in the commencement of the Epistle to the Hebrews. For giving this
sense to the original term, there is not, I think, any authority to be
found either in Hellenistic or classic Greek.”—_Norton on the
Trinity._
Footnote 141:
Heb. ix. 26.
Footnote 142:
Whitby, from whose armoury I find so many weapons have been taken,
contends also for “the end of the world,” on the ground that Christ’s
miraculous assistance was continued sensibly _till the beginning of
the fourth century_.
Footnote 143:
John x. 34, 35, 36.
Footnote 144:
Wetstein, quoted by Norton.
Footnote 145:
See note, page 19. I have no access to the text of Scholz, except in
the edition published by Taylor and Walton. This places a period after
σάρκα, _flesh_; which, however, it also gives in the text as the
pointing of Griesbach, contrary to the only other edition I have at
present the opportunity of examining.
Footnote 146:
See Appendix for a fuller examination of these two passages, viz., the
Proem of St. John’s Gospel, and Rom. ix. 5.
Footnote 147:
And especially since Mr. Byrth has alluded to the disapprobation with
which the sentiment was received.
Footnote 148:
Christian Teacher, New Series, No. I, pp. 31, 32.
Footnote 149:
By this I mean a God who cannot forgive except by one
process—advantage of which must be taken by an act of faith—it being
always uncertain whether the faith is right or sufficient.
Footnote 150:
We find in the first beginnings of the Trinity, the Logos and the Holy
Spirit identified. This is even angrily contended for by Tertullian.
“What! when John said that the Logos was made flesh, and the angel”
(respecting the miraculous conception) “that the Spirit was made
flesh, did they mean any thing different?”—_Tertullian, Advers.
Praxeam._ Cap. xxvi.
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LECTURE IV.
“THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MEN,
THE MAN CHRIST JESUS.”
BY REV. HENRY GILES.
“THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST
JESUS.”—1 _Tim._ ii. 5.
The passage I have read suggests the subject of my lecture, the position
in which we stand to our opponents will suggest the tendency of the
commentary. The text announces the two great truths on which our entire
system of Christianity is based, and ours in all essential points, we
think, coincides with simple, with evangelical Christianity. The truths
propounded in the text are, the Unity of God, and the Unity of Christ.—A
unity in each case absolute and perfect, without division of nature or
distinction of person. We believe that God is one,—that he is one being,
one mind, one person, one agent. And this belief, and no other, we can
deduce from the works of creation, and the teachings of the Scriptures.
That God is one universally and absolutely, we have impressed upon us
from the order of creation; that he is great, we learn from the
magnitude of his works; and that he is good, we learn from their
blessedness and beauty. This sublime truth is illustrated in every
region of existence, so far as we know it, and every illustration is an
argument. It is written on the broad and immortal heavens in characters
of glory and light; it is manifested in that mighty law which binds atom
to atom into a world, and world to world in a system, and system to
system, until from that wonderful universe which science can traverse,
we arise to him, whom no knowledge can fathom, whom no limits can bound,
and in contemplating whom science must give place to faith.
The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament showeth his
handy-work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth
knowledge—and that God is one, is proclaimed in this speech, and
manifested in this knowledge. It gleams in the light, it breathes in the
air, it moves in the life of all created nature; it is the harmony of
creation, and the spirit of providence, the inspiration of reason, and
the consistency of wisdom. The existence of one Supreme Intelligence is
the Testimony of Nature, and to the same import are the testimonies of
Scripture. We are told, and told it in every variety of tone, that to
believe one God in three persons is absolutely needful to Salvation, yet
we may read from Genesis to Revelations without finding such a doctrine
either as a statement of truth, or a means of sanctity: but the simple
and unqualified declaration that God is one, without any of these
dogmatical distinctions which men of later ages have invented, I need
not tell a Bible-reading audience, are interwoven with the whole texture
of revelation. It was that for which Abraham left his home, and went
forth a wanderer from his family and his nation; it was that for which
Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, and for which
he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God; it was that
over which he had long thought in his shepherd-life in an Arabian
wilderness; it was that with which he was more deeply inspired in the
solemn retirements of Mount Horeb; it was that to which all his laws and
institutions pointed. Our Saviour took the doctrine as a known maxim—and
in this his disciples followed him. We have then the truth brought down
to us through Scripture, in patriarchal tradition, in Mosaic
legislation, in the poetry of prophets, in the words of Christ, in the
preaching of apostles,—and we have it brought down to us without one of
those distinctions with which it has been since surrounded by
theological ingenuity. We are zealous in the assertion of it, not for
its mere metaphysical correctness, but for its moral power and its moral
consistency. It does not divide our hearts, and it does not confuse our
