrases as abiding with, being in, and dwelling in. "At 
 that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in 
 me, and I in you" (comp. xv. 4-7 ; xvii. 21, 23, 26). Unless, 
 too, the hard exigencies of his position had coerced Mr. Lid 
 don to clutch recklessly at possible deductions, he would 
 have noticed how verse 24 indirectly negatives Christ s Deity. 
 " The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father s Who 
 sent me." If Jesus and the Father are bound together by 
 unity of Nature and Attributes, the " Avord " is in all strict 
 ness as much Christ s as the Father s, and nothing is added 
 to its dignity or sacredness when it is in any sense disowned 
 by the one and transferred to the other. And even a Bamp- 
 ton Lecturer may be asked to remember the twenty-eighth 
 verse, before he proceeds to drag in theories through the 
 twenty-third. Whether the Discourse in the supper-room is 
 reported verbatim, or is a compilation of the Evangelist s 
 from loose and imperfect data, of which we can never now 
 
HIS OWN GODHEAD ? 265 
 
 know the original form, still we may venture to surmise 
 that even the highest inspiration, in preparing materials for 
 the exegetical offices of the Church, did not quite renounce 
 rational coherence, and that therefore the relation implied 
 in the associating words, " We will come, and make Our 
 abode," is compatible with the inferiority avowed in the 
 saying, " My Father is greater than 7." 
 
 Mr. Liddon is convinced the claim to be universal Judge 
 is irreconcilable with the capacities of any created intelli 
 gence. And if the question were simply a problem proposed 
 t3 human reason and experience, much might be said for 
 his view ; but I must again remind him bare rationalism is 
 inadmissible. In surveying, from the ground he has taken, 
 the doctrine of our Lord s Divinity, we are not concerned 
 with what reason alone makes probable, but with what the 
 Sacred Writings, reasonably interpreted, teach. And they 
 teach, with a clearness and accuracy which nothing can invali 
 date (short of a revelation more authoritative and explicit 
 than themselves), that the province of judgment belongs 
 primarily to the Almighty, and that He delegates, commis 
 sions, and qualifies His Son, Servant, and Messenger, Jesus 
 Christ, to act the part of Judge. " To Him the Father has 
 given all judgment ; and given Him authority to execute judg 
 ment, because He is the Son of Man (John v. 22, 27). He 
 is ordained of God to be the Judge of the quick and the 
 dead. God lias appointed a day in which He will judge the 
 world in righteousness by a man whom lie has ordained 
 (Acts x. 42; xvii. 31). God will judge the secrets of men 
 through Jesus Christ (Rom. ii. 16)." The authors of these 
 announcements may be quite mistaken, and far behind Mr. 
 Liddon in the scope and exactness of their information ; but 
 they announce plainly enough that Jesus is, in the work of 
 judging, God s Agent ; the Holder of an appointment from 
 God, the Wielder of divinely consigned prerogatives. If 
 judgment appertains to Christ s glorified condition as the 
 Messiah, God has highly exalted Him and made Him both 
 Lord and Christ. He is not Judge in right of infinite, inher- 
 
266 CLAIM TO BE UNIVERSAL JUDGE. 
 
 ent, independent qualities, but in right of Divine ordination, 
 and imparted gifts. Orthodox Protestant expositors may, 
 if they choose, pronounce this to be irrational, but they will 
 argue more to the purpose when they state what other mean 
 ing the words of Scripture will rationally bear. 
 
 That Evangelists and Apostles did not imagine the task 
 of judging to demand the independent possession of the 
 boundless resources of Deity is evident from the feet of 
 Christ s being made to promise that the Twelve (including 
 Judas Iscariot ?) " shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the 
 twelve tribes of Israel " (Matt. xix. 28), a promise which 
 St. Luke repeats without specifying the number of thrones, 
 but with the prefatory statement : " I appoint unto you a 
 kingdom, as (xadcog) my Father hath appointed unto me " 
 (xxii. 28-30). St. Paul, also, was inspired to teach, "the 
 saints shall judge the world, and judge angels" (1 Cor. vi. 2, 
 3 ; comp. Rev. ii. 27 ; iii. 21). These passages indicate, on the 
 part of the Sacred Writers, a point of view different from 
 that which Mr. Liddon s rationalism furnishes, and a disability 
 to perceive, in the functions of judgment, duties necessarily 
 beyond the range of created and divinely equipped intelli 
 gence. 
 
 If the foregoing considerations are fairly weighed, the con 
 cluding section of Matt, xxv., which Mr. Liddon labors to 
 utilize, cannot contribute to his argument. But, with respect 
 to that section, there is, obviously, something more to be 
 added. Supposing Jesus really to have uttered the sayings 
 therein narrated, they must be taken together with their gen 
 eral context (for they terminate a series of closely connected 
 discourses), and compared with some other sayings which 
 lead up to the emphatic predictions : " Verily I say unto you, 
 this generation will not pass away, till all these things be 
 fulfilled" (Matt. xxiv. 34; Mark xiii. 30; Luke xxi. 32; 
 compare also the very distinct statement in Matt. xvi. 27, 
 28). " Verily, I say unto you, ye shall not have finished the 
 cities of Israel, till the Son of Man be come" (Matt. x. 23). 
 These texts are more than sufficient to make a sincerely truth- 
 
CHRIST S CLAIMS UPON THE HUMAN SOUL. 267 
 
 seeking, cautious thinker pause, before he interprets the 
 highly figurative and dramatic expressions contained in Matt, 
 xxv. 31-46, of a coming to judge finally the human universe 
 of quick and dead. And the whole probable bearing of pur 
 pose and language in chapters xxiv. and xxv. favors the 
 opinion that the winding up (or conclusion) of the age, which 
 is so erroneously translated the end of the world, relates to 
 the close of the Jewish .Dispensation. Quietly to take for 
 granted, in face of all the difficulties and uncertainty which 
 hang around the phrases, conclusion of the age, coming of 
 the Son of Man, a yet future and universal assize to be 
 intended is a proceeding which can add no strength to a 
 doctrine, and no credit to expositors who profess to find their 
 guiding light in the Bible, and the Bible only. 
 
 "In dealing with separate souls, our Lord s tone and lan 
 guage " are, according to Mr. Liddon, " not less significant " 
 than in claiming to be universal Judge. " We will not here 
 dwell on the fact of His forgiving sins (St. Matt. ix. 6 ; St. 
 Mark ii. 10; St. Luke v. 24), and. of transmitting to His 
 Church the power of forgiving them (St. Matt. xvi. 19 ; xviii. 
 18; St. John xx. 23)." For the ends of truth, however, we 
 ought to dwell upon the texts referred to, so far as to note 
 that our Lord in replying to the murmuring thought of the 
 Scribes, "Who is able to forgive sins except God only?" 
 hinted no claim whatever to Deity, but, employing the title 
 which unequivocally denotes His Humanity, said, " that ye 
 may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to for 
 give sins," &c. Some of his auditors fancied He was arro 
 gating a prerogative of the Almighty. He answered by an 
 explicit confession of his Manhood, and affirmed His power 
 to forgive sins, with the restricting clause, on earth. Neander 
 comments : " God forgives the sins in heaven, but Christ, as 
 Man, announces the Divine forgiveness. Son of Man and 
 on earth are correlative conceptions." The context shows 
 that the forgiveness the Son of Man had power to grant to 
 have been, in effect, the removal of present disease, which 
 either really was, or was believed by the Jews to be, inflicted 
 
268 
 
 as the punishment of transgression (comp. John v. 14 ; ix. 2, 
 34 ; Luke xiii. 2-5). 
 
 If the power of forgiving sins was transmitted to the Apos 
 tles, and in succession from them to the Church, then clearly 
 the possession of it does not necessarily involve the posses 
 sion of Divine attributes, and the fact to which Mr. Liddon 
 points tells against his argument. 
 
 The call of Christ, Follow Me, which occurs several times 
 in the Gospels ; and the words, " He that loveth father or 
 mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me : if any man come 
 to Me, and- hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and 
 children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, 
 he cannot be my disciple" (St. Matt. x. 37; St. Luke xiv. 
 26), are construed: "It is clear that Pie treats those who 
 come to Him as literally belonging to Himself, in virtue of 
 an existing right. He commands, He does not invite dis- 
 cipleship. ... It is impossible to ignore this imperious 
 claim on the part of Jesus to rule the whole soul of man. 
 Other masters may demand a man s active energies, or his 
 time, or his purse, or his thought, or some large share in his 
 affections ; but here is a claim on the whole man, on his very 
 inmost self, on the sanctities of his deepest life " (pp. 175, 
 176). The stream of eloquence then expands into a succes 
 sion of vehement interrogatories, whose form may be readily 
 guessed. 
 
 Such studied inflation of language which, when justly 
 interpreted, carries a much lower meaning, scarcely deserves 
 attention. The contexts amply testify the complete absence 
 of any approach to an assertion of inherently Divine right. 
 As the Messenger of God and the Teacher of Truth, our 
 Lord s commission and office quite justify the tone and cast 
 of the language ascribed to Him, without resorting to the 
 conjecture that He spoke from a reserved, underlying con 
 sciousness of Godhead. If He knew Himself to be the 
 preacher of the highest moral and spiritual verities ; if He 
 felt that the Father had sent Him ; that the Father was with 
 Him ; and that He was doing the Father s work, His sell- 
 
MUST CHRIST BE GOD OR MAN? 269 
 
 consciousness fully suffices to explain and vindicate the say 
 ings which Mr. Liddon loads with alien inferences, instead 
 
 3 
 
 of equitably expounding. Antagonism to existing earthly 
 ties and relationships inevitably waited on faithful disciple- 
 ship to a spiritual Leader and Reformer Who came to purify 
 and elevate old truths, and to proclaim truths practically 
 new. Decision, promptitude, the renunciation of worldly 
 interests, and in some cases of home affections, may certainly 
 be due tributes of allegiance to spiritual light and truth, 
 without suggesting more than the inspiration and Divine 
 Mission of the Instructor through Whom the light and truth 
 are sent. 
 
 I find it very difficult, almost impossible, to comprehend 
 how any man can have studied the Gospels, and yet have 
 brought himself to pen such sentences as : " How can Christ 
 bid men live for Himself, as for the very End of their exist 
 ence? How can He rightly draw towards Himself the whole 
 thought and love, I do not say of a world, but of one single 
 human being, with this imperious urgency, if He be indeed 
 only the Christ of the Humanitarian teachers, if He be any 
 thing else or less than the supreme Lord of life ? " Where 
 is there a tittle of proof Christ did any thing of the kind ? 
 In what discourse, honestly read by the light of near context, 
 and the plain general purport of the Gospel records, did He 
 ever put Himself on a level with God, or claim rights neces 
 sarily Divine ? Assuredly not in any utterance which Mr. 
 Liddon has been able to cite. But the poor sophistry of a 
 bastard rationalism, to which I have before adverted, is 
 beneath Mr. Liddon s declamation. His traditional faith and 
 pious credulity, having accepted conclusions destitute of 
 Scriptural ground, retain his understanding to plead there 
 is no place or rank for Jesus between actual Godhead and 
 ordinary Manhood. Jesus Christ is in nature merely a 
 human fellow-creature, or he is in Nature the Adorable, 
 Uncreated One ; and to the measures of these alternatives 
 all Scripture must be forcibly contracted or forcibly stretched. 
 
270 DID CHRIST EXPLICITLY 
 
 Would it not be more reverent, as well as more logical and 
 convincing, to say boldly : the Church Universal has been 
 guided from Above to decree that Christ is " Very God," 
 and by so decreeing has provided a pregnant, paramount, 
 unerring rule of interpretation, and a clew to senses of Script 
 ure otherwise inaccessible ? 
 
 Mr. Liddon, however, believes he can adduce something 
 stronger than doubtful deductions and rhetorical special 
 pleadings. The statements and claims in which the truth is 
 latent are, to our "positive moral relief," explained by dec 
 larations explicitly asserting Christ s Godhead. The com 
 parative paucity of " the solemn sentences in which our Lord 
 makes that supreme revelation" is acknowledged ; but, " en 
 tering as He did perfectly into the actual conditions of our 
 human and social existence, He exposed Himself to a triple 
 scrutiny, and met it by a correspondingly threefold revela 
 tion. He revealed His Divinity to His disciples, to the 
 Jewish people, and to His embittered opponents, the chief 
 priests and Pharisees" (p. 177). 
 
 One instance of this revelation is our Lord s response 
 when " Philip preferred to Him the peremptory request, 
 1 Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Well might 
 the answer have thrilled those who heard it. Have I 
 been so long time with you, and yet thou hast not known 
 Me, Philip ? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father ; 
 and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father ? Believest 
 thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me ? 
 (St. John xiv. 9, 10.) Now what this indwelling really 
 implied is seen in our Lord s answer to a question of St. 
 Jude (verse 23)." The argument from the answer to St. 
 Jude s question has been already examined. And the utter 
 futility of the appeal to the reply given to Philip is easily 
 demonstrated. According to the Evangelist, Jesus had just 
 previously (verse 6) distinguished Himself, personally and 
 officially at any rate, from the Father. He then had added, 
 " If ye had known Me, ye would have known my Father 
 
REVEAL HIS OWN DEITY ? 271 
 
 also, and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen 
 Him." * This declaration drew from Philip a request which 
 seems to have originated in the mistake of understanding 
 literally the words have seen. The rejoinder Jesus is repre 
 sented to have made was either a definite affirmation that 
 He is personally the Father, and that, therefore, i-n Him the 
 Father was beheld by the bodily senses (but see 1 John iv. 
 12 ; 1 Tim. vi. 16), or else it was a figurative statement that 
 Tie is, through the Father s benefactions and indwelling, 
 the Moral Image of God, and the Manifest er of His teach 
 ing, character, and purposes. Even Orthodox Protestant 
 theologians, when out of their pulpits, will not deny that it 
 was the latter, and, if so, it carries no intimation of equality 
 of Attributes, unity of Nature, identity of Substance. That 
 our Lord must not be supposed to have intended to equalize, 
 or Essentially to identify Himself, with the Father, is evident 
 from the sentence which follows next after Mr. Liddon s 
 quotation, " the words that I speak unto you, I speak not 
 from myself, but the Father Who dwelleth in Me, lie doeth 
 the works" (an equally good reading is, doeth Ills works). 
 See also verse 24. 
 
 Men who have strenuously toiled to sustain, by such argu 
 ments as the case admits, the idea that Christ s Deity is so 
 set forth in Scripture as to be sufficiently within the cogniz 
 ance of devout and diligent intellects interpreting in accord 
 ance with the common laws of thought and diction, hare 
 perceived the weakness of inferences drawn from our Lord s 
 "language in the supper-room to St. Philip." Professor Stu 
 art (Fourth Letter to Channing) wrote : 
 
 " The expression of Jesus that the Father is in Him, and 
 lie in the Father, I do not understand as asserting His Di 
 vine Nature in a direct manner. It is a phrase which is used 
 to express the idea that any one is most nearly and affection- 
 
 * Winer (Grammar of New Testament, Sec. xl. 4) observes that this 
 last clause must be rendered literally : from this time ye know Him, and 
 ye have seen Him, not paraphrased, ye will soon know, and as it were see 
 Him. 
 
272 DID CHRIST EXPLICITLY 
 
 ately united with God (see 1 John iv. 16, where it is applied 
 to Christians; also verses 12, 13, and 15)." 
 
 The error of the explanation which deduces the Essential 
 Unity of Christ and God from the phraseology under con 
 sideration is displayed not alone by the context (John xiv. 
 20), and other texts to which I have already referred, but 
 also by Matt. x. 40 ; xxv. 40 ; John vi. 56 ; 1 John iii. 6, 24 ; 
 3 John 11). 
 
 The knowledge and the sight of the Father, and the mutual 
 indwelling between the Father and Himself, to which the 
 words of Jesus relate, are to be looked for in disclosures of 
 God s Will, and manifestations of His character and power. 
 And if the other reasons, whose cumulative force unanswer 
 ably dispels the interpretation Mr. Liddon would impose, did 
 not exist, we should still be bound to remember how, in the 
 same discourse and chapter, there stands the very intelligible 
 avowal, the Father is greater than I; an avowal which, 
 whether it contrasts Christ s purely pre-incarnate, or His 
 whole composite Being, with the Father s Deity, is a declara 
 tion that He is Personally less than God, and therefore not 
 Divine in the senses of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds. 
 
 Another instance of our Lord s " explicit and supreme 
 revelation of Himself" is presented as follows. When the 
 Jews saw a breach of the Sabbath-day in the healing of an 
 impotent man, and in the injunction given him to take up 
 his bed and walk, 
 
 "Jesus justified Himself by saying, My Father worketh 
 hitherto, and I work. Therefore, continues the Evangelist, 
 the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He not only 
 had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God \vas .His Own 
 Father, making Himself equal with God (St. John v. 17, 
 18). Now the Jews were not mistaken as to our Lord s 
 meaning. They knew that the Everlasting God neither 
 rests nor is weary ; they knew that if He could slumber but 
 for a moment the universe would collapse into the nothing 
 ness out of which He has summoned it. They knew that 
 He rested on the seventh day from the creation of new 
 
REVEAL HIS OWN DEITY ? 273 
 
 beings; but that, in maintaining the life of those which 
 already exist, He worketh hitherto. They knew that none 
 could associate himself as did Jesus with this world-sustain 
 ing energy of God, who was not himself God. They saw 
 clearly that no one could cite God s example of an uninter 
 rupted energy in nature and providence as a reason for set 
 ting aside God s positive law, without also and thereby 
 claiming to be Divine. . . . Our Lord claims a right to break 
 the Sabbath, because God s ever active Providence is not 
 suspended on that day. Our Lord thus places both His Will 
 and His Power on the level of the power and Will of the 
 Father. . . . He claims distinctly to be Lord of nature, and 
 thus to be equal with the Father in point of operative energy. 
 He makes the same assertion in saying that whatsoever 
 things the Father doeth, those things the Son also doeth in 
 like manner (ver. 19). To narrow down these words so as 
 to make them only refer to Christ s imitation of the moral 
 nature of God is to take a liberty with the text for which it 
 affords no warrant ; it is to make void the plain meaning ol 
 Scripture by a sceptical tradition. Our Lord simply and 
 directly asserts that the works of the Father, without any 
 restriction, are, both as to their nature and mode of produc 
 tion, the works of the Son" (pp. 179-181). 
 
 How much may be hidden in a little ! what stupendous 
 conclusions in a few exceedingly vague and ambiguous 
 words ! The commentary of Mr. Liddon proves, at least, that 
 the obligation of extracting Orthodox dogma from Scripture 
 alone, develops both audacity and productive ingenuity. 
 The simple, consistent, almost obvious explanation of Christ s 
 language is neglected; and artificial, misguiding assumptions, 
 constructed to fit the dogma to be defended, are inserted at. 
 nearly every step. Our Lord did not " set aside God s posi 
 tive law ; " He did not break the Sabbath, and He claimed 
 no right to break it ; He broke only the Pharisaical and Rab 
 binical rules respecting it ; (see some pertinent observations 
 on this point in Smith s Dictionary of the BiUe ; Art. Sab 
 bath). Does Mr. Liddon believe Christ s act of healing to 
 
 18 
 
274 DID CHRIST EXPLICITLY 
 
 have been a real violation of either the letter or spirit of the 
 Fourth Commandment rightly understood ? and if he does 
 not, what becomes of his argument ? The arbitrarily restric 
 tive rules which Rabbis had appended to the Commandment 
 were quite separable from the Commandment itself. Our 
 Lord does not " cite God s example of an uninterrupted 
 energy in nature and providence as a reason " for His own 
 conduct. He far more naturally, and probably, identifies His 
 own acting with the acting of the Father, by whose might 
 He performed His miracles. The Father wrought; and 
 therefore He, being the Father s obedient Servant and Or 
 gan, wrought in resulting unison. 
 
 When we fix our attention solely on the Gospel narrative, 
 and on the materials the Gospel furnishes to shape our judg 
 ment, the perversity of Mr. Liddon s exposition becomes 
 increasingly apparent. The Evangelist does not ascribe the 
 hatred of the Jews to the notion that our Lord associated 
 Himself on terms of complete parity, with " the world-sus 
 taining energy of God ; " but to the fact of His having in 
 their estimation " not only broken the Sabbath, but said also 
 that God was His own Father, making Himself equal icith" 
 or, as the term may also mean, " like to God." It is not 
 within the province of exposition to give disproportionate, 
 or exclusive predominance to aspects which the Canonical 
 Writer does not put forward. The precise offence lay in the 
 presumed arrogation of a peculiar Sonship, of which the 
 association in working was an indication, and this offence 
 was exaggerated into the blasphemy of challenging equality 
 with God. The Jews malevolently caught at, and misrep 
 resented, Christ s words. The Evangelist does not indorse 
 their construction, either as to the breach of the Sabbath, or 
 the nature of the Sonship ; and in his record generally he 
 assuredly does not depict them as being the best, or at all 
 unbiassed, judges of our Saviour s meaning. They often 
 misunderstood and perverted His sayings, and malignantly 
 blamed His actions (John vii. 20, 23 ; viii. 48 ; ix. 16 ; x. 19, 
 20, 33). And, in the very passage from which Mr. Liddon 
 
REVEAL HIS OWN DEITY ? 275 
 
 argues, Jesus Himself, with pointed emphasis, denies that His 
 accusers had rightly apprehended His assertion of Sonship, 
 when they saw in it, or pretended to see, an assumption of 
 actual equality with, or near resemblance to, the Almighty 
 One. " The Son can do nothing of Himself, save what He 
 seeth the Father doing ; for whatever things He doeth, these 
 also doeth the Son in like manner. For the Father loveth 
 the Son, and showeth Him all things which Himself doeth ; 
 and He will show Him greater works than these, that ye may 
 marvel " (verses 19 and 20; compare verse 30). As regards 
 one point, this language is lucid enough. It is difficult to 
 imagine what terms could signify more plainly that the Son- 
 ship of Jesus was not of a kind to equalize Him with the 
 Only God (verse 44). He acts by the Father s instruction, 
 and at the Father s instigation. His action waits upon the 
 Father s Will. He can do nothing from Himself; He origi 
 nates nothing ; He derives unceasingly leading and knowl 
 edge from the Father Who is His Teacher and Example. 
 " He does what He sees the Father doing, and the Father 
 loves Him, and shows Him all things," &c. The single 
 feature which this phraseology throws distinctly out is just 
 that which corrects the Jews mistake. Whatever unde- 
 scribed, and indescribable privileges of near communion and 
 instrumental agency the Son may possess, there is between 
 Him and the Father a vast difference ; a difference which 
 puts equality completely out of the question. Transpose the 
 names Father and Son, and in the opinion of every sane 
 mind the Father s Godhead will be clearly denied. We 
 cannot eliminate the relation of receptiveness, imitation, de 
 pendence, and comparative inability, even though we should 
 arbitrarily distend the whatsoever things and all things be 
 yond the sphere of the works in which Christ was engaged 
 on earth, and which the Father wrought through Him. 
 
 Elucidated by our Lord s own revelations, which Mr. Lid- 
 don conceives to have been with such singular authenticity 
 preserved in the Fourth Gospel, His announcement, My 
 Father worketh hitherto, and I work, is, at the utmost, simply 
 
276 WRESTING SCRIPTURE TO A PURPOSE. 
 
 a statement that He was the Father s privileged Associate 
 and Instrument ; that the Father was working in Him, and 
 with Him, prompting, directing, and empowering, His deeds. 
 " The Father Who dwelleth in me, He doeth the works. As 
 the Father hath commanded me, so I do" (xiv r . 10, 31). 
 "My judgment is just, because I seek not mine own will, but 
 the Will of Him Who sent Me. I am come down from 
 heaven, not to do mine own will, but the Will of Him Who 
 sent Me" (v. 30; vi. 38). These expressions accord with 
 the immediate context of the announcement, My Father 
 viorketh, &c., and leave an expositor without excuse when 
 he tells us, the spiteful, carping Jews " were not mistaken as 
 to our Lord s meaning." The sense manifestly is, that Jesus 
 was the Father s willing and obedient, as well as chosen and 
 favored, Organ : He spoke not His own words, and did not 
 His own works, but always acted in virtue of the Father s 
 Might, and revealed the Father s Mind and Will. In every 
 thing, the Father wrought ; and therefore the Son, " Whom 
 the Father had sanctified, and sent into the world " (x. 36), 
 wrought correspondingly. 
 
 I have bestowed what will perhaps seem to some readers 
 an unnecessary amount of attention on a very poor argument, 
 but John v. 17 is just one of those texts which feeble but 
 pretentious Biblical Orthodoxy loves to isolate, and fill with 
 preconceptions. It is subjected to exacting stress, and loaded 
 with the largest significance its terms could possibly, under 
 the most favorable circumstances, be made to carry, while 
 the context, and the numerous other passages which shed a 
 bright light upon its meaning, are either quite ignored, or 
 with painstaking ingenuity explained away. The concurring 
 voices of many previous expositors are, doubtless, with Mr. 
 Liddon, but constitute only a slight palliation of his conduct, 
 in wresting Scripture with such a violent hand. The time 
 has gone by for parrot-repetitions of other men s opinions on 
 the doctrine of our Lord s Divinity. We must either cease 
 to make acceptance of the doctrine a condition of communion, 
 or we must put the doctrine on its true basis. We must 
 
ATTEMPTED REMOVAL OF OBSTACLES. 277 
 
 either interpret the Bible honestly beneath the beams of 
 devoutly inquisitive reason, comparing Scripture with Script 
 ure, or we must make the decisions and authority of the 
 Church Universal our starting-point and standard. Without 
 impugning Mr. Liddon s conscientious integrity, I cannot 
 help thinking he would have appeared morally to greater 
 advantage, if he had shown himself mentally more blind; but 
 he saw quite well the obstacles besetting his way, and made 
 the following attempt to reconcile the language of his cher 
 ished Evangelical document with Orthodox tradition : 
 
 " Certainly our Lord insists very carefully upon the truth 
 that the power which He wielded was derived originally from 
 the Father. It is often difficult to say whether Pie is speak 
 ing, as Man, of the honor of Union with Deity, and of the 
 graces which flowed from Deity, conferred upon His Man 
 hood ; or whether, as the Everlasting Son, He is describing 
 those natural and eternal Gifts which are inherent in His 
 Godhead, and which He receives from the Father, the Foun 
 tain or Source of Deity, not as a matter of grace or favor, 
 but in virtue of His Eternal Generation. As God, the Son 
 can do nothing of Himselfj and this not from lack of Power, 
 but because His Being is inseparable from That of the 
 Father. It is true of Christ as God in one sense it is true 
 of Him as Man in another that, as the Father hath life in 
 Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself. 
 But neither is an absolute harmony of the works of Christ 
 with the Mind and Will of the Father, nor a derivation of 
 the Divine Nature of Christ Itself from the Being of the 
 Father by an unbegun and unending Generation, destructive 
 of the force of our Lord s representation of His operative 
 energy as being on a par with that of the Father. For our 
 Lord s real sense is made plain by His subsequent statement 
 that the Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son; 
 that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. 
 (v. 22, 23). This claim is indeed no more than He had 
 already advanced, in bidding His followers trust Him and 
 love Him" (p. 181). 
 
278 CHRIST S STATEMENT THAT HE 
 
 Many theologians, sincere believers in Christ s Deity, have 
 explained the words, I and my Father are one (John x. 30), 
 of union in purpose and working, not of oneness in Substance, 
 and identity in Nature. Neander gave up the text for the 
 uses of controversial advocacy, when he wrote : " We under 
 stand by the oneness here spoken of, the oneness of Christ 
 with the Father in will and works, in virtue of which His 
 work is the work of the Father ; but this was founded on the 
 consciousness of His original and essential oneness w T ith th^ 
 Father, as is clear (?) from His testimonies in other places as 
 to His relations to God. In and of itself the language of 
 Christ contained nothing that might not have been said 
 from the stand-point of the Jewish idea ot the Messiah. But 
 the hostile spirits gladly seized the occasion to accuse Him 
 of blasphemy, and preparations were made to stone Him" 
 (Life of Christ). But Mr. Liddon resolutely commits him 
 self to an interpretation from which orthodox men of keener 
 discernment, or feebler faith, have deliberately retired. 
 
 " Our Lord reveals His absolute Oneness of Essence with 
 the Father. . . . He insists upon the blessedness of His true 
 followers. With Him they are secure ; no power in earth or 
 in heaven could pluck them out of His hand (ver. 28). A 
 second reason for the blessedness of His sheep follows : My 
 Father which gave them Me is a Greater Power than all ; * 
 and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father s Hand 
 (ver. 29). In these words our Lord repeats His previous 
 assurance of the security of His sheep, but He gives a dif 
 ferent reason for it. He had represented them as in His 
 own Hand. He now represents them as in the Hand of the 
 Almighty Father. How does He consolidate these two rea 
 sons which together assure His sheep of their security ? 
 By distinctly asserting His own oneness with the Father : I 
 and my Father are One Thing. Now what kind of unity is 
 that which the context obliges us to see in this solemn state- 
 
 * Against a very heavy balance of MSS. testimony, Mr. Liddon arbi 
 trarily puts the adjective greater in the neuter. The Vulgate supports him, 
 but the true reading is, pretty certainly, the masculine. 
 
279 
 
 ment ? Is it such a unity as that which our Lord desired for 
 His followers in His intercessory prayer, a unity of spiritual 
 communion, of reciprocal love, of common participation in 
 an imparted, heaven-sent Nature? (as in St. John xvii. 11, 22, 
 23.) Is it a unity of design and co-operation, such as that 
 which, in varying degrees, is shared by all true workers for 
 God? (1 Cor. iii. 8.) How would either of these lower uni 
 ties sustain the full sense of the context, which represents 
 the Hand of the Son as one with the Hand that is, with 
 the Love and Power of the Father, securing to the souls 
 of men an effectual preservation from eternal ruin ? A unity 
 like this must be a dynamic unity, as distinct from any mere 
 moral and intellectual union, such as might exist in a real 
 sense between a creature and its God. Deny this dynamic 
 unity, and you destroy the internal connection of the passage. 
 Admit this dynamic unity, and you admit, by necessary 
 implication, a unity of Essence. The Power of the Son, 
 which shields the redeemed from the foes of their salvation, 
 is the very Power of the Father ; and this identity of Power 
 is itself the outflow and the manifestation of a Oneness of 
 Nature" (pp. 182-184). 
 
 As usual, the text, and immediately preceding context, are 
 cleverly but palpably and grossly distorted. Jesus is not 
 made to say, that no one can, but that no one will, pluck His 
 sheep out of His hand. The ground of this predicted secu 
 rity is then stated : " My Father Who gave them to Me is 
 greater than all," &c. No one will pluck them out of Christ s 
 hand, because they are His Father s gift, and His Father 
 being greater than all (" a stupid truism" again ?), no one is 
 able to pluck them out of His Father s hand. In relation to 
 their safety, He and His Father are, in effect, one. To be by 
 gift of the Father in Christ s hand is to be in the Father s 
 hand. The climax of security is the Father s Almightiness. 
 But if Christ is Omnipotent God, as truly as the Father is, 
 the reference to the Father does not heighten the assurance 
 of safe-keeping ; the Father s guardianship adds no protec 
 tion, and the Father s giving is a merely formal and superfi 
 cial, if not quite an unintelligible, consignment. 
 
280 PROFESSOR NORTON S EXPLANATION. 
 
 Surely the employment of the neuter numeral in literal 
 English, one tiling tells rather against than for Mr. Liddon s 
 object. If the masculine or feminine form had been employed, 
 there would have been, so far, better reason for our surmising 
 Essential Oneness to have been predicated. With the mas 
 culine, it might have been urged that God was the noun in 
 agreement ; with the feminine, that nature should be sup 
 plied. And, more than all, the text would then have been 
 dissociated from those other texts which now so conclusively 
 help to fix its meaning. The neuter numeral is used in John 
 xvii. 11, 21-23, where Jesus prays that the disciples "may be 
 one thing, as He and the Father are one thing? It is used 
 likewise in 1 Cor. iii. 8 : " He that planteth and He that 
 watereth are one thing? The unity between the Father and 
 the Son must, moreover, upon any tenable explication, be of 
 a kind not at variance with the declared facts, that the Father 
 Who sent Jesus Christ is the Only True God / is greater 
 than the Son and that the Son can do nothing of Himself . 
 But a mind of thorough ecclesiastical culture is, perhaps, 
 competent to bend these enigmatical declarations into agree 
 ment with the profoundly precise significance embodied in 
 the neuter gender of a numeral. 
 
 Some observations, in the course of which Professor Nor 
 ton refers to John x. 30, are very judicious, and capable of 
 general application in the exposition of the Fourth Gospel, 
 if exposition is to be conducted on reasonable principles. 
 
 " Even where there is no peculiar boldness or strength of 
 expression in the original, we are liable to be deceived by a 
 want of analogy to our modes of speech. Figures and turns 
 of expression familiar in one language are strange in another ; 
 and an expression to which we are not accustomed strikes us 
 with more force, and seems more significant than one in com 
 mon use, of which the meaning is in fact the same. We are 
 very liable to mistake the purport of words which appear 
 under an aspect unknown or infrequent in our native tongue. 
 The declaration, I and My Father are one, may seem to us 
 at first sight almost too bold for a human being to use con- 
 
281 
 
 cerning God, merely because we are not accustomed to this 
 expression in grave discourse. But in familiar conversation 
 no one would misunderstand me, if, while transacting some 
 business as the agent of a friend, I should say, I and my 
 friend are one; meaning that I am fully empowered to 
 act as his representative" (Statement of Reasons, &c., Sec 
 tion 7). 
 
 Professor Stuart, arguing for the Deity of Christ against 
 Channing, wrote ( Third Letter), 
 
 " You will expect me, perhaps, to adduce John x. 30, I 
 and My Father are one. It is a clear case (?) that the Jews 
 here seem to have understood Christ as claiming equality 
 with God, or rather claiming to be God. (See verse 33.) 
 But I am not satisfied that the manner in which they often 
 expounded His words is a sure guide for our interpretation 
 of them at the present time. The malignant disposition 
 which they frequently displayed may well lead us to suspect 
 that they would, if possible, put such a construction on His 
 words as would subject Him to the imputation of blasphemy 
 or rebellion against the Roman government. I would ex 
 pound the words of Christ, therefore, independently of any 
 construction which His embittered enemies put upon them. 
 And, in the present case, it seems to me that the meaning of, 
 I and My Father are one, is simply, I and my Father are 
 united in counsel, design, and power." 
 
 Union in power does not, of course, denote identity of 
 power, or possession of equal energy and might, but co-op 
 erative union for a common end. Identity of power (quali 
 tative and quantitative) with God must, in strictness, imply 
 identity of Nature. 
 
 To the authority of the Jews as interpreters of Christ s 
 sayings, Mr. Liddon attaches a high value. He repeats the 
 well-worn adage, so pertinently rebuking the Arians, " the 
 Jews understood what the Arians do not understand." He 
 knows, and presumes the Author of the Fourth Gospel to 
 have known, how greatly malice sharpens the moral and 
 intellectual perceptions. The moral disposition of the Jews 
 
282 CHRIST MISUNDERSTOOD BY THE JEWS. 
 
 accounts for the superior keenness of their intelligence, as 
 compared with that of the Apostles and disciples. " They 
 understood our Lord to assume Divine honors, and proceeded 
 to execute the capital sentence decreed against blasphemy by 
 the Mosaic law. His words gave them a fair ground for 
 saying that, being Man, He made Himself God (ver. 
 33)." 
 
 Now the reply of Jesus (ver. 36), to all appearance, testi 
 fies the imputation of blasphemy did not rest specifically on 
 His claiming unity with God, but (as in an instance already 
 discussed) on His calling God in some special sense His 
 Father. The Jews misconception, real or feigned, of 
 the saying, I and My Father are one, was therefore, as it 
 would seem, less gross than Mr. Liddon s, and lie cannot be 
 sure he is sustained by their reputable alliance. But the 
 answer ascribed to Jesus, if it was not studiedly evasive and 
 diplomatic, excludes the blunders both of His ancient adver 
 saries and His modern expositor. He referred to the Origi 
 nator and Cause of the good works He had shown, they 
 were /row (tx) the Father, and He asked for which of these 
 works the Jews menaced Him (ver. 32). They answered 
 "for a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, and 
 because thou, being a man, makest thyself a god " (deog with 
 out the Article. Observe the use of the Article with Oso^ 
 in the immediate context, and compare its use in verse 18). 
 The sense would perhaps be more accurately conveyed to an 
 English ear, by because thou, being human, makest thyself 
 Superhuman or Divine. Certainly the Jews did not mean 
 that Jesus affirmed Himself to be individually, in His. own 
 person, the Almighty One. They did not, even with their 
 stimulated insight, detect His saying to be in effect, " I am 
 Jehovah, the God of Israel." Such depth of penetration was 
 a stage in the unfolding of Christian discernment. " Jesus 
 answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said ye are 
 gods f If he called them gods unto whom the word of God 
 came (and the Scripture cannot be made void), say ye 
 of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent unto the 
 
CHRIST S REFERENCE TO PSALM LXXXII. 6. 283 
 
 world, Thou blasphemest ; because I said I am a Son of 
 God ? " * 
 
 Psalm Ixxxii. has, in verse 1, God judgeth among gods ; in 
 verse 6, I said ye are gods, and all of you sons of the Most 
 High (comp. Luke i. 32). The Septuagint Version, of course, 
 marks the distinction between the God and gods, by prefix 
 ing and omitting the Article. The reasoning, such as it is, 
 in connection with the quotation ascribed to our Lord, seem 
 ingly turns upon the fact that gods are synonymous witli 
 sons of the Most High, and that the words cited would 
 inevitably recall to Jewish minds the more apposite words 
 left uncited. If unjust judges could be called gods and sons 
 of the Highest, He whom the Father had consecrated and 
 sent could not justly incur the imputation of blasphemy by 
 calling himself a son of God. The reasoning implies that 
 Christ would not have blasphemed had He called Himself 
 6eb^, since in official dignity and mission He was superior to 
 those who were in Scripture called dsoi. He did not, how 
 ever, employ that title, but the humbler and more customary 
 designation, son of God, which could then only be equivalent 
 to dtog, when, as in the instance quoted, the appellation was 
 applied in some lower, relative, representative sense. By 
 assuming Jesus to be Very God, we surrender the right to 
 criticise any words which we hold to be really His, but if, 
 being truly God, He could use the language quoted, in order 
 to evade the charge of claiming to be what lie truly was, 
 then clearly the Divine standard of truthfulness is amon^ 
 the mysteries of the Divine Nature, and is no pattern or 
 standard for mankind. Taking for granted Mr. Liddon s two 
 suppositions, (1) that Jesus, in asserting His oneness with 
 the Father,. intended to reveal His own Deity; (2) that the 
 Jews penetrated His meaning, and accordingly accused Him 
 
 * As a rule in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus, when naming Himself Son 
 and Son of God, uses the Article ; in x. 36 He does not, and I translate 
 accordingly. If Son of God was a familiar and recognized Messianic 
 title, the absence of the Article would make no practical difference, unless 
 the context supplied reasons for supposing that the omission was designed 
 to indicate a distinction in sense. 
 
284 UNDUE DEDUCTION FROM THE TEXT. 
 
 of identifying Himself with the Nature of the Almighty, 
 His expostulation, judged by the rules of human reason and 
 morality, would be mere guileful evasion and deceit, because 
 it carries every semblance of repudiating an imputation 
 which, upon the suppositions above stated, was in all main 
 points perfectly legitimate and true. No honest and moder 
 ately intelligent man, deducing from Scripture only, would, 
 I think, venture to affirm our Lord s reply was calculated to 
 suo-jrest to His hearers the sense : " I am indeed God, and 
 
 &O 
 
 do not therefore blaspheme when I announce my Unity in 
 Nature with the Father." 
 
 But Mr. Liddon s entire argument, apart from its other fal 
 lacies, appears to me to rest on the substitution of a fiction 
 of his own for the specific reproach urged by the Jews, who, 
 according to the terms of their accusation, and of our Lord s 
 answer, censured Him because He, being, as they considered, 
 merely human (compare John vii. 27), claimed to be Super 
 human, by claiming to be, in some peculiar sense, Son of 
 God. Good declamation is wasted in the sentences : 
 
 " Who then shall anticipate the horror of His soul or the 
 fire of His words, when he is once made aware of the ter 
 rible misapprehension to which His language has given rise 
 in the minds around Him: Thou, being a man, makest 
 Thyself God ? The charge was literally true ; being hu 
 man, He did make Himself God. Christians believe He 
 only made Himself That which He is. But if He is not 
 God, where does He make any adequate repudiation of a 
 construction of His words so utterly derogatory to the great 
 Creator, so necessarily abhorrent to a good man s thought ? " 
 (p. 199.) 
 
