authority of opinions; as, indeed, it cannot stand on antiquity at all, and is wholly of modern growth. This modified scheme of Arianism recognizes the spiritual character of the creation or construction of all things ascribed to Christ, but interprets literally of a pre-existent glory those texts which, in language common to Scripture, speak of things predestinated as having a previous existence.

The Low Arians are more properly Unitarians than their elder brethren; but their hypothesis of pre-existence appears unnecessary. If God wrought in Christ, it did not require a superior nature or being, exclusive of God, to enable Christ to do what he did; and this applies to the original view of the Arian scheme, which seems to substitute super-angelic power for the power of God. superior nature seems only called for on the supposition of a satisfactional purpose in the death of Christ; and then only on the supposition that the satisfaction could not be made but by a being of infinite or superior nature.

A

The Arians conceive that the dignity of Christ is lowered by the abandonment of the scheme of preexistence. But if we exclude his agency in the material creation, it does not appear why, as a man "anointed with the holy Ghost, and with power," the dignity of Christ is less, than as an incarnate secondary God, or a spirit above archangels. Although a man, he was to us as God; the organ of his will the medium of his wisdom-the mercy-seat of his redeeming love-the agent of his power; and, as one in all respects like his brethren," "tempted, yet without sin," his moral dignity is incomparably greater than as a supra-human being, the meritoriousness of whose sinless obedience is lessened in exact proportion as his nature is exalted above the level of humanity.

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EXAMINATION

OF THE

Supposed Scriptural Grounds for the Pre-Existence

of Christ.

1 JOHN iv. 9. In this was manifested the love of God towards us: because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him,

Only-begotten is conceived to express a mysterious filiation before the ages; Christ having been either the proper wisdom of God, begotten by him into a separate yet homogeneous essence, the personal word; or having been the first production of God, the intermediate link or limit between him and his creation; which is proper Arianism.

The term only-begotten, like that of only by itself, is equivalent to best-beloved, and has no necessary reference either to generation or production. Isaac is so called, Heb. xi. 17, though Abraham had more than one son; and the epithet does not seem applied to Isaac as distinguishing Abraham's only son by Sarah, but in the same sense of peculiarly beloved, beloved as an only son; for, where the corresponding Hebrew word occurs in the Old Testament, it is rendered in the Septuagint, indifferently, only-begotten, povoyers, and beloved, αγαπητος. ayanηros. Begotten has no reference to the supposed generation from the Father's essence, or to the investing Christ with being, as the receptacle or instrument of divinity, before the ages. Hebrews i. 5, "To which of the Angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?" Though this is accommodated in a secondary prophetical sense

to Christ by the Apostle, it was in the primary sense applied to David, Psalm ii. 7, and 2 Sam. vii. 14, where it is the language of adoption. And that Paul did not intimate any thing of mystic generation, or creation before the worlds, but alluded to Christ being " declared the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead,' appears from Acts xiii. 33, "God hath fulfilled the same, in that he raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second Psalm, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee;" and Col. i. 18, "The head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead." And Rev. i. 5, "the first-begotten of the dead."

The figure of generation is applied to Christ's disciples in a spiritual sense: James i. 18, "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth." This is the sense of being born of God to righteousness: 1 John v. 1, "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God; and every one that loveth him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him."

The "sending the Son into the world," is understood as if he came from a higher world into this. Yet Jesus says of his Apostles, John xvii. 18, "As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I sent them into the world." So also, John x. 35, "If he called them Gods, unto whom the word of GOD came, say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?" John xvi. 28, "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father."

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In the former passage, Son of God is explained to mean, he "whom the Father had sanctified and sent into the world;" and it appears from the passage relative to the mission of the Apostles, that

the world does not mean the terrestrial globe, but the world of mankind.

The text under consideration cannot be reconeiled with a Trinity: for, if God be the Father, the Son, and the holy Ghost,-the Father, Son, and holy Ghost must have sent the Son; and, on the Arian scheme, there is here no proof of super-human nature in the "righteous servant in whom God was well pleased," and whom he suffered to be afflicted, that the great purpose of the Gospel might most effectually be fulfilled; for even if the terms onlybegotten and Son be not understood of peculiar favour and adoption, but in a natural sense, they do not necessarily imply more than Christ having been born of a woman through the divine power; and this is perfectly consistent with his proper or simple humanity. This does not depend on the authenticity or spuriousness of the narratives contained in Matthew and Luke; which, as being wanting in some ancient copies of the Gospels, and as unsupported by the genealogies of Jesus and the general tenor of the Evangelists, have presented difficulties: for the existence of the human soul independent of the human creature must itself be proved, before we can admit the possibility of a composite person or union of natures in the "Man Christ Jesus."

MATT. i. 20. Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

LUKE i. 35. The holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God.

This statement is equally opposed to the Trinitarian and Arian schemes. If the holy Spirit be a divine PERSON, instead of a power which it is here styled, then Christ is not the Son of THE FATHER, which he is declared to be, but of the holy Spirit.

If the spirit, or power, of God himself was influential in the conception of Jesus, there is no ground for explaining it by the descent of a celestial being into the womb of the virgin. It is not said that the Son of God should be born of her, but that the holy thing born should be called the Son of God.

The connecting of a previous state of being, and the incarnation of a celestial spirit9 with the miraculous conception of this holy infant, is inconsequent, and presupposes what is yet to be proved,the possible existence of two opposite natures in man, or the separate incorporeal vitality of the reasoning power, and even touches upon the Gnostic pre-existence of human souls.

Isaac, Samuel, and John the Baptist, were conceived in the womb of their mothers through the supernatural interposition of God; whose influence, though exerted in a less degree, was not the less miraculous. Adam, as having no human father, is styled by Luke the "Son of God:" iii. 38.

A miraculous incarnation is thought to be also signified in the prophetic passage of Isaiah liii. 8, "He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation?" It is not possible to explain how such an allusion could bear upon the sense, or what either the divine filiation of Jesus before the worlds, or his taking human nature in the womb, can have to do with his being taken from prison and from before the judgment

seat.

The passage has seemed to present a difficulty, even to those who connect nothing of a pre-existent nature taking humanity with the miraculous conception of Jesus. It has been explained to mean "the manner of his life who shall declare ?" It has been applied to the age: "who shall describe that wicked generation?" The Chaldee Paraphrase