heads. It leads our minds up to one spirit, infinite in power, infinite
in wisdom, and infinite in goodness. Without confusion or perplexity we
can trace God in all and all in God: in the atom that trembles in a
sunbeam, as in the planet that moves in boundless light, from the blush
of a flower to the glory of the heavens—from the throb of an insect to
the life of an immortal. The Unitarian faith in the universal father is
clear, simple, and defined; inflicting no violence on our
understandings, and raising no conflicts in our affections. One, and one
in the strictest sense, is our parent, one is our sovereign, one is our
highest benefactor, one is our protector and our guide, one is our
deliverer and sanctifier; one has bestowed all we possess, one alone can
give all we hope for; one is holy who demands our obedience; one is
merciful who pities our repentance; one is eternal in whose presence we
are to live, and therefore whether we present our adorations in
dependence, or bow down in submission, or send forth our praises in
gratitude, there is one, and but one, to whom our aspirations can
ascend, and to whom our hearts can be devoted. Thus impressed, we must
feel united to one Father in filial obedience, and to all men in a
common and fraternal relationship; we cannot look upon some as selected,
and upon others as outcasts; we cannot look upon some as purchased, and
upon others as reprobate; we cannot look upon some as sealed with the
spirit of grace for ever unto glory everlasting, and upon others as
abandoned, unpitied, and unprotected, the victims of an everlasting
malediction. We regard men as bound in a community of good, consequently
as bound in a community of praise; we regard them as struggling in like
trials, and therefore indebted to each other for mutual sympathy; we
regard them as heirs of the same glory, and on the level of their
heavenly hopes, standing on a basis of sacred and eternal equality. If
these sentiments are false, they are at least generous, and it is not
often that generosity is found in company with falsehood. Alas, how many
heart-burning enmities, how many deadly persecutions have been caused by
different apprehension of God’s nature or God’s worship; how often have
these differences broken all the fraternal bonds of humanity, made man
the greatest enemy to man,—more savage and cruel than the beast, yea,
and cruel in proportion to the zeal he pretended for his God. But never
could this have been, had men believed in God, had men believed in
Christ—had they believed in God as an impartial and universal Father,
had they believed in Christ as an equal and universal brother.—Then we
could have all sent our mingled prayers to the skies, and with a
Christianity as broad as our earth, and as ample as our race, and
generous as the soul of Jesus, we could have taken all mankind to our
heart. We maintain it not in mere abstract speculation, but because we
consider it a positive and a vital truth. Were the point metaphysical
and not moral, we conceive it would be little worthy of dispute—and in
that sense I for one would have small anxiety, whether God existed in
three persons or in three thousand. In like manner we hold the simple
and absolute unity of Christ; a unity of nature, a unity of person, and
a unity of character. But as this topic is to occupy so large a space in
the present lecture, I shall here forbear from further comments.
The statement of our subject in a text, was alluded to by the Christ
Church Lecturer, in a tone that at least approached to censure. But we
consider it amongst our privileges, that we can express our main
principles in the simple and obvious language of Scripture; and if in
this case deep scholarship and acute criticism be needed to give it to
common minds a meaning different from that in which we understand it,
the fault certainly is not ours.—Neither, indeed, is ours the blame, if
a similar phraseology pervades the whole Christian Scriptures; that in
every page we read of God and Christ, and never of God in three persons,
or of Christ in two natures. To find out such distinctions, we leave to
Scholastic ingenuity; to give them definition and perpetuity, we consign
to the framers of creeds and articles—and to receive and reverence them
we turn over to the admirers of Athanasian perspicuity. We take the New
Testament as the best formulary; we are satisfied with a religion direct
and simple in its principles, and we long not for a religion of
deducibles. We have been accused of tortuous criticism; and although we
desire not to retort the accusation on our opponents, so far I mean, as
it implies moral delinquency, we cannot forbear observing that the
intellectual sinuosities by which some of these deductions have been
drawn from the New Testament is to us, certainly, a subject of not a
little admiration. Our motive in selecting this text was the best of all
which governs men in the use of language, simply that with greatest
brevity and greatest perspicuity, it enunciates our opinions. Our
opponents, however, have no right to complain; the advantage of being
first in the field was on their side, and the struggle was not provoked
on our part but on theirs: they of course selected their own subjects,
and they suggested ours. They could, therefore, have had no uncertainty
either as to our views or interpretation of the text. I would not allude
to a matter so small, were it not for the contradictory delinquencies
with which Unitarians are accused—one time they are charged with
dreading an appeal to Scripture, and when by the very title of their
subject, they tacitly appeal to Scripture, there is wanting still no
occasion to blame.