 It would be far more to the purpose to ask : What con 
 ceivable relevance is there in the citation from the language 
 of the eighty-second Psalm, if our Lord s relation to the 
 Father was not only nearer and more elevated in degree 
 than, but utterly different in kind from, that of the theocratic 
 chiefs of ancient Israel ? Things absolutely diverse in kind 
 are not mutually illustrative, except in the hands of a bad 
 
" BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, T AM." 285 
 
 reasoner or a cunning verbal trickster. Here again Mr. Lid- 
 don, unhappily for his own reputation, shows himself to be 
 not altogether blind, " Our Lord s quotation justified His 
 language only, and not His full meaning, which, upon gain 
 ing the ear of the people, He again proceeded to assert." 
 The imagined re-assertion is in the remaining clauses of 
 Christ s vindication of Himself from the reproach of blas 
 phemy : " If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me 
 not. But if I do them, though ye believe not Me, be 
 lieve the works ; that ye may know and understand, that 
 the Father is in Me, and I in Him " (x. 37, 38). The con 
 cluding words are, to Mr. Liddon s mind, "expressive of our 
 Lord s sharing not merely a dynamical, but an essential 
 Unity with the Father." But, presuming the words to have 
 the force Mr. Liddon awards to them, will he explain the 
 reciprocal indwelling of Christ and His disciples, as enun 
 ciated in John vi. 56; xiv. 20 ; xv. 4; xvii. 21, 23, 26 ; and 
 give some valid reason for subjecting phrases of one and the 
 same cast to totally different interpretations ? 
 
 Like a skilful strategist, Mr. Liddon gives the boldest front 
 to arguments of more than ordinary weakness. In treating 
 the words, Before Abraham was, I am (John viii. 58), he 
 says : 
 
 "In these tremendous words, the Speaker institutes a 
 double contrast, in respect both of the duration and of the 
 mode of His existence, between Himself and the great an 
 cestor of Israel. Before Abraham icas born. Abraham, 
 then, had come into existence at some given point of time. 
 Abraham did not exist until his parents gave him birth. 
 But I am. Here is simple existence, with no note of begin 
 ning or end. Our Lord says not, Before Abraham was, I 
 was, but I am. He claims pre-existence indeed, but He 
 does not merely claim pre-existence : He unveils a conscious 
 ness of Eternal Being. He speaks as One on Whom time 
 has no effect, and for Whom it has no meaning. He is the 
 I AM of ancient Israel; He knows no past, as He knows no 
 future ; He is unbeginning, unending Being ; He is the eter- 
 
286 EXPOSITION OF A PREJUDICED MIND. 
 
 nal Now. This is the plain sense of His language, and 
 perhaps the most instructive commentary upon its force is 
 to be found in the violent expedients to which Humanitarian 
 writers have been driven in order to evade it" (pp. 187, 188). 
 
 This exposition is the product of a prejudiced imagination, 
 and on every ground, grammatical and other, is not what 
 the guidance of Scripture alone suggests. Before it can be 
 fairly imposed, the doctrine it conveys should be so settled 
 and determined as to invest with probability a merely pos 
 sible sense. As regards the grammar, the present tense of 
 the verb substantive is often, in the Fourth Gospel and else 
 where in the Sacred Writings, equivalent to the past ; for 
 examples, see Greek, in John v. 13, 15; vi. 24, 64; xii. 9; 
 xiv. 9 ; xv. 27 ; xx. 14 ; xxi. 4, 12 ; Acts ix. 26 (comp. Sept. 
 Psalm Ixxxix. 2; Jer. i. 5). Winer makes the saying, "Be 
 fore Abraham was, I am," an illustration of his remark: 
 " Sometimes a Past Tense is included in the Present, when, 
 for instance, a verb expresses a state which commenced at 
 an earlier period, but still continues a state in its whole 
 duration" (Gram. New Test., Sec. xl. 2). The rendering, 
 ^Before Abraham was (or was born), Ticas, is therefore not 
 merely permissible, but so highly probable that weighty 
 objections are required to exclude it. Jesus claimed pre- 
 existence, either actual, or in the Mind and purposes of God. 
 But actual pre-existence, even before the world was (xvii. 
 5), is not necessarily the Everlasting, Uncaused existence of 
 Deity ; and its assertion, taken alone, cannot mount higher 
 than the Apocalyptic title, the beginning of the creation of 
 God (Rev. iii. 14). 
 
 The Gospel "according to John" must, I conceive, be ad 
 mitted both to affirm and imply Christ s veritable pre-exist 
 ence, and, therefore, I have no inclination to argue that 
 any thing less than really antecedent Being is the more prob 
 able sense of John viii. 58.* But pre-existence need not, as 
 
 * I do not forget how facts and events designed and pre-ordained by 
 the Almighty are frequently described in Scripture as though they had 
 actually existed previously to their realization. Not to mention examples 
 
BEARING OF EXODUS III. 14. 287 
 
 Mr. Liddon concedes, imply true Divinity ; and the attempt 
 to establish, from rational and Scriptural considerations, that 
 the words in question mean more than pre-existence, must, 
 in any hands, be a ridiculous failure. 
 
 For connecting Christ s saying with Exod. iii. 14, there is 
 absolutely no justification whatever. The Hebrew title in 
 that passage is either, I am What I am ; or I will be What 
 I will be: "say unto the children of Israel, I Am, or I Will 
 .Be, hath sent," &c. The Septuagint Version, and the Vul 
 gate, render : " I am He Who is. . . . He Who is hath 
 sent," &G. Now the distinctive force and significance of the 
 title are certainly not in the fragment I am, but either in 
 the whole title, or in the portion He Who is. The supposi 
 tion that Jesus appropriated, or was understood, even by the 
 Jews, to appropriate a most sacred and peculiar designation 
 of the Self-existent, Immutable God, is too arbitrary and im 
 probable to merit examination. Take I am as a designation 
 of the Almighty One, equivalent to Jehovah, and the saying 
 of Jesus ceases to be a proposition : " Before Abraham was, 
 Jehovah" It is perfectly futile to contend Christ s words 
 had the same force as if He had said, lam Who I am j or 
 I am lie Who is. I am is far too common and indispen 
 sable a form of language to be a name or appellation, and, 
 when more than a bare statement of existence, must be sup 
 plemented into a proposition, as the context suggests. And 
 the whole connection of the passage demonstrates that, if 
 more was intended than the bare affirmation of existence 
 anterior to Abraham, it was the avowal of Messiah ship. 
 
 Beginning at verse 12, we learn that the self-assertions of 
 Jesus respecting His own office, relation to God, and mission 
 
 from the Old Testament, see Rom. iv. 16, 17 ; Eph. i. 3, 4 ; 2 Tim. i. 9 ; 
 Tit. i. 2 ; Rev. xiii. 8. Language of this type is characteristically He 
 braistic, and Professor Norton (Statement of Reasons, c., Third Edition, 
 p. 283) illustrates its use by instances from Rabbinical sources ; but I 
 cannot doubt that the writer of the latest Gospel teaches Christ s pre- 
 existence. It seems to me as unreasonable, to deny he teaches Christ s 
 pre-existence, as it is unreasonable to assert he teaches Christ s God 
 head. 
 
288 THE CONTEXT EXPLAINS THE TEXT. 
 
 from Above, elicited from the sceptical Jews the inquiry : 
 "Who art thou? And Jesus said unto them: Even what I 
 said unto you from the beginning ; " or, according to a pref 
 erable translation, "Altogether what I say unto you." (I 
 am entirely what in my discourses I profess to be. Winer, 
 Sec. liv. 1.) Our Lord then went on to say, that " He did 
 nothing of Himself, but was instructed and sent by the 
 Father, and had the Father s presence with Him, because He 
 did always those things which pleased the Father" (ver. 
 25-30). He reproached His enemies (ver. 40) with seeking 
 to kill Him, a man who had spoken to them the truth, which 
 He had heard from God ; and He met their boast that God 
 was their Father with the reasoning, "If God were your 
 Father, ye would love Me, for I came forth, and am come 
 from God ; neither came I of myself, but He sent Me" (ver. 
 42). Having upbraided the Jews with diabolical parentage 
 and diabolical deeds, He disclaimed a counter charge of 
 having a devil, and said, " I honor my Father, and ye do 
 dishonor Me. But I seek not my own glory ; there is One 
 that seekoth and judgeth. Verily, verily, I say unto you, if 
 a man keep my saying he shall never see death" (ver. 49, 51). 
 This made the Jews renew their abuse : " Now we know 
 that thou hast a devil. Abraham died, and the prophets ; 
 and thou sayest if a man keep my saying he shall never 
 taste death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, 
 who died ? and the prophets died ; whom makest thou thy 
 self ? " According to the Evangelist, Jesus answered, " If I 
 glorify Myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father that 
 glorifieth me, of Whom ye say, He is our God : and ye have 
 not known Him ; but I know Him ; and if I should say, I 
 know Him not, I shall be a liar like unto you; but I know 
 Him, and keep His saying. Your father Abraham rejoiged 
 that he should see my day; and he saw it and was glad. 
 The Jews, therefore, said unto Him, Thou art not yet fifty 
 years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto 
 them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was 
 
EXAMPLES OF THE PHRASE, " I AM." 289 
 
 born, I am? or, amending the translation, since the verb 
 substantive is coupled with the mention of past time, " be 
 fore Abraham was born, I was" (ver. 52-58). Now, only 
 in our Lord s character of Messiah could Abraham, by faith, 
 have " seen His day," and this fact, together with the whole 
 scope of the context, obliges us, if we regard Christ s asser 
 tion as a partially expressed proposition, to see in it a declar 
 ation of Messiahship. I do not dwell on the virtual negations 
 of Godhead with which the context must be admitted to 
 abound, unless it was dictated by an inspiration of conceal 
 ment and perplexity paving the way for the subsequent and 
 higher revealing functions of the Church. The identical 
 expression, I am, occurs in this very same eighth chapter, 
 and in other places of the Fourth Gospel, in a manner which 
 alone is sufficient to evince the absurdly untenable nature of 
 the interpretation Mr. Liddon endeavors to enforce. " If ye 
 believe not that I am, ye shall die in your sins" (ver. 24). 
 "When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye 
 know that I am" (ver. 28). "Jesus said unto her, I am, 
 who speak unto you" (iv. 26). "And he saith unto them, 
 I am y be not afraid" (vi. 20). "I tell you before it come 
 to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I 
 am" (xiii. 19). "Whom seek ye? They answered Him, 
 Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith upon them, I am. As soon 
 then as He said unto them, I am, they went backward and 
 fell to the ground. He asked them, therefore, again, Whom 
 seek ye ? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth ; Jesus answered, 
 I told you that I am" (xviii. 4-8). In all these instances, 
 the supplementary idea requisite to complete the sense is 
 unmistakably indicated by the context. But if I am is to 
 be understood as a most sacred and yet familiar Divine title, 
 then according to Mark xiii. 6, and Luke xxi. 8, the false 
 Christs were to claim Deity; a blind man also, who had been 
 healed, used dangerously ambiguous language when he said, 
 lam (John ix. 9; comp. Sept. Isa. xlvii. 8, 10). 
 
 When these considerations are duly Weighed, " the plain 
 
 19 
 
290 AN UNWARRANTED CONJECTURE. 
 
 sense of Christ s language " is seen to be either the simple 
 assertion of pre-Abrahamic existence, or the avowal of 
 Messiahship. The conjecture of an intention to announce 
 Eternal, Self-existent Being is, if rationally measured by 
 Scripture evidence, wildly unwarranted and improbable. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Supposed Evidence that the Sanhedrim condemned Christ for claiming 
 to be God. The Title Son of God never, in Jewish estimation, equiv 
 alent to God, or more than a Messianic designation. Force of the 
 Exclamation attributed to the Apostle Thomas when he was con 
 vinced of Christ s Resurrection. The Argument from certain say 
 ings in the Synoptical Gospels assumed to be closely similar to 
 sayings found in the " Gospel according to John." Baseless, repre 
 hensible, and irreverent character of the Dilemma, " If Jesus Christ 
 is not God, He is not morally good." Language ascribed to Christ 
 Himself is, plainly and often, not rationally reconcilable with the 
 Dogma of His Godhead. 
 
 WITH his accustomed hardihood, Mr. Liddon affirms : " Noth 
 ing is more certain than that, whatever was the dominant 
 motive that prompted our Lord s apprehension, the Sanhe 
 drim condemned Him because He claimed Divinity. The 
 members of the court stated this before Pilate, " We have a 
 law, and by our law He ought to die, because He made Him 
 self the Son of God" (St. John xix. 7). Their language 
 would have been meaningless if they had understood by the 
 " Son of-God " nothing more than the ethical or theocratic Son- 
 ship of their own ancient Kings and saints. If the Jews held 
 Christ to be a false Messiah, a false prophet, a blasphemer, it 
 was because He claimed literal Divinity. True, the Messiah 
 was to have been Divine. But the Jews had secularized the 
 Messianic promises ; and the Sanhedrim held Jesus Christ to 
 be worthy of death under the terms of the Mosaic law, as 
 expressed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Lev. xxiv. 16; 
 Deut. xiii. 5)." [For the very doubtful appropriateness of 
 these references, consult the passages themselves.] " After 
 the witnesses had delivered their various and inconsistent tes 
 timonies, the high priest arose and said, I adjure Thee by the 
 living God, that Thou tell us whether Thou be the Christ, 
 
292 WHY THE SANHEDRIM 
 
 the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said ; 
 nevertheless, I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son 
 of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in 
 the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent his clothes, 
 saying, He hath spoken blasphemy (St. Matt. xxvi. 63-65). 
 The blasphemy did not consist either in the assumption of 
 the title Son of Man, or in the claim to be Messiah, or even, 
 excepting indirectly, in that which by the terms of Daniel s 
 prophecy was involved in Messiahship, namely, the commis 
 sion to judge the world. It was the further claim to be the 
 Son of God, not in any moral or theocratic, but in the natural 
 sense, at which the high priest and his coadjutors professed 
 to be so deeply shocked. The Jews felt, as our Lord intended, 
 that the Son of Man in Daniel s prophecy could not but be 
 Divine ; they knew what he meant by appropriating such 
 words as applicable to Himself" (pp^.190, 191). 
 
 Here, again, there are traces that Mr. Liddon sees the diffi 
 culty, which by a clever exercise of his talent for special plead- 
 ership he endeavors to disguise. In what acceptation could 
 the Jews have felt that the Son of Man, as described in Dan. 
 vii. 13, 14, was Divine ? He is not put on an equality with 
 the Ancient of Days ; there is no particle of excuse for iden 
 tifying Him with the Most High ; and there is nowhere any 
 approach to evidence that in Jewish estimation either Son of 
 Man or Son of God meant God in the full, true, proper 
 sense of the term as applied by the Jews to Jehovah, the 
 Sole Personal Object of their faith and worship. What is 
 " the natural sense " of the term Son in relation to God ? 
 and where in the Canon of Scripture is there any shadow 
 of warrant for understanding the term to denote a relation 
 different in kind from that of produced intelligent Beings, 
 either celestial or human? Will Mr. Liddon deny the 
 strictest Monotheism to have been the fundamental basis of 
 Jewish conceptions of the Divine Entity; and, if he will not, 
 what sort of Co-eternal, Co-equal, Consubstantial, and yet 
 distinctly Personal Sonship, does he hold to be I do not 
 say familiarly, but possibly associable with a scrupulously 
 
CONDEMNED CHRIST. 293 
 
 jealous faith in One God ? The chief priests and rulers may 
 have thought Christ to be guilty of blasphemy when He 
 hinted at, or alleged, the possession of Sonship in an ante 
 cedent celestial nature, because such an allegation involved 
 high claims to deference and authority as the Ambassador 
 and Representative of God. Such claims would appear to 
 them impious intrusions into the sphere of the Divine gov 
 ernment, and therefore derogatory to the Divine honor, but 
 there is no pretext for supposing even the blundering spite 
 attributed to Jews to have been so blundering as to charge 
 Jesus with arrogating to Himself identity with the Eternal 
 One. 
 
 Mr. Liddon, in common with many controversialists on his 
 side, indulges in the conjecture that the inquiry, "tell us 
 whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God " (Matt. xxvi. 
 63), does not intimate that, in the opinion of the high priest, 
 the Christ was the Son of God. He presumes the titles to 
 be distinct, and our Lord to have claimed them both in their 
 separate meanings. The word and, which ought to have 
 stood between the titles, is unfortunately missing ; but the 
 requirements of Orthodox argument show us how to correct 
 a clause which has no various readings. In his reply (ver. 
 64, and Mark xiv. 62), Jesus takes the undoubtedly Messianic 
 appellation, Son of Man, which, combined with the form 
 of the imputation in John xix. 7, implies that Son of Man 
 and Son of God were both recognized Messianic designations. 
 The record in Luke xxii. 69, 70, is varied ; and the announce 
 ment, " the Son of Man will be seated on the right hand of 
 the power of God," at once evokes from the whole assembled 
 council the demand, "Art thou then the Son of God?" 
 plainly suggesting that Son of God was, in the opinion of 
 the Sanhedrim, a Messianic title. 
 
 From Matt, xxvii. 54, we learn how, " when the centurion, 
 and they that were with him watching Jesus, saw the earth 
 quake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, 
 saying, Truly this was the Son of God." Are we to suppose 
 them to have meant that Jesus was the Messiah, or that He 
 
294 THE PHRASE, 
 
 was God? By St. Mark s narrative (xv. 39) the saying is 
 ascribed to the centurion alone, and he is made to say ex 
 plicitly, " truly this Man was the Son of God ; " a form of 
 speech which may be a recognition of Messiahship, but is 
 hardly a recognition of Deity. St. Luke s narrative (xxiii. 
 47) makes the centurion say, " certainly this man was right 
 eous." It is to be regretted the circumstances of the case 
 forbid the application of the ordinary process for reconciling 
 differences, and will not permit us to maintain all the inspired 
 accounts to be verbatim accurate, the centurion and those 
 with him having spoken once, and the centurion alone twice. 
 
 The derisive taunts of the passers-by, and of the mocking 
 priests and scribes, are related by the three Synoptists with 
 a general, but by no means minute, agreement (Matt, xxvii. 
 40-43; Mark xv. 29-32; Luke xxiii. 35-37). The assertors 
 of verbal inspiration, no doubt, have harmonizing expedients 
 capable of eliminating all appearance of discrepancy in details, 
 but, assuming the verbal exactness of St. Matthew s record, 
 there is an utter absence of indication that Son of God was 
 equivalent to God, or other than a Messianic description. 
 
 I may add : the Fourth Gospel Mr. Liddon s paramount 
 authority when obscurities are to be illuminated to some 
 extent witnesses the Jews had not so " secularized the Messi 
 anic promises" as to popularize the notion that Christ was 
 not to be Superhuman. " We know this man whence he is ; 
 but when the Christ corneth, no man knoweth whence He is" 
 (John vii. 27), are words which can hardly point to the place 
 of Christ s birth (comp. vers. 41, 42). The aim of the Gospel, 
 as stated in the concluding words of the twentieth chapter, 
 is to create the belief " that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
 God" where the discriminative and is again wanting. See 
 also John xi. 27, with which read verse 22. 
 
 In seeking to ascertain what was, in Christ s own earthly 
 lifetime, the full meaning of the phrase Son of God, as 
 descriptive of Him, we cannot overlook that confession of 
 St. Peter s, which was, according to the First Gospel, though 
 not according to the others, made in the words : Thou art 
 
A MESSIANIC TITLE. 295 
 
 the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. xvi. 16 ; comp. 
 Mark viii. 29 ; Luke ix. 20 ; John vi. 69, with correct read 
 ing). Mr. Liddon assumes the verbal fidelity of St. Mat 
 thew s single record, and argues : 
 
 " If St. Peter had intended only to repeat another and a 
 practically equivalent title of the Messiah, he would not have 
 equalled the earlier confession of a Nathaniel (John i. 49). 
 or have surpassed the subsequent admission of a Caiaphas 
 (Matt. xxvi. 63). If we are to construe his language thus, il 
 is altogether impossible to conceive why flesh and blood 
 could not have revealed to him so obvious and trivial an 
 inference from his previous knowledge, or why either the 
 Apostle or his confession should have been solemnly desig 
 nated as the selected Rock on which the Redeemer would 
 build His imperishable Church" (p. 11). But difficulties too 
 formidable to be ignored, without moral discredit, lie in the 
 way of this bold assumption. Not only are the words, /Son 
 of the living G-od, no part of St. Peter s confession as reported 
 by three Evangelists, but the one Evangelist who does report 
 them, makes them, to all appearance, a practical equivalent, 
 or at most an explanatory extension, of Messiah s name. The 
 confession is not "the Christ and the Son." The significance 
 
 O 
 
 introduced by separating the designations is entirely the 
 achievement of interpretation. Our Lord Himself, by the 
 plain tenor of the narrative, saw in Peter s words an acknowl 
 edgment of Messiahship, and charged His disciples that they 
 should tell no one He was the Christ (Matt. xvi. 20 ; comp. 
 Mark viii. 30 ; Luke ix. 21). The Fourth Gospel, it must be 
 conceded, makes the knowledge of His Messiahship familiar, 
 and relates how He had Himself, from the very commence 
 ment of His ministry, proclaimed in the freest way His Mes 
 sianic character. There is, in fact, a glaring and irremovable 
 discrepancy on this topic, between the last written and the 
 earlier Gospels, and to utilize any feature of this discrepancy, 
 in the elucidation of Peter s confession, is a remarkable stroke 
 of expository daring and skill. But if St. Peter, in making 
 the solemn, profoundly significant, and heaven-inspired reply, 
 
296 THE EXCLAMATION ASCRIBED TO THOMAS. 
 
 which only one Evangelist has correctly transmitted, meant 
 all that Mr. Liddon imagines, how are we to explain the cir 
 cumstance that neither he nor any of " the other disciples in 
 whose name he replied " ever exhibited the awe-struck vener 
 ation of men who knew the Master whose companions they 
 were to be Very God, the Almighty Father s Equal, in human 
 form ? Where is there, in the recorded conduct of Apostles 
 and disciples, a single trace of the effect which the strong 
 suspicion, not to say the faith, that Jesus Christ was indeed 
 the Eternal God, must inevitably have produced ? That His 
 first followers loved and revered their Great Master, believing 
 Him to have been sent by God, and to have God with Him, 
 will not be disputed, but that they believed Him to be Him 
 self God is a conclusion which the Evangelical Histories 
 absolutely refuse to yield. 
 
 Surveying the facts to which I have referred, it is, I think, 
 quite manifestly a gratuitous and untenable opinion that the 
 Jews employed, or supposed our Lord to have employed, 
 the title Son of God to signify " literal Divinity," that is, 
 possession of the One Eternal, Uncreated, Omnipotent 
 Nature. And if Caiaphas, and his fellow priests and rulers, 
 had employed it in this sense, in what respect would Peter s 
 confession have " surpassed their admission " ? In his Fourth 
 Lecture, Mr. Liddon contends that members of the Sanhe 
 drim saw what he conceives to have been the full sense of the 
 designation Son of God, and condemned Christ for claiming 
 to be Divine (i.e., God) ; but, in his First Lecture, he refers 
 to the language of Caiaphas (Matt. xxvi. 63) as of more cir 
 cumscribed meaning than Peter s confession. Is there not 
 inconsistency here ? 
 
 The exclamation ascribed to Thomas, My Lord, and my 
 God (John xx. 28), Mr. Liddon (Lect. vii.) calls an adoring 
 confession, and pre-eminently the language of adoration. If 
 he concludes Thomas to have been convinced Jesus was the 
 Lord God Himself, and to have expressed the conviction, 
 he defies every inference which the context suggests. The 
 evidence offered to Thomas was not evidence that Jesus was 
 
DESCRIPTIONS OF GODHEAD. 297 
 
 God, but that Jesus had risen from the grave. The fact 
 which the faith of the previously unconvinced Apostle recog 
 nized was the fact of Christ s Resurrection. Does that fact 
 prove Christ to be God? Our Lord accepted the acknowl 
 edgment in strict relation to the circumstances out of which 
 it grew, and pronounced a blessing not on those who with 
 out having seen His wounded body believe He is the Immor 
 tal God, but on those who without having seen believe 
 He rose again from the dead. If after His Resurrection, 
 or at any period of their intercourse with our Lord on 
 earth, all or any of His Apostles entertained the persuasion 
 they were associating with their God and Creator, their state 
 of mind must have imprinted deeply corresponding marks 
 upon their conduct But, beyond dispute, such marks are 
 totally wanting, and against the absence of them the isolated 
 phraseology of an excited exclamation cannot for one moment 
 be rationally set. 
 
 If the Absolute G-ood and the Absolute Truth are compre 
 hensive descriptions of Godhead, then it is an error to fancy 
 descriptions synonymous with them are applied to Christ in 
 the Fourth Gospel ; and a double misrepresentation to say, 
 as Mr. Liclclon does, in his Fifth Lecture : " When we weigh 
 the language of the first three Evangelists, it will be found 
 that Christ is represented by it as the Absolute Good and the 
 Absolute Truth not less distinctly than in St. John." To 
 support this misrepresentation we have some choice speci 
 mens of exposition. " It is on this account that He is exhi 
 bited as in conflict, not with subordinate or accidental forms 
 of evil, but with the evil principle itself with the Prince of 
 Evil. I beheld Satan as lightning fallen from heaven 
 (St. Luke x. 18). The temptation by Satan (St. Matt. iv. 
 1-11) : If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, &c. (St. 
 Matt. xii. 27-29). The field is the world; the good seed 
 are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the chil 
 dren of the wicked one, &c. (xiii. 38, 39) " (p. 251). 
 
 Read the passages referred to, as they stand in the Gospels, 
 and the ridiculous folly of connecting them, even indirectly, 
 
298 SUPPOSED IMPLICATION OF DEITY 
 
 with claims to Godhead or inferences of Godhead, is palpa 
 ble. If Mr. Liddon was so disinterested as to have no respect 
 for his own intellectual reputation, when he devoted himself 
 to the occupation of defending from untenable grounds the 
 Church s faith, he might have respected his audience. But 
 he goes on, in the same strain : " And, as the Absolute Good, 
 Christ tests the moral worth or worthlessiiess of men by 
 their acceptance or rejection, not of His doctrine, but of His 
 Person. It is St. Matthew who records such sentences as 
 the following: Be not ye called Rabbi; for One is your 
 Master, even Christ (xxiii. 8) ; He that loveth father or 
 mother more than Me is not worthy of Me (x. 37) ; 
 Whosoever shall confess Me before men, him will I con 
 fess also before My Father (x. 32 ; St. Luke xii. 8) ; c Come 
 unto Me, all ye that labor, and I will give you rest ; Take 
 My yoke upon you, and learn of Me (xi. 28, 29). In St. 
 Matthew, then, Christ speaks as One Who knows Himself 
 to be a universal and infallible Teacher in spiritual things ; 
 Who demands submission of all men, and at whatever cost or 
 sacrifice ; Who offers to mankind those deepest consolations 
 which are sought from all others in vain. Nor is it other 
 wise with St. Luke and St. Mark" (p. 252). 
 
 Differences of reading are here of little moment, but Mr. 
 Liddon must be aware the probably true reading in the first 
 of the texts he quotes is, " Be not ye called Rabbi ; for One 
 is your Teacher (fotfacrxttAot, )." The name Christ is not men 
 tioned, and our Lord went on consecutively, " And all ye 
 are brethren. And call none your father upon the earth ; for 
 One is your Father, the Heavenly. Neither be ye called 
 leaders ; * for one is your Leader, the Christ." The highest 
 title and the supreme honor are reserved for the Father in 
 heaven. The disciples are forbidden to be like the self- 
 exalting Scribes and Pharisees, in appropriating names of 
 authority and distinction ; and, in matters of religion and 
 
 * The term used may be Guide, Leader, or Teacher. To mark the 
 difference from the other term (ver. 8), I give the more radical and literal 
 meaning. 
 
IN CERTAIN SYNOPTICAL SAYINGS. 299 
 
 conscience, they are forbidden to recognize any right to 
 childlike, implicit obedience, except the right of God. The 
 appellation they are forbidden to give is manifestly, in its 
 spiritual aspect, of higher import than the customary precep 
 torial appellations they are forbidden to accept ; and I am 
 at a loss to understand why Mr. Liddon should have referred 
 to the passage, unless he hoped to catch the ear with a sem 
 blance of argument unfit for the mind to investigate. 
 
 Matt. x. 32 and 37 are, of course, to be studied with their 
 contexts. They demand confession of Christ, and self-deny 
 ing submission to Him, as the God-sent Messenger and 
 Instructor, and they stand in a connection which clearly 
 points to One greater and more exalted than Christ even 
 the Father in heaven Who sent Him. Our Lord enforces 
 the duty of receiving those whom He sends, by the state 
 ment, "He that rcceiveth you receiveth Me, and he that 
 receiveth Me receiveth Him Who sent Me" (ver. 40), where 
 He either identifies His messengers with Himself in the same 
 way in which He identifies Himself with the Father, or He 
 implies that, as He is superior to His messengers, so the 
 Father by Whom He was sent is superior to Him. No other 
 interpretation is possible, unless we are able to bring in, from 
 extraneous sources, clear light and fixed conclusion. 
 
 In making a joint reference to Luke xii. 8, did Mr. Liddon 
 fail to notice how the confession on the part of the Son of 
 Man is there said to be, before the angels of God, instead of, 
 as in Matthew, before my Father Who is in Heaven ? 
 
 In studying Matthew xi. 28, 29, the surroundings of the 
 passage must again be our guide. Perhaps it is enough to 
 add the clause Mr. Liddon omits : because I am meek and 
 lowly in heart / and to ask with relation to whom this meek 
 ness and humility existed. If they existed towards God, 
 then it is difficult to see how the text, in which they are 
 adduced as reasons for taking Christ s yoke and learning of 
 Him, can at all help to bring into view His Personal God 
 head. Are not the words learn of Me, &c., explanatory of 
 the preceding invitation and promise, and indicative of one 
 
300 SUPPOSED IMPLICATION OF DEITY 
 
 whose standing is that of Instructor and Example, not that 
 of Omnipotent Sovereign and Benefactor? Only by an 
 intellect rarely gifted, or peculiarly conformed, can the pas 
 sage be perceived to involve claims of Deity. 
 
 "If the title of Divinity is more explicitly put forward in 
 St. John, the rights which imply it are insisted on in words 
 recorded by the earlier Evangelists. The Synoptists repre 
 sent our Lord, Who is the object of Christian faith no less 
 than the Founder of Christianity, as designing the whole 
 world for the field of Hfcs conquests (St. Matt, xxviii. 19 ; St. 
 Mark xvi. 15 ; St. Luke xxiv. 47 ; comp. St. Matt. xiii. 32, 
 38, 41 ; xxiv. 14), and as claiming the submission of every 
 individual human soul. All are to be brought to disciple- 
 ship. Only then will the judgment come, when the Gospel 
 has been announced to the whole circle of the nations (St. 
 Matt. xxiv. 14). Christ, the Good and the Truth Incarnate, 
 must reign throughout all time (St. Luke xxii. 69). He 
 knows, according to the Synoptists no less than St. John, 
 that He is a perfect and final Revelation of God. He is the 
 Centrepoint of the history and of the hopes of man. None 
 shall advance beyond Him ; the pretension to surpass Him is 
 but the symptom of disastrous error and reaction (St. Matt, 
 xxiv. 23-26, &c.) " (pp. 252, 253). 
 
 That Jesus, conscious of His own mission from God, and 
 of the adaptation to the needs of Humanity of the few but 
 pregnant spiritual and ethical precepts which He promul 
 gated, may have looked forward to the universal spreading 
 of His religion, is, doubtless, what might be expected ; but 
 the texts to which Mr. Liddon refers are not, I think, suffi 
 cient to prove that our Lord either explicitly announced the 
 universal diffusion of Christianity, or enjoined His disciples 
 to preach to all the nations of the earth. The whole con 
 text around Matt. xxiv. 14, on which Mr. Liddon relies, goes 
 to show that the end there was not a final judgment, but a 
 very proximate event; and the phrase employed for world is 
 really only commensurate with the inhabited parts known to 
 the Jews at most, the Roman Empire ; and yet the pro- 
 
IN CERTAIN SYNOPTICAL SAYINGS. 301 
 
 mulgation of the Gospel in this comparatively narrow sphere, 
 is said to be for a witness to all the nations. The preaching 
 of the Gospel among all the nations (Luke xxiv. 47) is not, 
 therefore, language altogether conclusive as to definite designs, 
 and express injunctions to make the whole globe the field of 
 Christianity. But I have already touched upon this subject, 
 and need not repeat reasons, more particularly as its bearing 
 upon the theme of Mr. Liddon s Lectures is very indirect. 
 The universality of Christ s religion, if it were at this moment 
 absolutely universal, would not aid in proving His Deity, un 
 less the dogma of His Deity were demonstrably an integral 
 portion of His religion. 
 
 Before deducing copiously and exactingly from Matt. xxviiL 
 19, any Protestant controversialist is bound to recognize, and 
 endeavor to remove, the discrepancy which exists : (1) be 
 tween that passage and the sentiments and conduct of the 
 Apostles relative to the admission of the Gentiles into the 
 Christian Church (see Acts x. and xi.) ; and (2) between 
 that passage and every other notice of the formula for Chris 
 tian Baptism which is found in the New Testament. The 
 arguments I have already advanced on this point are merely 
 the expression of ordinary fairness and common sense. They 
 are too obvious and inevitable not to have been well known 
 to Mr. Liddon, and until they are met it is worse than useless 
 to talk of " self-intrusion into the sphere of Divinity," and to 
 tell us Jesus " deliberately inserts His own Name into the 
 sacramental formula ; He inserts it between that of the Fa 
 ther and that of the Spirit." Baptism "into the Name of 
 the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," was the 
 common practice of the Church early in the second century, 
 so far as the scanty evidence we possess reveals her practice : 
 but, by every rule of reasonable interpretation, the Acts of 
 the Apostles and the Epistles attest Baptism to have been at 
 the first administered with another and a simpler formula. 
 Words of solemn command and instruction, uttered by the 
 risen Jesus Himself, would not be forgotten or disobeyed, and 
 therefore only one conclusion remains : the words are not 
 
302 SUPPOSED IMPLICATION OF DEITY 
 
 really His, though found in every known MS. and Version 
 of the First Gospel. It is pretty certain St. Matthew s Gos 
 pel was originally written in* the Hebrew dialect. In being 
 transferred to Greek the document may have received ad 
 ditions, and for such additions the endings of sections and 
 discourses would present the most favorable points. The 
 exact date of the present Greek Gospel cannot be determined ; 
 neither the extent of its correspondence with, nor deviation 
 from, the lost Hebrew original. We ought not causelessly to 
 suspect modifications or enlargement; but the circumstance 
 that the Canonical Matthew is a translation renders modifica 
 tions and additions to some extent highly probable, and in them 
 the candid investigator will believe he has the most rational 
 explanation of discrepancies. Dr. Davidson considers : " The 
 baptismal formula and some other passages prevent the critic 
 from putting the Canonical Gospel before A.D. 100." Nean- 
 der, who in his " Life of Christ " surrendered nothing which 
 could with any sort of prudence or plausibility be retained, 
 evidently had very grave doubts respecting the accuracy of 
 Matt, xxviii. 19, and practically admits the text to be unau- 
 thentic, though he wraps his meaning in a verbal haze, and, 
 after the manner of an Orthodox Protestant in difficulties, 
 shuns straightforwardness. 
 
 But, if the text were undoubtedly genuine, it would not 
 necessarily be an announcement of a Trinity of Persons, Co- 
 eternal and Co-equal. The doctrine of the Trinity in Unity 
 would, indeed, be a fair exposition, provided that unfathoma 
 ble paradox were so stated elsewhere in the New Testament 
 as to intimate its having had a place in the professed faith 
 of the early believers. Without this sustaining statement, 
 the reasonable expositor of Scripture will not think himself 
 warranted to see in the words, " Name of the Father, and 
 of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," the metaphysical mys 
 tery whose verbal expression the Church subsequently incor 
 porated with the Faith. And, assuming the words to have 
 proceeded from Christ Himself, and to have been from the 
 first apprehended in the maturer Church s sense, there could 
 
IN CERTAIN SYNOPTICAL SAYINGS. 303 
 
 have been little reserve about the triformal and trinominal 
 composition of the Infinite Substance, and the silence (not 
 to mention the virtual negations) of the Acts and Epistles 
 become more than ever an insoluble enigma to the Protest 
 ant. A theory of the Self-existent Being, which the Bap 
 tismal formula was generally understood to communicate, 
 was assuredly no reserved topic. 
 
 There are, however, other singularly delicate and subtile, 
 if not persuasive, tokens, that the Synoptical Gospels furnish 
 implications of Christ s Deity. " Equally with St. John they 
 represent Him as claiming to be not merely the Teacher, but 
 the Object of His religion. He insists on faith in His own 
 Person (St. Matt. xvi. 16, 17). ... If Christ is the Logos in 
 St. John, in these Gospels He is the Sophia (Wisdom). (St. 
 Luke vii. 35 ; St. Matt. xi. 19 ; Wisdom was justified of all 
 her children ; and apparently St. Luke xi. 49, where ike 
 Wisdom of God corresponds to I in St. Matt, xxiii. 34). 
 Thus He ascribes to Himself the exclusive knowledge of the 
 Highest. No statement in St. John really goes beyond the 
 terms in which, according to two Synoptists, He claims to 
 know and to be known of the Father. Xo man knoweth 
 the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father 
 save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal 
 Him (St. Matt. xi. 27; St. Luke x. 22). Here then is a re 
 ciprocal relationship of equality ; the Son Alone has a true 
 knowledge of the Father ; the Son is Himself such that the 
 Father Alone understands Him" (p. 251). 
 
 The witness to Christ s insistence " on faith in His own Per 
 son," and to His identification with the Wisdom of God, may 
 be left uncriticised. The remaining testimony is far from 
 unimpeachable. Does Mr. Liddon suppose the Son s knowl 
 edge of the Father is of that unique and incommunicable 
 sort which presumes the possession of God-head ? and if 
 he does, will he explain what is meant by the words, he to 
 whomsoever the Son will reveal Him f If Christ could impart 
 the knowledge to men, it was within the grasp of created 
 capacity, and may be identical with the knowledge referred 
 
304 SUPPOSED IMPLICATION OF DEITY 
 
 to in the saying : " Father, this is life eternal, that they may 
 know Thee the Only True God, and Jesus Christ Whom 
 Thou hast sent " (John xvii. 3 ; comp. Ye have known the 
 Father: knoweth God. 1 John ii. 13; iv. 7). The Son is 
 known by liis true disciples : " I know my sheep, and am 
 known of mine" (John x. 14) ; we know Him (1 John ii. 3). 
 And St. Paul looked onward to a day, when he should know 
 as also he was known (1 Cor. xiii. 12). 
 
 Christians, then, are capable, through Divine gift and illu 
 mination, of a knowledge of God and Christ. Mr. Liddon s 
 selected texts testify the Father can be revealed to men, and, 
 if the Father can be known in the sense of the texts, even 
 a theologian will not dispute that the Son can be known 
 equally. The " reciprocal relationship of equality " is not, 
 therefore, equality in the incommunicable attributes of God 
 head. The unbelieving Jews were not participators in the 
 knowledge of the Father, and their persecuting virulence is 
 ascribed by Jesus to their ignorance of the Father and Him 
 self. " These things will they do unto you, because they 
 know not Him Who sent Me ; because they have not known 
 the Father, nor Me" (John xv. 21 ; xvi. 3). The difference 
 between the outside world and the enlightened circle of 
 Christ s disciples is displayed in the words : " O Righteous 
 Father, the World knew Thee not ; but I knew Thee, and 
 these knew that thou didst send Me. And I made known 
 unto them Thy Name, and will make it known ; that the 
 love, wherewith Thou lovest Me maybe in them, and I in 
 them" (xvii. 25,20). 
 
 The connection, both in St. Matthew and St. Luke, of the 
 statement from which Mr. Liddon deduces, is the reverse of 
 suggestive that there is between the Father and the Son " a 
 reciprocal relationship of equality." Our Lord s words are 
 prefaced by an expression of devout thankfulness for the 
 Father s action, and by a recognition of the Father s absolute 
 sovereignty : " I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and 
 earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and 
 prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father ; 
 
IN CERTAIN SYNOPTICAL SAYINGS. 305 
 
 for thus it seemed good in Thy sight." And does the saying, 
 All things are delivered unto Me by my Father, accord with 
 the idea of Co-equal Deity in the Recipient? Straining the 
 word all, in order to enlarge the capacity of the Recipient, 
 cannot efface the recipiency, which is in itself inconsistent 
 with Godhead. And the adjective all is very freely used in 
 Scripture when its meaning is manifestly circumscribed, or, 
 at the utmost, restricted to what pertains to the Christian dis 
 pensation. To take a few examples from the Fourth Gospel 
 only: "All things which I have heard from my Father, I 
 have made known unto you" (xv. 15). Are we to conclude 
 that every thing w y hich the Second of the Co-equal Persons 
 "in the Three Who yet are One," heard from the First, is 
 here declared to have been communicated to the Apostles ? 
 (See also iii. 26 ; iv. 25, 29, 39 ; xiv. 26). 
 
