THEOLOGY.

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a man, veiling his divinity under mortal flesh. Hence he is saidelsewhere to have been “ manifested in the flesh,” and “ to havetaken upon him the nature of man phrases of the same im-port with that which asserts “ the Word to have been made flesh.”

I his incarnation of the Son of God is perhaps the greatest mys-tery of the Christian faith, and that to which ancient and modernheretics have urged the most plausible objections. The doctrineof the Trinity , though expressly scriptural, is equally incompre-hensible ; but the nature of God and his mode of existence mustnecessarily be incomprehensible by finite beings. And thereforeit is a philosophical truth, that a revelation, which should containnothing but incomprehensible truths, would be equally incredibleand useless. As well may we expect a river to contain the ocean,as a finite being to comprehend the infinite God. The difficulty'is not how two natures so different as the divine and human canbe so intimately united as to become one person ; for this unionin itself is not more inconceivable than that of the soul and bodyin one man: but that which at first is apt to stagger the faith ofthe reflecting Christian is the infinite distance between the twonatures in Christ , and the comparatively small importance of theobject, for the attainment of which the eternal Son of God is saidto have taken upon him our nature. But the importance of theobject for which the Word condescended to be made flesh, wecannot adequately know. And it is to be observed that in thedaily administration of providence, we find numberless instances ofthe divine condescension ; which, though they cannot be comparedwith the incarnation of the Second Person in the blessed Trinity ,are yet sufficient to reconcile our understandings to that mysterywhen revealed to us by the Spirit of God. That in Christ thereshould have dwelt on earth “ all the fulness of the Godheadbodily,” is indeed a truth by which the devout mind is over-whelmed with astonishment; but it is little less astonishing that theomnipotent Creator should be intimately present at every instantof time to the meanest of his creatures, “ upholding all thing's,the vilest reptile as well as the most glorious angel, by the wordof his power.” Yet it is a truth self-evident, that, without thisconstant presence of the Creator, nothing which had a beginningcould continue one moment in being, but the whole visible uni-verse would fall into annihilation. See Metaphysics, MoralPhilosophy , and Providence. The great object of this divinePerson’s being sent into the world, and born of a woman, was tobruise the head of the serpent, and restore mankind to the inhe-ritance which had been forfeited by Adam’s transgression. Everydispensation of Providence from the fall had been preparatory tothis restoration. Prophets had been raised from time to time topreserve in the early ages of the world the knowledge andworship of the true God: the children of Abraham had beenseparated from the surrounding nations for the same pur-pose; and bv the dispersion of the ten tribes, the captivityof the other two in Babylon, and the translation of the He-brew scriptures into the Greek language, much of the know-ledge which had been revealed to the Israelites was gradually dif-tused over the eastern world. While the Jews were thus the in-struments of enlightening the heathen nations of antiquity, theirintercourse with, those nations made them almost unavoidably ac-quainted with the philosophy which was cultivated among theChaldeans, the Persians , and the Egyptian Greeks; and ingraft-ing many of the opinions derived from those schools upon thedoctrines of Moses and the prophets, they corrupted their own re-ligion while they improved that of their neighbours. Hence, bythe time that Christ came among them, they had made the wordof God of none effect through a number of idle fancies which theyinculcated on the people as the traditions of the elders; and asthey had attached themselves to different masters in philosophy,their unauthorized opinions were of course different according tothe different sources whence they were drawn. The peculiar'te-nets of the Essenes seem to have been a species of mystic Plato-nism. The Pharisees are thought to have derived their originfrom a Jewish philosopher of the Peripatetic school ; and the re-semblance between the doctrines of the Sadducees and the philo-sophy of Epicurus has escaped no man’s observation. Most ofthese sects, however, though they opposed each other, agreed inthe expectation of the Messiah promised to their fathers; but, un-happily for themselves, expected him to be a great and temporalprince. To this mistake several circumstances contributed ; some