 But farther indications, full of significance in Mr. Lid- 
 don s estimation, are producible from the Synoptical docu 
 ments : 
 
 " In these Gospels, moreover, Christ ascribes to Himself 
 sanctity ; He even places Himself above the holiest thing in 
 ancient Israel. I say unto you, that in this place is a greater 
 thing than the temple (Matt. xii. 6). He and His people 
 are greater than the greatest in the old covenant (Matt. xi. 
 11; xii. 41, 42: xxi. 33-42; Luke vii. 28). He scruples not 
 to proclaim His consciousness of having fulfilled His mission. 
 He asserts that all power is committed to Him both on earth 
 and in heaven (Matt. xi. 27; xxviii. 18; Luke x. 22). All 
 nations are to be made disciples of His religion (Matt, 
 xxviii. 19)." 
 
 Is not every sincere Christian, to say nothing of God s 
 chosen and exceptionally qualified Messenger, Servant, and 
 Son, more truly a temple of God, greater and more holy, 
 than the consecrated fabric of wood and stone at Jerusalem ? 
 May not the least in the kingdom of heaven be greater than 
 John the Baptist, and Jesus Himself greater than Jonah, or 
 Solomon, without entailing the inference, "Jesus is God "? 
 The avowed consciousness of having fulfilled His mission 
 
 20 
 
306 PERSUASION BY FEARFUL ALTERNATIVES. 
 
 implies, in a very inexplicable manner, Christ s consciousness 
 of parity with the Father Who gave Him His mission (John 
 xvii. 4 ; iv. 34 ; v. 36 ; comp. the proximately Divine con 
 sciousness of St. Paul, 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8). 
 
 If it were not a very serious matter for men to reason 
 falsely from Scripture, and to build the Church s dogmatic 
 faith on thoroughly insecure foundations, Mr. Liddon s argu 
 ment from the Gospels, and more especially from the former 
 three, would be simply amusing. But, in his fervid zeal and 
 blind confidence, he stakes every thing on the soundness of 
 palpably invalid reasonings and expository inferences. If the 
 sayings recorded in the Gospels do not implicate and reveal 
 what Mr. Liddon is persuaded they implicate and reveal, 
 then our Lord is not morally good ; He is neither sincere, nor 
 unselfish, nor humble. This fearful alternative, presented in 
 terms of passionately appealing rhetoric, is no doubt sufficient 
 to terrify the great majority of minds, warped as they are by 
 education into the belief that the faith of the Church respect 
 ing Christ s Person can be rationally deduced from Scripture. 
 A very potent temporary weapon of Protestant Orthodoxy is 
 this presentation of an alternative which shocks sacred pre 
 possessions, and enlists the pious emotions against the duty 
 of inquiry. Its employment is, indeed, calculated to awaken 
 intellectual suspicion, but theological controversialists know 
 that, when a widely prevailing belief is to be sustained, intel 
 lect may be disregarded, provided the emotions can be roused 
 into active play. When reason is discovered to be inadequate 
 to dogmatic exigencies, what course is open to the Protestant 
 champions of ecclesiastical truth, but to stem investigation 
 by presenting an alternative so alarming, that " devout and 
 earnest (?) thought cannot falter for a moment in the agony 
 of its suspense." 
 
 Beneath all Mr. Liddon s declamation there lurks, as I 
 have already had occasion to notice, the supremely false as 
 sumption that the rank of Christ is, according to Scripture, 
 either mere Manhood, or absolute Godhead. His argument 
 is powerless against the really Scriptural position, that Christ 
 
MERE MAN OR ABSOLUTE GOD. 307 
 
 fills in the scale of Being a place not perfectly defined, but 
 certainly above man,* and as certainly beneath God. With 
 what unscrupulous vehemence he urges the abandonment ot 
 all love and reverence for Jesus, if Jesus is not confessed to 
 have proclaimed or implied His own veritable Deity, may 
 be gathered from the following sentence : " If Christ is God 
 as well as Man, His language falls into its place, and all is 
 intelligible; but if you deny His Divinity, you must conclude 
 that some of the most precious sayings in the Gospel are but 
 the outbreak of a preposterous self-laudation ; they might 
 well seem to breathe the very spirit of another Lucifer" 
 (p. 196). 
 
 Undiscriminating attachment to every portion of an inher 
 ited system which has been elaborated and fortified through 
 generations of devoted reception is too natural to be very 
 discreditable. The deep and sound convictions which re 
 spond to the intuitions, and satisfy the cravings of man s reli 
 gious nature, are strong enough to carry a vast weight of 
 speculative lumber, and impart to feeble indefensible theories 
 some measure of warmth and vitality. It is, therefore, to be 
 expected that, when times of intellectual sifting come, the 
 clergy should be impelled by other forces than those of merely 
 selfish interest, to display a blindly obstinate conservatism in 
 defence of the very questionable accretions with which doc 
 trines not at variance with reason have been encompassed 
 and overlaid. A dread lest beliefs having a permanent and 
 independent basis in man s nature should be disturbed makes 
 
 * I mean, of course, if every statement of Scripture is accepted in its 
 natural rational meaning, with unquestioning acquiescence. The Christ 
 of an uncritical Biblical Protestantism is an Arian, superhuman Christ. 
 The Christ of a critical Protestantism is a merely human, but extraordi 
 narily endowed Christ. For the Catholic Christ there is, without the 
 admission of the Church s revealing inspiration and authority, no logical 
 basis anywhere. 
 
 Apart from free criticism, Arian and Orthodox expounders of texts are 
 both stronger in attack than in defence ; but their contests do not result in 
 a dead-lock, the decided advantage, if not the complete victory, being 
 necessarily with the Arians. Before rational criticism neither Arianism 
 nor Orthodoxy will stand. 
 
308 THE ALARM-CRIES OP CONTROVERSIALISTS. 
 
 the Protestant clerical mind refuse to surrender time-honored 
 traditions, which never could bear reason s scrutiny, and 
 which, if not guaranteed by revelation from God through the 
 Church, represent only decaying moods and phases of human 
 thought and sentiment. But mental apathy and moral cow 
 ardice, though they affect most injuriously Protestant adhe 
 sion to primary spiritual truths, are very different from the 
 alarm-cries of professional controversy, and the outbursts of 
 emasculated bigotry, deliberately invoking terror, and for 
 mally staking precious verities on the continued acceptance of 
 precarious opinions. The servants of the God of Truth, and 
 the ministers of the Anointed King in Truth s Kingdom, do 
 not let their light shine, and certainly do not advance their 
 Master s glory, when in angry effeminate desperation they 
 brandish in men s faces the alternative, " You must take the 
 whole of our system, or let all religion go." Consent won by 
 fear against intelligence is too speedily and terribly avenged 
 to be worth winning. Yet we saw Dignitaries of the Angli 
 can Church promptly sink to this degraded style of argu 
 ment, when an adventurous Prelate published his persuasion 
 that the Pentateuch is by no means unmixed truth, and 
 Moses not its sole author ; and now we see Mr. Liddon 
 demean himself to imperil all loving veneration for Christ, 
 all faith in Christ s precepts, example, inspiration, and mis 
 sion from the Father, by frantically waving the ugly scare 
 crow, if Jesus be not infinitely Divine, He must be almost 
 Satanic." 
 
 I have now shown by copious reference to Scripture, and 
 more particularly to the Fourth Gospel, that Christ s claims 
 did not rise to the height Mr. Liddon imagines. They were 
 distinctly and studiously (unless we isolate and inflate at 
 pleasure a few little patches of vague and metaphorical dic 
 tion) below the appropriation of Deity, or the assertion of 
 equality with the Father. Mr. Liddon s dilemma cannot be 
 formally retorted, because the suppositions that Christ is 
 God, and that His words have been handed down with 
 unerring correctness, lift His sayings above all criticism and 
 
PLAIN WORDS SPOKEN BY CHRIST. 309 
 
 * 
 
 the application of any moral standard ; but, if the rules of 
 human veracity and sincerity could be applied, Christ would 
 be convicted of untruthfulness, and a cruelly misleading 
 phraseology, when, knowing Himself to be God, and knowing 
 also that faith in his Godhead was to be a vital necessity, 
 He, without elucidating and guarding explanations, expressed 
 Himself as follows : 
 
 u Why callest thou Me good ? None is good except One, 
 that is, God" (Mark x. 18 ; Luke xviii. 19). 
 
 " The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath 
 anointed Me," &c. (Luke iv. 18, 19 ; comp. Matt. xii. 18). 
 
 " Of that day or that hour knoweth no one, neither the 
 angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father " (Mark xiii. 
 32 ; comp. Matt. xxiv. 36, and Acts i. 7). 
 
 " To sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to 
 give, except to those for whom it has been prepared by my 
 Father" (Matt. xx. 23; Mark x. 40). 
 
 "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, 
 and He will furnish Me with more than twelve legions of 
 Angels?" (Matt. xxvi. 53).. 
 
 " My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me ; 
 nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt " (Matt. xxvi. 39, 
 42; Mark xiv. 34-36; Luke xxii. 42). 
 
 "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me" (Matt, 
 xxvii. 46; Mark xv. 34). 
 
 "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 
 xxiii. 46). 
 
 The dogma inculcated by Mr. Liddon pronounces the soul 
 and spirit of Jesus to have been* inextricably taken into a 
 Personal Form of the Divine Nature, Very God, possessing 
 in their entirety the attributes of Deity. But, upon this 
 hypothesis, the language just cited is not only mysterious 
 and inexplicable, it is also, in the highest degree, artificial, 
 histrionic, and misguiding. What must it have been under 
 stood to express and imply, by those who heard it, more par 
 ticularly if, in their minds, there already existed, or were in 
 the progress of dogmatic revelation soon to be sown, the 
 seeds of faith in Christ s veritable Godhead ? 
 
310 CHRIST INSINCERE IN HIS WORDS, 
 
 
 
 " Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath sought to have ye, that 
 he might sift ye as wheat ; but I have prayed for thee, that 
 thy faith fail not" (Luke xxii. 31, 32). 
 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of 
 Himself, except what He seeth the Father doing. I can 
 of mine own self do nothing," &c. (John v. 19, 30). "I do 
 nothing of Myself; but as my Father hath taught Me, I 
 speak these things" (viii. 28). But I have already referred 
 sufficiently to some of the multitude of utterances in the 
 Fourth Gospel, which, if accepted as veracious and intelligible 
 statements, afford the strongest inferential evidence against 
 the supposition of Christ s Deity. I w T ill now confine myself 
 to sayings of a very direct and explicit nature ; they could 
 not, indeed, be more direct and explicit, unless they had been 
 pointed, formal negations of Christ s true Godhead. 
 
 " The Only God" " That they may know Thee (Father), 
 the Only True God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent " 
 (v. 44; xvii. 3). 
 
 "My Father is greater than I" (xiv. 28). 
 
 " Go to my brethren and say unto them : I ascend unto 
 my Father and your Father, and my God and your God " 
 (xx. 17). 
 
 Tried by the rules of human morality these sayings are 
 conspicuously untruthful, insincere, and deceptive, if Jesus 
 knew Himself to be the Father s Equal, Essentially and truly 
 God ; and if, further, He designed His own utterances should 
 be ingredients in the revelation of His Xature. But if He 
 knew Himself not to be God, these sayings are, in their nat 
 ural sense, and with their inevitable suggestions, simple, 
 intelligible, and honest. The former of the pair of alterna 
 tives which really issue from the evidence is exactly the 
 reverse of that (" the conscious and culpable insincerity of 
 Jesus if he is not God ") on which Mr. Liddou insists. He 
 assures his readers with reference to his own fancied reduc- 
 tiones ad horribile : " Certainly we cannot create such alter 
 natives by any process of dialectical manufacture, if they do 
 not already exist." He has, with laborious ingenuity, striven 
 
IF HE KNEW HIMSELF TO BE GOD. 311 
 
 to effect what lie pronounces to be impossible. But as he 
 himself reminds us, " If such alternatives are not matters of 
 fact, they can easily be convicted of inaccuracy" (p. 203). 
 
 Looking solely to " the language which Christ actually 
 used about Himself," and taking it as their sufficient guide, 
 Protestants have, in reason and candor, no choice left but 
 to deny that He is God. By the light of reasonably inter 
 preted Scripture, no apostrophe can be further from the 
 truth than that with which Mr. Liddon concludes his Fourth 
 Lecture : 
 
 " Eternal Jesus ! it is Thyself Who hast thus bidden us 
 either despise Thee or worship Thee. Thou wouldst have 
 us despise Thee as our fellow-man, if w r e will not worship 
 Thee as our God." 
 
 By the light of ecclesiastical revelation the case is, I admit, 
 changed: words acquire new meanings, Scripture is trans 
 formed, and rational significance is banished. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Examination of the Scripture testimony adduced in support of the prop 
 osition, "from the earliest age of Christianity, Jesus Christ has 
 been adored as God." The terms which precisely and definitely 
 describe the worship and service due to the Supreme Being are 
 never connected with the Name of Christ. Detailed investigation 
 of the feeble and forced pretexts on which Mr. Liddon relies. 
 Meaning of the expressions, to call upon the Lord, and upon the Name of 
 the Lord. Dying petitions of St. Stephen. Words of frequent use, 
 and specific, restricted application, denoting prayers and vows to the 
 Almighty, are never used of petitions addressed to Christ. The 
 prayer at the election of the Apostle Matthias was offered to our 
 God and Father, not to our Lord Jesus Christ. Argument from the 
 prayer of the disciple Ananias, and from the first prayers of St. Paul, 
 examined. Supposed recognition, in St. Paul s Epistles, of prayer 
 to Jesus Christ, including the Apostle s entreaty to be freed from 
 " the thorn in the flesh." Strained and erroneous constructions of 
 passages in St. John s Eirst Epistle, and in the Apocalypse. Brief 
 summary of the evidence that Christ was not worshipped as God. 
 A glance at some arguments from the earlier Fathers. Frequency of 
 devotional addresses to our Lord Jesus Christ in the Anglican Book 
 of Common Prayer. llemarks on the action of the Clergy, and on 
 the use of Family Prayers, and Hymns, wherein Jesus Christ is 
 studiously equalized with the Father, in the language of supplica 
 tion and praise. 
 
 MR. LIDDOX S failure in his attempt to prove that, " from 
 the earliest age of Christianity, Jesus Christ has been adored 
 as God," is no fault of his. The task to which he applied 
 himself was beyond the powers of any special pleadership, 
 however talented. The worship of Christ as God is nowhere 
 enjoined in Scripture, while the worship of the God and 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is enjoined, and shown by 
 clear and plentiful evidence to have been the habitual prac 
 tice of the Apostles and first disciples. About the general 
 and prescribed Scripture rule with regard to prayer and 
 
THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST NOT ENJOINED. 313 
 
 thanksgiving, there can be no dispute. The worship of Jesus 
 must, as its Protestant advocates well know, be based upon 
 presumed implications, and indirect teachings, and upon 
 instances which carry on the face of them discriminative and 
 exceptional circumstances. The precepts of Jesus Himself 
 perspicuously and unequivocally set the Father before us as 
 the only Object of strictly religious homage. The teaching 
 and example of the Apostles, so far as Scripture recounts 
 them, repeat, and are conformed to, the Great Master s pre 
 cepts. From a mass of testimony, I select a few texts : 
 Matt. vi. 6-15 ; vii. 11 ; Luke xi. 1, 2, 13 ; Mark xi. 25 ; John 
 iv. 21-24 ; xv. 16 ; xvi. 23, 24, 26 ; Acts iv. 24-30 ; Rom. i. 8-10; 
 xv. 5, 6, 30 ; 1 Cor. i. 4 ; Eph. i. 16, 17 ; iii. 14 ; v. 20 ; Phil. 
 i. 3-6; iv. 6; Col. i. 3 ; 1 Thess. i. 2; 2 Thess. i. 3, 11, 12. 
 
 When we lay aside foregone conclusions, and look steadily 
 at the subject, we can scarcely escape perceiving how the 
 existence of exhortations and directions to render to the 
 Almighty Father the tribute of prayer and praise, and 
 the lack of directions and exhortations to render the like 
 tribute to our Lord Jesus Christ, constitute a very serious 
 obstacle to the reception of Mr. Liddon s dictum : " The 
 adoration of Jesus is as ancient as Christianity. Jesus has 
 been ever adored on the score of His Divine Personality, of 
 Which this tribute of adoration is not merely a legitimate 
 but a necessary acknowledgment" (p. 364). The worship 
 of Christ on the ground of His Essential Deity, and with 
 " that adoration which is due to the Most High God, and to 
 Him Alone," would be, both to Jewish and Gentile converts, 
 a peculiar and difficult feature in their newly adopted faith. 
 Very little encouragement or counsel would be needed to 
 impress the duty of praying to and praising the one- God and 
 leather of all, but most explicit and repeated encouragement 
 and counsel would seem to have been necessary, in order to 
 develop and direct " that worship of Christ s Person, that 
 tide of adoration," which is imagined to have " burst upwards 
 from the heart of His Church " immediately after His Ascen 
 sion. Without expressed guidance and pointed admonition, 
 
314 IS THE ADORATION OF CHRIST 
 
 it is simp.y inconceivable that the adoration of Christ, " on 
 the score of His .Divine Personality," could have been, as 
 Mr. Liddon opines, " the universal practice of Christians ; " 
 " in the judgment of Christians and imperious Christian 
 duty " " rooted in the doctrine and practice of the Apostles, 
 and banded down to succeeding ages as an integral and re 
 cognized element of the spiritual life of the Church." 
 
 I am fully conscious dearth of Scriptural mandate is not, 
 from the Catholic point of view, an effective argument 
 against paying to Christ the honors of supreme worship. 
 The section of Apostolic teaching which related to the adora 
 tion of Christ may, owing to its intimate connection with 
 the revelation of His Deity, have been withheld from the 
 written documents, and committed to the less exposed chan 
 nel of the Church s oral tradition. The witness to the 
 Divine adoration of Jesus would indeed appear naturally to 
 follow the witness to His absolute Divinity ; and ho\v jeal 
 ously the presiding inspiration of the Canonical penmen 
 restrained and veiled that witness, we have already seen. 
 But, upon the primary Protestant hypothesis, that the Bible 
 alone yields sufficient rules of faith and practice, the circum 
 stance of our being taught and counselled to offer supplica 
 tions and thanksgivings to God our Heavenly Father, and 
 not taught and counselled to offer them to our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, is a very formidable barrier against the proposition 
 which Mr. Liddon so ardently affirms. The evidence is, 
 undeniably, in a vastly inverse proportion to the rational 
 demand. The New Testament rule of worship is copious 
 and lucid where new light was little called for ; it is most 
 meagre and indistinct where full and precise statements was 
 indispensable. 
 
 In common with all expositors who undertake to find in 
 Scripture intimations of Christ s having been the Object of 
 supreme religious worship, Mr. Liddon is compelled to fabri 
 cate negative testimony, by assuming the point lie was bound 
 to prove. He remarks, " never was the adoration of Jesus 
 protested against in the Church as a novelty, derogatory to 
 
COEVAL WITH THE CHURCH ? 315 
 
 the honor and claims of God," forgetting, apparently, that 
 the absence of prohibition and protest in the New Testament 
 has for him no auxiliary bearing, unless the New Testament 
 contains proof of his positions : " The early Christian Church 
 approached Christ s Glorious Person with that very tribute 
 of prayer, of self-prostration, of self-surrender, by which all 
 serious Theists, whether Christian or non-Christian, are ac 
 customed to express their felt relationship as creatures to the 
 Almighty Creator. . . . The Church simply adored God ; and 
 she adored Jesus Christ, as believing Him to be God" (p. 3GO). 
 " The historical fact before us is, that from the earliest age of 
 Christianity Jesus Christ has been adored as God." 
 
 The negative evidence, so far as it has weight, is measured 
 more equitably, when we see in it a token that Divine adora 
 tion was not paid to Jesus. Assuming the Canonical records 
 to comprise a moderately complete exhibition of prominent 
 facts, it is significant that no charges of idolatry and mis 
 directed worship were laid against the first Christians by 
 their Jewish adversaries, more particularly since the Fourth 
 Gospel (as understood by Mr. Liddon) attests the Jews to 
 have suspected and accused Christ of claiming to be the 
 Almighty One. The question whether " the unlettered multi 
 tudes of the Church so acted and spoke as to imply a belief 
 that Jesus Christ is actually God," was a question likely to be 
 very keenly scrutinized by Priests, and Scribes, and Phari 
 sees ; and, unless proof to the contrary is forthcoming, the 
 natural inference from Jewish silence is, Christians did not, 
 by adoring Jesus Christ as God, afford a pretext for the 
 charge of idolatry. The " heresy " which St. Paul confessed 
 was not that in the matter of worship he had in any degree 
 put Jesus of Nazareth in the place of the God of his Fathers 
 (Acts xxiv. 14; comp. iii. 13). 
 
 And what proof is Mr. Liddon able to construct, that the 
 adoration of Christ is coeval with the Church ? He begins 
 with a totally unapt disquisition on the difference between 
 admiration and adoration. No one who is willing to accept 
 and abide by the statements of the New Testament can sup- 
 
316 TEXTS ADDUCED TO VINDICATE 
 
 pose "the early Christian Church contented herself with 
 admiring Jesus Christ." According to the representations 
 in the New Testament, He was venerated with a veneration 
 distinct from that paid to angels or men, and distinct also 
 from that paid to God. He was reverenced and honored as 
 one who held a heavenly commission, was furnished with 
 heavenly gifts, and filled an altogether peculiar place and 
 office between the Most High God our Father, and the great 
 human family whom the Father s love was seeking to elevate 
 and save. To descant on the difference between admiration 
 and adoration serves no purpose, except that of diverting the 
 reader s attention to a false issue. What Mr. Liddon s case 
 requires is Scriptural proof of the position Jesus was wor 
 shipped because He was apprehended to be verily God. If 
 the proof is riot producible in the shape of direct assertions 
 of His Godhead, and injunctions to worship Him as God, it 
 may be produced in the shape of evidence, that the homage 
 rendered Him was of such a nature as to be incomprehensi 
 ble on any other ground than His veritable Deity. And, for 
 the production of proof in the latter shape, a primary neces 
 sity is refutation of the opinion that His claims and qualifica 
 tions as an exalted Spiritual Being, who is in a special sense 
 the Messenger, Servant, and Son of the Highest, are ade 
 quate to explain the veneration and service of which He was 
 the Object. But Mr. Liddon entirely fails to furnish this 
 necessary refutation. As usual, he shirks the real question, 
 leaving out of the calculation the singular Messianic func 
 tions and endowments, and stating his argument as though 
 it were enough to show that the profound reverence accorded 
 to Jesus was more than only a good man, or an Angel, would 
 have received. 
 
 Some of the texts adduced to vindicate the worship of 
 Christ have been already examined in conjunction with other 
 portions of Mr. Liddon s reasonings. I shall try to avoid 
 needless repetition, but repetition to some extent is unavoid 
 able. 
 
 As a sample of adoration, Rev. i. 17 is cited. " When I 
 
THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST. 317 
 
 saw Him, says St. John, speaking of Jesus in His glory, 
 I fell at His feet as dead. That was something more than 
 admiration, even the most enthusiastic; it was an act in 
 which self had no part; it was an. act of adoration." It looks 
 far more like the effect of sudden and overpowering alarm 
 and awe, and as such seems to have been dealt with by the 
 glorified Son of Man in the vision : " He laid His right hand 
 upon me, saying, Fear not : I am the first and the last, and 
 the living (one), and I was dead, and behold I am living for 
 evermore." That the writer of the Apocalypse did not con 
 sider Jesus Christ to be the Lord God Almighty is abun 
 dantly clear from the language of verses 1, 5, and 6, of the 
 first chapter. 
 
 The reverential respect paid to Christ while upon earth, 
 Mr. Liddon conceives to have been, at least in some instances, 
 Divine worship. 
 
 " During the days of His early life, our Lord was sur 
 rounded by acts of homage, ranging, as it might seem, so for 
 as the intentions of those who offered them were concerned, 
 from the wonted forms of Eastern courtesy up to the most 
 direct and conscious acts of Divine worship. ... It may be 
 that, in some of these instances, the worship paid to Jesus 
 did not express more than a profound reverence. Sometimes 
 He was worshipped as a Superhuman Person, wielding super 
 human powers ; sometimes He was worshipped by those who 
 instinctively felt His moral majesty, which forced them, they 
 knew not how, upon their knees. But if He had been only 
 a good man, He must have checked such worship. He had 
 Himself re-affirmed the foundation law of the religion of 
 Israel : Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him 
 only shalt thou serve (Matt. iv. 10). Yet He never hints 
 that danger lurked in this prostration of hearts and wills 
 before Himself; He welcomes, by a tacit approval, this pro 
 found homage of which He is the Object" (pp. 364-366). 
 
 Now there are in the New Testament certain words of 
 not infrequent occurrence (G^Secdai; l.axQsvetv ; kaiQEia), which 
 express with precision and definiteness the worship and ser- 
 
318 WAS CHRIST WORSHIPPED 
 
 vice due to the Supreme Being. These words are never 
 found in connection with the Name of Christ. Will Mr. 
 Liddon explain that fact ? If these words had been used to 
 describe the homage and service done to Christ, there would 
 have been, so far, reason for surmising some perception of 
 His Deity to have dwelt in the minds of His first disciples, 
 though, even then, the absence, during His earthly lifetime, 
 of all other traces of the state of mind and feeling which must 
 have been engendered by belief in His Deity, would have 
 been a serious difficulty. But the terms used to describe 
 the homage and service He received are such only as are 
 often employed to express relations and obligations of respect 
 and service between man and man. The same terms are, 
 doubtless, employed also, as many other common terms are, 
 to express the relations in which we stand to God, and the 
 duties we owe to Him ; but, when so employed, they acquire 
 from the known attributes of the Almighty, a peculiar and 
 intensified meaning. The claims of the Most High upon the 
 affections, the homage, the obedience, of His rationally intel 
 ligent creatures, are at once so singular and supreme, that 
 ordinary language is transfigured by associatioYi with His 
 Holy Name and the duties owing to Him. The supposition 
 that the customary Eastern usages of kneeling and prostra 
 tion, with which our Lord was frequently approached during 
 His mortal lifetime, were ever " direct and conscious Divine 
 worship," is purely arbitrary and unfounded. There can be 
 no doubt genuflexion and prostrate obeisance were acts of 
 reverential salutation and suppliant respect, not unusual on 
 the part of inferiors to men of superior rank ; and the verb 
 TtQOGxvvetv, by which the homage or "worship" paid to Christ 
 is denoted, is assuredly not limited to the expression of Di 
 vine worship (see Matt, xviii. 26; Mark. xv. 19; Acts x. 25; 
 and Septuagint, Gen. xxiii. 7, 12; xlii. 6; Exod. xviii. 7; 1 
 Sam. xxiv. 8 ; 1 Kings i. 23, comp. xviii. 7 ; Dan. ii. 46). To 
 worship, in the modern religious and restricted use, is not its 
 equivalent, except in its application to the Almighty, when, 
 of course, the application affixes the highest and utmost 
 meaning the verb will bear. 
 
DURING HIS EARTHLY LIFE ? 319 
 
 Mr. Liddon admits that, in the intentions of those who 
 offered them, the acts of homage, and the "language of devo 
 tion " by which our Lord was surrounded, had a very wide 
 range, and unequal significance, and he can supply no frag 
 ment of indication, that in a single instance the manifes 
 tations of respect and deference from which he argues were 
 incited by the knowledge, or the suspicion, that Jesus was the 
 Supreme Being. The instances of "the worship of Jesus 
 during His earthly life," which he has flung together, simply 
 fill his space, without aiding his argument. He "freely con 
 cedes " many of the prostrations by which the worship was 
 expressed did not involve the payment of Divine honors 
 but, in reply to Channing s insistence on " the indifference 
 of the Jews to the frequent prostrations of men before 
 Christ," urges : " That the Jews suspected the intention to 
 honor Christ s Divinity in none of them would not prove 
 that none of them were designed to honor It. The Jews 
 were not present at the confession of St. Thomas after the 
 Resurrection ; but there is no reasonable room for questioning 
 either the devotional purpose or the theological force of the 
 Apostle s exclamation, My Lord and My God" Men s ideas 
 of "reasonable room" in theology vary with their prejudices 
 and controversial aims ; but there would seem to be the least 
 possible room for assuming the doubting Thomas, who was 
 invited to accept proofs of Christ s Resurrection, to have 
 passed over in a moment to the conviction that the Being 
 who had been crucified, and raised from the dead, was the 
 Lord God Almighty. The devotional purpose is on a par 
 with the theological force of the exclamation ascribed to the 
 Apostle. 
 
 Mr. Liddon says : " Apparently Mary of Magdala, in her 
 deep devotion, had motioned to embrace His feet in the 
 garden, when Jesus bade her Touch Me not" The deep 
 devotion is more apparent in the commentary than in the 
 Evangelist s recital. "Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She 
 turned herself, and saith unto Him, Rabboni, which is to say, 
 Teacher. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not ; for I am not 
 
320 DISTINCTION BETWEEN HOMAGE 
 
 yet ascended to my Father ; but go to my brethren and say 
 unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and 
 my God and your God (St. John xx. 16, 17). 
 
 Mr. Liddon cites the conduct of the eleven disciples who 
 "met our Lord by appointment on a mountain in Galilee, and 
 when they saw Him, as it would seem, in their joy and fear, 
 they worshipped Him. If some doubted, the worship 
 offered by the rest may be presumed to have been a very delib 
 erate act (St. Matthew xxviii. 17)." What does Mr. Liddon 
 consider to have been the subject of their doubt ; the Resur 
 rection or the Deity of Jesus ? If the former, there is no 
 pretext for converting the demonstrations of reverence and 
 obeisance made by any of the eleven into acts of deliberate 
 religious adoration. 
 
 " When the ascending Jesus was being borne upwards into 
 Heaven, the disciples, as if thanking Him for His great glory, 
 worshipped Him ; and then returned to Jerusalem with great 
 joy (St. Luke xxiv. 51, 52)." Does not fair exposition demand 
 that verses fifty-two and fifty-three, which together form one 
 sentence, should not be put asunder: "And were continually 
 in the temple praising and blessing God." The narrative, 
 when reasonably and honestly read, may well suggest, they 
 thanked God for Christ s great glory, but cannot suggest, 
 they thanked Christ Himself. Their worship was not a ren 
 dering of honors belonging to God, but a showing forth of 
 the veneration and awe which the character of Jesus, and 
 the marvellous events of His Resurrection and Ascension, 
 naturally inspired. The thanksgivings in the temple were 
 worship in the strictest, highest sense. 
 
 When we are told the man born blind accompanied his 
 confession of faith in the Son of God " by an undoubted act 
 of adoration " (St. John ix. 35-38), w r e are led to ask whether 
 the title Son of God was a recognized synonym for God, or 
 for the post-canonical designation God the Son. If it was 
 not, the blind man s reverent homage has no proper place in 
 Mr. Liddon s argument. If the man did not worship Jesus 
 under the persuasion that Jesus was indeed God, his " wor 
 ship " was not adoration of God. 
 
AND DIVINE WORSHIP. 321 
 
 It seems scarcely credible, but Mr. Liddon actually inquires, 
 "Did not the dying thief offer at least a true inward wor 
 ship to Jesus Crucified, along with the words, Lord, remem 
 ber me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom ? (St. Luke 
 xxiii. 42)." 
 
 The difference is not very material in relation to the point 
 under discussion, but the true reading most probably is : 
 "Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom." 
 In the verse next preceding, the repentant robber is reported 
 to have said respecting Jesus, " This (man) hath done noth 
 ing amiss." But man is not supplied in the original, and 
 perhaps the ecclesiastically irradiated instinct which detects 
 the latent harmonies of the written and unwritten Word 
 may have taught Mr. Liddon, God is the noun in the agree 
 ment. At any rate if the penitent malefactor had not 
 attained to the conception that the human vesture of a Self- 
 existent and Deathless Person was expiring by His side, his 
 " true inward worship " was not worship offered to Jesus as 
 God. 
 
 In truth no assertion can less endure rational scrutiny than 
 the assertion that any of the acts of homage which Christ 
 received during His earthly lifetime were "most direct and 
 conscious acts of Divine worship." They could not possibly 
 have been so, unless the men and women from whom they 
 proceeded believed Christ to be in very deed God. It is, I 
 know, a rash thing to set bounds to the eccentricities of 
 pious Protestant exposition, but I doubt whether an inter- 
 pr^ter of established sanity could be found with the capacity 
 for discovering in the pages of the Gospel narratives tokens 
 our Lord w r as apprehended to be God by any of His earthly 
 friends and followers. 
 
 Inferences from the circumstance of Christ s not having 
 checked the worship with which He was often approached 
 can have no validity, apart from the assumptions that such 
 worship was either intentionally offered to Him as God, or 
 was, in its own nature, and by the light of customary prac 
 tice, beyond what any Being less than God could lawfully 
 
 21 
 
322 THE FOUNDATION LAW 
 
 receive. But both these assumptions are unwarranted. 
 When Mr. Liddon writes about " the prostration of hearts 
 and wills before Christ," he uses language which may cor 
 rectly convey his own impressions, but which certainly ex 
 ceeds the Evangelical statements. 
 
 In " the foundation law of the religion of Israel Thou 
 shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou 
 serve" quoted in Matt. iv. 8-10, and in the fuller account, Luke 
 iv. 5-8, the exclusive restriction is with the service, which is 
 expressed by a word consecrated to God, and never applied 
 to Christ. This service includes worship in the highest sense, 
 and, following modern English usage, the closer translation 
 of the injunction would be, " Thou shalt bow down to (or 
 do homage to) the Lord Thy God, and Him only shalt thou 
 worship." Satan is not, in the story, represented as having 
 asked for latreia, but for proskunesis. It is indisputable that, 
 as an external form of homage, proskunesis was compara 
 tively common, and, if not intentionally directed to the 
 Almighty, was not, in the estimation of a Jew, Divine wor 
 ship. Our Lord s answer is a refusal of any kind of homage 
 to Satan, froskunesis is due to God, and to God alone 
 latreia must be paid. Thus the phraseology of the text is. 
 when exactly weighed, rather against than for Mr. Liddon, 
 because it tends to illustrate the distinction between terms 
 which severally express an outward homage customarily ren 
 dered to superiors, and the devout service due to God alone. 
 I confess myself quite unable to see the relevance of a refer 
 ence to our Lord s re-affirmation of "the foundation law of 
 the religion of Israel." The ancient Israelites certainly did 
 not understand their law to prohibit bowing down before 
 superiors in office and station ; and how can the refusal of 
 proskunesis., which the Tempter sought to obtain by a lie, be 
 at all suggestive that Jesus, the authorized Messenger and 
 chosen servant of God, was bound to repudiate proskunesis, 
 if He were not in very truth God ? 
 
 So far as we have means of judging, the language which 
 Christ is made to employ as a quotation is not a repetition 
 
OF THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL. 323 
 
 of the precise words written in Deut. vi. 13; (comp. x. 20). 
 The Hebrew is, Thou shaltfear the Lord thy God, and serve 
 Him,) and with this the better (the Vatican) MS. of the 
 Septuagint Version agrees, in all but the introduction of 
 only.* The quotation is, however, sufficiently near to the 
 sense of what is written, and is illustrated by the Sec 
 ond Commandment. The verbal divergence would not be 
 worth notice, if the force of a particular word were not in 
 question. 
 
 Recurring again to a passage which has already been dis 
 cussed, and shown to afford no ground for such violently 
 comprehensive deductions (John v. 23), Mr. Liddon charac 
 teristically writes : " He claims all the varied homage which 
 the sons of men, in their want and fulness, in their joy and 
 sorrow, may rightfully and profitably pay to the Eternal 
 Father : all men are to honor the Son even as they honor the 
 Father" (p. 367). 
 
 When we have left the Gospels and the incidents of Christ s 
 earthly life, we find only one passage, seemingly an adaptation 
 of language taken from Psalm xcvii. 7, in which even the 
 lower and unrestricted term for ho mage or worship is applied 
 to Christ. On that passage (Heb. i. 6), Mr. Liddon comments : 
 " Apostles believed that when the First-begotten was brought 
 into the inhabited world, the angels of heaven were bidden 
 to worship Him." The exceeding dignity and endowments 
 with which the Almighty Father enriched " the Son of His 
 love " no doubt induced Apostles to believe that the Son was 
 looked upon with humbly venerating regard by the angelic 
 host ; but if the First-born Son were the Everlasting God 
 robed in our nature, it is difficult to conceive what sense or 
 necessity there could have been in bidding the Angels worship 
 Him. Was the Eternal Personal Logos, Who possessed every 
 attribute of Deity, at any period subsequent to the creation of 
 the Angels not an Object of angelic worship ? The reason- 
 
 * Mr. Turpie, in a collection of facts and materials, entitled " The Old 
 Testament in the New," says : " The reading of the Alexandrine MS. ap 
 pears to have been changed to agree with the New Testament." 
 
324 DID CHRIST INVITE PRAYER TO HIMSELF ? 
 
 able inferences from the expressions to which Mr. Liddon 
 points are adverse to his doctrine. If Apostles entertained 
 the belief which he ascribes to them, and along with it a 
 belief in the Self- existent, Infinite Deity of Jesus, then their 
 understandings must have been either peculiarly constituted, 
 or dominated by an inspiration of a very remarkable kind. 
 
 Mr. Liddon sedulously insists that prayer to Jesus was a 
 settled practice among the first generation of Christians, 
 and discovers intimations, satisfactory to his own mind, of 
 our Lord s having, while upon earth, prepared for, and in 
 effect, encouraged such prayer. 
 
 " He seems to invite prayer to Himself, even for the highest 
 spiritual blessings, in such words as those which He addressed 
 to the woman of Samaria: If thou knewest the gift of 
 God, and Who it is that saith unto thee, Give me to drink ; 
 thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given 
 thee living water (St. John iv. 10). He predicts indeed a 
 time when the spiritual curiosity of His disciples would be 
 satisfied in the joy of perfectly possessing Him ; but He no 
 where hints that He would Himself cease to receive their 
 prayers (St. John xvi. 20-22)." 
 
 .To be taught by Christ " to hear His word, and believe 
 on Him who sent Him " (John v. 24) was, doubtless, to 
 receive the highest spiritual blessings ; and there is no reason 
 to suppose that by "living water" He meant more than that 
 knowledge of truth which is the means to nourish and develop 
 spiritual life. The woman of Samaria did ask for the living 
 water (ver. 15), and the answer to her request was instruction 
 as to the nature of true worship ; a declaration that the Ob 
 ject of worship, the Father and God, is a Spirit ; and an 
 announcement that Jesus is the Messiah (verses 21-26). In 
 definite phrases which admit the intrusion of Mr. Liddon s 
 dogmatic beliefs may seem to him to sanction those beliefs, 
 but unbiassed minds will discern in the narrative of the con 
 versation at Jacob s Well no invitation to address to Christ 
 the devotional dependence and service of prayer ; and will 
 identify the living water with " the sanctifying truth " (John 
 
SKILFUL DISCRIMINATION OF WORDS. 325 
 
 xvii. IT); "the cleansing word " (xv. 3); "the word which 
 was not Christ s own, but the Father s Who sent Him" (xiv. 
 24); "the doctrine of God" (vii. 17). Would not the 
 accustomed methods of ecclesiastical as distinguished from 
 rational interpretation stimulate us to perceive in the lan 
 guage to the Samaritan woman, the gift of God, and who it 
 is, &c., an oblique and veiled annunciation of Deity ? Jesus 
 seems to identify the gift of God with His own gift ; there 
 fore Jesus is God. This more capacious form of deduction 
 includes Mr. Liddon s. 
 
 In referring to John xvi. 23, Mr. Liddon says, " Here the 
 Greek" (translated in our Version ye shall ask) "clearly 
 means question" The Greek verb may bear, but does not 
 dearly bear, the meaning Mr. Liddon approves. It has pre 
 cisely the same ambiguity which belongs to the English verb 
 to ask, and sometimes denotes interrogation and inquiry, 
 sometimes request and entreaty. In the " Gospel according 
 to John," the places where it occurs in the sense of request 
 are rather more frequent than the places where it occurs in 
 the sense of question (see iv. 31, 40, 47 ; xii. 21 ; xiv. 16 ; 
 xvi. 26; xvii. 9, 15, 20; and xix. 38, with which compare 
 Matt, xxvii. 58). The instance about which Mr. Liddon s 
 verdict is so decided is doubtful. In xvi. 5, 19, 30, question 
 ing is indicated, but in verse 26 requesting. The different 
 verbs rendered as7c and pray are in verse 26 so fhr synony 
 mous that both denote requesting ; and the same is perhaps 
 the case in verse 23, where both are rendered ask (compare 
 1 John v. 10).* 
 
 * In his "Synonyms of the New Testament," Archbishop Trench has 
 an article on these verbs. He writes : " It is very noteworthy, and wit 
 nesses for the singular accuracy in the employment of words, and in the 
 record of that employment which prevails throughout the New Testa 
 ment, that our Lord never uses airtiv or aireladat of Himself, in respect 
 of that which He seeks on behalf of His disciples from God ; for His is 
 not the petition of the creature to the Creator, but the request of the Son 
 to the Father. The consciousness of His equal dignity, of His potent 
 and prevailing intercession, speaks out in this, that often as He asks or 
 declares that He will ask any thing of the Father, it is always cpu-ru, 
 epu-rjou, an asking, that is, as upon equal terms (John xiv. 16 ; xvi 26 ; 
 
326 " ON THAT DAY YE SHALL ASK," ETC. 
 
 I may be mistaken, but, as I understand Mr. Liddon s 
 exposition, the words in that day ye shall ask Me nothing do 
 not relate to the period between our Lord s Resurrection and 
 Ascension, to which the promises again a little while and ye 
 
 xvii. 9, 15, 20). . . . It will follow that epurav, being thus proper for 
 Christ, inasmuch as it has authority in it, is not proper for us ; and in no 
 single instance is it used in the New Testament to express the prayer of 
 man to God, of the creature to the Creator." 
 
 Now, about the general accuracy of the distinction on which the 
 Archbishop insists, there can be no dispute, but the point in debate is 
 New Testament usage, and more particularly that of the Fourth Gospel, 
 where, it should be observed, the more customary, appropriate, and exact 
 words for prayer do not occur. The term which the Archbishop con 
 ceives " to have authority in it," and to denote " asking as upon equal 
 terms," denotes solicitation, begging, the humble request of an inferior to 
 a superior in Mark vii. 26 ; Luke iv. 38; John iv. 40, 47; xix. 88; 1 
 John v. 16 (comp. Ps. cxxii. 6). On comparing the parallel places in the 
 Evangelists, it will be seen that three of them in narrating the solicita 
 tion of Joseph for the body of Jesus use one, and the fourth (John xix. 
 38) the other of the two verbs, between which the Archbishop so elabo 
 rately discriminates. Whatever, therefore, may be argued on general 
 grounds against the fitness of the term epuTiiv to express petitioning, we 
 cannot deny that, in the hands of the New Testament writers, it some 
 times covers prayerful petitioning, and is especially likely to do so in 
 passages of the last Evangelist, because in the phraseology of supplica 
 tion his vocabulary is peculiarly narrow, and has the remarkable feature 
 of being without words for prayer which are at once both common and 
 precise. 
 
 With regard to " the singular accuracy in the employment of words," 
 &c., on which Archbishop Trench dilates, our Lord himself uses a suppli 
 catory verb in stating that he had prayed for Peter (Luke xxii. 32) ; and 
 in Matt. xix. 13, the Evangelist describes the "request of the Son" on 
 behalf of others, by a term which is confined to the devotional entreaties 
 " of the creature to the Creator," and is also constantly employed to 
 describe the prayers offered by Jesus to the Father (see Matt. xiv. 23 ; 
 xxvi. 36, 39, 42, 44, and parallels in Mark and Luke ; Mark i. 35 ; vi. 46 ; 
 Luke iii. 21 ; v. 16 ; vi. 12 ; ix. 18, 28, 29; xi 1). The earlier Evangel 
 ists, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (v. 7), appear to have 
 thought Christ s prayers for Himself the prayers of a man to God ; and, 
 since Christ had no proper human personality, an expository argument 
 which turns on a nice verbal distinction between His requests on behalf 
 of Himself, and his requests on behalf of His disciples, pertains to that 
 lofty and obscure region into which only minds ecclesiastically illumi 
 nated can venture. 
 
327 
 
 shall see Me (ver. 16), and I will see you again (ver. 22), 
 seem naturally to point ; but to the period when His visible 
 bodily presence would be entirely withdrawn. Jesus, there 
 fore, will be concluded to have meant that, when His disci 
 ples could no longer put questions to Him, they would no 
 longer put questions. But if our Lord spoke only of the 
 indulgence of an inquisitive spiritual curiosity while He was 
 visibly present, what connection has His saying with prayer 
 to Him? If He is supposed to have meant that, after the 
 Holy Ghost should have become their Teacher, the Apostles 
 were no longer to seek instruction from Himself, there is, of 
 course, no distinct prohibition of asking in every sense ; but 
 to argue, " He nowhere hints that He would Himself cease to 
 receive their prayers," is transparently sophistical, since no 
 proof is discoverable of His ever having been addressed in 
 prayer, or ever having enjoined the offering of devotional 
 petitions to Himself. The remainder of the passage from 
 which Mr. Liddon quotes undoubtedly enjoins prayer to. the 
 Father, in the Name of Christ (compare Matt, xviii. 19, 20). 
 From the fact of Christians being described (Acts ix. 14, 
 21 ; 1 Cor. i. 2) as " those who call upon the Name of Jesus 
 Christ," Mr. Liddon unfalteringly makes the largest in 
 ferences. He could not be more confident, if the verb 
 translated to call upon were so perfectly definite and circum 
 scribed as to admit no other meaning than to pro y. But the 
 term fmxaJLetfrdai, on which he builds, is unquestionably loose 
 and ambiguous. When the reference is to the Eternal 
 
 O 
 
 Father, the phrases to call iipon the Lord and upon the Name 
 of the Lord may signify not only openly proclaimed trust 
 and allegiance, but prayer in the strictest sense. Numerous 
 instances in the Septuagint attest this. The few examples 
 cf New Testament usage in conjunction with the Name of 
 God do not so specifically as Mr. Liddon fancies signify 
 prayer. Even the quotation from Joel, in Acts ii. 21 ; Rom. 
 x. 13 (comp. Pss. Ixxix. 6; Ixxx. 18; Jer. x. 25), may in 
 dicate summarily the acknowledged general standing and 
 relation of God s servants, rather than the one particular 
 
328 " CALLING UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD." 
 
 practice, prayer. Calling upon God may be a brief equiva 
 lent for undisguised and habitual service of God, the public 
 confession of being His, obeying and worshipping Him; 
 prayer would be involved and implied, but not prominently, 
 and still less exclusively specified. Dean Alford (Revised 
 Version) construes 1 Pet. i. 17, if ye call upon as your Father , 
 Him, &c., a construction which may be disputed, but is prob 
 ably right, and has, at least, the merit of carrying over the 
 ambiguity of the Greek into the English. 
 
 But whatever may be the exact force of the expressions, 
 to call upon, and to call upon the Name of, when the refer 
 ence is to our God and Father, they need not when the 
 reference is not to Him have the same force. No one will 
 pretend the verb is by usage confined to prayer, or capable 
 of only one sense. It is used of appealing to CaBsar, where 
 the appeal is plainly not devotional petitioning (Acts xxv. 11, 
 12, 21, 25; xxvi. 32; xxviii. 19). St. Paul employs it (2 
 Cor. i. 23), in the imprecation, I call God for a witness ^lpon 
 my soul. In the passive, it denotes the being surnamed 
 (Acts i. 23; iv. 36; x. 5, 18, 32 ; xi. 13 ; xii. 12, 25; Heb. xi. 
 16, comp. Acts xv. 17 ; James ii. 7). This passive use, in 
 connection with persons and things belonging and dedicated 
 to the Almighty, called by the Name of Jehovah, might 
 be abundantly illustrated from the Septuagint, and tends to 
 show that those who called upon the name of the Lord were 
 often not pointedly suppliants, but persons upon whom God^s 
 Name was called; that is, who proclaimed their fealty to 
 God, and were notoriously His servants. 
 
 The alleged practice of prayer to Jesus requires, therefore, 
 to be substantiated by some better evidence than is supplied 
 by the phrases on which Mr. Liddon is compelled to rely. 
 The " calling upon the Name of Jesus Christ," which specially 
 distinguished Christians, was not, upon any reasonable esti 
 mate of the evidence, praying to Christ as to God, but pro 
 fessing faith in Him, owning him to be Leader, Master, 
 Messiah ; confessing Him before men ; baptizing into His 
 Name ; working miracles in His Name ; and, according to 
 
His own directions, asking the Father in His Name. The 
 prominence Christ s followers gave to His Name as that of 
 their Lord and Head in the Kingdom God was establishing 
 through Him w r as a calling His Name upon themselves, and 
 caused them to be designated Christians, or to have His 
 Name " called upon " them. 
 
 Mr. Liddon says : " It cannot be doubted that in Acts xxii. 
 16 ; 2 Tim. ii. 22, the Lord Who is addressed is our Lord 
 Jesus Christ." In the former of these texts, the calling on 
 His (i.e., Christ s) Name is joined with Baptism, and more 
 probably denotes profession of Christian faith and discipleship 
 than prayer to Jesus. The context (ver. 14) certainly does 
 not put Jesus the Just (comp. Matt, xxvii. 19 ; Luke xxiii. 
 47 ; Acts iii. 14 ; vii. 52) on a level with the God of our 
 Fathers / and, in relating what took place during his trance 
 (verses 17-21), St. Paul betrays no consciousness of having 
 beheld and conversed with One Who was in Essential 
 Nature and dignity on a level with the JBlessed and Only 
 Potentate, Whom never man saw nor can see. 
 
 In 2 Tim. ii. 22, call on may differ little, if at all, in sense, 
 from name the Name of (ver. 19), and may stand for "ac 
 knowledge and serve," rather than pray to ; the details of 
 the acknowledgment and service depending on the position 
 and claims of the Being designated. Jesus is probably the 
 Lord referred to, and "them that call on Him" are probably 
 identical with the Lord s servants (ver. 24) ; but there is 
 room for doubt, because in verse 19 the true reading is, let 
 every one that nameth the Name of the Lord, &c., and if in 
 that verse the writer intended to quote from the Old Tes 
 tament (see Numb. xvi. 5 ; Nahum, i. 7 ; Ps. xcvii. 10), the 
 Lord will be Jehovah. The best, though far from a con 
 clusive argument for the opinion that Jesus is designated 
 (ver. 22) is the likelihood that servant of the Lord (ver. 
 24) means servant of Christ. 
 
 But it is contended the true force of the expression call 
 upon "is illustrated by the dying prayer of St. Stephen, 
 whom his murderers stoned " while he was "praying, and 
 
330 DYING PRAYERS OF ST. STEPHEN. 
 
 saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." The Name God is, 
 I need scarcely remark, not in the original, and its introduc 
 tion into the Anglican Version was unwarranted. The 
 former of Stephen s invocations (Acts vii. 59, 60) was, 
 according to the narrative, indubitably directed to Christ, 
 the latter not indubitably. The account is too condensed 
 and undetailed to sanction positive conclusions. There may 
 have been an interval between the dying martyr s petitions. 
 If the first petition was uttered either at the commence 
 ment of the stoning or during the preparations for the 
 stoning, or when the mob " ran upon him and cast him 
 out of the city," and the second just before the moment 
 of death, the supposition that the second petition was 
 directed to God, the Father, is the more probable. But, if 
 the petitions followed each other in quick succession, there 
 will be a probability both were addressed to Christ, and the 
 change of posture, he kneeled down (assuming that to have 
 been a voluntary act), and the difference between the appel 
 lations, Lord Jesus and Lord, will not justify inferences. 
 
 Mr. Liddon, therefore, travels beyond the firm ground of 
 the record, in the incautious confidence of his assertions, 
 " The words which were addressed by Jesus to the Father 
 (Luke xxiii. 34, 46) are by St. Stephen addressed to Jesus. 
 To Jesus Stephen turns in that moment of supreme agony; 
 to Jesus he prays for pardon on his murderers ; to Jesus, as 
 to the King of the world of spirits, he commends his parting 
 soul." To the objection that Stephen s words were " only an 
 ejaculation forced from him in the extremity of his anguish, 
 and that, as such, they are highly unfitted to be made the 
 premise of a theological inference," Mr. Liddon replies : 
 
 " The question is, whether the earliest apostolical Church 
 did or did not pray to Jesus Chrjst. And St. Stephen s dying 
 prayer is strictly to the point. An ejaculation may show 
 more clearly than any set formal prayer the ordinary currents 
 of devotional thought and feeling; an ejaculation is more 
 instinctive, more spontaneous, and therefore a truer index of 
 a man s real mind, than a prayer which has been used for 
 
DYING PRAYERS OF ST. STEPHEN. 331 
 
 years. And how could the martyr s cry to Jesus have been 
 the product of a thoughtless impulse ? Dying men do not 
 cling to devotional fancies or to precarious opinions ; the 
 soul in its last agony instinctively falls back upon its deepest 
 certainties." After drawing attention to the faith and inspi 
 ration (Acts vi. 5 ; vii. 55), official position, and almost apos 
 tolic rank, of Stephen, Mr. Lid don proceeds : " Is it urged 
 that St. Stephen s prayer was offered under the exceptional 
 circumstance of a vision of Christ vouchsafed in mercy to 
 His dying servant ? But it does not enter into the definition 
 of prayer or worship that it must of necessity be addressed 
 to an invisible Person. And the vision of Jesus standing: at 
 
 O 
 
 the right hand of God may have differed in the degree of 
 sensible clearness, but in its general nature it did not differ, 
 from that sight upon which the eye of every dying Christian 
 has rested from the beginning. St. Stephen would not have 
 prayed to Jesus Christ then, if he had never prayed to Him 
 before ; the vision of Jesus would not have tempted him to 
 innovate upon the devotional law of his life ; the sight of 
 Jesus would have only carried him in thought upwards to 
 the Father, if the Father alone had been the Object of the 
 Church s earliest adoration. St. Stephen would never have 
 prayed to Jesus if he had been taught that such pj-ayer was 
 hostile to the supreme prerogatives of God ; and the Apostles, 
 as monotheists, must have taught him thus, unless they had 
 believed that Jesus is God, Who with the Father is wor 
 shipped and glorified " (pp. 369, 370). 
 
 The argument is put with all the dexterity of accomplished 
 special pleadership, and also with the suppression, misrepre 
 sentation, and unfairness which attaches to mere advocacy 
 of foregone conclusions. Granting, what cannot be proved, 
 that the last words of Stephen were directed to Christ, it is 
 not true they are equivalent to the words addressed by the 
 crucified Jesus to the Father. Stephen asks that the guilt 
 of their crime may not be imputed to, or laid to the charge 
 of, his murderers. The term he is recorded to have used is 
 employed in a metaphorical and unusual sense, and is not, in 
 
332 DYING PRAYEES OF ST. STEPHEN. 
 
 this sense, found elsewhere in the New Testament. It is 
 quite distinct from the term which, in Luke xxiii. 34, signifies 
 forgiving ; and before we can determine its precise force in a 
 petition to Christ, we must have ascertained the relation in 
 which Christ stands to God, the Sole ultimate Judge, and 
 Source of pardon. Theologians, pledged to engraft ecclesi 
 astical dogmas upon Scripture language, may experience 
 insuperable difficulty in withstanding the temptation to con 
 struct from a single dubious word ; but unshackled minds will 
 not, in the absence of corroborating testimony, be content on 
 the strength of one ambiguous expression to believe Christ 
 is put on a level with God as the Pardoner of sin. If we 
 asume the prayer to have been directed to Christ, and assume, 
 further, its designed purport to have been : " When Thou, as 
 Judge of all, weighest their actions in Thy balance, do not 
 place tins sin in the scale against them," there still remains 
 the stubborn fact that rational interpretation imperatively 
 demands the supposition of Stephen s having shared the per 
 suasion of the Apostles who held Jesus to be, in the func 
 tions of judgment, subordinate, representative, and delegated 
 ordained of God to be the Judge, &c. a Man by lohom 
 God will judge the world in righteousness^ in His appointed 
 day (Acts x. 42 ; xvii. 31). 
 
 The artificial and forced character of the reasoning where 
 by Mr. Liddon labors to establish the palpable fallacy that 
 circumstances undeniably marvellous and exceptional would 
 lead to no exceptional results, and divert in no degree the 
 current of religious thought and emotion, hardly calls for 
 exposure. A vision of the Divine glory, and of Jesus stand 
 ing on the right hand of that glory, was, we may fairly pre 
 sume, calculated to give Jesus a very realized prominence in 
 the martyr s mind. The " deepest certainties," on which such 
 a vision would impel the soul to fall back, would be the cer 
 tainties of Christ s exaltation, Messiahship, and possession of 
 dignity and power bestowed by God. 
 
 Mr. Liddon tacitly assumes that Stephen s petition, being 
 addressed to Christ, must have been addressed to Him as 
 
DYING PRAYERS OF ST. STEPHEN. 333 
 
 God, and then, from the petition itself, he infers " Christ is 
 God." But, if we search for " indices of Stephen s real mind," 
 in the discourse which issued in his martyrdom, we do not 
 find any trace of his esteeming Christ to be God. On the 
 contrary, his words clearly bespeak his conviction that Christ 
 was inferior to God. We cannot doubt he had an eye to 
 Jesus, in quoting the saying of Moses, " A prophet shall God 
 raise up unto you from among your brethren, as He raised up 
 me " (Acts vii. 37 ; comp. iii. 22), and we may well doubt 
 whether he understood the saying to foretell a Personal In 
 carnation of the One Uncreated Nature. He was content to 
 speak of Jesus as the Just or Righteous (Man), whom the 
 Jews had betrayed and murdered (ver. 52), and the state 
 ment which, to his enemies, had the sound of blasphemy, was 
 very far indeed removed from an affirmation of Christ s God 
 head. That vision which, " in its general nature did not differ 
 from the sight upon which the eye of every dying Christian 
 has rested from the beginning," was the Son of Man stand 
 ing on the right hand of God. Beneath the revealing light 
 of ecclesiastical inspiration this may mean Co-eternal and Co 
 equal God standing on the right hand of the One God ; but 
 beneath the light of reason it has a less profound significance. 
 Stephen appears to have beheld a brightness which indicated 
 the Divine Presence, and, by the side of that brightness, the 
 glorified Man Christ Jesus in an attitude evincing readiness 
 to succor and receive His servant, perchance to punish His 
 servant s destroyers. If the spiritual senses of a dying 
 Christian were opened to perceive ministering spirits around 
 him, he might, I think, quite innocently, and without any 
 " innovation upon the devotional law of his life," say to them, 
 Receive my spirit! for he would address them as God s mes 
 sengers, and with a meaning distinct from that which he 
 would put into his words, if he were appealing to God in 
 prayer. And if he were expiring under the hands of wicked 
 violence, and believed that those ministering spirits, who 
 were ready to receive him, were able also to inflict vengeance 
 on his murderers, he might, without conscious or unconscious 
 
334 RESTRICTED USE OF PRECATORY TERMS. 
 
 "hostility to the supreme prerogatives of God," deprecate 
 such vengeance, in the benevolent entreaty, lay not this sin 
 to their charge. The numerous members of the older 
 branches of the Church Universal are as strict Monotheists 
 as Mr. Liddon himself is, or as he supposes the Apostles to 
 have been, and yet they fail to discern in the invocation of 
 glorified Beings an invasion of the Divine rights. The his 
 torically manifested consciousness of the Church (more par 
 ticularly since her clearer apprehension of -the mystery Mr. 
 Liddon defends) has steadily contradicted the idea that Chris 
 tian Monotheism restricts all venerating homage and prayer 
 ful invocation to God. Orthodox Anglicans should remember 
 obvious facts, before pronouncing what "the Apostles, as 
 Monotheists, must have taught." 
 
 Mr. Liddon argues : " It does not enter into the definition 
 of prayer or worship that it should be addressed to an invis 
 ible Person," intending, of course, prayer or worship such as 
 is due to God. Now before this remark can have the smallest 
 weight, proof must have been given that God is ever other 
 than an invisible Person. The truer shape of the proposition 
 is : petitions and homage offered to a visible Being are to be 
 distinguished from player and worship offered to God, unless 
 there is independent and adequate testimony the visible Being 
 is God. 
 
 The fact that the verb to call upon is accompanied, in the 
 story of Stephen s death, by explanatory adjuncts proving it 
 to have been in that instance connected with prayer, is cer 
 tainly no sufficient evidence for its usual connection. Stephen 
 named the Name of, or invoked Christ, "and said" what 
 were words of prayer ; but calling upon the name of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ might have introduced language of a 
 different kind, as profession of faith, avowal of attachment, 
 and discipleship. The use of a vague term, indisputably 
 open to several varieties of meaning, is ridiculously inade 
 quate testimony for an alleged universal, and specially char 
 acteristic, devotional practice. 
 
 An Orthodox Christian, educated to believe, and officially 
 
RESTRICTED USE OP PRECATORY TERMS. 385 
 
 pledged to maintain a particular doctrine, is perhaps literally 
 unable to see what militates against his own positions, and 
 therefore Mr. Liddon may be excused for not having noticed 
 a fact which demolishes his cunningly woven theories about 
 Apostolic prayers to Jesus Glorified. TJQoan^Gda^ n^oasv-^ 
 dfijGts, ev%ea6ai, /?/, are, in the New Testament, words of 
 specific and restricted application, denoting prayers and vows 
 to the Almighty. The Lord Jesus is, in no single instance, 
 the Person to Whom the devotions indicated by these words 
 are directed. The use of the three former, to express prayers 
 to God, is exceedingly frequent. If the Christians of Apos 
 tolic days were in the habit of praying to Christ as God ; if 
 petitions addressed to Him were an element in their united 
 and their individual worship, how comes it to pass their peti 
 tions are never described by the accustomed, familiar, and 
 specially appropriated terms ? Why does no Canonical 
 Writer furnish an example of the application of properly 
 precatory terms, with reference to a form of Christian devo 
 tion supposed to be prevalent and distinctive ? 
 
 The verb deTaQcu is used of prayer to God, but not limited 
 to that use, being sometimes employed of earnest requests 
 made by one man to another. It occurs of prayer to God 
 ten or eleven times, and among them of Christ s own prayer 
 to the Almighty for the spiritual preservation of Simon 
 Peter (Luke xxii. 32). It describes requests made to our 
 Lord while He was upon earth (Luke v. 12 ; viii. 28, 38 ; ix. 
 38), and likewise requests made to His disciples (Luke ix. 
 40 ; see also Acts viii. 34 ; xxi. 39 ; 2 Cor. x. 2 ; Gal. iv. 12, 
 and other texts), but it describes no requests made to our 
 Lord in Heaven. 
 
 These facts explain, and, from the Protestant advocates 
 point of view, palliate the vaporing expository efforts which 
 have been so often concentrated upon the phrase, to call upon 
 the Name of the Lord Jesus. The most must be made of 
 that phrase. The weak side must be covered in some fashion, 
 and, with the multitude of sympathizing readers, a pliant verb 
 and bold assertions will pass muster undetected. 
 
336 IS CHRIST ADDRESSED IN ACTS I, 24? 
 
 In the first eight chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, the 
 simple title Lord very rarely betokens Christ, but it might 
 betoken Him, and there is a case in which Orthodox exigen 
 cies demand that it should be understood to do so. When 
 Matthias was elected to the Apostleship, prayer (described 
 by the proper and most frequent term) was made to the 
 Almighty (Acts i. 24, comp. iv. 29, 30). Mr. Liddon, encour 
 aged by some previous commentators, has been able to write 
 deliberately as follows : " It would seem more than probable 
 that the prayer offered by the assembled Apostles at the 
 election of St. Matthias was addressed to Jesus Glorified " 
 (p. 368). The particular epithet Heart-knower, by which 
 the Most High is described, is found only in one other place 
 in the New Testament, viz., Acts xv. 8, where it is, beyond 
 doubt, applied to God (comp. Luke xvi. 15). There is no 
 shadow of reason for asserting it has not the same application 
 in Acts i. 24. To assume it there refers to the Lord Jesus 
 is to frame a conjecture utterly devoid of probability. 
 
 But Mr. Liddon contends, " The selection of the twelve 
 Apostles is always ascribed to Jesus Christ (Acts i. 2 ; Luke 
 vi. 13; John vi. 70; xiii. 18; xv. 16, 19) ;" and though "St. 
 Paul was indeed accustomed to trace up his apostleship to the 
 Eternal Father as the ultimate Source of all authority (Gal. 
 i. 15; 2 Cor. i. 1; Eph. i. 1 ; 2 Tim. i. 1), yet this is not 
 inconsistent with the fact that Jesus Christ chose and sent 
 each and all of the Apostles." Certainly, it is not incon 
 sistent with the fact that Jesus Christ was, while upon earth, 
 God s visible Instrument and Organ in the choosing and 
 sending, but it is unfavorable to the supposition that Jesus 
 Christ, when no longer upon earth, was, not only on God s 
 behalf, but independently, the Selecter and Authorize!-. In 
 Acts xv. 7, Peter says, "From ancient days God made 
 choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear 
 the word of the Gospel, and believe;" a saying on which 
 Mr. Liddon remarks, " that God can have no reference to 
 our Lord is an assumption. Moreover, St. Peter is clearly 
 referring, not to his original call to the Apostolate, but to 
 
THE EPITHET " HEART-KNOWER." 337 
 
 his being directed to evangelize the Gentiles." To the 
 Church Catholic the whole mystery of the Trinity is, of 
 course, latent in the denomination God. " One God, the 
 Father; and one Lord, Jesus Christ," may, for a Church 
 inspired so to understand, be the inspired mode of intimat 
 ing the One God, and the One Lord, to be each Personally, 
 and in the full sense, God, and nevertheless both together 
 One God. With this I have nothing to do ; but in the esti 
 mate of reason, the ever recurring distinctive and separating 
 appellations of God and Christ, and the reservation from 
 Christ of the title God, which is so many hundred times 
 applied to the Almighty Father, are revelations that God 
 and Christ are not both comprised in the One Uncreated 
 Nature, and that, therefore, in the lack of clear evidence to 
 the contrary, the Protestant investigator of Scripture "as 
 sumes" nothing by holding that, in Acts xv. 7, the denomi 
 nation God " can have no reference to our Lord." Unless 
 the expression, from ancient days, is transformed by expo 
 sition, the reference will be to an election preceding and 
 determining St. Peter s call by Christ to the Apostolate. 
 And if Christ did, as Mr. Liddon believes, give the command 
 ascribed to Him in Matt, xxviii. 19, the direction to evan 
 gelize the Gentiles proceeded from Him as much as the 
 selection of the twelve Apostles. Are we to imagine that, 
 when His solemn parting command was forgotten, our Lord, 
 acting not in His distinct Personality, but in the Unity of 
 the Father, made choice of Peter, and issued fresh injunc 
 tions ? 
 
 "The epithet Ileart-knower, and still more the word Lord, 
 are," we are informed, " equally applicable to the Father and 
 to Jesus Christ. For the former, see John i. 50; ii. 25; vi. 
 64; xxi. 17. It was natural that the Apostles should thus 
 apply to Jesus Christ to fill up the vacant chair, unless they 
 had believed Him to be out of the reach of prayer, or in 
 capable of helping them." The texts referred to are quite 
 insufficient for the end for which they are cited. Our Lord s 
 acquaintance with the human heart, and profound insight 
 
 22 
 
338 ANANIAS S REMONSTRATIVE PRAYER. 
 
 into human purposes and character, must, since they are not 
 specifically attributed to inherent Deity, be regarded as im 
 parted gifts, flowing from the anointing and presence of God s 
 Spirit. Peter knew what was in the heart of Ananias and 
 Sapphira (Acts v. 2-9), but the circumstance would n:>t 
 warrant the application to him of the designation, IZhower 
 of hearts. However, mere assertion that a rare epithet is 
 " equally applicable " to two Beings, when it is only known 
 to have been applied to One of them, is not worth attention.* 
 The assumption of the point to be proved is very manifest 
 in the sentence, " It was natural that," &c. 
 
 Mr. Liddon s comments on Acts ix. 13, 14, are perhaps 
 more original than convincing : 
 
 "The reply of Ananias, to whom Jesus appeared in a 
 vision, and desired him to go to the newly converted Saul of 
 Tarsus, is an instance of that species of prayer in which 
 the soul trustfully converses with God, even to the verge 
 of argument and remonstrance, while yet it is controlled 
 by the deepest sense of God s awful greatness : Lord, I 
 have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath 
 done to Thy saints at Jerusalem : and here he hath author 
 ity from the chief priests to bind all that call on Thy Name. 
 . . . . Ananias s remonstrance is a prayer; it is a spiritual 
 colloquy ; it is a form of prayer which implies daily, hourly 
 familiarity with its Object ; it is the language of a soul 
 habituated to constant communion with Jesus. It shows 
 very remarkably how completely Jesus occupies the whole 
 field of vision in the soul of His servants. The saints 
 whom Saul of Tarsus has persecuted at Jerusalem are the 
 saints, it is not said of God, but of Jesus; the Name 
 which is called upon by those whom Saul had authority 
 to bind at Damascus is the Name of Jesus. Ananias does 
 not glance at one higher than Jesus, as if Jesus were lower 
 
 * Dr. Bloomfield thought the epithet "equally applicable " to Christ, 
 but recorded the acknowledgment : " Certainly the appellation is not un- 
 frequent in the Old Testament, Josephus, and Philo, as applied to God 
 the .Father." 
 
PAUL S FIRST PRAYER TO JESUS. 339 
 
 than God ; Jesus is to Ananias his God, the Recipient of 
 his worship, and yet the Friend before Whom he can plead 
 the secret thoughts of his heart with earnestness and free 
 dom" (p. 370). 
 
 Is then the sight of God, or the hearing of God s voice, in 
 a vision, so ordinary and simple an experience as to encour 
 age a reverent familiarity, and to put the soul of the worship 
 per at ease ? To most minds the trustfulness and freedom, 
 " even to the verge of argument and remonstrance," will 
 irresistibly suggest that Ananias did not apprehend the 
 Object of his vision to be the Eternal God. What tokens 
 are there of "the deepest sense of God s awful greatness"? 
 Where is there, in the account, the faintest shadow of an 
 indication, " Jesus was to Ananias his God, the Recipient of 
 his worship " ? The narrative tells of neither prayer, nor wor 
 ship, but of an exceptional state, and of some abnormal com 
 munication with the inner senses through a dream or trance. 
 The complete occupation of the field of spiritual vision, in 
 the colloquy with the glorified Jesus, is, perhaps, better evi 
 dence that the field was finite, or the soul s faculties awakened 
 only so far as to attend to the Object presented, than that 
 the Object was Infinite, sufficing to engage and satisfy all 
 capacities for devotion. 
 
 The " conspicuousness " of St. Paul s " devotion to the 
 Adorable Person of our Lord" furnishes Mr. Liddon with 
 materials for a number of rhetorical, indiscriminating, and 
 exaggerating statements : 
 
 " At the very moment of his conversion, Saul of Tarsus 
 surrendered himself by a prayer to Christ, as to the lawful 
 Lord of his being : Lord, he cried, what wilt Thou have 
 me to do? (Acts ix. 6.) And when afterwards, in the tem 
 ple, our Lord bade St. Paul, Make haste and get thee quickly 
 out of Jerusalem, we find the Apostle, like Ananias, unfold 
 ing to Jesus his secret thoughts, his fears, his regrets, his 
 confessions ; laying them out before Him, and waiting for an 
 answer from Jesus in the secret chambers of his soul (Acts 
 xxii. 19,20)" (p. 371). 
 
340 PAUL S SUPPOSED HABITUAL 
 
 There is something stronger than a probability the words 
 by which Saul of Tarsus is supposed to have " surrendered 
 himself," &c., were never spoken. They are in the Vulgate 
 Version, but are wanting not only in the three most ancient 
 MSS., the Sinaitic, the Vatican, and the Alexandrine, but 
 in the Greek MSS. generally. Dean Alford says of them: 
 " They are without any authority whatever from the Greek 
 MSS." They may have been based upon Acts xxii. 10, xxvi. 
 14 ; passages which for Mr. Liddon s purpose are not parallel. 
 But, assuming for the moment, Paul did, trembling and aston 
 ished, cry, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? " are we 
 to assume also that by Lord he meant I^ord God, or that 
 if he had not believed Christ to be God he must have said, 
 "Lord, wilt Thou tell me what God would have me to do?" 
 
 The expostulation during the trance or ecstasy in the temple 
 (Acts xxii. 17-21) does not, either in form or matter, excuse 
 Mr. Liddon s inflated commentary ; and, if we exactingly 
 draw inferences, the unawed and outspoken unfolding of the 
 entranced Christian s thoughts suggests that his soul was 
 not conscious of beholding, and conversing with, the Ever 
 lasting God. The purpose of his pleading, after Jesus had 
 told him the Jews at Jerusalem would not receive his testi 
 mony, was to show there were strong reasons why they 
 ought, and in his opinion were likely, to receive it. Is this 
 remonstrance, and preference for one s own judgment, at all 
 natural, when the soul s inward senses are opened to direct 
 and conscious intercourse with the Almighty ? 
 
 But Mr. Liddon has brought to the study of Scripture a 
 penetrating discernment conducting him to the persuasion 
 thus expressed, 
 
 " St. Paul constantly uses language which shows that he 
 habitually thought of Jesus as of Divine Providence in a 
 Human Form, watching over, befriending, consoling, guiding, 
 providing for him and his, with Infinite foresight and power, 
 but also with the tenderness of a human sympathy. In this 
 sense, Jesus is placed on a level with the Father in St. Paul s 
 two earliest Epistles. c Now God Himself and our Father, 
 
CONCEPTION OF CHRIST. 341 
 
 and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you (1 Thess. 
 iii. 11). Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even 
 our Father, Which hath loved us, and hath given us ever 
 lasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort 
 your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work 
 (2 Thess. ii. 16, 17). Thus Jesus is associated with the 
 Father, in one instance, as directing the outward movements 
 of the Apostle s life, in another as building up the inward life 
 of the recent converts to Christianity. In other devotional 
 expressions, the Name of Jesus stands alone. ( I trust in the 
 Lord Jesus, so the Apostle writes to the Philippians, to send 
 Timotheus shortly unto you (Phil. ii. 19). I thank Christ 
 Jesus our Lord, so he assures St. Timothy, Who hath given 
 me power, for that He counted me faithful, putting me into 
 the ministry (1 Tim. i. 12). Is not this the natural language 
 of a soul which is constantly engaged in communion with 
 Jesus, whether it be the communion of praise or the com 
 munion of prayer? Jesus is to St. Paul not a deceased 
 teacher or philanthropist, who has simply done his great 
 work and then left it as a legacy to the world ; He is God, 
 ever living and ever present, the Giver of temporal and of 
 spiritual blessings, the Guide and Friend of man, both in 
 man s outward and in his inward life" (pp. 371, 372). 
 
 Whether the tone and diction of the Epistles to the Thessa- 
 lonians are in any degree calculated to suggest or encourage 
 the fancy of St. Paul s having, in one or two expressions, 
 which may by total isolation become ambiguous, purposed 
 to place Jesus on a level with the Father, can readily be 
 determined by readers of those Epistles. The personal dis 
 tinction between God and Christ is everywhere clearly and 
 prominently presented, and God is the Christian s God and 
 Father, the Source of the Christian s election, the Object of 
 the Christian s prayers and thanksgivings. The conversion 
 of the heathen to Apostolic Christianity was a turning from 
 idols " to serve the Living and True God, and to wait for His 
 Son from the heavens, even Jesus whom He raised from the 
 dead" (1 Thess. i. 9, 10). 
 
342 HOW IS PRAYER TO CHRIST 
 
 The first of the passages which Mr. Liddon cites, and in 
 which the Apostle sets forth the earnest and pious desire of 
 his heart, is prefaced by a reference to his thanksgiving and 
 fervent prayer to God, and followed by the expression of a 
 hope that the Thessalonians hearts may be established un 
 blamable in holiness, before our God and Father, at the com 
 ing of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. There can, I 
 should imagine, be no doubt, even in the most ecclesiastically 
 tutored mind, that our God (ver. 9) is synonymous with our 
 God and Father (ver. 11 and 13), and therefore does not 
 include the personally separate Son, our Lord Jesus. 
 
 The text quoted from the Second Epistle to the Thessa 
 lonians stands in a passage where the Apostle declares his 
 obligation to give thanks to God always, for His election of 
 the Thessalonians, and His calling of them by the Gospel, to 
 the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 If St. Paul had conceived Jesus Christ to be on a level 
 with the Father, and included with Him in one and the same 
 Divine Nature, it seems impossible he should have so habitu 
 ally and sharply discriminated Them from each other. There 
 is no evidence St. Paul was a man of slovenly, unsystematic 
 mind, or was afraid to face and proclaim the results and con 
 clusions which his faith involved. If he was really enlightened 
 to believe and know that Jesus is, in virtue of Very Godhead, 
 the Father s Equal, his language in every Epistle singly, and 
 in all taken together, cannot be rationally explained when 
 severed from the hypothesis of his being the Mouthpiece of 
 an inspiration whose fruits are to be judged by no received 
 rules of human intelligence. 
 
 The argument the Name of Christ is mentioned con 
 jointly with the Name of the Father, in references to the 
 bestowal of spiritual guidance and strength and comfort 
 has no cogency, unless proof is forthcoming that Jesus and 
 the Father are, in the same sense, kind, and degree, the 
 sources of spiritual guidance and strength and comfort. 
 The truer and solely Scriptural point of view is, that God 
 imparts blessings by and through Christ. That the exalted 
 
RECOGNIZED IN PAUL S EPISTLES? 343 
 
 Jesus, as the Messiah, the Head of the Church, and the Re 
 cipient of vast and peculiar gifts from the Almighty Father, 
 is the Channel of grace, and the secondary and subordinate 
 Dispenser of blessings, was unquestionably a portion of the 
 Apostolic Faith, and amply accounts for sundry forms of 
 expression which the Bampton Lectures misinterpret ; while 
 it does not contravene the mass of direct statements and 
 clear implications which attest Christ s inferiority and exte 
 riority to the Unoriginated, Incorruptible Essence. The 
 Apostle, who could cheer and exhort his converts with the 
 assurance, ye are Christ s / the Head of every man is Christ, 
 would, doubtless, believe in Christ s loving care and ability to 
 afford gracious assistances; but in the expressions which his 
 belief instigated he would not intend to bring the one Lord 
 to the level of the One God, and would not forget that Christ 
 is God s; that God is the Head of Christ (I Cor. iii. 23; 
 xi. 3) / and that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ is the Father of mercies and God of all comfort 
 (2 Cor. i. 3). 
 
 The Apostle s benedictory salutations, &c., " Grace be unto 
 you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus 
 Christ " (1 Cor. i. 3), " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be 
 with you all" ( Rom. xvi. 24), and the like, are not "indirect 
 prayers offered to Christ, that His blessing might be vouch 
 safed to the Churches which the Apostle is addressing," unless 
 prayer is the same thing as kind commendations, benevolent 
 wishes, and pious aspirations. A believer in angelic minis 
 trations and guardianship would not indirectly pray to angels, 
 if he said, "May angelic care be with you, may the holy 
 Angels guard you." Since all things and events are within 
 the scope, and subject to the sway of the Divine wisdom and 
 power, every expression of hope and desire with respect to 
 the bestowal of good gifts might be called an "indirect 
 prayer" to God, but could not be called prayer in the strict 
 and proper sense. If the gifts were contemplated as flow 
 ing from, or through, a secondary and intermediate Giver, it 
 would be simply absurd to say that kindly expressed hopes, 
 
344 HOW IS PRAYER TO CHRIST 
 
 wishes, and commendations were prayers to him, proving him 
 to be the Object of truly religious supplication. 
 
 Before adducing the texts quoted in the last paragraph, 
 Mr. Liddon should have studied the contexts. The very 
 next words after the text from the first Corinthian Evcstle 
 are, " I thank my God always concerning you, for the gra ce 
 of God which was given you in Christ Jesus ; " and the next 
 sentence (ver. 9) is, " God is faithful, by Whom ye were 
 called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our 
 Lord." 
 
 The text from the Roman Epistle should have been referred, 
 xvi. 20 ; verse 24 not being found in either of the three great 
 Manuscripts. Verse 20 is immediately preceded by an an 
 nouncement : " The God of peace will bruise Satan under 
 your feet shortly; "and followed (ver. 25-27) by a doxology 
 of rather involved and incoherent construction (see Winer, 
 Grammar of N. T. Sec. Ixiii. 1) : "To him that is able to 
 stablish you according to my Gospel, and the preaching of 
 Jesus Christ, ... to the Only wise God, to Whom, through 
 Jesus Christ, be the glory for ever." 
 
 A theologian must be suffering grievously from scarcity 
 of materials, when he endeavors to build reasoning on such 
 phrases as, in the Lord Jesus ; in the Lord ; in Christ. If 
 my readers will consult a few of the many examples in which 
 those phrases occur, they will see how much out of place are 
 minute doctrinal deductions. Mr. Liddon borrows the follow 
 ing commentary on Phil. ii. 19, from Bishop Ellicott : "I 
 hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy shortly. This hope 
 was in the Lord Jesus / it rested and centred in Him ; it 
 arose from no extraneous feelings or expectations, and so 
 would doubtless be fulfilled." 
 