of their prophets had foretold his coming in lofty terms, borrowedfrom the ritual law, and the splendour of earthly monarchs. Thenecessity of casting this veil over those living oracles iS evidentfrom the very nature of prophecy. At the time when the predic-tions were made, the Mosaic system had not run out half itscourse, and was therefore not to be exposed to popular contemptby an information that it was only the harsh rudiment of one moreperfect. To prevent, however, all mistakes in the candid and im-partial, when the Messiah should arrive with the credentials of mi-raculous powers, other prophets had described hint in the clearestterms as having no form nor'comeliness, as a sheep dumb beforehis shearers, and as a lamb brought to the slaughter ; but the Jews had suffered so much from the Chaldeans, the Greeks, and othernations by whom they had been conquered, and were then suffer-ing so much from their masters the Romans, that their carnalminds could think of no deliverance greater than that which shouldrescue their nation from every foreign yoke. What men earnestlywish thev are very ready to believe. As our Saviour came for avery different purpose, the first object of his mission was to rectifythe notions of his erring countrymen, to fit them for the deliver-ance which they were to obtain through him. Accordingly, heembraced every opportunity of inveighing against the false doc-trines taught as traditions of the elders; and by his knowledge ofthe secrets of all hearts, lie exposed the vile hypocrisy of thosewho made again of godliness. The Jews had been led, by theirseparation from the rest of the world, to consider themselves as thepeculiar favourites of Jehovah; and the consequence was, that,contrary to the spirit of their own law, and the explicit doctrinesof some of their prophets, they looked upon all other nations withabhorrence, as upon people physically impure. These prejudicesthe blessed Jesus laboured to eradicate. Having desired a law-yer, by whom he was tempted, to read that part of the law ofMoses which commanded the Israelites to love their neighboursas themselves, he compelled him, by means of a parabolic ac-count of a compassionate Samaritan , to acknowledge that, un-der the denomination of neighbour, the Divine Lawgiver hadcomprehended all mankind as the objects of love. The impor-tance in which Moses held the ritual law, and to which, as themeans of preserving its votaries from the contagion of idolatry,it was justly entitled, had led the Jews to consider every ce-remony of it as of intrinsic value and perpetual obligation:but Jesus brought to their recollection God’s declared prefer-ence of mercy to sacrifice; shewed them that the weightier mat-ters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, claimed their re-gard in the first place ; and its ceremonial observances only in thesecond ; and taught them, in conformity with the predictions oftheir own prophets, that the hour was about to come when theworship of God should not be confined to Jerusalem , but that“ true worshippers should everywhere worship the Father in spiritand in truth.” Christ having come into the world, to break downthe middle wall of partition between the Jews and Gentiles, and tointroduce a new dispensation of religion which should unite allmankind as brethren in the worship of the true God, he did notmerely restore the moral part of the Mosaic law to its primitivepurity, but added many new and refined precepts, which had ne-ver occurred either in Jew or Gentile. The Hebrew lawgiver hadprohibited murder under the penalty of death ; but Christ extend-ed the prohibition to causeless anger, and to contemptuous treat-ment of our brethren, commanding his followers to forgive theirenemies, and to love all mankind. Adultery was forbidden bythe law of Moses; but Jesus said to his disciples, “ Whosoeverlooketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adulterywith her already in his heart.” The lex talionis was in forceamong the Jews , so that the man who had deprived his neighbourof an eye or a tooth, was to suffer the loss of an eye or a toothhimself; but this mode of punishment being inconsistent with themild spirit of Christianity , was abolished by our blessed Lord,who severely prohibited the indulgence of revenge, and com-manded his followers to love even their enemies. Perjury has inevery civilized nation been justly considered a crime of the highestatrocity, and the Mosaic law doomed the false witness to bear thepunishment, whalerer it might be, which he intended by swearingfalsely to bring upon his brother; but the Author of the Christian religion forbade not only false swearing, but swearing at all, excepton solemn occasions, aud when an oath should be required by

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