 St. Paul s avowal of gratitude to Christ (1 Tim. i. 12) is 
 no " devotional expression " of religious adoration, implying 
 Jesus to be God, and equally with the Father the primary 
 Fountain of spiritual endowments and energy. It is a Simple 
 expression of thankfulness for his call to the Apostleship, and 
 for the strength which had, through Christ, been imparted to 
 
RECOGNIZED IN PAUL S EPISTLES? 345 
 
 him. The original of I thank is not the verb ev /jwiGreTv, 
 which is in the New Testament almost exclusively appropri 
 ated to the sacred purpose of thanking God, (Luke xvii. 16 ; 
 Rom. xvi. 4 ; being the only exceptions in between thirty arid 
 forty texts), but a phrase which is not frequent, and is not 
 in itself devotional (Luke xvii. 9), though it is used with ref 
 erence to God in 2 Tim. i. 3. If devout thanksgivings were 
 continually ascending to the Glorified Jesus, how is it that 
 Mr. Liddon can adduce only a single imperfect instance, from 
 the whole range of the Acts and Epistles? And, again, 
 how is it that, in the same wide field, the consecrated term, 
 tv%uQiGTtiv, is never applied to Christ ? And, yet again, how 
 is it that the Pauline phrase, thanks be to God, y/wt^ raj 
 QSCO (Rom. vi. 17 ; vii. 25, probably ; 1 Cor. xv. 57 ; 2 Cor. ii. 
 14; viii. 16 ; ix. 15), has nowhere one parallel thanks be to 
 Christ ? Have these facts no weight, and are honest men, 
 who profess to learn from the New Testament, at liberty to 
 ignore them? 
 
 Mr. Liddon might, moreover, have gathered the precarious- 
 ness of the conjecture, Christ was " to St. Paul, God ever liv 
 ing," &c., from the context of 1 Tim. i. 12. Inverse 11, the 
 Apostle names " the Gospel of the glory of the Blessed God," 
 where the Blessed God is not Jesus Christ; and in verse 17 
 he writes : " Unto the King of the Ages, the Immortal, the 
 Invisible, the Only God, be honor and glory for ever and 
 ever;" where, again, the Only God is not Jesus Christ. 
 
 What is meant by coupling with Christ s " Infinite fore 
 sight and power the tenderness also of a human sympathy"? 
 The Incarnation of Deity can scarcely be imagined to have 
 augmented God s tender love, and capacity of feeling with, 
 and for, His creatures. Our Maker does not acquire a better 
 knowledge whereof we" are made, and come to understand 
 more" thoroughly the work of His own Hands, by enveloping 
 One of His Own Divine Persons in the raiment of an Imper 
 sonal Humanity. Is not God s Nature, inasmuch as It is 
 the fountain and sustenance of ours, the One conceivable 
 Nature Which can perfectly sympathize with our infirmities, 
 
346 HOW IS PRAYER TO CHRIST 
 
 and can learn nothing about us by the assumption of our 
 flesh and blood ? A created Being, not one of ourselves, or 
 even an Arian Christ, such as the Fourth Gospel, when not 
 ecclesiastically expounded, so distinctly yields, might attain 
 complete sympathy with us by entering our ranks ; but In 
 carnation could not add to our Creator s Omniscience, or 
 extend His loving tenderness. The Personal and absolutely 
 Divine Word cannot have furnished Himself with one ad 
 ditional or enlarged sympathetic qualification by becoming 
 Incarnate. If the undiminished Attributes of Deity did not 
 deprive His experience of veritable human reality, still His 
 experience could not have enhanced His perfect comprehen 
 sion of His rational and sensitive creatures. 
 
 Rom. x. 9-13 is a passage which we are asked to accept as 
 proof of St. Paul s having believed Christ to be God, and 
 consequently the Object of prayer: 
 
 " In point of fact, the Apostle has not left us in doubt as 
 to his faith or his practice in this respect. If, he asserts, 
 thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and 
 shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from 
 the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man 
 believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession 
 is made to salvation. For the Scripture saith, Whosoever 
 believeth on Him shall not be ashamed. For there is no 
 difference between the Jew and the Greek ; for the Same is 
 Lord over all, rich unto all that call upon Him. For whoso 
 ever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved. 
 The Prophet Joel had used these last words of prayer to the 
 Lord Jehovah. St. Paul, as the whole context shows be 
 yond reasonable doubt, understands them of prayer to 
 Jesus" (p. 372). 
 
 I have already shown that the context does any thing 
 rather than remove " reasonable doubt " St. Paul understood 
 the prophet s words in the sense Mr. Liddon asserts ; but I 
 may add a few remarks here. The alteration in the transla 
 tion, " the Same is Lord of all," is probably not an improve 
 ment. At any rate, it is a matter of opinion, arbitrary, on no 
 
RECOGNIZED IN PAUL S EPISTLES? 347 
 
 ground provable, and of no consequence in the interpretation 
 of the passage, "God Who raised Christ from the dead" 
 (ver. 9), being the more probable Object of the faith and the 
 invocation in verses 11 and 12. In Acts ii. 21, we meet with 
 the same quotation from Joel, where, if the original sense of 
 the prophet s words is departed from, and the Lord designates 
 Christ, and Christ is God, ecclesiastical exposition becomes 
 eminently requisite in the next sentence, "Jesus of Naza 
 reth, a man proved by God unto you by miracles, and won 
 ders, and signs, which God did by Him ; " and again in ver. 
 36, " God hath made this same Jesus whom ye crucified both 
 Lord and Christ." If it should be said, as the present Bishop 
 of Lincoln, Dr. Wordsworth, does say (Smith s J3ible Dic 
 tionary, Article, Son of God), " Lord equals Jehovah" then 
 we have the portentous disclosure that the Self-existent, 
 Eternal One has made a Being Who expired upon the cross, 
 Self-existent and Eternal. To soften this startling revelation, 
 by explaining the making of Jesus into Jehovah, to signify 
 merely the giving Him the Name Jehovah, is to abandon its 
 witness to Christ s Deity ; for to bear the Name is not the 
 same thing as to possess the -Nature of Jehovah. 
 
 If calling upon the Name of the Lord is understood of 
 Jesus, in Rom. x. 13, then that form of expression, which has 
 been shown not necessarily and specifically to indicate 
 prayer, may be synonymous with confessing with the mouth 
 the Lord Jesus (ver. 9). The probably true reading in verse 
 17 is the report is through the word of Christ; but before 
 we draw upon this circumstance for inferences favorable to 
 Mr. Liddon s exposition, we should study, in the certainly 
 true reading of Col.iii. 16, 17, a description of the devotional 
 effects which the word of Christ ought to produce. " Let 
 the word of Christ dwell in you richly ; in all wisdom teach 
 ing and admonishing each other with psalms, hymns, spiritual 
 songs, in grace singing in your hearts to God. And every 
 thing whatsoever ye do in word or in deed, do all in the 
 Name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God, the Father, 
 through Him." The denomination, Lord of all, being used 
 
348 HOW IS PRAYER TO CHRIST 
 
 in Gal. iv. 1, can hardly be reckoned among the consecrated 
 and exclusive titles of God. 
 
 In the particular case we are discussing, there is no proof, 
 aiid no preponderance of likelihood, " St. Paul applies to 
 Jesus the language which the prophets had used of the Lord 
 Jehovah;" and if he had so applied it, no convincing testi 
 mony for the Apostle s belief in Christ s Godhead would be 
 involved. The great characteristic of Christ s disciples in 
 the Apostolic Church was, that they did in every way sup 
 plicate, acknowledge, and praise their God and Father. To 
 believe in, confess, and call upon the Name of Jesus Christ 
 Whom God had sent, was included in the Christian worship 
 of God, not because Christ was held to be God, but because 
 the very position and offices of Christ were understood to be 
 those of Example, Leader, Lord, and Head, in the family of 
 God s worshippers. From the Apostolic standpoint, the dis 
 ciples of Jesus were, in virtue of their discipleship, most 
 emphatically and distinctively the servants and children of 
 God. I speak, of course, only upon the basis of a reasonable 
 interpretation of Scripture, and under correction from eccle 
 siastical light. Ecclesiastical interpretation may teach, and, 
 upon Catholic as opposed to Protestant principles, may teach 
 rightly, there is a divinely devised and irrefragable argument 
 for Christ s Deity contained in the fact, that a prophet used 
 certain language concerning Jehovah ; that St. Peter (Acts 
 ii. 21) quoted the prophet s language, to all appearance in its 
 original application ; and that St. Paul afterwards quoted it, 
 in a passage sufficiently obscure and ambiguous to leave room 
 for doubt whether his designed reference was to Jehovah or 
 to Christ. 
 
 Mr. Liddon inquires : " What shall we say of St. Paul s 
 entreaties that he might be freed from the mysterious and 
 numiliating infirmity which he terms his thorn in the flesh ? 
 He tells us that three times he besought the Lord Jesus 
 Christ that it might depart from him, and that in mercy his 
 prayer was refused (2 Cor. xii. 8, 9). Are we to imagine 
 that that prayer to Jesus was an isolated act in St. Paul s 
 
KECOGNIZED IN PAUL S EPISTLES? 349 
 
 spiritual life? Does any such religious act stand alone in 
 the spiritual history of an earnest #nd moderately consistent 
 man?" (p. 373.) 
 
 From the particular term, TtaQaxafaiv, by which St. Paul 
 describes his petition, no argument can be dravn for the 
 petition s having been prayer to God. That term is never 
 by the Apostle used of requests to the Almighty, but it 
 repeatedly occurs of entreaties and exhortations addressed to 
 the brethren. In the Gospels it frequently describes peti 
 tions made to Christ while He was upon earth ; but it is, in 
 the entire New Testament, only once used of prayer to God, 
 in the words, " Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my 
 Father, and He will furnish Me with more than twelve 
 legions of Angels ? " (Matt. xxvi. 53.) 
 
 Dean Stanley, on 2 Cor. xii. 8, says of the verb of entreaty 
 used by St. Paul : " This is often applied to Christ in the 
 Gospels, and implies that personal communication which the 
 Apostle always presupposes in his language concerning 
 Him." 
 
 But the petition cannot be fairly disjoined from the excep 
 tional circumstances, the "visions and revelations of the 
 Lord," with which it is, in the Apostle s narrative, associated. 
 From verse 9, we learn there was some sort of sensible, 
 unusual communication. The answer given to St. Paul was, 
 in its degree, a revelation, and the account leads us to sup 
 pose Christ appeared and spoke. So far as our knowledge 
 of the Apostle s spiritual history extends, we have no warrant 
 for "imagining that that prayer to Jesus" was other than an 
 " isolated act," or, at any rate, an act attached to conditions 
 foreign to ordinary experience, and therefore no guide to us, 
 unless in our cases the conditions should be repeated. I do 
 not doubt that all persons who believe in Christ s exaltation, 
 and His mission from God, would, if they were to behold and 
 hear Him, either in their normal or in an entranced state, 
 address petitions to Him. They would do so, whether they 
 held or repudiated the doctrine of the Church Catholic 
 respecting His Person. Exceptional experiences, such as 
 
350 HOW IS PRAYEE TO CHRIST 
 
 those of Stephen, Ananias, and St. Paul, natu "ally produced 
 exceptional results. These saints of the primitive Church 
 did not appeal to Christ as to the Invisible and Omnipresent 
 God, but as to a Being marvellously disclosed to, and com 
 municating with, the inner senses of their souls. The visions 
 and colloquies vouchsafed to St. Paul (see Acts ix. 27 ; xviii. 
 9 ; xxii. 18 ; xxiii. 11 ; 2 Cor. xii. 1-9) would have had a 
 practically incontrollable tendency to make prayer to Jesus 
 the Apostle s habitual practice, if he had held Jesus to be 
 Omnipotent and Omniscienlt Deity. He would himself con 
 tinually have prayed to Christ, and would have enjoined 
 prayer to Christ as among the foremost and most profitable 
 of Christian duties. But if we know any thing about his life, 
 teaching, and devotional habits (and the reasonable supposi 
 tion is, the Acts and Epistles tell us the prominent features), 
 he did nothing of the kind. We may, therefore, fairly infer 
 his views of his exalted Master s Nature caused him (times 
 of ecstasy and revelation apart) to abstain from offering 
 prayers to our Lord, and to abstain from encouraging or 
 directing others to offer them. " An earnest and moderately 
 consistent man," convinced of Christ s Godhead, and enjoying 
 the intercourse with Christ with which St. Paul was favored, 
 must have shown his earnestness and consistency by prac 
 tices and injunctions which the known history and extant 
 writings of St. Paul totally foil to exhibit. The attempt to 
 deduce Christ s Godhead from St. Paul s " worship " of Christ 
 is an impolitic blunder, because it at once, and necessarily, 
 fixes the attention on facts most adverse to the deduction. 
 The Apostle had special individual inducements to render, 
 and prescribe, the adoration which, in Mr. Liddon s opinion, 
 he would on general grounds of doctrine feel to be due. But 
 while there is superabundant testimony he himself adored, 
 and taught others to adore, the Unseen Father, with the 
 tributes of prayer and praise, there is no testimony he 
 adored, or counselled the adoration of, the Unseen Christ. 
 
 Mr. Liddon reverts again to a portion of the much-dis 
 cussed passage in the second chapter of the Epistle to the 
 
351 
 
 Philippians, for the purpose of asserting that, in verses 9 
 and 10, "Apostles declared Jesus, when His day of humilia 
 tion and suffering had ended, to have been so highly exalted 
 that the Name which He had borne on earth, and which is 
 the symbol of His Humanity, was now the very atmosphere 
 and nutriment of all the upward torrents of prayer which 
 rise from the moral world beneath His throne ; that as the 
 God-Man He was worshipped by Angels, by men, and by the 
 spirits of the dead. The practice of the Apostles did but 
 illustrate their faith ; and the prayers offered to Jesus by 
 His servants on earth were believed to be but a reflection 
 of that worship which is offered to Him by the Church of 
 heaven" (p. 374). 
 
 That the Name bestowed upon Christ was " the Name He 
 had borne on earth " is not less manifest than many other 
 things which are stated in the Lectures I am reviewing, but 
 at the same time is very far from being really manifest. The 
 wording of the text certainly leaves the impression that the 
 giving of " the Name which is above every name " was con 
 current with the exceeding exaltation Christ Jesus received 
 from God, and therefore posterior to the " day of humiliation 
 and suffering." Mr. Liddon strengthens himself by quoting 
 Dean Alford : 
 
 " The general aim of the passage is the exaltation of Jesus. 
 The to the glory of God the Father, below, is no deduction 
 from this, but rather an additional reason why we should 
 carry on the exaltation of Jesus until this new particular is 
 introduced. This would lead us to infer that the universal 
 prayer is to be to Jesus. And this view is confirmed by the 
 next clause, where every tongue is to confess that Jesus 
 Christ is Lord, when we remember the common expression, 
 to call upon the Name of the Lord, for prayer " (Rom. x. 
 12; 1 Cor. i. 2; 2 Tim. ii. 22). 
 
 The worth of the references, in connection with the state 
 ment, " to call upon the Name of the Lord is a common New 
 Testament expression for prayer," my readers are in a posi 
 tion to estimate. No man could write with more clearness 
 
352 
 
 than Dean Alford, when he was not engaged upon the task 
 of elucidating Catholic dogma by the exposition of intrac 
 table texts ; but I am greatly mistaken, if he w r as thinking or 
 writing clearly, w r hen he affirmed that the words to the glory 
 of God, the Father (ver. 11), are no deduction from the 
 exaltation of Jesus. Take the bending of the knee in the 
 Name of Jesus, and the confession of the Lordship of Jesus, 
 in what sense we will, the glory of God the Father is the 
 supreme and ultimate aim and end ; and, if this does not 
 deduct from the exaltation of Jesus, it at least implies that 
 the exaltation did not, in the Apostle s thought, reach the 
 height of Co-equal Godhead. If, in the Sacred Writer s 
 estimation, Jesus and God were distinct Beings, so decidedly 
 on different levels that the one could be " exceedingly ex 
 alted " by the Other, there is, of course, no deduction from 
 the exaltation, but rather a guarantee and continuation of 
 it, in the " new particular introduced ; " but if the writer 
 judged Jesus to be in Nature the Eternal Father s Equal, 
 his language is among those products of revealing inspiration 
 which are wholly inscrutable to reason. 
 
 I may remark, the Dean s Revised Version of Phil. ii. 6, 
 " deemed not His equality with God a thing to grasp at," 
 will not pass with unprejudiced scholars, however it may 
 deceive the body of English readers, whom the Dean was 
 bound with scrupulous fairness to enlighten. Equality with 
 is a translation too doubtful ever to be given without an inti 
 mation of its doubtfulness ; and for the intrusion of the 
 pronoun His, there was no authority but the Dean s own 
 conviction, which he might have stated and defended, but 
 had no right to foist upon the public, under the guise of 
 literal rendering.* An expositor s opinion of the Apostle s 
 
 * While referring to Dean Alford s Revision, which is in so many 
 points a real improvement, I may notice two glaring faults. He retains 
 in St. Matthew s Gospel the inaccurate and misleading phrase, " end of 
 the world ; " and in Rom. ix. 5 gives no hint that the rendering, " Christ, 
 Who is God over all, blessed for ever," is only one of two translations 
 equally admissible on grammatical grounds. The preponderance of evi 
 dence, on all other grounds (excepting, of course, the Church s final dog- 
 
DISCREDITABLY HANDLED BY COMMENTATORS. 353 
 
 meaning may be very valuable in its proper place, but that 
 place is not a translation supposed to be as closely literal as 
 the different idioms of different languages will permit. Or 
 thodox Protestant scholars have an instinctive and almost 
 insuperable reluctance to acquaint English reader,, with the 
 ambiguities involved in the construction and language of 
 Rom. ix. 5, Phil. ii. 5-11. But, however natural this reluc 
 tance may be, the translator s duty should be performed with 
 conscientious equity ; and in the few instances of phrases with 
 a controversial bearing, where two renderings are, on merely 
 philological grounds, equally probable, both should be given. 
 Fear lest the majority of readers should, when thrown on the 
 contexts, and on the general teaching of Scripture, arrive 
 at what the translator judges to be a wrong conclusion, is no 
 sufficient palliation for making a Sacred Writer definitely 
 say one thing when it is quite as likely he meant another. 
 
 The treatment which the Philippian passage has long re 
 ceived is a discredit to commentators. Every Greek scholar 
 knows quite well that the far more general and fundamental 
 sense of the word translated form is outward semblance, 
 shape, fashion, appearance, and from this sense the meaning 
 
 matic authority) is so heavily against the punctuation applied, and the 
 rendering given, in the Authorized Version, that a reviser, whatever his 
 private opinion may be, ought, in Christian truthfulness and honesty, to 
 apprise English readers of the ambiguity of the text. 
 
 Another, though in comparison trivial, blemish of the Dean s work, 
 is that, in every instance except one, he translates Greek which is, word 
 for word, the God and Father of us, by God and our Father. The sense is 
 undoubtedly that which he has in the exceptional instance (Phil. iv. 20) 
 given Our God and Father. The phrase, the God and Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, he always construes literally and correctly ; yet in Eev. i. 6, 
 he declines to substitute unto his God and Father for the less faithful ren 
 dering unto God and His Father. 
 
 The English reader should consult, along with Alford s Revised Ver 
 sion, Sharpe s well-known translation from Griesbach s Text. These 
 together will put him in possession of the true sense of the Original. If 
 he adds " Tischendorf s English Testament, with various readings from 
 the three most celebrated Manuscripts," he will have every aid of real 
 importance, as regards translation and Text. The three volumes I have 
 named may all be purchased for five shillings. 
 
 23 
 
354 " FOIIM OF GOD," " EQUALITY WITH GOD." ETC. 
 
 of the very difficult and figurative expression, form of God, 
 should be derived ; yet, because form may, in the refinement 
 of philosophical diction, possibly signify, " aggregate of the 
 qualities," " sp ecific character," it is boldly declared to be, in 
 the Apostle s statement, tantamount to essence, nature, pos 
 session of distinctive attributes. It is used in only one other 
 instance in the New Testament (Mark xvi. 12), where the 
 expression, lie appeared in another form, does not mean in 
 another essence or nature (comp. Septuagint ; Job iv. 16; 
 Isa. xliv. 13 ; Dan. v. 6, 9, 10 ; vii. 28 ; also Wisdom xviii. 1). 
 The cognate and derivative words occurring in the New 
 Testament do not aid to sustain the conjecture which doc 
 trinal considerations recommend to Orthodox scholars. The 
 similar designation, image of God, is protected by its appli 
 cation to man ; otherwise subtle theologians would have dis 
 cerned that, since it cannot relate to external shape, it must 
 imply identity of " essential qualities " and " distinctive 
 attributes." 
 
 The phrase assumed to betoken equality with God more 
 probably betokens likeness to God, the being as God, and all 
 attempts to make it definite by inserting the particulars, or 
 specifying the extent of resemblance, are mere surmises.* 
 Together with the previous phrase, /or;?? of God, it indicates 
 with vague generality a Godlike condition, but could never 
 be accepted as an allegation of Christ s Godhead, without a 
 strong previous persuasion that Christ is God. Its evidential 
 force for minds not already persuaded of our Lord s Deity is 
 rather adverse to the dogma, because the subject of Christ s 
 dignity and exaltation was in the Apostle s thoughts, and, 
 unless checked by inspiration, he may be fairly presumed to 
 have written freely from the depth and fulness of his faith 
 and knowledge. Ambiguity and reserve imply the absence 
 of clear conviction and didactic purpose ; and if the stupen 
 dous dogma, " Jesus is the Most High God," had not been 
 already proclaimed and established among the converts at 
 
 * No man with a competent knowledge of Greek can deny the greater 
 probability that taa is used adverbially, in the sense of as or like. 
 
DOUBTFUL RENDERING OF I JOHN V. 13-15. 355 
 
 Philippi, they certainly would never have gathered it from 
 doubtful and dark phraseology. The scope and diction of 
 the Philippian Epistle generally, as I have shown in examin 
 ing an earlier section of Mr. Liddon s Lectures, lend no sup 
 port to the notion that St. Paul believed and taught the 
 Essential Equality of Christ and the Father. 
 
 The Fathers of the early Christian centuries are eminently 
 instructive in their treatment of the passage we have been 
 considering. Handling it with vivacious imagination, pene 
 trating boldness, and untiring pertinacity, they smite with 
 it numerous heresies, and construct from its condensed 
 and comprehensive teachings impregnable defences for the 
 Church s Faith concerning the Nature and Person of Christ. 
 Bishop Bull, a diligent student of their writings, was truly a 
 partaker of their spirit when he said respecting the seemingly 
 cloudy, metaphorical, and difficult phrases addressed to the 
 converts at Philippi, " This one passage, if it be rightly un 
 derstood, is sufficient for the refutation of all the Heresies 
 against the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ" (JDef. NIC. 
 Fid,}. 
 
 With laudable self-restraint, Mr. Liddon abstains from 
 appealing to the " less clearly traceable belief in the brief 
 Epistles of St. Peter," but he hazards the remark : " Yet 1 
 Peter iv. 11 is a doxology framed, as it might seem, for com 
 mon use on earth and in heaven. See also 2 Peter iii. 18." 
 In the former of these texts, the doxology is, in all probabil 
 ity, directed to God, " Whom the Apostle would have to be 
 glorified in all things through Jesus Christ ; " but the wording 
 is ambiguous, a circumstance which begets absolute confi 
 dence in a Christian controversialist. 
 
 What is less conspicuous in St. Peter is, however, " espe 
 cially observable in St. John. St. John is speaking of the Son 
 of God, when he exclaims, This is the confidence that we 
 have in Him, that, if we ask any thing according to His Will, 
 He heareth us : and if we know that He hcareth us, we know 
 that we have the petitions that we desired of Him (1 John 
 v. 13-15). The natural construction of this passage seems 
 
356 THE DESCRIPTIONS AND VISIONS 
 
 to oblige us to refer of Him, and His Will, to the Son of 
 God (ver. 13). The passage 1 John iii. 21, 22, does not for 
 bid this : it only shows how fully in St. John s mind the 
 honor and prerogatives of the Son are those of the Father" 
 (p. 374). 
 
 A man who has no theory to serve will perceive that we 
 cannot insist 011 construing the pronoun with reference to 
 the last antecedent title, Son of God. Verses 12 and 13 are 
 parenthetical, and the confidence spoken of in verse 14 is, by 
 the more natural construction, confidence towards God, of 
 Whom it had been affirmed in verse 11, " God gave to us 
 eternal life, and this life is in His Son." Macknight rightly 
 paraphrases : " This is the boldness which we have with the 
 Father, through our believing on His Son," &c. The pas 
 sage (iii. 21, 22), w^hich unquestionably relates to the Father, 
 is in its phraseology parallel and illustrative, and enhances 
 the contextually strong probability that in v. 14, 15, the refer 
 ence is to God. 
 
 With a curious disregard for the plain sense of the very 
 texts which he quotes, unless, indeed, his object is to infer, 
 in the teeth of the Apostle s language, the Godhead of the 
 Lamb, Mr. Liddon brings forward the Apocalyptic vision 
 of " the adoration Above, where the wounded Humanity of 
 our Lord is throned in the highest heavens " (Rev. v. 6-14). 
 The Lamb slain and glorified is first declared to be " worthy 
 to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, 
 and honor, and glory, and blessing" (ver. 12), and then every 
 creature joins in saying, " Blessing, and honor, and glory, and 
 power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto 
 the Lamb, for ever and ever." This " hymn of the whole 
 visible creation" Mr. Liddon introduces with the liberally 
 imaginative statement : " All created life, whether it wills or 
 not, lives for Christ s as for the Father s glory." But the 
 chapter from which Mr. Liddon s argument is drawn does 
 not in the smallest degree betray an intention to equalize 
 Christ with God. The Lamb is clearly distinguished from 
 God. He is called " the Lion which is of the tribe of Judah, 
 
OP THE BOOK OP REVELATION. 357 
 
 the Root of David" (ver. 5); and is pronounced to be 
 " worthy to take the Book, and to open the seals thereof; 
 because He was slain, and did redeem to God by His blood, 
 out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation ; 
 and did make them unto our God a kingdom and priests." 
 The adoration, so far, is most palpably not to Jesus as God, 
 but to Jesus as Redeemer; and in verse 13 there is, as I have 
 before observed, no trace of identity, or unity of nature, and 
 a very manifest separation of persons, between Him that 
 sitteth upon the throne and the Lamb. To show " how the 
 Redeemed Church on earth bears her part in this univer 
 sal chorus of praise," Mr. Liddon cites Rev. i. 5, 6 : " Unto 
 Him That loveth us, and washed us from our sins in His 
 blood, and made us a kingdom and priests unto His God and 
 Father ; to Him be the glory, and the dominion, for ever and 
 ever. Amen ; " words, be it remembered, which follow 
 immediately after the description : " Jesus Christ, the faith 
 ful Witness, the First-born of the dead, and the Ruler of 
 the kings of the earth." It is possible the writer may, in the 
 ascription of glory, have had Christ s God and Father in 
 view, but grammatical construction refers the clause to Christ. 
 
 The feelings of those who deny, from the Protestant 
 ground of reasonably interpreted Scripture, the dogma which 
 Mr. Liddon upholds, may, I should imagine, be here expressed 
 in his own language: "You will not, my brethren, mistake 
 the force and meaning of this representation of the adora 
 tion of the Lamb in the Apocalypse. . . . You cannot doubt 
 for one moment Who is meant by the Lamb, or what is 
 the character of the worship that is so solemnly offered to 
 Him" (p. 376). 
 
 When we are admonished that, " To adore Christ s 
 Deity while carefully refusing to adore His Manhood would 
 be to forget that His Manhood is for ever joined to His 
 Divine and Eternal Person, Which is the real Object of our 
 adoration," we are tempted to ask how it is that, in the 
 Apocalypse, Christ never receives the appellation G-od, to 
 which " His Divine and Eternal Person " entitles Him ? 
 
358 THE GKOUND IN SCRIPTURE 
 
 Why is the title of Deity so jealously restricted to the Al 
 mighty Father ? A writer with no stronger incentive than 
 a cherished speculative suspicion that Christ was, in His Per 
 sonal Being, a Form of the Self-existent Nature, could scarcely 
 refrain from sometimes calling Him God, especially if He 
 were desirous to extol Christ, and depict Christ s highest 
 dignity. 
 
 What intimations the New Testament affords of a worship 
 of Jesus entailing the inference, "Jesus is in Essential Na 
 ture the Most High God," my readers can now judge. If 
 the decision of the Church is authoritative and binding, then 
 any intimations, however ambiguous, and however scanty, 
 are enough, and no evidence to the contrary can have weight ; 
 but if the appeal is to Holy Scripture as a document of 
 rational proof, the assertion " Jesus was worshipped with the 
 adoration due to God " is thoroughly baseless. 
 
 Mr. Liddon rightly contends that the homage paid to 
 Jesus " cannot be accounted for, and so set aside, as being 
 part of an undiscriminating cultus of heavenly or superhu 
 man beings in general. Such a cultus finds no place in the 
 New Testament, except when it, or something very much 
 resembling it, is expressly discountenanced " (Acts x. 25 ; 
 xiv. 13-15 ; Col. ii. 18 ; Rev. xxii. 8, 9). But this statement, 
 though true, is not to the point, because, in the view of the 
 Canonical Writers, Jesus did not rank among heavenly or 
 superhuman Beings in general, but held peculiar, unshared, 
 position and office between God and man. The tributes of 
 affection, reverence, and homage paid to Him, are attached 
 to the qualifications with which God has enriched Him; to 
 the pre-eminent place to which God has exalted Him, and 
 the glorious dignity which God has bestowed upon Him. 
 If numerous and perspicuous announcements are not forcibly 
 put aside ; if constant implications of a very direct kind are 
 not refused a hearing ; if every rule of rational exposition is 
 not reversed, the claims of Jesus all flow, not from intrin 
 sic and independent attributes of Self-existent Essence, but 
 from the originating Will and Energy of an Omnipotent 
 
OF CHRIST S RIGHT TO HOMAGE. 359 
 
 Producer ; from what God has made Him to be ; and from, 
 what He has become in virtue of derived powers, a Divine 
 Mission, and the abiding, imparted presence of His God and 
 Father. And while this guiding fact stands out conspicuously 
 in the pages of the New Testament, " the worship of Jesus," 
 were it much more than the meagre, scantily displayed thing 
 it is, could not possibly imply His Godhead or raise Him 
 to a level with the Supreme One, Whose beloved and glori 
 fied Offspring, Servant, and Ambassador He is. There is no 
 need for the clearly drawn "distinction between a primary 
 and a secondary worship," on the absence of which Mr. Lid- 
 don builds. The honors rendered to the glorified Redeemer 
 and Head of the Church are not rendered to Him as God, 
 nor as one of a class of superhuman Beings, and still less as 
 a rival of God, but as one whom God has made worthy of 
 honor. 
 
 Viewing the subject from the Scriptural as distinguished 
 from the Ecclesiastical standing-point, Mr. Liddon appears 
 to me to exaggerate, color, and misrepresent the New Testa 
 ment indications of the homage accorded to Jesus. He 
 chooses to ignore altogether the distinctly specified grounds 
 of conferred office, qualification, and dominion, which explain 
 that homage, and then he sophistically handles the English 
 term " worship " as though it were a fair equivalent for all 
 the Greek terms, and were definite enough to exclude all 
 gradations of lower and higher, whenever the gradation 
 is not formally mentioned. The worship of respect, rever 
 ence, humble request, and gratitude, is, unquestionably, 
 denoted in the New Testament by several words differing 
 from each other in range and force, the stronger, more re 
 stricted, and more sacred of which are never found in con 
 junction with the Name of the Ascended Jesus, yet Mr. 
 Liddon could permit himself to pen and publish the sentence : 
 " Worship is claimed for, and is given to, God alone ; and if 
 Jesus is worshipped, this is simply because Jesus is God" 
 (p. 378). 
 
 With Patristic arguments for " the worship of Jesus Christ," 
 
360 TESTIMONY OF SUBAPOSTOLIC FATHERS. 
 
 I am not concerned. I will only remark that, in estimating 
 their value, the exact question at issue must not be lost sight 
 of; viz., whether Christ was worshipped under the persuasion 
 of His being truly, and in the full sense, God, in Essence, 
 Nature, and Attributes the Uncreated, Almighty Father s 
 Equal. From the first Epistle of Clement, the earliest of 
 the authentic writings ascribed to the Subapostolic, or, as 
 they are sometimes called, the Apostolic Fathers, no testi 
 mony conducive to Mr. Liddon s dogma can be cited, and its 
 absence agrees with the opinion that the dogma was pro 
 gressively revealed through the Church, and not through the 
 preaching and writings of the Evangelists and Apostles. 
 The exceedingly uncertain authorship, and certainly corrup 
 ted text, of the Ignatian Epistles, condemns such language 
 as : " Even before the end of the first century, St. Ignatius 
 bids the Roman Christians put up supplications to Christ 
 on his behalf, that he might attain the distinction of mar 
 tyrdom." 
 
 " The Epistle of St. Polycarp to the Philippians " does not, 
 either in the introductory benediction or the twelfth chapter, 
 teach or imply that Christ is God, or, as an Object of wor 
 ship, on a par with God. The date of Polycarp s Epistle is 
 towards the middle of the second century ; the date of the 
 story of his martyrdom, which successive transcribers have 
 probably garnished, is, of course, somewhat later. 
 
 The writings of "St. Justin" (about A.D. 150) are, when 
 impartially examined, seen to be strikingly deficient in the 
 dogmatic insight and accurate definition which distinguish 
 the teaching of the maturer Church concerning the Nature, 
 Person, and worship of Jesus Christ. 
 
 In the Authorized Services of the Church of England, 
 devotional addresses to our Lord Jesus Christ are very fre 
 quent. Mr. Liddon reckons the number of them to exceed 
 eighty, of which the Litany, a Service of peculiar form,* 
 
 * " The Litany is one of the parts of the Prayer Book which has its 
 origin in a time neither primitive nor reformed. ... Its form is very 
 peculiar, and the explanation is to be sought in the occasion of its first 
 
WORSHIP OF CHRIST IN 361 
 
 contains more than half, while the numerous Collects, the 
 most precious of the Church s prayers, contain only three. On 
 the whole, there can be no question the Church of England, 
 in common with the older branches of the Church Catholic, 
 has advanced greatly beyond merely Scriptural practice and 
 proportion, in her public religious services. She has hitherto 
 borne her part in the grand work of diffusing and inculcating 
 the plenary Ecclesiastical Revelation in which Holy Script 
 ure is but a subordinate factor. She has inherited, and holds 
 fast, more than Scripture, and is therefore a living portion 
 of that organized and inspired Body, whose duty, in relation 
 to Scripture, has been to bring forth what is secreted, to 
 complete what is imperfect, and in so doing to suppress and 
 nullify some conclusions delusively apprehensible by reason 
 and common sense. At the present time, through the har 
 monious action of a majority of her Priests, the Church of 
 England fulfils her task, in maintaining a well-developed dog 
 matic faith, of which the most ancient extant Creed (the Apos 
 tles ] is no sufficient presentation. The wants which the 
 Bible does not meet, and the faith which the Bible does not 
 establish, are met and established, not merely by the JSTicene 
 and Athanasian Creeds, and by forms for public prayer, but 
 also by hymns and forms for private prayer. The heretical 
 interpretations of devout but erring common sense are an 
 swered not by investigation and reasoning, but by multiplied 
 repetitions, in the most sacred and influential associations of 
 the doctrine or practice whose Scripturalness is challenged. 
 Convinced that iminquiring habit is the safest road in theo 
 logical belief, the Clergy confirm their lay brethren in the 
 faith of Christ s Godhead, by the selection and congrega- 
 
 introduction. The usual mode of addressing our prayers, both in the 
 Scriptures and in the Prayer Book is to God, our Father, through Jesus 
 Christ. This is the form of the Lord s Prayer, after which manner we 
 are all taught to pray. . . . This was the general mode of prayer through 
 out the early ages of the Church. Even those earlier forms of prayer 
 which are most like the Litany are, for the first three hundred years of 
 the Church, always addressed direct to God the Father." Dean Stanley 
 on the Litany : Good Words, July, 1868. 
 
362 THE A.NGLICAN CHURCH. 
 
 tional use of hymns in which Jesus is, with studied distinct 
 ness, and systematic frequency, declared to be internal to the 
 One Divine Nature, and equalized with the Father in expres 
 sions of supplication and praise. Forms for family prayer, 
 likewise compiled and recommended by the Clergy, address 
 Jesus as God in the language of highest adoration. These 
 methods engrain the Church s doctrine, while they help to 
 shape and feed the adoring instinct of which the One God is 
 the proper Object. Mr. Liddon rightly observes : " Hymnody 
 actively educates, while it partially satisfies the instinct of 
 worship ; " and there can be no fair objection against making 
 it, and the words of our household worship, vehicles for fixing 
 and propagating the persuasion that Christ is God, provided 
 only the persuasion is rested on Ecclesiastical and not on 
 solety Scriptural revelation. But there is a very palpable 
 inconsistency between the Protestant position that Holy 
 Scripture is the sole sufficient and Divine Rule of Faith and 
 Practice, and the use of prayers and hymns, whose sentiments 
 arid diction are either utterly devoid of Scriptural sanction, 
 or quite out of Scriptural proportion. 
 
 Men who decline to see revelation outside the Canonical 
 pages seem to be overtaken by a retributive intellectual 
 blindness, when they take in hand to promulgate the Deity 
 of Jesus. If we confess that the Incarnate God still speaks 
 through His Church no less certainly than He speaks through 
 the written Gospels, we can, without inconsistency, accept, in 
 Christian forms of prayer and praise, modification, enlarge 
 ment, and completion of the temporary and imperfect model 
 given in the Lord s Prayer, and the introductory direction, 
 After this manner pray ye. Our Divine Master s utterances 
 in His living Church are not shaped and restrained by His 
 voice in the Evangelical histories. There is no need that the 
 one should be, to the ear of reason, consonant with the 
 other. Upon His first disciples He laid the injunction: 
 " when ye pray, say Our Father. 1 1 His praying followers in 
 the nearer ages. He, by means of His Church, teaches to 
 address Himself, as often and as devoutly as they address 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CHURCHES PRACTICE. 363 
 
 the Father, if not more often and more devoutly ! To His 
 first disciples He is reported to have said, " I am the Way, 
 and the Truth, and the Life : no man cometh unto the Fa 
 ther but through Me ; " to His disciples of later date He, by 
 means of His Church, says, " I am the Goal ; no nature and 
 attributes excel mine ; look to me as your God, the rightful 
 and sufficing Object of your devotions." The earlier instruc 
 tion survives only as a slightly flavoring ingredient amid the 
 more recently vouchsafed knowledge. Revelation is a per 
 petually unrolling scroll ; identity is not lost, but growth is 
 constant, and new particulars and adjustments are superadded. 
 Together with unbroken continuity, there is marvellous devel 
 opment. The Old Testament, the New r , and explanatory, 
 complementary, and superior to both, the Church, : such is 
 the outline and proportion in the series of messages sent from 
 Heaven for the guidance of Christian worship. The varia 
 tions and progress impressively proclaim an abiding presence 
 of the Incarnate God, and the high prerogatives with which 
 that presence clothes His Organ, the Church. A trustful 
 unparleying faith, likewise, is invigorated by well-sustained 
 exercise ; and the All-Wise Source of our Intelligence affords 
 larger latitude for ennobling virtue, in the self-denying re 
 pression of His dangerous intellectual gifts. From the 
 Protestant point of view, the expansion and divergence of 
 Christian worship into its present shape may appear disso 
 nant and shameful ; but from the Catholic it is harmoniously 
 suggestive and sublime. 
 
 The fact is very observable that the customary prayers to 
 Jesus are not directed to Him in the character and office of 
 High Priest, Advocate, and Intercessor, which a few passages 
 of Scripture assign Him, but in the character of Almighty 
 God. To entreat Him to intercede with God would be mak 
 ing one Personal God intercede with another, and, in other 
 respects, would not suit Orthodox ideas, or correspond with 
 Ecclesiastical definitions of Christ s perfect Deity. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Texts which imply or assert Limitation of Knowledge in Christ. 
 There is nothing to prompt or justify Mr. Liddon s forced explana 
 tions. Asserted illuminative power of the dogma of Christ s Deity, 
 in relation to the Atonement. Examination of an attempt to meet 
 the objection that the dogma detracts from the value of Christ s Life 
 as an ethical model for Mankind. The dogma cannot be shown to 
 be morally fruitful in giving intensity to Christian virtues, and is not 
 calculated to promote the devotion of the heart to God. 
 
 IN his last Lecture, Mr. Liddon explains and guards, from his 
 point of view, the statement (St. Luke ii. 52), Jesus increased 
 in wisdom and stature. He approaches the subject with 
 modest diffidence, his own previous theories making a plain 
 text difficult and obscure. 
 
 " We can scarcely doubt," he concedes, " that an intellectual 
 development of some kind in Christ s human soul is indicated. 
 This development, it is implied, corresponded to the growth 
 of His bodily frame. The progress in wisdom was real and 
 not merely apparent, just as the growth of Christ s Human 
 
 Body was a real growth But, on the other hand, St. 
 
 Luke had previously spoken of the Child Jesus as being filled 
 with wisdom (ii. 40) ; and St. John (i. 14) teaches that, as the 
 AVord Incarnate, Jesus was actually full of truth. St. John 
 means not only that our Lord was veracious, but that He was 
 fully in possession of the objective truth " (p. 456). 
 
 Now every Protestant of Orthodox faith, and perhaps 
 many Catholics, will be quite confident that St. Luke, before 
 he wrote his Gospel, had apprehended the mystery of our 
 Lord s Being, and saw in Jesus God Incarnate. St. Luke 
 had, as his preface assures us, taken some trouble to search 
 out the facts of a history about which many had taken in 
 hand to furnish accounts. He may therefore be presumed 
 
CHRIST S " INCREASE IN WISDOM." 365 
 
 to have written with knowledge, accuracy, and consistency ; 
 and, particularly, with a thoughtful regard to the grand mys 
 tery which must necessarily, wherever it is believed, dominate 
 and mould all unrestrained didactic expression. The question 
 then simply is, whether a writer would be likely, if he held 
 Jesus to be the Infinite God robed in human flesh, to say of 
 Him that He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor 
 with God and man? Would not his conceptions and his 
 words arrange themselves around, and take their form from, 
 his knowledge of the Divine Personal Being of Jesus? As 
 suming Jesus to be a Divine Person, Consubstantial with the 
 Omniscient God, is it reverent, judicious, or even intelligible, 
 to declare, He increased in icisdom and in favor with God? 
 The same sort of difficulty attends verse 40, of which, as of 
 verse 52, Mr. Liddon quotes (perhaps not inadvertently) only 
 a fragment, " The child grew, and waxed strong, being filled 
 with wisdom ; and the grace (or favor) of God was upon 
 Him." * The argument may be urged : the Evangelist Luke 
 (taking for granted his Gospel has not been interpolated) 
 taught the miraculous conception of Jesus, and nevertheless, 
 in a loose, unguarded way, wrote of the parents of Jesus (ii. 
 27, 41, 43), and of His father and His mother (ver. 33 ; 
 comp. ver. 48) ; but this argument does not render adequately 
 probable incautiousness of description regarding internal 
 qualities and relations to God. 
 
 In deducing from St. John i. 14, it is as well, though it 
 may not be convenient, to remember that the Evangelist s 
 words are full of grace and truth. Were the grace and 
 truth inherent, or imparted? 
 
 The difference between a miraculous paternity of Christ in 
 the Virgin s womb, through the agency of the Holy Ghost, 
 and the assumption of our nature by the Personal Logos, 
 Who is in the full sense God, must strike every one who 
 
 * In spirit is wanting in the Sinaitic and Vatican MSS. Dean Alford 
 translates the present participle, becoming filled. In the other verses 
 quoted from Luke ii., I follow the Sinaitic and Vatican readings, with 
 which the Vulgate Version agrees. 
 
366 CHRIST S AVOWAL IN MARK xiu. 32. 
 
 compares the opening statements of the First and Third, 
 with the prologue of the Fourth Gospel. To suppose the 
 difference amounts to radical discrepancy in the representa 
 tions of our Lord s Person may be, in Mr. Liddon s judg 
 ment, a "vulgar rationalistic expedient;" but the question 
 is : can inquiring reason and common-sense suppose any thing 
 else, unless the Holy Ghost was Personally the Logos, not- 
 only creating the germs of His Own Humanity, but dwelling 
 Personally in the Virgin during some months of her preg 
 nancy? And even upon this latter supposition we sorely 
 miss, in the Evangelists, the discriminating perception and 
 lucid definition with which younger sons of the Church ex 
 hibit the inner Economy of the Infinite, Uncreated Essence. 
 Mr. Liddon enters into a learned and very labored, but 
 perplexed and hesitating discussion of the avowal recited in 
 St. Mark xiii. 32 : " Of that day or hour knoweth none, no 
 not the Angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." 
 In the parallel passage (St. Matt, xxiv. 36), the received 
 Text is in substantial accordance, confining the knowledge 
 of the Father alone; but the Sinaitic and Vatican Texts 
 have the words, neither the Son. Great Fathers of the 
 Church, Western and Eastern, are appealed to, who, if not 
 unanimous in the details of their exposition, concur, as might 
 be anticipated, in the opinion that, whatever Christ s words 
 may mean, they can mean nothing at variance with the 
 hypothesis of His Deity. That hypothesis fills, in the minds 
 of Orthodox Commentators in all ages, the place of a prior 
 and regulative conclusion. A potent solvent of the tremen 
 dous difficulty involved in this confession of ignorance is, of 
 course, found in contemplating our Lord s Human Nature 
 apart from His Deity. In the Human knowledge of the 
 Incarnate Son, the possible existence of limits is admitted ; 
 or we may accept the admirably acute suggestion that, for 
 the sake of His disciples and to rebuke their forwardness, 
 Jesus refrained from gazing- at secrets which, owing to His 
 Deity, were necessarily within the ken of his mental vision ; 
 or, we may learn from " what appears to be " the mind of 
 
MR. LTDDON S FORCED EXPLANATION OF IT. 367 
 
 St. Cyril of Alexandria, " that our Lord did know as God, 
 but in His love He assumed all that belongs to real manhood, 
 and therefore actual limitation of knowledge" (p. 461). 
 
 The recorded words of Christ contain nothing to prompt 
 or justify these forced and illusory explanations. lu compar 
 ing the Church s doctrine with the language of Scripture, we 
 must always remember that our Lord s Personal Being is 
 seated in His Divine Nature, not in the Manhood which has, 
 by the bonds of an indissoluble union, been "taken into 
 God." The Church s standpoint does not permit the suppo 
 sition of His speaking as a human Person ; and, moreover, 
 the form of the passage under examination does not at all 
 encourage the notion that by the Son Jesus meant the Son 
 of Man, rather than the Son of God. The singular and 
 exclusive character of the Father s knowledge is brought 
 into prominence by the affirming it to be unparticipated not 
 only by the Angels in heaven, but even by the Son of the 
 Father. On every ground, therefore, consistent Ecclesiastical 
 interpretation is pledged to understand by the Son Christ in 
 His Superhuman Person. Since the human sphere of Christ s 
 existence is not in reality separable from the Superhuman, 
 reverence forbids us to shun the direct sense of His words by 
 interposing the hypothesis of separability. Jesus, Whom the 
 Church reveals to be God Incarnate, is made in the Gospel 
 to declare there is a subject as to which He is ignorant; that 
 is the simple fact for the consideration of all who do not 
 question the truthfulness of the record. Mr. Liddon fairly 
 states the invincible objection to the assumption Christ " knew 
 as God, but was ignorant as Man." 
 
 "Does not this conjunction of knowledge and igno 
 rance in one Person, and with respect to a single subject, 
 dissolve the unity of the God-man? Is not this intellectual 
 dualism inconsistent with any conception we can form of a 
 single personality?" He replies by noticing the very wide 
 scope of the objection, and asks, " Is it not equally valid 
 against other and undisputed contrasts between the Divine 
 a nd Human Natures of the Incarnate Son ? For example, as 
 
368 BEARING OF CHRIST S SUPPOSED DEITY 
 
 God, Christ is omnipresent; as Man, He is present at a par 
 ticular point in space. . . . Let me then ask whether this 
 co-existence of ignorance and knowledge, with respect to a 
 single subject in a single personality, is more mysterious than 
 a co-existence of absolute blessedness and intense suffering? 
 .... If as He knelt in Gethsemane, Jesus was in one sphere 
 of existence All-blessed, and in another sore amazed, very 
 heavy, sorrowful even unto death, might He not with equal 
 truth be in the one Omniscient, and in the other subject to 
 limitations of knowledge ? The difficulty is common to all 
 the contrasts of the Divine Incarnation" (p. 463). 
 
 The dogma Mr. Liddon defends, no doubt, involves all 
 these astounding contrasts, but they do not alleviate each 
 other ; for even in the regions of theology the magnitude 
 and variety of the difficulties which a particular doctrine 
 involves do not illustrate the truth of that doctrine. These 
 contrasts are all, upon rational principles, so many motives 
 to mistrust, and to searchingly re-examine the foundations 
 of the doctrine itself. 
 
 A number of fanciful pleadings, the offshoots of assump 
 tions, and the reflexes of foregone conclusion, are urged in 
 Mr. Liddon s final Lecture. I need do very little more than 
 enumerate them, since they belong to the outskirts of the 
 controversy. " Christ s Person is the measure of His Pas 
 sion. His Deity illuminates His Passion, and explains 
 Apostolical language respecting the efficacy of His death." 
 Then again, " His Divinity explains and justifies the power of 
 the Christian Sacraments, as actual channels of supernatural 
 grace." His Godhead warrants the grace of Sacraments; 
 Faith in It forbids their depreciation. " In view of our Lord s 
 Divinity, we cannot treat as so much profitless and vapid 
 metaphor the weighty sentences which Apostles have traced 
 around the Font and the Altar, any more than we can deal thus 
 lightly with the precious hopes and promises that are graven 
 by the Divine Spirit upon the Cross. The Divinity of Christ 
 warrants the realities of Sacramental grace as truly as it 
 warrants the cleansing virtue of the Atoning Blood." 
 
ON THE CHRISTIAN SACRAMENTS. 369 
 
 Now, before we allege the Deity of Jesus to be "the 
 measure of His passion," and to "warrant the cleansing 
 virtue of the Atoning Blood," we must be prepared with 
 ideas of Atonement much more lucid and definite than any 
 the Scriptures furnish. The sacrificial language applied in 
 the New Testament to the sufferings and death of Jesus is 
 very varied, generally figurative, and not always consistent. 
 There is nothing in it to denote that its writers were endeav 
 oring to express with guarded accuracy the effective rela 
 tion of our Lord s death to the Mind and purposes of God, 
 or that they were doing more than freely employing the 
 coarse and imperfect religious phraseology of their a<?e and 
 country. Neither the Canonical Writings, nor the Creeds, 
 make a particular conception of the nature and efficacy of 
 Christ s death an article of Christian Faith. General state 
 ments that our Lord s Incarnation and sufferings were for, 
 
 O " e/ 
 
 on account of, or for the sake of, us men and our salvation, 
 impose no precise theory, and the earliest of the Three 
 Creeds does not contain even these. Vicarious punishment, 
 judicial substitution, satisfaction to Divine justice, imputed 
 sin and righteousness, and the like, are ideas which owe 
 their prominence and definiteness to a comparatively recent 
 theology. Calvinistic and Evangelical divines, to whom the 
 judicial interior of the Almighty Mind is so familiar, would 
 be scandalized at the latitudinarian and undecided opinions 
 of numerous Fathers, on the redemptive meaning and pro 
 pitiatory power of Christ s sufferings. Archbishop Anselm, 
 in the eleventh century, was the first who unfolded formally, 
 and consolidated the theory which, with slight modifications 
 (mostly for the worse), is a treasured property of Orthodox 
 Protestants. The basis of the theory is, that in the death 
 of Jesus satisfaction or payment was made to the Almighty, 
 and not, as many preceding Fathers had surmised, to the 
 Devil, the Humanity of Jesus enabling Him to take up, 
 and His Godhead enabling Him to discharge, the tremendous 
 debt due from offending creatures to their Omniscient and 
 (Omnipotent Creator. The scheme, through all its varia- 
 
 24 
 
370 RELATION OF THE DEITY OF JESUS 
 
 tions, has been drawn out upon legal lines, but has never 
 failed to outrage fundamental principles of justice. The 
 human mind is quite incompetent to understand how guilt 
 and merit are transferable, though experience attests their 
 mighty and far-extending fruits and influences. Analogy 
 throws no ray of light on vicarious punishment, though 
 it abundantly illustrates vicarious sufferings, not only in 
 voluntary endurances on the part of the innocent, occasioned 
 by the transgressions of the guilty, but also endurances 
 deliberately incurred with a view to succor and save the 
 guilty. Self-sacrifice, the willing bearing, at all costs, of 
 another s burden, is, doubtless, the strongest proof of love, 
 and the surest channel of beneficence ; I ut we cannot, with 
 out changing God into something lower than our own like- 
 
 o o o 
 
 ness, imagine Him to be capable of punishing the guiltless 
 instead of the guilty, or of exacting judicial satisfaction and 
 payment for men s moral delinquencies, from penal endur 
 ances in One Who was morally unblemished. By imagina 
 tions of this nature, God s perfections are doubly disparaged. 
 Unwillingness to forgive freely, and willingness to be mollified 
 by undeserved sufferings, are both ascribed to Him. But we 
 may be sure our Heavenly Father sees us as we verily are, 
 with a vision on which forms of forensic procedure and com 
 mercial bargaining have no effect; and if we heartily love and 
 revere Him, we shall stipulate for very explicit, unmistak 
 able revelation, before we believe that any features of His 
 dealings with us are repugnant to the intelligence and moral 
 sense which are His implanted gifts. 
 
 When a preacher, with the qualifications of talent and 
 culture presupposed in the office of Hampton Lecturer, talks 
 of " the cleansing virtue of the Atoning Blood," he knows 
 he is using words of exceeding vagueness, though their 
 Scriptural cadence may please the ear of a mentally apa 
 thetic Protestantism, which loves customary sound better 
 than ascertainable sense. Atonement may consist in the 
 reconciliation of man to God, and "the cleansing virtue" 
 may be exercised exclusively in the region of human con- 
 
TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. 371 
 
 sciousness, and not at all in God s judicial estimate of human 
 deserts. But however this may be, in lieu of perfunctory 
 deductions from figures of speech, Mr. Liddon should have 
 shown the existence of a necessary connection between the 
 Co-equal Deity of Jesus, and His death as an expiatory obla 
 tion to the First Person of the Godhead, on account of the 
 original and actual sins of mankind. Perhaps the hypothesis 
 of such a connection involves intellectual or moral absurdity, 
 and will not bear examination. Duns Scotus, one of the 
 profoundest masters in scholastic theology, "rejected alto 
 gether the notion of a necessary Divine infinity in Christ s 
 piacular merits, declaring that the scheme of redemption 
 might have been equally accomplished by the death of an 
 angel or a righteous man." * At the end of the eighteenth 
 century an Anglican prelate, Bishop Watson, stated a similar 
 opinion in his Charges. 
 
 We are admonished how " depreciation of the Sacraments 
 has often been followed by depreciation of our Lord s Eternal 
 Person. True, there have been and are earnest believers in 
 our Lord s Divinity, who deny the realities of Sacramental 
 grace. But experience appears to show that their position 
 may be only a transitional one. History illustrates the 
 tendency to Humanitarian declension, even in cases where 
 Sacramental belief, although imperfect, has been for nearer to 
 the truth than in the bare naturalism of Zwingli" (p. 483). 
 
 This admonition to so-called Evangelical Protestants is, I 
 think, perfectly just and well-founded. The Church s system 
 hangs together, and her central dogma is endangered when 
 divorced from pretensions, and teachings, which are at once 
 
 * I borrow the information respecting Duns Scotus, from the Disser 
 tation on " Atonement and Satisfaction," one of the numerous Essays 
 which enrich Professor Jowett s Commentary on some of St. Paul s 
 Epistles. In the interests of theolog} r , it is to be regretted that the Com 
 mentary is not at present easily procurable. 
 
 Mr. II. N. Oxenham s History of the " Catholic Doctrine of the Atone 
 ment " is a most useful compendium. For the aggravation, if not for the 
 existence, of some stumbling-blocks attaching to theories of Atonement, 
 Protestantism is peculiarly responsible. 
 
372 RELATION BETWEEN CHRIST S GODHEAD 
 
 its products and its preservatives. But if the dogma had a 
 sound and sufficient Scriptural foundation, it would be able 
 in Protestant Churches to stand alone, and would also be 
 powerful enough to call back and confirm subordinate and 
 related Sacramental tenets, instead of tottering whenever 
 these tenets are for a time withdrawn. 
 
 Mr. Liddon insists : " It is belief in the Divinity of our 
 Lord which has enriched human life with moral virtues, such 
 as civilized paganism could scarcely have appreciated, and 
 which it certainly could not have created. The fruitfulness 
 of this great doctrine in the sphere of morals will be more 
 immediately apparent, if we consider one or two samples of 
 its productiveness" (p. 488). The examples he selects are 
 the graces of purity, humility, and charity, these being all, 
 according to his judgment, stimulated, deepened, and en 
 larged, by faith in Christ s Divinity. 
 
 But he could not despise, and endeavors to meet, the objec 
 tion that to insist on Christ s Godhead is to detract from the 
 value of His life as an ethical model for mankind. An im 
 personal Humanity, appropriated and swayed by Omnipotent 
 and All-perfect Personal Deity, obviously stands apart from 
 and above all ranges of our human attainment, being in kind 
 unlike ourselves. Its actings are not properly human actings, 
 and its exciting motive power can never be ours. The Catho 
 lic Christ is not truly the brother of men, but is dissociated 
 from them by differences radical, intrinsic, irremovable. He 
 is Very God, manifesting Himself through the organism of 
 our nature, not a human person, crowned in moral man 
 hood by the illuminating, sanctifying presence of God. His 
 life is the Divine perfection exemplified in some suggestive 
 features, not human perfection wrought out through an aux 
 iliary imparted strength accessible to men. He is not a 
 Leader far in advance, but verily on our own line. He is not 
 a specimen of what we may become. No gradual elevation, 
 no acquirements of indefinitely prolonged progress, can so 
 transmute the conditions and possibilities of our Being as to 
 exalt us to the level of our Incarnate God in the inward 
 
AND THE EXAMPLE GIVEN BY HIS LIFE. 373 
 
 reality of a single moral attribute. The disciple can never be 
 as the Master. His pattern, however much it may quicken 
 our aspirations, and raise and irradiate our consciences, is 
 light shining from another sphere, and cannot practically be 
 more than an illustrated edition of the precepts by which He 
 Himself, and His Apostle St. Paul, exhort us to be imitators 
 of God (Matt. v. 48; Luke vi. 36; Eph. v. 1). The illustra 
 tion, whatever may be its value, is not thoroughly imitable, 
 kindred example, stimulating our energies, and satisfying our 
 necessities, by showing what is possible to man. 
 
 If example has its greatest efficacy when the imitated and 
 the imitators are not dissevered by ineffaceable distinctions 
 of nature and capacity, the Catholic doctrine respecting 
 Christ s Person cannot enhance the fruit-fulness of the pat 
 tern His life supplies. Mr. Liddon perceives the difficulties 
 these considerations interpose, and, in seeking to evade them, 
 falls into language which would be more consistent if he 
 held Jesus to be truly a man whom the indwelling of God s 
 Spirit had enriched and purified, and "filled with all the 
 fulness of God." 
 
 " Nor are Christ s Human perfections other than human ; 
 they are not, after the manner of Divine attributes, out of 
 our reach ; they are not designed only to remind us of what 
 human nature should, but cannot, be. We can approximate 
 to them, even indefinitely. That in our present state of im 
 perfection we should reproduce them in their fulness is in 
 deed impossible ; but it is certain that a close imitation of 
 Jesus of Nazareth is at once our duty and our privilege, for 
 God has predestinated us to be conformed by that which 
 we do, not less than by that which we endure, to the Human 
 Image of His blessed Son, that He might be the first-born 
 among many brethren (Ptom. viii. 29) " (p. 486). 
 
 How can the inspiring presence of God, inhabiting human 
 persons, " approximate even indefinitely " to the production 
 of results which flow from the investiture of God Himself 
 with an impersonal humanity? The capacities of our nature 
 woven around, informed, and actuated by the Person of 
 
374 IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRIST THE 
 
 Deity, are lifted into an unattainable region, and conditioned 
 in a manner which precludes the reality of human brother 
 hood. In company with Mr. Liddon s dogma, St. Paul s 
 description of our Lord as the First-born (TtowToxoxoj) among 
 many brethren, becomes artificial, inaccurate, and merely 
 verbal. None other has been, or can be, born in the same 
 way, encompassed by the same conditions, equipped with the 
 same powers. Without human personality there can be no 
 veritable human fraternity, whatever there may be of bene 
 ficial light, attraction, and fellowship. Mr. Liddon grants 
 that, " Certainly the Divine attributes of Jesus are beyond 
 our imitation ; we can but adore a boundless Intelligence or 
 a resistless Will." Yet, in the composition of the God-man, 
 does not the Divinity of the central, energizing Person make 
 every human faculty, in action and effect, Divine ? A pas 
 sage which I have already cited (see Chapter viii.) quite con 
 sistently affirms, " in point of fact God, Incarnate in Christ, 
 willed each volition of Christ s Human Will." 
 
 But it is contended, "The power of imitating Jesus 
 conies from Jesus through His Spirit, His Grace, His Pres 
 ence. Now, as in St. Paul s day, Jesus Christ is in us 
 Christians, except we be reprobates (2 Cor. xiii. 5). The 
 power that worketh in us is no mere memory of a distant 
 past ; it is not natural force of feeling, nor the strength with 
 which self-discipline may brace the will. It is a living, ener 
 gizing, transforming influence, inseparable from the presence 
 of a quickening Spirit (1 Cor. xv. 45), such as is in very 
 deed our Glorified Lord. If Christ bids us follow Him, it is 
 because He Himself is the enabling principle of our obe 
 dience. If He would have us be like unto Himself, this is 
 because He is willing, by His indwelling Presence, to re 
 produce His likeness within us. ... If the Christ Whom 
 we imitate be truly human, the Christ Who thus creates 
 and fertilizes moral power within us must be Divine" (p. 
 487). 
 
 The thought which underlies this language is very enig 
 matical. Does Mr. Liddon believe there is a Personal pres- 
 
ENABLING PRINCIPLE OF OUR OBEDIENCE? 875 
 
 ence of the Incarnate Christ in Christians, distinguishable 
 from the sanctifying presence of the Holy Spirit ? or does 
 he suppose the Manhood of Christ adds to the resources, 
 or facilitates the entrance, of God s Spirit in His actual con 
 tact with the human spirits He touches and inspires ? Jesus 
 Christ is in us, lives in us, and is formed in us, through the 
 operation of the Spirit of Him Who raised up Jesus from 
 the dead (Rom. viii. 9-11 ; Gal. ii. 20; iv. 19). He is said 
 to be in us, and we in the full realized sense in Him, when 
 we are sincerely His followers, coming unto the Father by 
 Him, and being shaped by the Spirit s influence after the 
 pattern of His righteousness. Xo one dreams of distorting 
 the continually recurring phrase, in Christ, into metaphysical 
 mysticism ; and it is worse than nonsensical to twist the 
 infrequent, indeterminate expression, Christ in you (which 
 may mean among you}, into an announcement of His Per 
 sonal indwelling, and a subsidiary evidence of His Divinity. 
 Acccording to Eph. iii. 20, the power that worketh in us is 
 a power exercised by " the Father, from Whom the whole 
 family in heaven and earth is named." The close context 
 of 2 Cor. xiii. 5 reminds us that " Christ was crucified through 
 weakness, but lives by the power of God," and that St. Paul, 
 though weak in (with) Christ, expected to be alive with 
 Him by the same power. This does not harmonize with 
 the speculation, " Christ is God, and His Personal indwelling 
 the source of spiritual strength." Notwithstanding the pres 
 sure of Ecclesiastical commentary, attentive readers will 
 be led by the surrounding language strongly to suspect that 
 the quickening spirit (1 Cor. xv. 45) is riot the Incarnate 
 Christ, but the spiritual body, which is, in the order of 
 nature and grace, a chief constituent in Humanity. When 
 the more authentic reading, the second man is from heaven, 
 is restored in verse 47 (comp. our house which is from heaven, 
 2 Cor. v. 2), all certainty that the last Adam is a designa 
 tion of Christ vanishes. Though our Lord is by St. Paul 
 contrasted with Adam, He is nowhere in Scripture called 
 Adam ; but to make St. Paul call Him so creates the choicest 
 
376 " SACRAMENTAL UNION" WITH THE 
 
 material for dogmatic theorists a vague and elastic 
 phrase. 
 
 In unfolding his views of the relation of Christ s Godhead 
 to the grace of purity, Mr. Liddon literalizes figurative 
 phraseology, in order to ascribe to St. Paul a conception of 
 some ineffable conjunction and incorporation with our Lord s 
 Humanity, "a doctrine of Christ s Sacramental union with 
 His people, which is the veriest fable, unless the indwelling 
 Christ be truly God." Jesus Christ, w r e are told, " folded our 
 human nature around His Eternal Person ; He made it His 
 own ; He made it a power which could quicken and restore 
 us. And then, by the gift of His Spirit, and by Sacramental 
 joints and bands, He bound us to it (Col. ii. 19) ; He bound 
 us through it to Himself; nay, He robed us in it ; by it He 
 entered into us, and made our members His own. Hence 
 forth, then, the tabernacle of God is with men (Rev. xxi. 3) " 
 (p. 490). 
 
 Language of this complexion, attributing Omnipresence, 
 special pervasive spiritual efficaciousness and nutritive power, 
 to Christ s Manhood, is common with writers of the strictly 
 Ecclesiastical school, and may not be altogether devoid of 
 significance for those whose faith joyfully accepts paradoxes 
 at the hands of a revealing Church. But from the reasonable 
 point of view the language has the fault of being undecipher 
 able. It, may always be reduced to a nullity by the simple 
 demand for explanation. The attempt to present distinctly 
 the ideas it pretends to express displays its utter emptiness. 
 The texts to which reference is made do not contain the no 
 tion that Christ s Humanity is infused into individual souls 
 as a life-giving and refreshing force. The Body of which 
 Christ is the Head, and Christians are members, is the 
 Church, the great "company of all faithful people," not 
 Christ s human body. The clause (Eph. v. 30) which is com 
 monly supposed to make the curious statement, we are 
 "members of His flesh and His bones," is wanting in the 
 three great ancient MSS., and is almost indubitably a spurious 
 addition ; yet Mr. Liddon (p. 482) invites us to listen in it, 
 " to Christ s Apostle proclaiming," &c. 
 
INCARNATE DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 377 
 
 He also cites 1 Cor. vi. 15, " Know ye not that your bodies 
 are members of Christ ? Shall I then take the members of 
 Christ, and make them members of an harlot? God forbid." 
 The incorporation with Christ here alluded to is membership 
 in His Church. The preceding context (verses 13 and 14) 
 tells us : " the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the 
 body. And God both raised the Lord, and will also raise up 
 us by His power." The succeeding context (verses 17 and 
 19) tells us: "he who is joined unto the Lord is one spirit;" 
 and pronounces explicitly what the true spiritual indwelling 
 is, not an inconceivable, indescribable residence or impar- 
 tation of Christ s Humanity, but the presence of the Holy 
 Spirit Which our Heavenly Father gives: "Know ye not 
 that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost Which is in 
 you, Which ye have from God ? " 
 
 Reason diligently searching Scripture can assuredly dis 
 cover no intimation of an inhabiting presence of the Incar 
 nate Christ, which can be differentiated from the presence of 
 the Unincarnate Spirit of God. Without explanation and 
 proof from Scripture the notion of Sacramental union with 
 Christ s Humanity is no basis for the deduction, "He did 
 that which He could only do as being in truth the Almighty 
 God." But Mr. Liddon rightly speaks of this topic as being 
 "in a sphere so inaccessible to the measurements of natural 
 reason, so absolutely controlled by the great axioms of faith." 
 I do not dispute these "great axioms;" but what is their 
 parentage, are they Scriptural or Ecclesiastical? 
 
 The humility and love exhibited in the life and Self-sacri 
 fice of Jesus Christ are, doubtless, powerful incentives to the 
 cultivation of like virtues in Christ s followers, both because 
 they find a responsive witness in our hearts and consciences, 
 and because they are believed to be the fruits of a special 
 and abundant measure of Divine inspiration residing in One 
 Who was truly a sharer of our nature. They are grand dis 
 plays in man of qualities which God bestows and approves ; 
 and they mightily evoke and expand our better feelings, and 
 " fertilize the moral soil of human life." But when we cease 
 
378 IS THE DOGMA OF CHRIST S DEITY 
 
 to see in their exhibitor the real brotherhood of human per 
 sonality, their power as examples of human graces, if it 
 escapes diminution, can be in no degree increased. Proba 
 bly few Christians pursue the train of thought which medi 
 tation on the idea of Christ s Infinite Personality could not 
 foil to Busiest. If the seat of His Personal Being; was Ab- 
 
 OO O 
 
 solute Deity, He must, at every stage of His life on earth, 
 have " known the end from the beginning," and, by a Divine 
 foresight of results, have been incapable of that faith, trust, 
 and resignation, which, at their greatest strength, are less 
 than knowledge, and, through being less, give to human self- 
 sacrifice its chief value. All that He did was done with clear 
 vision of the joy and exaltation which awaited the human 
 portion of His Incarnate Being, since He was Himself "Very 
 God," and the elements of Manhood He had drawn around 
 Him could have no individual personal existence in separa 
 tion from His Godhead. To talk of lack of knowledge, of 
 intermitted percipience, of a clouded consciousness of the 
 Father s companionship, or of any of the limitations, intel 
 lectual and moral, which aiford latitude for faith, and trust, 
 and dependence, is manifestly to use words which belie the 
 plainest dictates of the logical understanding. 
 
 When our ideas are formed upon the first three Gospels, 
 such representations are not incongruous, because even the 
 Divine indwelling, which secured moral perfection in a 
 miraculously conceived Human Person, might not be neces 
 sarily exempt from restriction and remission. But when a 
 Person pre-existent, superhuman, and very highly exalted, 
 though still beneath the Almighty, appears, such representa 
 tions are incongruous, and therefore in the Fourth Gospel 
 there is scarcely a trace of them. In conformity with the 
 idealism of the Fourth Evangelist, the distinctively human 
 features of inward suffering, and exposure to temptation, 
 which belong to the earlier narratives, are omitted, and 
 their place supplied by experiences more in unison with the 
 metaphysical conception of a Personally pre-existent and 
 glorious Son of God. There are no temporary breaks in 
 
MORALLY FRUITFUL IN HIS DISCIPLES ? 379 
 
 the calm and assured anticipation with which Jesus looks 
 through and beyond the pre-determined events of what is 
 called His Passion. " He knew that His hour was come that 
 He should depart out of this world unto the Father. He 
 knew that the Father had given all things into His hands, 
 and that He came forth from God, and was going to God " 
 (John xiii. 1, 3). The treachery of the companion who 
 betrayed Him. might, for a brief season, trouble His spirit ; 
 but, when the unfaithful Apostle went out to complete his 
 perfidy, Jesus could exclaim, " Ngw is the Son of Man glori 
 fied, and God is glorified in Him" (ver. 31). His prayer 
 (John xvii.) breathes intimate communion with the Father, 
 unobscured perception, and confident assurance of approach 
 ing glory. In the Synoptists, prophetic prevision, and in 
 spired glimpses of Resurrection and Messianic exaltation, 
 intermingle with the lights and shadows of human faith 
 and fear, resignation and despondency. In the Fourth Gos 
 pel the creaturely emotions and innocent infirmities of hu 
 manity almost wholly disappear in presence of the Higher 
 Personality whom the earthly tabernacle enshrined. And 
 the delineation furnished by the latest Evangelist becomes 
 a necessity of inexorable logic, when we go forward from 
 his position to the dogma that the Person of Christ was not 
 merely the glorious, pre-existent Son of God s love, but a 
 veritable Form of the Self-existent "Essence, possessing every 
 attribute of Almightiness. The perfections of such a Being, 
 " made flesh and dwelling among us," may afford an illustrious 
 and inspiriting ensample ; but to call them human virtues is 
 to describe them with more of laxity than of truth. The 
 holiness and energy of Personal Godhead clothed with im 
 personal Manhood are not the springs of sanctity in the 
 greatest saint. 
 
 The assent of reflective and unprejudiced minds must, 
 therefore, be withheld from the propositions : " On the one 
 hand, the doctrine of our Lord s Divinity leaves His human 
 ity altogether intact ; on the other, it enhances the force of 
 His example as a model of the graces of humility and love " 
 
380 BEARING OF THE DOGMA OF CHRIST S DEITY 
 t 
 
 (p. 496). With every disposition to affirm the vast influence 
 and moral fruitfulness of Christ s example, men may justly 
 demur to the statement : " His example is more cogent when 
 regarded as that of Incarnate Deity, than when regarded as 
 that of God-inspired man." 
 
 But this is not all. When the extremity of our Lord s Self- 
 abasement, the magnitude of His Self-sacrifice, and the infin 
 ity of the love which that Self-sacrifice discloses, are inferred 
 from the dogma of His Godhead, we are reminded of difficul 
 ties with which the superficial pleadings of Orthodoxy quite 
 fail to grapple. The blessedness of Deity is not susceptible 
 of decrease ; and, as we have seen, Mr. Liddon himself assumes 
 that in one sphere of existence Jesus was All-blessed, while in 
 another He was agonized. The humiliation and Self-sacrifice 
 were, therefore, accomplished in the human sphere ; and even 
 if we pass over the tremendous paradox involved in supposing 
 the impersonal portion of our Lord s complete Being to have 
 been, during any sort of action or endurance, divorced from the 
 Infinite attributes of the Personal, we must yet admit that 
 the Humanity was grasped and directed by the Deity, with a 
 perfect foresight of all future events. And the foreseen con 
 sequences of briefly transient Self-humiliation and suffering 
 were, to the human side of Christ s existence, the loftiest 
 exaltation and everlasting felicity. If, according to Mr. Lid- 
 don s assumption, the two Natures, though united in a single 
 Person, can have diverse fields of experience, then, with the 
 inaugmentable bliss of Deity, has been joined a perfectly beati 
 fied Humanity. And this gainful consummation was reached 
 through processes wherein the Manhood was unceasingly 
 steered and controlled by a Divine Person, incapable of the 
 ignorance, the misgivings, the trusting reliance, and the hope 
 which impart depth and reality to human self-sacrifice in its 
 relations to God and man. 
 
 Mr. Liddon rightly declares : " The warmth of the spirit of 
 love varies with the felt greatness of the sacrifice which ex 
 presses it, arid which is its life." And, he reveals the strength 
 of very sincere prepossession, when he adds, " Therefore the 
 
ON HIS SELF-SACRIFICE. 381 
 
 love of the Divine Christ is infinite. He loved me, says 
 an Apostle, and gave Himself for me (Gal. ii. 20). The 
 Self which He gave for man was none other than the 
 Infinite God : the reality of Christ s Godhead is the truth 
 which can alone measure the greatness of His love" 
 (p. 495). 
 
 The infinite perfections of the Most High are not, indeed, 
 incompatible with love, for love is their chief ingredient, but 
 they are, by all rational conception, incompatible with the 
 experiences which constitute human self-sacrifice. The com 
 position of the Orthodox Christ reduces His Sacrifice of Self 
 to a minimum. When Mr. Liddon aimies : " Christians have 
 
 G 
 
 measured the love of Jesus Christ as man measures all love, 
 by observing the degree in which it involves the gift of self: 
 the Self which Christ gave was none other than the Infinite 
 God," he seems hovering on the verge of the silly verbal 
 quibble, "every thing done by an Infinite Being is in 
 finite." 
 
 The reasoning of the most plausible rhetorician, in support 
 of the assertion that Christian virtues are in some specific 
 sense effects of faith in Christ s Deity, cannot be otherwise 
 than unsatisfactory, and will have no weight with men who 
 believe the Lord Jesus Christ to have been produced and sent 
 by the One God and Father, the Only True God. Our Lord s 
 precepts, and our Lord s example, have, on valid grounds of 
 reason as well as moral feeling, great power, if He is acknowl 
 edged to be the elect Revealer of the Divine diameter and 
 purposes ; the Messenger and Image of the Blessed and only 
 Potentate, the Invisible God. If in the Man Christ Jesus 
 men behold the light and glory of a moral manifestation of 
 God, the mirror on which the brightness of the Fathers glory 
 falls, then the teaching and the pattern which Christ has left 
 us will not be deficient in force and fruit-fulness. The idea 
 that He is Personally the Infinite God may seem to add 
 force and intensity to His example, but it will do so only by 
 causing us to transfer a portion of our highest devotional 
 affections from the Father. The sum total of emotional 
 
382 DANGER OF DIVIDED LOVE AND WORSHIP. 
 
 religious energy will not be increased, but differently dis 
 tributed, and disorganizing germs of intellectual confusion 
 will be implanted. 
 
 Dissentients from the Church s dogma would, from their 
 point of view, make short work of the argument, that love to 
 God is enlarged by the doctrine Mr. Liddon advocates. They 
 would declare the heart s supreme love and worship are 
 divided and impoverished, when the One Infinitely Perfect 
 and Absorbing Object is verbally split up into two or more 
 mysterious Subsistences, each Personally God, and yet to 
 gether only one God. They would aver the Church is but 
 too surely a loser, in the depth and constancy of spiritual, 
 truthful worship, when her faith, trust, love, and devotional 
 service are as much, and in the same sense, given to the 
 Begotten and Incarnate Son, as to the Unbegotten and In 
 finite Father. 
 
 And they would reply to Mr. Liddon s inquiry " What 
 is the fountain head of the many blessed and practical results 
 of Christian civilization and Christian charity, but the truth 
 of His Divinity, Who has kindled man into charity by giving 
 Himself for man ? " by recounting results of a widely dif 
 ferent kind, which have been most intimately associated w r ith 
 the manifested life of the Christian Church. There are very 
 prominent facts in the Church s history, which certainly do 
 not point to the conclusion that the vital power of Chris 
 tianity in the production of Christian graces has been pro 
 moted by the Church s unflagging insistence on the particular 
 dogma which is Mr. Liddon s theme. The tendency to arro 
 gate a tyrannous dominion over men s faith and consciences 
 has been nowhere more, rank and vigorous than in the 
 Sacerdotal Hierarchy by whom the tenet of Christ s Deity 
 has been most jealously proclaimed and fostered. Meekness, 
 humbleness of mind, " the bearing of a little child (St. Matt, 
 xviii. 3), that true note of predestined nobility in the King 
 dom of Heaven," have never been, from the fourth century to 
 the nineteenth, distinguishing virtues of Orthodox Eccle 
 siastics the dauntless champions of the dogmatic Faith. 
 
WHAT HAS PROMOTED CHRISTIAN CHARITY ? 383 
 
 Neither has Christlike charity been remarkably displayed in 
 conjunction with a scrupulous holding of Nicene and Atha- 
 nasian definitions. Ferocious cruelty, unsurpassed in the 
 annals of heathenism ; unpitying, savage, deliberate atroci 
 ties, were long and largely perpetrated with the sanction, 
 and mostly at the instigation, of the Church s Hierarchy, in 
 the name of that religion which inscribed Christ s Godhead 
 on its banner. And the sentiments which gave birth to the 
 horrors of individual torturings and wholesale butcheries 
 were not subjugated by " the moral results of Calvary, which 
 are what they are, because Christ is God." They were not 
 abated or banished, because Christian faith deduced lessons 
 of love from "the charity of the Redeemer, which is infinite 
 because the Redeemer is Divine," but because the experi 
 enced failure of fiendish barbarity to extirpate heresy induced 
 prudent hesitation, and won a hearing for the voice of natural 
 tenderness, and the general teachings of Christian brotherhood 
 and compassion ; and even now, so far as modern civilization 
 permits it to emerge, the persecuting spirit is seen to cling 
 to earnest faith in Christ s Deity ; and suspicion is never so 
 keen-scented, denunciation never so bitter, opposition never 
 so relentless, resentment never so fierce, as when the delicate, 
 fragile, and incomprehensible definitions by which the Church 
 depicts the internal relations, constitution, and economical 
 distribution of the Uncreated Nature, are imagined to be 
 traversed. Our Lord s saying, "I came not to send peace, 
 but a sword : I came to set men at variance," referred to the 
 resistance which Christianity would provoke among Jews 
 and heathens ; but believers in His Deity have labored with 
 no small amount of success, to make the saying intensely ap 
 plicable to the demeanor of Christians towards each other. 
 
 " The Divinity of God s Own Son, freely given for us sin 
 ners to suffer and to die, is the very heart of our Christian 
 faith. It cannot be denied without tearing out the vitals of 
 a living Christianity" (p. 497). This dashing statement will 
 have no more weight with thinkers than the baseless asser 
 tion " Apostles, differing in much besides, were made one 
 
SS4 HOW FAR DOES PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 by faith in Christ s Divinity, and in the truths which are 
 bound up with it " will have with candid searchers of the 
 New Testament Scriptures. The statement may indeed be 
 true, if by " a living Christianity " is meant the system of 
 dogmas wrapt by the Church Catholic around the essential 
 truths which Christ and His Apostles taught; but if, by a 
 living Christianity, is meant the faith which works by love to 
 God, and love to our neighbor, we cannot easily understand 
 how T the doctrine of Christ s Deity increases its efficacy. 
 Which of the great leading conceptions, demanded by the 
 religious sentiments, hangs upon the theory that Jesus Christ, 
 as well as our Heavenly Father, is Almighty God? Do 
 God s existence, and His care for man ? Does a future life, 
 attended with recompenses corresponding to real deserv- 
 ings and character? Does our Maker s Fatherly compassion, 
 and willingness to forgive the transgressions of His erring and 
 repentant creatures? Is not belief in One Personal God and 
 Father sufficient to kindle the brightest flames of morally 
 intelligent affection, and to quicken, and raise to the highest 
 pitch, every pious emotion ? Is not the consciousness of Our 
 Father s near and dear Presence, that which feeds the 
 heart with the strongest motives to holiness, that which 
 takes a mighty hold on the emotional side of our nature, and 
 is ratified and re-enforced by the intellectual? The intro 
 duction of a second, Personally distinct Form of Godhead 
 neither facilitates, nor deepens, the play of the indispensable 
 spiritual forces, dependence, love, trust, conviction of sin, 
 and a sense of the need for pardoning and assisting grace. 
 Loving trust in an infinitely Wise, Holy, and Kind Father 
 the Father Whom Jesus and His Apostles proclaim is the 
 prime inward spring of Christian holiness; and from this 
 trust the dogma of Christ s Co-equal Deity is in theory cal 
 culated to detract, by producing in our minds the partition 
 of endearing Attributes, and thereby dimming the lustre of 
 the Father s Moral Glory. If we try to understand our 
 words, and realize our conceptions, the notion of a Plurality 
 of Persons in the Divine Nature becomes either an unprofit- 
 
DEPEND UPON FAITH IN CHRIST S DEITY ? 385 
 
 able and disconcerting repetition of One and the Same God, 
 or a presentation of more Gods than One, with claims more 
 or less diverse. Submissive, unquestioning reliance on au 
 thority is necessary, to shelter the notion from the blight 
 of rational inferences decidedly adverse to real and funda 
 mental Monotheism. 
 
 25 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The doctrine defended by Mr. Liddon is, wholly and necessarily, outside 
 the sphere of reason. Even the explicit statements of the Creeds 
 cannot Le rationally harmonized, and are fitted for a blindly confiding, 
 rather than a reflective and intelligent reception. Utter insuffi 
 ciency of the supposed Scriptural testimony for Christ s Godhead ; 
 and recapitulation of the adverse testimony. Mistaken impressions 
 kept up by false statements in Commentaries, Sermons, &c. The 
 Church s teaching cannot be fully appropriated without an acknowl 
 edgment of the Church s paramount authority. This fact appears 
 to have been at times forgotten even by great Fathers in the 
 Church. Necessity for an explicitly speaking Supreme Tribunal. 
 The inevitable outcome of Protestant principle. Conclusion. 
 
 I HAVE now examined in detail the strength of Mr. Liddon s 
 argument from Scripture, and trust I may have enabled my 
 readers duly to estimate the worth of the reasonings on 
 which he relies. To me those reasonings appear to be some 
 times absurd, often really, however unconsciously, sophistical, 
 and always insufficient. The whole structure of the Lectures, 
 so far as they are an appeal of reason to Holy Scripture (and 
 all exposition not avowedly based on the Church s supreme 
 authority must be such an appeal), rests upon untenable 
 ground, and exposes to inevitable capture the citadel of 
 Ecclesiastical Faith. Whenever the primary doctrine of 
 God s Unity is maintained, the doctrine of Christ s Deity is 
 outside the sphere of reason, and, if true, is emphatically and 
 solely a disclosure of Revelation. The terms in which the 
 doctrines are conjointly stated become, by a hard necessity, 
 either meaningless, or irrational and conflicting. This fact 
 does not, for any large class of minds, attest the Deity of 
 Christ to be revealed from Above ; but it, at least, attests the 
 proclamation of His Deity to be addressed to trustful, unques 
 tioning faith. How imperative is the need for intellectual 
 
DEFECTIVENESS OF THE NICENE CREED. 387 
 
 abeyance and submission may be seen in the circumstance 
 that even the Creeds wherein the Church most explicitly sets 
 forth her teaching are not reasonably reconcilable Avith each 
 other. If the Athanasian Symbol conveys the Church s riper 
 wisdom, and more thorough analysis of the One Infinite Self- 
 subsisting Nature, then that drawn up by the Councils of 
 Nice and Constantinople is manifestly defective, if not abso 
 lutely heretical. The Symbol of Nice and Constantinople 
 presents to our faith One God, the Father Almighty, and, in 
 addition, a Begotten God of the Self-same Substance, Very 
 God, of or from Very God. Clearly, therefore, in the con 
 ception which the Church s words compel, if the Father is 
 God, and the Son is God, there are two Gods. The Father 
 is, as the Father Almighty, One God ; and the Son Whose 
 eternity is dubiously predicated in the clause, begotten before 
 all the ages is a second God. There is no intimation that 
 One God means One Indivisible Self-existing Essence, within 
 Which are enfolded different Persons, Who severally have 
 One Divinity, equal Glory, and Co-eternal Majesty. 
 
 The phrases Begotten and Only-begotten are robbed of all 
 cognizable import, when we are bound to reconcile them with 
 +he Son s possession of unabridged everlasting Deity. With 
 the concession of derivation in any actual sense, the distinc 
 tive quality of true Godhead, Self-existence, vanishes, and a 
 gulf of severance, impassable by rational thought, yawns 
 between the derived glory of the Son, and the underived 
 Majesty of the Father. And, in another particular, the 
 Nicene Creed itself, if it has not the escort of a despotic 
 Commentary, must be confessed, in spite of its definitions, 
 to imply with clearness the Son s inferiority. The creation 
 of all visible and invisible things is attributed to the One 
 God the Father Almighty. The organizing action of the 
 Only-begotten Son, through or by means of Whom all things 
 were made, must therefore have been instrumental and de 
 puted. He was not the Coequal Partner, but the Agent of 
 the One God ; for, if the Son created by His own inherent 
 might, the Omnipotent Father was not the Maker of all 
 
388 PANTHEISM AND PROTESTANT MONOTHEISM. 
 
 things. The language of the Creed, as regards creation, can 
 not be harmonized without an acknowledgment of the Son s 
 subordination, servitorship, and mere agency. The affirma 
 tion, Very God from Very God, is quite inadequate rationally 
 to annul this fatal implication of vast inferiority, unless we 
 introduce direct antagonism to the Creed s opening clause, 
 and also cut down to nothing the meaning of the " Genera 
 tion " which took place before all the ages. Nor are the 
 renowned and sagacious words, of the same Substance with 
 the Father, competent, from a philosophical point of view, 
 to the task for which they were devised. Since things 
 visible and invisible come forth from the One Fountain of 
 Unoriginated Being, are they not all of one Substance with 
 the Father? They may manifest Him, and exist by His 
 presence and energy, in differing modes and degrees, but of 
 what other Substance than His can they be? Where is 
 there any other Substance ? To devout and reflective minds, 
 one inscrutable feature in the mystery of the Self-existent 
 Creator is the union of universally diffused, upholding Pres 
 ence with personal attributes. An adoring and philosophical 
 faith combines Pantheism with a belief in a Personal God. 
 The combination is confessedly paradoxical, but it follows 
 the direction given by lines of rational indication, and does 
 not contravene reason, though its ultimate statement is not 
 within reason s boundary. In propositions relating to the 
 Divine Nature we can scarcely hope to attain certitude, or 
 to avoid paradox, but we ought to avoid baseless, discordant, 
 fanciful specifications. When we have forsaken the ground 
 of Ecclesiastical authority, we act more reverently in con 
 fessing our ignorance than in contradicting ourselves, and 
 uttering sounds without sense. Piously inquisitive thought, 
 uninstructed by infallible revelation, will find no pretext for 
 conceiving the Divine Nature to consist of three Persons, 
 Each of Whom is by Himself God, and Who, nevertheless, 
 are together only One God ; but will discern inducements of 
 great probability for the faith that, in the Universe, the 
 Divine Substance is diffused and displayed, while neverthe- 
 
DIFFERENCES OF THE CREEDS. 389 
 
 less the One God has a Personal Subsistence and Attributes 
 apart from the Universe. Protestant Monotheism, retaining 
 the consecrated metaphor of dogmatic theology, has declared 
 by the pen of one of its ablest representatives : " For the 
 God of the Trinity must be substituted the one God, above 
 and within the world, filling the immensity of time and 
 space with the inexhaustible riches of His power, whose eter 
 nal Word is the Universe the revelation of His thoughts, 
 the expression of His wisdom " (Reville, On the Deity of 
 Christ}. 
 
 The Church s insight was deeper at the date of the Atha- 
 nasian, than at the date of the Nicene Creed, and she beheld 
 more vividly the imminent peril of dividing the Substance 
 in the intricate process of distinguishing the Persons ; but, 
 owing to the imperfection of human language, her ability of 
 expression could not keep pace with her inspired penetration, 
 and so, in her last analysis of God, there is, for mere reason, 
 inconsistency, whatever nutriment there may be for humble 
 faith. Through the Symbol called Athanasian, the Church 
 asserts concerning the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 
 that each Person must be acknowledged to be, by himself, 
 both God and Lord, Uncreated, Infinite, Eternal, Almighty, 
 and yet They are not three Uncreated, Infinite, Eternal, 
 and Almighty Beings, but One Almighty. To the intellect, 
 this phraseology is either totally unintelligible or flatly self- 
 contradictory. If Person signifies any thing, One is mean 
 ingless : if the Unity of God is held fast, Person loses all 
 significance. Sameness of Nature there may be in different 
 individuals, but Oneness of Being is singleness of Person. 
 If both the Unity, and the separate Personality are roundly 
 affirmed, the affirmation can evoke nothing but conceptions 
 diametrically opposed, and mutually exclusive. Manifesta 
 tion, pervasion, indwelling, and influence locally concentrated 
 or universally diffused, differ widely from multiplied Person 
 ality. 
 
 Assuming Eternity, and Independent Unoriginated Exist 
 ence, to be inalienable Attributes of God, the Creed of Nicaea 
 
390 USE OF REASON SUBVERSIVE OF ORTHODOXY. 
 
 and Constantinople either falls short in defining Christ s God 
 head, or is ditheistic. The Athanasian Creed, unless its defi 
 nitions of the Divine Nature are wholly shorn of sense, is 
 self-contradictory. To the vision of Ecclesiastical credence, 
 both Creeds may be perfectly harmonious, and both lofty 
 achievements of illuminated wisdom, but I speak from the 
 inferior ground of merely rational inspection. The Creed 
 known as the Apostles\ though it has but slender claims to 
 Apostolic parentage, yet exhibits, in relation to God and the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, a confession that satisfied the demands of 
 Ante-Mcene times, but no reasonable exposition can make it 
 cover the dogma of Christ s Deity. The Anglican Church, 
 indeed (see Catechism), teaches us to learn from it faith in 
 God the 8on, and in God- the Holy Ghost / but she does so, 
 only by making it mean what it does not say, thus honoring 
 the Creed with the mode of interpretation applied to inspired 
 writings. Men are sometimes told to take the Creed as their 
 compass in the study of the Bible ; but, when this sage advice 
 is given, we must expect the inquiry, " which Creed ? " for 
 in delineating Christ s Person the three Creeds carry us to 
 very different lengths, and do not run in precisely the same 
 direction. 
 
 The Bible and the Creeds are thoroughly dissimilar in 
 composition, yet the principle of rational interpretation is 
 almost as dangerous in its application to the one as to the 
 other. The notion, that formulas offered to Christian faith 
 are at the same time offered to the intelligence of Christians, 
 is in its very nature disintegrating, and subversive of Ortho 
 doxy. In secular and temporal concerns, truth requires that 
 words should closely correspond to thoughts, but in the 
 higher concerns of religion and eternity this correspondence 
 should not be looked for; and we walk more humbly and 
 securely in the traditional tracks when we portray the Ador 
 able, Uncreated Nature by language into which consistent 
 thoughts cannot be put. The subject is, doubtless, impene 
 trably mysterious, and the human intellect quite unable ade 
 quately to comprehend the Form of Self-existent Being; but 
 
THE CREEDS DO NOT AID THE UNDERSTANDING. 891 
 
 this inability, while it forbids the uninspired intellect to frame 
 definitions, does not forbid the examination of definitions, 
 since they must be to some extent the fruits of the intellect s 
 exercise, and, if not examples of human error, are instances 
 of Divine condescension employing the very imperfect ma 
 chinery of human parlance and capacity. From whatever 
 source, therefore, the Church s knowledge proceeds, if she 
 cannot intelligibly express the revelation intrusted to her 
 keeping, her demand must be for reliance upon herself, for 
 a confiding and blindly acquiescent, as distinguished from a 
 reflective and intelligent, acceptance of her tenets. 
 
 The Creeds, though they declare the Church s judgment, 
 do nothing towards unriddling the co-existence of Essential 
 Unity and Personal Plurality. The paradox remains un 
 solved, because Plurality of Personal Being is the negation 
 of Unity, and Unity the negation of Plurality. If reason be 
 permitted to enter the field, one-half of the Church s defi 
 nition falls immediately. The analogies to which zealous 
 faith and inflexible prejudice have had recourse, the tripar 
 tite nature of man, body, soul, and spirit, the triple energies 
 of the human mind, intelligence, love, and will, and the three 
 fold qualities of the Sun, its substance, light, and heat, are 
 obviously pointless. The conjunction of differing parts, pow 
 ers, affections, and efficiencies, in one complex Being, bears 
 no true illustrative analogy to the concomitance of distinct, 
 co-equal, and severally complete Persons in One Substance. 
 
 Definitions external to the Canon of Scripture have not 
 tended to assist in bringing the subject within the apprehen 
 sion of reason. And the detailed investigation of Mr. Lid- 
 don s argument has impressed upon my mind a reluctant 
 persuasion, that Scripture clearly proclaims the Almighty to 
 be, in the intelligible, exclusive sense, One Individual Personal 
 Being. The mode of His Existence, and the exercise of 
 His Omnipotent, Omnipresent Energy, are beyond the grasp 
 of finite understandings ; but absolute Personal Unity is the 
 conception of His Nature which reason approves, and the 
 only conception which the Bible, reasonably interpreted, sets 
 
392 THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE NOT ONLY 
 
 forth. The supposed Scriptural evidence for Christ s God 
 head crumbles vexingly away as the meaning of text after 
 text is explored. Scarcely a single fragment wears a respect 
 able look, and the whole fabric is miserably weak, and with 
 out cohesion. 
 
 The plain fact is, with regard to that doctrine of Christ s 
 Person which the two later of the three Creeds embody, the 
 Bible has been more talked about than really consulted. The 
 conscientious effort to reach the original meaning and occupy 
 the Sacred Writers point of view, the calm and unbiassed 
 investigation demanded by Protestant principle, have been 
 very rarely bestowed upon the Book which Orthodox Prot 
 estants so vauntingly declare to be the Divine Code of their 
 Faith. Nicene and Athanasian theologies have been taken 
 for granted, and, after a fashion illustrated, not searchingly 
 weighed and examined by the balance and the light which 
 the venerated Volume supplies ; and so the majority of 
 Protestants have gone on repeating the dogma of a plurality 
 of Persons in the One Godhead, contentedly ignorant that 
 rational investigation demonstrates the dogma to have been 
 always outside and beyond Scripture, outside and beyond 
 the Old Testament Canon, and again outside and beyond the 
 New. I do not deny that God may, in His own way, have 
 revealed the dogma ; but I do deny He has revealed it in a 
 way which their fundamental principle enables Protestants 
 to recognize. 
 
 The Old Testament furnishes nothing to set over against 
 its own repeated, explicit, and emphatic annunciations that 
 God is One Being ; and only by neglecting contexts, forget 
 ting original senses, and ignoring obvious characteristics of 
 Eastern thought and diction, can even a semblance of exposi 
 tion be constructed for the detention of minds trained from 
 childhood to believe, and not to inquire. In the New Testa 
 ment, the Great Speaker, Who is in the Church s preaching 
 Very God veiled in Humanity, gives no hint of His own 
 boundless Uncreated Greatness. He claims, indeed, intimate 
 communion with, and mission from, the Father His Father 
 
INSUFFICIENT BUT ADVERSE TO THE CREEDS. 393 
 
 and our Father, His God and our God, Whom He also 
 names the Only God, and the Only True God ; but He never 
 approaches an affirmation that He is internal to the Self- 
 subsisting Nature, and, by independent necessity of Being, 
 the Father s Co-equal Partner. His language is always that 
 of filial dependence, filial love ; and the highest Self-asser 
 tions attributed to Him rise no higher than announcements 
 of might and gifts, office and dignity, bestowed by the 
 Father. That He designed any words of His own to reveal 
 His possession of Godhead, or to identify Himself with the 
 One perfectly Good God Whom He enjoins us to love with 
 all our heart, and soul, and strength, is a conjecture which, 
 to the unaided eye of reason, must appear violently arbitrary 
 and improbable. If we argue from inferences suggested by 
 His words, we are confronted, at every page, with natural 
 and direct implications adverse to the Church s dogma, while 
 the whole pleading in favor* of the dogma reposes upon 
 unnatural and forced deductions and senses, not read in, but 
 into, a few expressions whose ambiguity invites theological 
 manipulation. 
 
 And the Evangelical historians, when speaking in their 
 own persons, show no perception that the Teacher sent from 
 God, Who is the subject of their narratives, is God, or God s 
 Equal. The metaphysically speculative introduction to the 
 Fourth Gospel does not identify the Word and the God with 
 Whom the Word was ; and by saying the Word was in the 
 beginning does not adequately affirm the Word s Eternity. 
 The Greek, although it twice asserts the presence of the 
 Logos with the God, does not assert the Logos was the God ; 
 and the wording of verses 1 and 2 strongly favors, if it does 
 not quite establish, the surmise that, in ascribing Divinity to 
 the Logos, the Article was designedly omitted, to mark a 
 distinction in sense. The whole tenor of the last Gospel, 
 moreover (unless inspiration destroys consistency), is at 
 variance with the supposition of a purpose on the writer s 
 part to put God and Jesus Christ in the same rank. Jesus 
 is pre-existent, superhuman, highly exalted, and in most near 
 
394 THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE NOT ONLY 
 
 and privileged fellowship with the Father, but is always dis 
 tinctly dependent upon and beneath the Father ; and we are 
 rationally bound to conclude the Evangelist s conception of 
 Christ was in easy unison with the testimony which He 
 makes Christ Himself bear respecting the Father s superior 
 greatness and exclusive Deity. 
 
 The authors of the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and 
 the Apocalypse, can, by no variations of intelligent or equi 
 table interpretation, be made to put Jesus, the Son Whom 
 God has raised and glorified, on a parity with God in Nature 
 and underived Majesty. The tone of each document singly, 
 and the force of all combined, forbid the idea that, in the 
 writers thoughts, Jesus occupied the place of Almighty God. 
 Rom. ix. 5, Tit. ii. 13, 1 John v. 20, are not, by grammatical 
 necessity, descriptions of Christ, and, by every guide but 
 ambiguity of construction, are shown to be descriptions of 
 the One God, our Father. Tne clamorous adherence to a 
 possible, but demonstrably improbable application of the 
 debated expressions in these texts, betrays the desperate 
 straits into which Orthodox Protestant exposition has fallen. 
 
 But not only is there, throughout the New Testament, an 
 absence of indications which we are by the rules of rational 
 evidence bound to expect, not only do the men who are pre 
 sumed to have been intrusted with a new and most moment 
 ous revelation withhold that revelation, but they also employ 
 language which must, to Monotheists in every age, be charged 
 with obstructive and hostile suggestions. In fearlessness, 
 earnestness, and intellectual grasp, St. Paul was not a whit 
 behind the chiefest Apostle, and yet, while lie constantly 
 employs the Name God, he never once gives the Name to 
 Jesus Christ, but distinguishes Him from God, in sentences 
 of pointed precision, capable of carrying but one meaning to 
 minds not filled with undoubting assurance that Jesus Christ 
 is God. He lays down as axioms of the Faith : there is no 
 God but One ; to Christians, there is One God, the Father, 
 and one Lord Jesus Christ ; there is one Lord, one faith, one 
 baptism, One God and Father of all ; there is One God, and 
 
INSUFFICIENT BUT ADVERSE TO THE CREEDS. 395 
 
 one Mediator between God and men, the Mem Christ Jesus. 
 He calls God the Only God ; the Only Wise God; the 
 Messed and Only Potentate ; the God and Father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. If in inspired, no less than H uninspired 
 men, the mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart ; if 
 language has any intrinsic connection with opinions and 
 thoughts, St. Paul knew no God but the One Almighty 
 Father, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of 
 Glory. Against his witness for the real Personal Unity of 
 God, it is vain to erect the sham testimony composed of 
 exorbitant deductions from isolated, vague, and opaque 
 phrases. At the bar of human intelligence, no writer can be 
 held to imply, through the merely possible, or less probable 
 meanings of obscure, or anibiguous, or metaphorical state 
 ments, opinions which he never explicitly avows, and seems 
 explicitly to exclude. Even in the Philippian and Colossian 
 Epistles (assuming their present Text to be in every clause 
 Apostolic), there is a studied avoidance of the open straight 
 forward method of calling Christ God, and an attribution to 
 Him of gifts, glory, and official exaltation from God, which 
 persuasively intimate that, when Jesus had been magnified 
 to the utmost verge of Apostolic conception, God was in 
 the height above, and God in unapproachable Sovereignty 
 beyond. 
 
 The volume, which Mr. Liddon so suicidally makes his re 
 pertory of proofs, presents its two most prominent figures, 
 our Lord Himself, and St. Paul, both plainly inculcating that 
 the Father is the Only True God, the One God, the Only God. 
 And the Father is, incontrovertibly, a Personal Being, not a 
 Divine Nature embracing a Plurality of Persons, each of 
 Whom is God. When to this truth is joined the admitted 
 fact of the Son s Personal distinctness from the Father, the 
 conclusion is irresistibly brought out, the Son is not Per 
 sonally the One Only True God, and is, therefore, either a 
 second God of a lower grade, or not God at all. Arianisrn 
 testifies how the minds of multitudes in the early Church 
 did not shrink from the former of these alternatives, which, 
 
396 HOW OFTEN, IN THE SCRIPTURES, 
 
 to Christians of modern days, appears to be more verbally 
 than really distinguishable from the latter. The intellectual 
 difficulties of the Arian Christ are not greater than those of 
 the Christ of Catholic Christendom, but they are a favorite 
 topic with Orthodox Protestants, and are eagerly assaulted 
 with Rationalistic weapons, whose use against Orthodoxy is 
 vehemently cried down. 
 
 In some largely circulated editions of the Bible (JBagster s) 
 long lists of texts are given, wherein Christ is imagined to 
 be called God. Most of these are utilized by Mr. Liddon, 
 and have in the preceding pages been investigated. Cor 
 rected readings- in a few instances, and, in general, the 
 contexts, and the exercise of common sense, disperse the 
 labored blunders concocted for the edification of credulous 
 Protestants, who exult in possessing an all-sufficient Written 
 Rule by which they do not test their inherited beliefs. Ec 
 clesiastical authority originating doctrines of faith is repu 
 diated ; but a selection of Ecclesiastical traditions labelled 
 "Bible-teachings," and illogically patched on to Scripture 
 in Commentaries and Sermons, passes muster undetected, 
 through willing ears and prepossessed minds. 
 
 Besides the quotation from Psalm xlv. (Heb. i. 8, 9), the 
 New Testament contains only two texts in which Christ is 
 denominated God, namely, John i. 1, xx. 28, all other 
 asserted instances being either mistaken applications or erro 
 neous readings.* The former of these texts has been dis 
 cussed in the preceding pages ; and the adequacy of its 
 obscure phraseology to sustain an elaborate pile of doctrine 
 may be safely left to the judgment of all candid men ac 
 quainted with Greek. As to the exclamation of Thomas 
 when convinced of our Lord s Resurrection, theologians who 
 
 * The reading, only-begotten God for only-begotten Son (John i. 18), is 
 too decidedly unsuited to the sentence in which it stands to be probable, 
 but it has very respectable external evidence. Theologians who turn 
 that reading to account are bound to show how the specific difference 
 between begotten and unbeyotten is compatible with the Self-existence and 
 Eternity inseparable from true Godhead. Generated Self-existence, and 
 Eternity with a starting-point, are curious ideas. 
 
IS CHRIST CALLED GOD ? 397 
 
 will build a doctrine upon that are not likely to see the un- 
 soundness of their foundation. Rational exposition will un 
 grudgingly leave them the text for what it is worth, and afford 
 them the opportunity of performing exegetical feats in argu 
 ing from a couple of words against inferences and statements 
 with which the New Testament teems. 
 
 Attempts have been made to appropriate the Church s 
 teaching, without any frank, honest recognition of the 
 Church s paramount authority as the divinely commissioned 
 Teacher of truth. The mere witness of the Church to an 
 asserted sense of Scripture has been held to establish that 
 sense, and to guarantee Apostolicity of doctrine ; but no 
 mere witness can establish an unreasonable interpretation of 
 documents which lie open to reason s inspection, and the 
 doctrine of Christ s Deity is, besides, very far from possessing 
 a full and unbroken historical attestation. The century after 
 the departure of the Apostles is an undepicted and undepict- 
 able time. Its literature has almost entirely perished, and 
 nothing survives duly to represent its features. Writers, the 
 most nearly subsequent, throw no true light on its details, 
 crises, and disputes; for, in Ecclesiastical history, "first, 
 among general facts, is the ignorance of the third and fourth 
 centuries respecting the first, and earlier half of the second." 
 And this destitution in necessary evidence is not all the 
 difficulty with which students are confronted who refuse to 
 take for granted the Church s revealing office and divinely 
 insured freedom from error in Articles of Faith. The Arian- 
 ism of the fourth century was very widely spread, and invoked 
 both Scriptural and post-Scriptural testimony. The language 
 of the Ante-Xicenc Fathers is often such as no sensible, well- 
 informed Orthodox man of later days could have permitted 
 himself to use. The necessity which Bishop Bull experienced, 
 of adding much commentary and explanation in order to 
 show how the right meaning was contained in the language 
 of the Fathers Avhom he cites, has been the occasion of fre 
 quent remark. 
 
 The statements of a learned and moderate Roman Catholic 
 
398 DOUBTFUL VIEWS OF SOME OF 
 
 theologian (Mr. H. N. Oxenham) very pertinently exhibit 
 the strict truth in relation to this aspect of our subject : 
 
 " We must not imagine that the principle of development 
 applies only to the less fundamental doctrines of Christianity. 
 It is most conspicuously illustrated in the case of those two 
 supreme verities on which all the rest depend, the Trinity 
 and the Incarnation. We are reminded of this, as regards 
 the former doctrine, by two of the greatest names respec 
 tively in Anglican and in Catholic theology, Petavius, the 
 Jesuit, and Bishop Bull. The Defensio Fidel Niccence has 
 won for its author a deservedly high reputation, and is quoted 
 respectfully by eminent Catholic divines ; but in his contro 
 versy with Petavius, though he may have the better of the 
 argument in some detailed instances, he has certainly failed 
 to make out his case as a whole. All impartial judges, on 
 either side, are now agreed that Petavius is right as to the 
 heterodox language, implying often heterodox notions, about 
 the Holy Trinity, which many Ante-Nicene writers use. 
 The fact that, in an elaborate treatise on the Holy Ghost, 
 written expressly against heretics, St. Basil studiously refrains 
 from giving Him the Name of God (which was first done by 
 the Council of Alexandria in 363) would alone indicate this. 
 So, again, Justin Martyr speaks of the Son as inferior to the 
 Father, in His Divine Nature. . . . Many Fathers, both 
 Greek and Latin, in arguing with the Arians, treat the unity 
 of Persons in the Holy Trinity as specific rather than nu 
 merical. Cudworth (Intellectual System) not only says this 
 with especial, though not exclusive, reference to Cyril of 
 Alexandria, Gregory Nyssen, Anastasius, Maximus the Mar 
 tyr, and John of Damascus, but roundly accuses them of 
 teaching a Trinity no other than a kind of tritheism, while 
 he charges several others with denying a co-equality of Per 
 sons " ( Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, Introduction, 
 2d ed., pp. 23-25). 
 
 Mr. Oxenham sustains these statements by quotations from 
 Dr. Newman s Anglican work, " The Arians of the Fourth 
 Century ; " from the late Professor Blunt s Lectures on the 
 
THE ANTE-NICENE WRITERS. 399 
 
 "Right Use of the Fathers;" and from Dean Merivale s Lect 
 ures on the " Conversion of the Northern Nations." The 
 writer last named, speaking of the Trinitarian dogma in the 
 age of the Apologists, says : " The time w r as not yet ripe for 
 its full and consistent exposition. . . . The discrimination of 
 the Persons of the Godhead was as yet unsteady and fluct 
 uating." Mr. Oxenham, and the concurring authors whom he 
 quotes, while they do not attempt to conceal the frequently 
 halting, inadequate, doubtful, or more than doubtful, lan 
 guage of the earlier Fathers, are individually satisfied that 
 the Nicene dogma is "the legitimate outcome of Ante- 
 Nicene theology as a whole." 
 
 Mr. Liddon declares : " Undoubtedly, it should be frankly 
 granted that some of the Ante-Nicene writers do at times 
 employ terms which, judged by a Nicene standard, must be 
 pronounced unsatisfactory." But he follows up this declara 
 tion with the plea : " In truth, these Ante-Nicene Fathers 
 were feeling their w T ay, not towards the substance of the 
 faith, which they possessed in its fulness, but towards that 
 intellectual mastery both of its relationship to outer forms 
 of thought, and of its own internal harmonies and system, 
 which is obviously a perfectly distinct gift from the simple 
 possession of the faith itself. As Christians, they possessed 
 the faith itself. The faith, delivered once for all, had been 
 given to the Church in its completeness by the Apostles" 
 (p. 420). 
 
 This pleading is not sufficiently to the point. Language 
 which falls below the Nicene definitions suggests that its 
 authors did not entertain, as a necessary article of faith, that 
 view of the Divine Nature which the later Church put forth 
 with authority, and confirmed by universal acceptance. The 
 difficulty involved is the same in kind, though not for the 
 Protestant so formidable in degree, as that which the Sacred 
 Scriptures furnish. The dogma of Christ s Deity, however 
 perplexing when contested and weighed, admits and incites 
 most simple and unmistakable statement, when thoroughly 
 believed. Its very mystery causes the sincere believer to be 
 
400 THE NICENE DOGMA A GROWTH. 
 
 clear and unflinching in its avowal. Yet, in the literary 
 remains of the earlier Christian times, the more nearly we 
 approach the century after our Lord s resurrection, the more 
 loose and defective, not to say palpably erroneous, do the 
 statements regarding Christ s relation to the Everlasting 
 Godhead become. Justin Martyr s Logos-doctrine does not 
 mount to the level of the Church s requirements, and the 
 sub-apostolic Fathers who preceded Justin do not make use 
 of the indispensable metaphysical conception which, in vary 
 ing forms, appears in Plato, Philo, and the Fourth Gospel. 
 Non-heretical theology, for the first hundred years following 
 the day of Pentecost, did not go beyond the Synoptical Gos 
 pels, on the topic of Christ s Person. No fact in the history 
 of opinion is more clearly provable than that the Orthodox 
 dogma was a growth, developed amid controversy, and fixed in 
 the face of strong opposition. If it had an existence in Apos 
 tolic days and teachings, it was only as a seed, the smallest 
 of all seeds, invisible to eyes not specially invigorated to dis 
 cern it. The Catholic believer may rejoice in the full assur 
 ance of an unquestioning faith, that the dogma was, through 
 Divine instruction, from the very first, germinally and poten 
 tially present in the Church ; but the critic who discards the 
 assumption of the Church s immunity from error will trace 
 the real roots of the dogma in the treatises of Philo, and the 
 philosophy of Plato. 
 
 The most able of the Fathers, in their anxiety to argue 
 from Scripture, at times weaken their position, and seem but 
 imperfectly to apprehend the sovereignty and magnitude of 
 the Church s mission. The extensive prevalence of equivo 
 cation, jealousy, turbulence, violence, and persecution, in the 
 theological strifes of the fourth century, clouded the spiritual 
 glory of Ecclesiastical movements ; and perhaps the fact that 
 Imperial favor had much to do with the alternating prepond 
 erance of wrestling factions predisposed minds to seek too 
 cravingly an adequate Scriptural base for the minutely defi 
 nite formulas which sprang from a newer inspiration. A 
 highly nurtured and keenly sensitive faith was needed to 
 
CONFLICTING VOICES OF COUNCILS. 401 
 
 recognize the Divine guidance, and to catch the accents of 
 Heaven-descended, revealing wisdom, amid the din and tur 
 moil of excited disputants, some of whom, according to the 
 testimony of the historian Socrates (writing at the middle 
 of the fifth century), were proved by their letters to have 
 been troubled about the term homoousion of the same 
 Essence, and to have contended for the faith in the dark, 
 with no intelligent comprehension of the propositions before 
 them (Socrates, Ecd. Hist., Bk. i. 23). 
 
 The Church, of the period when the confession concerning 
 Christ s Person was settled, was not resplendent in morals 
 and intellect. Measured by the conduct of its members, it 
 bore few outward prints of sanctity, and was blurred with 
 many stains of ignorance, credulity, profligacy, impiety, and 
 blindly savage contentiousness. The short-sighted and derog 
 atory estimate of Episcopal Conventions, avowed by Gregory 
 of Nazianzum, was excusable. He could not look along the 
 stream as we do, and admire the wonderful unanimity of 
 Ecclesiastical adherence to a dogma which transcends con 
 sistent expression, an unanimity conspicuous through ages 
 broadly stamped with intellectual suppression, political enor 
 mities, and moral corruption. There is, therefore, no cause 
 for astonishment, if the combatants, and near spectators of 
 the ft ay, occasionally failed rightly to perceive and appreciate 
 the Church s living voice, inspiration, and supremacy. From 
 Episcopal Conclaves themselves uncertain and discordant 
 sounds issued. Councils held in the fourth century, between 
 those of Nica3a and Constantinople, set forth Creeds purposely 
 eluding the Nicene faith, and among them one assembled at 
 Ariminum (Rimini), A.D. 359, consisting of more than four 
 hundred Bishops (the number at Nicaea was about three 
 hundred), naturally had an appearance of weight. 
 
 The late Dean Goode, in the second volume of his large 
 and learned work, " The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice " 
 (p. 130), cites from St. Augustine a striking passage, in which 
 the ill-judged and virtually destructive reasoning of Protest 
 ants is anticipated. The Dean writes : " Nay, even in the 
 
 26 
 
402 THE NECESSITY FOR AN 
 
 highest points, not only is Catholic consent incapable of 
 proof, but the partial consent adduced is met by counter- 
 statements, pleading an opposing witness of equal authority." 
 
 For instance take the case of Avian, Nestorian, or Pelagian 
 errors. Arius, as we have seen, appealed to Antiquity as in 
 his favor, and not only were there several dissentients to the 
 decision come to at Nice, but not long after, at another 
 Council composed of nearly twice as many Bishops, the oppo 
 site doctrine was maintained. Can we appeal then to the 
 decision of the Nicene Council as infallible, as binding the 
 conscience to belief, as authoritative? Augustine knew bet 
 ter than to do so. When disputing with Maximinus the 
 Avian, what is his language? "But now," he says (i.e., 
 while arguing this question), "neither ought I to bring for 
 ward the Nicene Council, nor you that of Ariminum, as if 
 we could thus settle the question. Neither am I bound by 
 the authority of the one, nor you by the authority of the 
 other. We must argue the matter point with point, cause 
 with cause, reason with reason, by authorities of Scripture, 
 witnesses not belonging to any party, but common to both." 
 Was not this then to make Scripture the Judge of the con 
 troversy ? 
 
 This much at least is plain : without a Tribunal of appeal, 
 authoritative and unambiguous in its sentence, the contro 
 versy over Christ s Deity will be a wasting one for Ortho 
 doxy. Whether the Bible or the Church is assumed to be 
 the divinely commissioned Legislator and Judge, two things 
 are absolutely necessary, the legislative and judicial authority 
 must be unquestioned, the laws and decisions clearly stated. 
 If either of these things is wanting, the storms of theological 
 dissension will continue, except in so far as they give place 
 to contemptuous indifference. Make Holy Scripture the sole 
 standard, clothe every sentence, word, and syllable in the 
 mantle of infallible inspiration, and what is gained for Ortho 
 dox Protestantism, if the sense of Scripture is too latent, ov 
 too equivocally expressed for reason s recognition? If dis 
 putes are to be ended in favor of Orthodoxy, an interpreting 
 
AUTHORITATIVE TRIBUNAL. 403 
 
 voice is needed, whose prerogative will be magnified in the 
 same proportion as Scripture is exalted. Make Holy Script 
 ure subordinate and subsidiary to the Church in the scheme 
 of revealing Instrumentality, and then, however intrinsically 
 mysterious the doctrine, there will be no cause to complain 
 of inadequate statement, while the assumption of unerring 
 guidance may be as reasonably made on behalf of the Church 
 as on behalf of the Bible. But if, in compliance with the 
 fundamental axiom of Protestantism, the Church is dethroned 
 from both revealing and interpreting supremacy, the doctrine 
 in aid of which Mr. Liddon has contended will vanish from 
 the Creed of Protestants. Not being the plain, ascertainable 
 meaning of the Sacred Writers, and not having been in 
 trusted to any other divinely appointed Channel, it will be 
 classed among seemingly kindred examples of human error. 
 The history of mankind notifies a tendency to exalt and 
 Deify not only personified ideals, but also the Founders and 
 Renovators of religious faiths. In the absence of clearly 
 pronounced ordaining Revelation the dogma of our Lord s 
 Divinity is sure to be measured from the basis of this ten 
 dency ; and, so measured, the figure of Jesus, as lie appears 
 in the first three Gospels, would be judged to have grown 
 under the progressive action of hallowing imagination into 
 His figure as conceived by the fourth Evangelist, and that 
 again, after a struggle with Monotheistic tradition and in 
 stinct, to have been expanded into Co-essential Godhead, 
 nominally One with the Father, to allay the alarms of Mono 
 theism, Personally a Being distinct from the Father to 
 satisfy the old Polytheistic propensity which had always 
 bribed speculation to dilute the sublime truth that "the 
 Only True God, the One God and Father, is a Spirit, an 
 Invisible King of the ages, Whom never man saw, nor can 
 see." 
 
 Thoughtful believers in the Deity of Jesus Christ cannot 
 be grounded and settled in their faith without the conception 
 of a revealing Church, to whose guardianship Christian doc 
 trine has for all time been committed, and through whose 
 
404 CONCLUSIONS TO WHICH FACTS POINT. 
 
 assenting and formally certifying voice the great stages in 
 the unfolding growth of doctrine have been, from time to 
 time, announced. The incompetence of Protestantism for 
 Orthodox ends becomes daily more perceptible and more 
 perceived. The conclusion forces itself upon men s minds 
 that adherence to Protestantism signifies abandonment of 
 Orthodoxy; adherence to Orthodoxy, abandonment of Pro 
 testantism. Those various Protestant communities which, 
 differing in much else, concur in persistently proclaiming the 
 Catholic doctrine of Christ s Person, are surely paving the 
 way for large accessions to the Catholic Church. Intellectual 
 consistency, though temporarily violated, will eventually 
 triumph, and individuals who are unable to renounce the 
 dogma will, in multiplying numbers, accept along with the 
 dogma the only foundation on which the dogma can logically 
 rest. 
 
 The doctrine most assiduously, though after an injudicious 
 mode, defended by Mr. Liddon, has a tendency when made a 
 sine qua non, and clung to as the heart and citadel of Chris 
 tian Faith, to turn the eyes of the understanding and attract 
 the heart towards the beauty of the ancient Organization 
 which our forefathers deserted. This tendency, long dor 
 mant, and suspected by few, now exerts itself with accumu 
 lating force, as the unnoted impulse of traditionalism, carried 
 away by the Reformed Churches in their jevolt, becomes 
 sufficiently relaxed to be the subject of sober and unpreju 
 diced inquiry. 
 
 Trinitarian Nonconformists in this country, vauntingly 
 proclaim their attachment to Reformation principles, and 
 especially to the notion that Holy Scripture, reasonably un 
 derstood, is a supreme and sufficient Rule of Faith ; but, if 
 they set store by their Protestantism, let them take heed lest 
 the Catholic dogma, faithfully cherished, should entail gravi 
 tation towards the duly accredited Catholic Body. English 
 Dissenters, who are steadfast in their Orthodoxy, may learn 
 to see that complete truth is the heritage and ever-enlarging 
 treasure of the divinely inhabited Church, and is not, as they 
 
CONCLUSIONS TO WHICH PACTS POINT. 405 
 
 once fondly imagined, deducible from Scripture by individual 
 searching and judgment. The more steadily they resist the 
 inducements of Rationalism, and repudiate a form of religion 
 which has no better foundations than faith in God, in 
 conscience, in a future life, and in Christ as God s inspired 
 Servant and Messenger, the more prevailingly will they be 
 drawn to retrace the steps, and forsake the tenets, of their re 
 volutionary ancestors. Startling as the thought of such a 
 transformation may appear, they will probably yet perceive 
 the traditions of the Church to be as precious as, and more 
 revealing than, the Written Word, and will acknowledge 
 Bishops alone to be endowed with the right and the power 
 of announcing and imposing what is pure and legitimate in 
 Christian doctrine. 
 
 In the Church of England, Protestant elements are con 
 fessedly balanced by elements of an opposite kind, and the 
 recurrence to pre-Reformation principles is, therefore, less 
 obviously necessary than among professors of Puritan 
 Christianity. But though the departure from definite, un- 
 mutilated Catholicism has been, among us, less wide and 
 fundamental than among our Nonconforming fellow-country 
 men, and has left us, on one side of our Church s teaching, 
 more tenable ground, yet, even within the Anglican Com 
 munion, jealously tenacious retention of the grand Ecclesias 
 tical dogma will work towards an eventual restoration of 
 unity, and contribute to heal the Disruption of the sixteenth 
 century, by attracting our fragment into union with the 
 main body of Christendom. It is, indeed, impossible to pon 
 der the historical manifestations and the individual influence 
 of the dogma, without feeling in how great a degree the 
 Deity of Jesus is the sap and fibre of the whole Ecclesiasti 
 cal system. The methods and details of dogmatic Ortho 
 doxy have been penetrated with it, and unfolded around it by 
 intrinsic connection and natural growth. For all the dis 
 tinctive doctrinal characteristics of Catholic Christendom, 
 the belief that Jesus Christ is God appears to be directly or 
 indirectly responsible. 
 
406 CONCLUSIONS TO WHICH FACTS POINT. 
 
 And by this belief, far more than by any thing else, Evan 
 gelical Churchmanship and Orthodox Protestantism are at 
 the present hour instigated and sustained, in their virulent, 
 but inconsistent and impotent, antagonism towards free 
 religious thought. Modern Evangelicals, whether Church 
 men or Nonconformists, are not the true intellectual progeny 
 of the Reformation. The Anglican Reformers and the Puri 
 tans had valid excuses which advancing knowledge has 
 deprived of validity for their adherence to traditional 
 dogma. The questions to which modern criticism has given 
 birth could have been anticipated by very few in the six 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries ; and preconceptions, rooted 
 through forty zealously assenting generations, disguised for a 
 season the fact that, together with a freely consulted Bible, 
 the pretensions of Rational, as opposed to Ecclesiastical, 
 Monotheism, must be at no distant date urgently revived. 
 The revival was at first within a narrow circle, and expressed 
 itself through arguments too refined and intellectual to 
 kindle popular sympathy ; but in the maxims of the Refor 
 mation it found the food of an intense and imperishable life. 
 Indeed, nothing less than the safeguard discarded by the Re 
 formers (authority, imperiously ruling interpretation) could 
 have preserved the doctrine of Christ s Deity intact amid the 
 destructively free handling applied to other portions of the 
 Church s system. Protestant principle commanded the whole 
 dogmatic field, and openly avowed reserves and exemptions 
 were impossible. The extremest forms of prostration before, 
 and arbitrary assumption about, the Bible, were never im 
 agined to protect the contents of the Bible from diligent 
 searching and reasonable exposition. And, upon the axioms 
 enunciated by the Reformers, no preliminary conceptions 
 respecting the inspiration, the purposes, and the sole suprem 
 acy of the Sacred Volume, could eventually escape rational 
 scrutiny, and, if needful, corrective modification. 
 
 Two dangers, therefore, threatened the tenet of Christ s 
 actual Personal Deity ; the nearer and more obvious danger 
 springing out of deferential but reasonable interpretation, 
 
PROTESTANTISM MUST GO FORWARD. 407 
 
 and the remote and unforeseen danger springing out of 
 unrestrained historical and critical investigation into the ori 
 gin, authenticity, and general claims and warranty of the 
 Canonical Books themselves. Both dangers have established 
 their reality, have acquired formidable proportions, and are 
 now menacing with accumulated force and urgency. The 
 tree planted by the Reformation has borne unexpected and 
 unwelcome fruits. The Latitudinarian theory maintained by 
 Jeremy Taylor, Archbishop Tillotson, and others, " Reason 
 is the judge ; that is, we, who are the persons to be persuaded, 
 must see that we be persuaded reasonably," is the expres 
 sion of fundamental Protestantism, and is cruelly adverse to 
 conclusions accepted when faith was capacious and eager, 
 intelligence and morality contracted and slow. 
 
 Protestants are not the legitimate, and cannot be the effi 
 cient, champions of traditional dogma. Their attempted 
 action in a province not properly theirs either ends in their 
 gravitation towards the Church system they repudiate, or wins 
 their consent to the Rationalism they assail. Within the 
 Anglican Establishment, the former of these results has been 
 conspicuous since the avidity displayed by the Evangelicals 
 in the prosecution of two contributors to the memorable 
 volume, " Essays and Reviews." The temporary coalition with 
 High Churchmen, for the ejection of moderate and cautious 
 exponents of Protestant liberty in thought, has been followed 
 by the arrested growth and rapid decline of the Evangelical 
 Party. Whether this sequence of events is to be viewed as 
 a recompense of reward, or of punishment, is a point about 
 which opinions will naturally differ. Catholics will recognize 
 a Divine gift and blessing in the reviving perception of the 
 Church s prerogatives ; consistent Protestants will discern a 
 well-merited righteous retribution, in the paralysis of a Party 
 which, in the hour of trial, spurned the oifspring of its own 
 principles, and deserted the work God had given it to do. 
 The Protestantism which refuses now to go forward is, in the 
 judgment of every Liberal thinker, apostate, and doomed to 
 speedy extinction. 
 
408 RADICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN 
 
 And " to go forward " unquestionably means to relinquish, 
 as conditions of Christian fellowship and brotherhood, the 
 Nicene and Athanasian definitions of the Divine Nature. 
 Intelligible Monotheism, practically exhibited in the exclusive 
 worship with the honors due to Deity, of the " One God and 
 Father of all," is the heart and essence of Progressive, as 
 opposed to Conservative, theology. To set forth this issue 
 distinctly, and to expose the mischievously untenable and men 
 tally debasing nature of Orthodox Protestant pretensions 
 to stand upon Scripture reasonably understood, is the best 
 service to Truth that either Liberal or Catholic writers can 
 at the present juncture render. 
 
 Between the asserters of Ecclesiastical sovereignty, and 
 the advocates of free inquiry, there are wide and clearly 
 marked differences of preliminary conception, of method, and 
 of practical teaching. Each lays at the other s door a heavy 
 impeachment. The Catholic reproaches the Theist with leav 
 ing men to wander in the mazes of speculation, unchecked 
 and unguided ; with abandoning the essentials of Christianity, 
 and shaping the details of education and conduct without 
 regard to God s Revealed Will. The Theist retorts, by 
 pointing to the effects of Catholic teaching, and declaring 
 that Ecclesiastical dogmas have darkened the mind, dimin 
 ished faith, lowered morality, hampered and twisted the de 
 votional instincts, and stereotyped ideas of God and God s 
 dealings, calculated to retard the soul s progress, and defraud 
 mankind of half the benefits attainable through an undog- 
 matic, simple, and pure Christianity. 
 
 These retaliatory accusations contain matter for intermin 
 able debate, and as to their truth or falsehood I am not called 
 to offer an opinion; but the incapacity of Protestantism, 
 logically and morally, to curtail Christian fellowship by the 
 imposition of Catholic doctrine is, I think, a fact demonstra 
 ble to the great majority of honestly inquiring minds. The 
 particular doctrine, so eloquently re-stated in the Bampton 
 Lectures for 1866, may be the grandest and most profitable 
 among Christian verities, but it rests upon the foundation of 
 
ECCLESIASTICISM AND RATIONALISM. 409 
 
 Church authority, and falls when the support of that authority 
 is withdrawn. In enforced association with Protestantism, 
 it is totally out of place ; and, whatever advantages may 
 attend it elsewhere, its imposition as an Article of Faith 
 within the Churches of the Reformation is unwarranted and 
 demoralizing. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE. 
 
 A PAMPHLET on " The Thirty-nine Articles and the Creeds, 
 By a Country Parson," has recently come into my hands. It 
 is written with undeniable vigor and acuteness, in the form 
 of conversations, wherein an Archdeacon, a Dean, a Dio 
 cesan Chancellor, and a Bishop, are the interlocutors. The 
 following extract illustrates portions of my argument, by 
 showing how next to impossible is explicit statement of Trin 
 itarian dogma in conjunction with the fundamental truth of 
 the Divine Unity. If my readers should think the reasoning 
 unfair or defective, they can exercise their minds in trying to 
 amend it, and will at least reap the benefit of learning to 
 measure more equitably the wisdom and moral rectitude 
 displayed by some Protestant Communities, in enforcing, as 
 an item of necessary belief, a tenet which the thought of a 
 Monotheist cannot grasp, and the vocabulary of a Mon- 
 otheist cannot, without logical contradiction, be used to 
 express : 
 
 Dean. I fear that in your reading of our first Article 
 there is a little quibble between God and Godhead, between 
 eo^, the Living God, and TO Oelor, the Godhead, the Divine, 
 the generic term of the old philosophers, under which they 
 spoke of one deity or of many, according as they discoursed 
 with the initiated who believed in One, or with the vulgar 
 who believed in many. Let us try to avoid heathenish 
 ambiguity by writing down the shortest propositions, that 
 
412 THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES 
 
 we may keep them steadily before us. Will you allow me 
 to write down as certain verities the two, A and J?, thus ? 
 
 A. God the Father is the one true God. 
 
 B. The one true God is God the Father. 
 
 Archdeacon. They are both undeniably true. 
 Dean. And the two G, D, thus ? 
 
 C. God the Son is the one true God. 
 
 D. The one true God is God the Son. 
 
 Archdeacon. These are both true, like the former pair. 
 Dean. Then, if all four be true, the first and the fourth 
 are both true, thus : 
 
 A. God the Father is the one true God. 
 D. The one true God is God the Son. 
 
 Are these fairly put together ? What follows from them ? 
 
 Archdeacon. Of course, by mere logic, that God the 
 Father is God the Son ; but, because I acknowledged the 
 Christian verities in your premises, I am not responsible for 
 your false conclusion. There is something wrong. 
 
 Dean. The premises A, D, are your own, and you logi 
 cally drew the conclusion. If the premises are right, there 
 can be nothing wrong, unless the shortest and plainest step 
 that human reason can take from truth to truth is something 
 wrong. 
 
 Archdeacon. Ah ! I see my oversight : your propositions, 
 J3 and D, ought both to be The one true God is God the 
 Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. That is the 
 Church s full truth. 
 
 Dean. Then call that E, and write it under -4, thus : 
 
 A. God the Father is the one true God. 
 
 E. The one true God is God the Father, God the Son, and God the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 These are your premises : now draw the conclusion. 
 
 Archdeacon. I decline ; I am not bound by your logical 
 methods. I will maintain the Catholic Faith in the Church s 
 perfect language, but not your contradictions. 
 
AND THE CREEDS. 413 
 
 Dean. Then I must draw it for you : it follows of neces 
 sity that God the Father is God the Father and God the Son 
 and God the Holy Ghost, which is nonsense and impossible, 
 unless God the Son and God the Holy Ghost are either each 
 of them nothing at all, or somehow nothing when taken 
 together. This would make the conclusion into 
 
 God the Father is God the Father, 
 
 which is undeniably true. 
 
 Archdeacon. My tjear friend, you and I are both out of 
 our depth in this great mystery. All this was quite familiar 
 to the Nicene Fathers, and belongs to the most profound 
 investigation into the Holy Trinity. It is nothing else than 
 the sublime truth of the TTSOI^^GI^ whereby Each of the 
 Persons is in Each, Each in All, All in Each, and All in All. 
 
 Dean. So it is a contradiction, and also not a contradic 
 tion, but the sublimity and profundity of the rtSQi%{nQijGi 
 What is your derivation of that famous word ? 
 
 Archdeacon. Of course from 7tQi, round about, and 
 XWQSW, I move on ; it is a figurative word, drawn from the 
 mystery of circular motion. 
 
 Dean. As you say, it is a figure in theological science. 
 I can easily show you an illustration. You see this metal 
 disk, movable on an axis, a gyroscope top of my grandchild s. 
 I put three white wafers on the disk, which you can conceive 
 to symbolize the three Persons of the Trinity. Now I whirl 
 the disk rapidly round : what do you see ? 
 
 Archdeacon. I see one complete circle of white. 
 
 Dean. That is the ft8Qi%coQr{Gi$, or, if you prefer it, the 
 tvvitaqfcis. Don t you agree with me that both these renowned 
 words may be well rendered by the English word AUround- 
 inallation ? 
 
 Archdeacon. I have been over hasty in allowing you to 
 write the proposition E. The Catholic doctrine is not exactly 
 that, but this : " In Unity of this Godhead there are three 
 Persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
414 THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES 
 
 Dean. I thought you would get tired of the word God, 
 and recur to the Godhead. It is fatiguing to stand long on 
 one leg when Nature has given us two. A change is com 
 fortable. So you may stand on the other leg. We will talk 
 a little about the Godhead. But, first, are we quite agreed 
 that the Godhead, the Divine Nature, and the Divine Sub 
 stance all mean exactly the same Object of thought ? 
 
 Archdeacon. Assuredly they do ; the comparison of the 
 Latin and the English first Article with the Athanasian 
 Creed proves that they have all one and the same meaning. 
 
 Dean. From the second Article, which affirms that " two 
 whole and perfect natures, the Godhead and the Manhood, 
 were joined together in One Person," namely, the Second 
 Person of the Trinity, we are quite sure are we not ? of 
 the preposition F I now write : 
 
 F. The whole Godhead is in God the Son. 
 
 Archdeacon. This F is infallibly true. 
 
 Dean. And from the first Article, which affirms that all 
 the Three Persons are in the Unity of the Godhead, are we 
 not quite as certain of this proposition, G f 
 
 G. God the Son is in the whole Godhead. 
 
 I do not know what you understand by the Godhead, or the 
 whole Godhead, different from " the one Living and true 
 God;" but I hope you know what you mean. All that I 
 ask is your assurance that F and G- are both alike true. 
 
 Archdeacon. I am certain that they are both alike true. 
 
 Dean. If F be true, the following must be true : 
 
 H. God the Son is not less than the whole Godhead ; 
 
 for, if He were, the whole Godhead could not be in God the 
 Son. And if G- be true, this ./must be true : 
 
 I. God the Son is not greater than the whole Godhead ; 
 
 for, if He were, He could not be in the Godhead, as the first 
 Article affirms Him to be. Are these propositions, .ZTand 1^ 
 quite true ? 
 
AND THE CREEDS. 415 
 
 Archdeacon. What right have you to introduce these 
 terms of quantity, greater and less, into propositions about 
 the Trinity? 
 
 Dean. I am only doing what is already done in the Ar 
 ticles and in the Athanasian Creed. The Church makes 
 propositions containing whole and greater, and less and equal, 
 about the Three Persons. 
 
 Archdeacon. I agree that she does; and I confidently 
 affirm your two propositions to be true, namely : 
 
 If. God the Son is not less than the whole Godhead. 
 J. God the Son is not greater than the whole Godhead. 
 
 They are the Church s plain teaching ; but I am not bound 
 by the methods of your long-winded logic. 
 
 Dean. I shall not be long, as you will see; and now you 
 may stand on both your venerable legs. For from JTand I, 
 whether you will or no, follows this proposition J: 
 J. God the Son is verily and truly the whole Godhead ; 
 
 for lie is neither greater nor less than it. 
 
 Archdeacon. Of course the Church has always taught 
 that each of the Three Persons has in Himself the whole 
 undivided Godhead. 
 
 Dean. I ask are you content with the truth <7as I have 
 deduced it from J^and If If it is faulty, show me where. 
 
 Archdeacon. I allow that it is true as it stands, by inevi 
 table necessity of consequence from JaTand I. 
 
 Dean. Look now at the first Article : " in Unity of this 
 Godhead there be Three Persons of one Substance, power, 
 and eternity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." I 
 ask you, is the whole Godhead in any way greater than the 
 Three Persons? 
 
 Archdeacon. Certainly not. 
 
 Dean. I ask, again, is the whole Godhead in any way less 
 than the Three Persons ? 
 
 Archdeacon. It cannot possibly be less. 
 
 Dean. Then it is not in any way unequal to the Three 
 
416 THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES 
 
 Persons ; wherefore it is equal to them ; and this .ZTmust be 
 true : 
 
 K. The whole Godhead is God the Father, God the Son, and God 
 the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Is this true or not true ? 
 
 Archdeacon. Assuredly true. 
 
 Dean. Now we write 7^and jBT together : 
 
 J. God the Son is verily and truly the whole Godhead. 
 K. The whole Godhead is God the Father, God the Son, and God the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 From these follows by the inexorable law of human thought, 
 
 L. God the Son is verily and truly God the Father, God the Son, and 
 God the Holy Ghost ; 
 
 that is, either God the Father is nothing at all, and God the 
 Holy Ghost is nothing, or else both together they make noth 
 ing. Thus the quibble between God and Godhead cannot 
 save you from the absurdities before demonstrated from the 
 propositions A and E. Of course you will content yourself 
 with the same reply, the Trg^oo^d/t, again. 
 
 Archdeacon. And of course you know that reply has 
 been sufficient for the last 1800 years. You have said noth 
 ing new, nothing that has not been answered a thousand 
 times. 
 
 Dean. I wish you all the comfort you can have from that 
 popular consideration, and I am exceedingly obliged to you 
 for standing your ground so well. It must be a long time 
 since two men of our age and reading spent as much time on 
 these ancient quibbles with zeros and infinities. I shall keep 
 a little note of our conversation, which will read as something 
 very new ; for in truth no man now-a-days ever either con 
 descends to attack, or is required to defend, those Athanasian 
 contradictions ; so that, while thinkers have felt ashamed of 
 such inglorious assaults, many dunces on your side have be 
 gun to fancy their positions inexpugnable. 
 
AND THE CREEDS. 417 
 
 Chancellor. What dangerous combustibles these old dog 
 mas are ! I see no way of escape, unless by moistening the 
 powder with my distinction of personal and substantial. You 
 can go to the Dean, and tell him that you accept the conclu 
 sion L thus : 
 
 U . God the Son is substantially God the Father, God the Son, and 
 God the Holy Ghost 
 
 Archdeacon. Yes, and I shall put in the verily and truly, 
 and say this, ^ 
 
 L". God the Son is substantially, verily, and truly God the Father, 
 God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. . 
 
 Of course I deny that He is such personally ; but the Dean 
 cannot say that I deny the logical conclusion L, when I 
 declare that I accept it substantially, verily, and truly. 
 
 Chancellor. Here comes the Bishop. We must even ask 
 his Lordship. Let me write the whole argument from A, B, 
 C, D, down on a clear page of your pocket-book. 
 
 So he wrote it, ending thus : 
 
 A. God the Father is the one true God ; 
 
 D. The one true God is God the Son ; 
 
 Ergo, salva Trinitate in Unitate. 
 
 P. God the Father is God the Son ; id est, 
 
 E. God the Father is substantially God the Son, although 
 Q. God the Father is not personally God the Son. 
 
 Bishop. It is most perilous heresy, or next door to it, to 
 make one Person of the Trinity the subject, and another the 
 predicate, of any negative proposition whatever ; for by so 
 doing you reduce them to finite personalities. I am myself, 
 but I am not either of you two ; the Archdeacon is himself, 
 but he is neither the Bishop nor the Chancellor, who is also 
 himself, and is not either of the other two. This is the way 
 in which we affirm, and it is the only way in which we can 
 affirm, our own limited personalities. If now you say that 
 the Persons of the Trinity are so related really and in Them- 
 
 27 
 
418 THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES 
 
 selves, that the Father can say, I am Myself, but am not 
 You the Son, nor You the Holy Ghost ; that the Son can 
 say, I am Myself, but am not the Father nor the Holy Ghost ; 
 and that the Holy Ghost can say, I am Myself, but I am 
 neither the Father nor the Son, you have three Persons 
 mutually limiting and excluding each other ; that is, three 
 finite persons, and not one of them the Infinite and the Abso 
 lute, which the one true God of necessity must be. Thus 
 you undeify the Divine Persons. The same thing may be 
 shown thus : Suppose a man to pretend that God the Son 
 is not God the Father in Person, then you can reason thus : 
 
 God the Father in Person is the only true God ; 
 God the Son is not God the Father in Person ; ergo, 
 God the Son is not the only true God, 
 
 which is absurd and blasphemous, proving the absurdity 
 of the man s pretence in the second premise; for the first 
 premise is infallibly true ; and the absurdity remains if you 
 erase the words " in Person " from the premises. 
 
 Archdeacon. But surely, my lord, in some sense or other 
 the Son is not the Father ; for the Church clearly distinguishes 
 the Three Persons one from the other, in the Catechism, the 
 Creeds, and the Articles. 
 
 Bishop. Distinguishes is not the right word. The Church 
 affirms their co-existence, enumerates them and names them ; 
 and she takes care to teach the child to enumerate and to 
 name them. Of difference of existence apart from that 
 inherent in the pure order of Personality, she says not a 
 word, and above all she never writes a not between any two 
 of them. "There is one Person of the Father, another of 
 the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost : " this is far from 
 affirming a distinction and difference between any two. On 
 the contrary, " Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and 
 such is the Holy Ghost." They are not different : They are 
 other by number and by name; nor are They identical: They 
 are One such as Another, qualis talis, in the Latin. If I may 
 be allowed as a Bishop to coin a term of theological science, 
 
AND THE CREEDS. 419 
 
 I should say that the relation between the Persons of the 
 Trinity is neither of identity nor of difference, but of a cer 
 tain mutual and mystical qualitality. But in these profound 
 mysteries it is always safest to employ the exact words of the 
 Creeds; and it is a perilous thing to swerve by a hair s 
 breadth from them. Also remember above all that the 
 numerical character is not that of three things ; not a Trinity 
 in triplicity^ but & Trinity in unity. I hope I have made this 
 clear to you. 
 
 Archdeacon. As clear., perhaps, as the subject can be 
 made. 
 
 Chancellor. Almost as clear as it was to me when, at six 
 years of age, I learned my Catechism. I could count Them 
 and name Them then, and I can count Them and name 
 Them now; and that exhausts all the conception that I shall 
 ever get of the matter, except that it is a qualitalitive three- 
 ness, not at all in threeness, but in oneness. 
 
INDEX 
 
 TO 
 
 TEXTS SPECIALLY REFERRED TO. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 i. 26 
 
 PAGE 
 
 56 
 56 
 56 
 58 
 67 
 
 287 
 58 
 
 58 
 323 
 
 223 
 
 138 
 169 
 69 
 
 70 
 283 
 223 
 71 
 
 62 
 
 58 
 56 
 77 
 76 
 73 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 xxiii. 5 . . . . 
 xxxi. 31-35 . . . 
 
 DANIEL. 
 iii. 25 
 
 PAGE 
 
 76 
 73 
 
 999 
 
 PAGE 
 
 xxvii. 46 . . . .238 
 xxvii. 54 . . . .293 
 xxviii. 17 . . . .320 
 xxviii. 19 ... 95, 301 
 
 ST. MARK. 
 
 x. 17, 18 . . . . 241 
 xi. 12-14 .... 94 
 xiii. 32 .... 366 
 xv. 39 294 
 
 iii 22 ...... 
 
 xi. 7 
 
 xix. 24 . . . . 
 
 xlix. 10 . . . . 
 
 EXODUS. 
 iii. 14 . . . . . 
 
 vii. 13, 14 . . . 
 
 HOSEA. 
 
 xi 1 
 
 292 
 223 
 80 
 
 99 
 79 
 
 77 
 
 80 
 
 77 
 223 
 322 
 245 
 243 
 267 
 299 
 299 
 91 
 303 
 299 
 295 
 71 
 298 
 300 
 267 
 293 
 
 NUMBERS. 
 vi. 23-26 . . . . 
 
 DEUTERONOMY 
 vi 4 
 
 HAGGAI. 
 ii. 7-9 
 
 xvi. 12 .... 354 
 
 ST. LUKE. 
 
 i. 68, 69 . . . . 196 
 i. 76 99 
 
 ZECHARIAH. 
 ii. 10-13 . . . . 
 xii. 10 
 
 vi 13 
 
 ii. 52 ... 
 ix 26 . . . 
 
 . 364 
 . . 193 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 vii 14 
 
 x. 22 . . . 
 
 xiv 26 . . 
 
 . . 303 
 
 . 9,fi 
 
 MALACHI. 
 iii 1 
 
 xxviii. 18, 19 . . 241 
 xxii. 29 .... 90 
 xxii. 42, 44 ... 238 
 xxiii. 42 . . . .321 
 xxiii. 47 . . . .294 
 xxiv. 51, 52 ... 320 
 
 ST. JOHN. 
 
 i. 1 . . . 100, 108, 393 
 i. 18 396 
 
 vii. 16 
 
 PSALMS. 
 ii. 7, 12 . . .69 
 xvi. 10 ... 
 xlv.^6, 7 ... 
 Ixxii 
 Ixxxii. 1, 6 . . 
 Ixxxix. 26, 27 . 
 ex. i 
 
 ST. MATTHEW. 
 
 i 23 
 
 ii. 15 
 
 iv. 8-10 .... 
 v. 22, et seq. . . . 
 
 ix.6 
 x. 32 . . . 
 x. 37 . . . 268, 
 x. 40 
 xi. 27 
 xi. 28 29 . . . 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 viii. 22 .... 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 vi. 3 
 vi 8 ... 
 
 iii. 34 ... 
 
 . . 103 
 
 iv. 10 ... 
 
 . . 324 
 
 iv. 14, 23, 24 
 
 iv. 22 ... 
 
 249, 250 
 . . 250 
 
 xvi. 16, 17 . 106, 
 xxii. 4145 . 
 xxiii. 8 . 
 xxiv. 14 . . 95, 
 xxv. 31-46 . 266, 
 xxvi. 63. 64 . 
 
 v. 17, 18 . . 
 v. 21-30 . . 
 v. 23 . . . 
 v. 26, 44 . . 
 vi. 32-63 . . 
 vi. 39 . 
 
 272-276 
 . . 252 
 . . 253 
 . . 248 
 . . 249 
 . 252 
 
 vii. 14 . 
 
 ix. 6 . . . . 
 
 xi. 3 . 
 
422 
 
 INDEX TO TEXTS. 
 
 vi 57 . . . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 . . 249 
 
 ] 
 xv 28 
 
 AGE 
 193 
 
 PAGE 
 
 iv. 6 211 
 
 vii. 16, 17 . 
 viii 12 
 
 . . 243 
 . . 247 
 
 xvii. 18-31 . . . 
 xvii 31 . . 
 
 185 
 83 ? 
 
 v. 22-24 .... 217 
 v. 30 376 
 
 viii. 12-57 . 
 viii. 23, 38, 44 
 viii. 28, 40 . 
 viii. 42 . . 
 viii. 58 . . 
 
 v 8 
 
 . . 287 
 . . 251 
 . . 244 
 
 . . 255 
 
 285-290 
 9 f SO 
 
 xx. 18-36 . . . 
 xx. 28 
 xxii. 16 .... 
 xxii. 17-21 . . . 
 
 186 
 186 
 329 
 340 
 
 PHILIPPIANS. 
 
 ii. 6-11 . 121, 124, 201 
 352 
 ii. 19 341 
 
 y 18 
 
 167 
 
 
 
 iv. 13 126 
 
 x. 28, 29 . . 
 x. 30 . . . 
 x. 31-36 . . 
 x. 37, 38 . . 
 xi 25 . . . 
 
 . . 278 
 278-281 
 281-282 
 . . 285 
 . . 252 
 
 viii. 29 .... 
 ix. 5 . . . 114, 
 x. 9-13 .... 
 x. 13 ... 195, 
 vi .fi i m 
 
 zlu 
 373 
 120 
 347 
 327 
 91 n 
 
 COLOSSIANS. 
 
 i. 15-17 . 126 sq. 210 
 i. 18, 19 . . . . 133 
 
 ; o on-l 
 
 xii. 49, 50 . 
 
 . . 244 
 
 . 248 
 
 xvi. 25-27 . . . 
 
 216 
 
 ii. 9 ... 133, 135 
 
 xiv. 9, 10 . . 
 xiv. 11 . . 
 
 viv 14 
 
 270, 272 
 . . 40 
 251 
 
 1 CORINTHIANS 
 12 
 
 3*7 
 
 1 THESSALONIANS. 
 iii 11 341 
 
 5MV 1 ^ 94. 
 
 256 
 
 i 30 
 
 90 R 
 
 
 viv 93 
 
 OAQ OAK 
 
 i 31 
 
 195 
 
 
 xiv 26 
 
 53 
 
 ii. 8 
 
 169 
 
 2 THESSALONIANS. 
 
 xiv. 28 . . 
 
 vv 1 3 
 
 257-260 
 250 
 
 ii. 11 
 iii. 23 
 
 40 
 91 fi 
 
 ii. 16, 17 . . . . 341 
 
 xv 15 
 
 244 
 
 
 377 
 
 1 TIMOTHY. 
 
 xvi. 13 . . 
 
 . . 155 
 
 viii. 4-6 .... 
 
 209 
 
 i. 12 345 
 
 xvi. 20-23 . 
 
 . . 324 
 
 x. 16 
 
 199 
 
 i 1 7 213 
 
 xvii. 3 ... 
 xvii. 22 . . 
 xviii. 36 . . 
 
 260-263 
 . . 123 
 . . 90 
 
 xi. 3 
 xi. 27-29 .... 
 xii. 3 
 
 216 
 199 
 156 
 
 ii. 5, 6 212 
 iii. 16 ... 194, 212 
 v 21 . -193 
 
 xix. 7 ... 
 
 . . 293 
 53 
 
 xv. 28 
 
 xv 45 . 
 
 214 
 
 375 
 
 vi. 15, 16 . . . . 214 
 
 xx. 17 ... 
 
 xx. 28 ... 
 
 310, 320 
 296, 396 
 
 xvi. 23, 24 ... 
 
 193 
 
 2 TIMOTHY. 
 ii. 22 329 
 
 ACTS. 
 
 
 i 3 
 
 916 
 
 
 i. 2 . . . . 
 
 . . 105 
 
 xi 31 
 
 216 
 
 TITUS. 
 
 i. 24 . . . 
 
 . . 336 
 
 xii. 8, 9 .... 
 
 349 
 
 ii. 13 112 
 
 ii. 21 ... 
 
 . . 348 
 
 
 375 
 
 
 ii. 24 ... 
 
 . . 168 
 
 xiii 14 
 
 193 
 
 
 
 170 
 
 
 
 HEBREWS. 
 
 
 164 
 
 
 
 i 2 140 
 
 iii 16 
 
 171 
 
 
 
 3 ... 137 139 
 
 
 
 i 1 . . . 
 
 1<)9 
 
 
 iii. 21 ... 
 iv. 9-12 . . 
 
 . . 169 
 . . 172 
 
 300 
 
 i. 15, 16 .... 
 iii. 20 
 
 188 
 216 
 
 . 5 . . . . 138, 223 
 . 6 .... 140, 323 
 8 ftq 107 
 
 
 
 iv 14 
 
 917 
 
 
 vii. 59, 60 . 
 ix 6 
 
 330-335 
 339 
 
 
 
 . 10-l.J .... 141 
 ii 18 142 
 
 iv 13 14. 
 
 338 
 
 EPHESIANS. 
 
 
 iv 15 142 
 
 ix 14 21 
 
 327 
 
 i 3 6 13 
 
 900 
 
 v 7 142 
 
 x. 36 . . 
 
 . . 170 
 
 i. 17 
 
 916 
 
 vii. 3 ..... 143 
 
 x 42 
 
 339 
 
 ii 18 
 
 ^00 
 
 vii. 26 237 
 
 xv. 7 . 
 
 . 337 
 
 iii. 6 , 
 
 200 
 
 xii. 23, 24 .. . 190 
 
INDEX TO TEXTS. 
 
 423 
 
 ST. 
 i 21 
 
 PAGE 
 
 JAMES. 
 . 156 
 
 2 ST. 
 i. 1 . . . 
 
 PETER. 
 . 114 
 
 PAGE 
 
 178 
 
 REVELATION. 
 i 5 6 
 
 PAGE 
 0-7 
 
 ii. 1 . 
 
 . ... 161 
 
 i. 3, 4 . . 
 
 
 179 
 
 i 17 147 
 
 
 iv. 12 . 
 
 . . . .159 
 
 iii. 18 . . 
 
 
 179 
 
 ii 8 
 
 147 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 iii. 1 ... 
 
 146 
 
 1 ST 
 
 . PETER. 
 
 1 ST 
 
 . JOHN. 
 
 
 iii. 5 .... 
 
 193 
 
 i 7 8 
 
 175 
 
 
 
 
 iii. 12 
 
 149 
 
 i 11 . 
 
 . ... 174 
 
 v. 13-15 . 
 on 
 
 . . . 
 
 355 
 
 iii. 14 
 
 147 
 
 i. 12 . 
 
 . . . . 175 
 
 
 
 
 v. 5-13 . . 152 
 
 , 357 
 
 i. 23 . 
 
 . . . .177 
 
 
 
 
 xix. 12 . . . . 
 
 148 
 
 ii. 22, 23 
 iii. 21 22 
 
 . . . . 238 
 
 . . . .177 
 
 ST. 
 4 . . . 
 
 JUDE. 
 
 181 
 
 xix. 16 . . . . 
 xxii. 21 . . . . 
 
 149 
 150 
 
 iv. 11 . 
 
 178, 355 
 
 25 . 
 
 
 182 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 TO 
 
 QUOTATIONS, AND SOME PRINCIPAL TOPICS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Alford, Dean ; How to study the Neiv Testament 200 
 
 , ; quoted by Mr. Liddon 351 
 
 , ; his Revised Version, remarks upon 352 
 
 Aute-Nicene Fathers, the doubtful language of 398 
 
 Apocalypse, Christology of the 146-153 
 
 Athanceum, on the Ignatian Epistles 45 
 
 Atonement, certain assumptions respecting 16, 369, 370 
 
 Baptismal Formula, what the Apostolic 1 96, 301 
 
 Basilides, was he cognizant of the Gospel " according to St. John " 46 
 Bloomfield, Dr. S. T. ; Notes on the Greek Testament ... 95, 210, 338 
 
 , ; Lexicon to Greek Testament 254 
 
 Bull, Bishop ; Defensio Fidei Niccence 355 
 
 Christian Charity ; how related to the Dogma of Christ s Deity . 382 
 Cony beare and Howson ; Life and Epistles of St. Paul .... 65,139 
 
 Councils, the discordant voices of 401 
 
 Creeds ; the Three ; differences of, &c 387-390 
 
 Davidson, Dr. S. ; Introduction to the Old Testament 56, 63, 72, 78, 81, 169 
 
 , ; Introduction to the New Testament . 47, 98, 102, 148, 150, 302 
 
 , ; Articles in The Theological Review 50, 58, 62, 85, 86, 150, 169 
 
 De Bunsen, Ernest ; Hidden Wisdom of Christ 43, 52 
 
 Donaldson, Dr. James ; Critical History of Christian Doctrine, frc. 47, 101 
 
 Ellicott, Bishop, quoted by Mr. Liddon 113, 344 
 
 Ewald, Professor, quoted by Mr. Liddon 49 
 
 , ; his Life of Christ 168 
 
 First-born, the Title considered 129 
 
 Form of God, meaning of the expression 123, 354, 355 
 
 Fourth Gospel, authorship of the 44-54, 224 
 
 , ; Justin Martyr s knowledge of the 47 
 
 Fuerst ; Hebrew Lexicon 57, 78, 80 
 
 God, how often is Jesus so called ? 396 
 
 God the Son, not a Scriptural Title 219 
 
 Goode, Dean ; Divine Rule of Faith, frc 402 
 
426 INDEX TO QUOTATIONS, AND 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Gospels, the ; their Origin and Purity 43, 223, 302 
 
 Hebrews, the Epistle to the, Christology of 137-144 
 
 Hengstenberg ; On the Apocalypse 146 
 
 Human perfections ; can they co-exist with Personal Godhead ? . 373-379 
 
 Image of God, the Title considered 126, 127, 354 
 
 Jesus Christ; Catholic Dogma respecting His Person, 37, 239. Dif 
 ficulties attaching to the Dogma, 39-42, 105, 125, 130, 224, 230, 
 236, 239, 387-390. His exceptional Mission, Offices, &c., explain 
 the Scriptural language concerning Him, 192, 197, 268. His own 
 plainest sayings, when not Ecclesiastically interpreted, adverse to 
 the conception of His Deity, 309, 310. 
 
 Jowett, Professor* Commentary on St. Paul 118, 203, 371 
 
 , ; Essay on Interpretation 7, 35 
 
 Leeser, Isaac ; Translation of the Old Testament 75,80 
 
 Macnight, Dr. James ; On the Epistles 122, 356 
 
 Mill, John Stuart 33 
 
 Muller Max, Professor ; Semitic Monotheism 57 
 
 Muratori, the Canon of 48 
 
 Neander; Life of Christ 168,267,278,302 
 
 Norton, Andrews ; Statement of Reasons, frc 281,286 
 
 On/y-begotten, force of the designation 229 
 
 Oxenham, H. N. ; Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement 398 
 
 Perowne, J. J. S.; On the Psalms 70,83,169 
 
 Philo Judceus, his relation to the Fourth Gospel 64 
 
 Prologue, The, of the Fourth Gospel 99-105, 108 
 
 Prophecy, Messianic, the Three Stages of ........ 67-81 
 
 Pusey, Professor, cited by Mr. Liddon 78 
 
 Rabbinical Messianic Doctrine ... 83-86, 150 
 
 Religious faith and emotion, how far dependent on the Doctrine of 
 
 Christ s Deity ? . . . , 384 
 
 Resurrection of Christ, ascribed to the Father s power 168 
 
 Reville, Albert; History of the Dogma of the Deity of Jesus Christ 17, 21, 
 
 389 
 Rowland, David ; The Apostolic Origin af the Fourth Gospel . ... 47 
 
 Schenkel, Dr. D. ; Sketch of the Character of Jesus 50,249 
 
 Schottgen ; Canon Westcott s estimate of 84 
 
 Scrivener s, F. H. ; Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus, frc 178 
 
 Self-Sacrifice minimized by the possession of Personal Deity . . 380, 381 
 Septuagint Version, Article on the ; Smith s Dictionary of the Bible . 74 
 
 Socrates, the Historian 401 
 
 Son of God, the Title considered 224-230 
 
 St. James s Epistle, Christology of 156-164 
 
 St. Jude s Epistle, Christology of 181, 182 
 
 St. Paul s Discourses and Epistles, Christology of 184-219 
 
SOME PRINCIPAL TOPICS. 427 
 
 PAGE 
 
 St. Peter s Sermons and Epistles, Christology of 164-181 
 
 St. Paul, his Witness to the Divine Unity 208-221 
 
 Stanley, Dean ; Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians . . 120, 349 
 
 , , ; On the Litany 360 
 
 Stuart, Moses, Professor ; On Future Punishment 140 
 
 , ; Letters to dimming 135, 271, 281 
 
 Summary of Philonian Logos-epithets; from Dr. Pye Smith ... 66 
 Sympathy of the Divine Nature, not susceptible of Increase through 
 
 Incarnation 845 
 
 Tayler, J. J. ; On the Fourth Gospel 47, 50 
 
 Texts, a few in the Epistles supposed expressly to assert, or clearly 
 
 to imply, the Deity of Jesus Christ 109-146 
 
 Theophanies, the, in the Old Testament 58-61 
 
 Trench, Archbishop, Remarks of his on New Testament "Words 170, 325 
 Westcott. B. F. ; History of the Canon of the New Testament ... 48 
 
 , ; Introduction to the Stud;/ of the Gospels ... 50, 53, 84, 150 
 
 Winer, G. B. ; Grammar of the New Testament Diction 100, 101, 111, 114, 
 
 116, 211, 271, 286 
 
 Wisdom, in the Apocryphal Books 62 
 
 Word, or Logos, the Title discussed 99-103, 225-228 
 
 Wordsworth, Christopher, Bishop of Lincoln 120, 138, 347 
 
 Worship of Jesus Christ as God ; how deducible from Scripture ? 312-359 
 
 Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son. 
 
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