What, in Unitarian views, is Christ the Man, and what is Christ the
Mediator, shall make the subject of the present Lecture.
I.—First, I beg your attention to the enquiry as to what we believe of
Christ as man. To this we answer, that in his nature we think him simply
and undividedly human; that in his character we regard him morally
perfect. We cannot recognize in Christ a mixture of natures, and we
wonder that any who read the gospel’s records can. That he was simply
and merely human, is a conclusion which meditation on these Records but
fixes more profoundly on our understandings, and makes more precious to
our faith. We derive the conclusion from Christ’s own language—“Ye seek
to kill me,” he says, “a _man_—which hath told you the truth, which I
heard of God.”—Again, when a worldly and ambitious individual, mistaking
the true nature of this kingdom, desired to become his disciple: “The
foxes, said Jesus, have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but
the Son of man hath not whereon to lay his head.” Instances, too many to
repeat, might be enumerated; but the only other I shall adduce is that
in which Christ’s human nature speaks from its deepest sorrows, and its
strongest love: when Jesus, as he hung upon the Cross, saw his mother
and the disciple whom he loved standing by, he saith unto his mother,
“Woman, behold thy son.” It is vain to tell us of an infinite God veiled
behind this suffering and sweetness, the mind repels it, despite of all
the efforts of theology.[151]
The impression of a simple humanity was that which he left on the mind
of his countrymen. What other impression could they have of one whom
they daily saw amongst them as of themselves? who came weary to rest in
their habitations; who came hungry to sit at their boards; whom they met
in their streets sinking with fatigue; whom they might see upon their
wayside asking drink from a well; one whom they saw weep over their
troubles and rejoice in their gladness. Nay, the very intenseness of his
humanity became a matter of accusation. To many it seemed subversive of
religion. That spirit which sympathized with human beings, in their joys
and woes, which not only loved the best, but would not cast out the
worst, was what those of strait and narrow hearts could not understand.
He came eating and drinking, and they called him a man gluttonous and a
wine-bibber. Had he said long prayers at the corners of their streets,
and been zealous for the traditions of the fathers, they would have
revered him as a saint. Those who were panoplied in their own spiritual
sufficiency knew not how he could be the friend of sinners; how he could
associate with the deserted and the excommunicated; how he could take to
his compassion the weary and the heavy-laden. The pharisee who proudly
asked him to his house, but gave him no salute, no oil for his stiffened
joints, and no water for his parched feet, had nothing within him
whereby to interpret the feeling of Jesus towards her who anointed his
head with ointment, washed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with
the hairs of her head. Yes, it was this truth and fulness of humanity
which made Jesus hateful to the pharisees, but loved and blessed by the
poor; it was this that made the common people hear him gladly, and gave
his voice a power which they never felt in the teachings of the scribes;
which drew crowds around him, in wilderness and mountain, that hung
raptured on the glad tidings which he preached. The flatterers of Herod
on a particular occasion cried out, “It is the voice of a god and not of
a man;” but no one ever thought of insulting Jesus with such an
exclamation.
The guilt of the Jews in crucifying Christ has been alluded to in the
present controversy. But this is only an additional proof that Jesus
left no other conviction on the minds of his countrymen than that he was
simply a man. That our views diminish this guilt has been urged as a
powerful objection against us; but, with reverence I say it, the
objection turns more against Christ himself. Either then he was simply
man, or being Deity, he suppressed the evidence which would prove it,
and allowed this people to contract the awful guilt of killing a
God-man. If the first be true, the guilt asserted has no existence; if
the second, I leave you to judge in what light it places the sincerity
and veracity of an incarnate Deity. There is neither declaration nor
evidence afforded by Christ by which the Jews could think him more than
man. On the contrary he disclaims expressly the far lower honour at
which they thought his presumption aimed, by a quotation from their own
Scriptures: “It is written in your law” he observes, “I said ye are
Gods. If he called them Gods, unto whom the word of God came (and the
Scripture cannot be broken), 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.”[152] There is then no declaration, nor yet is there
evidence. Miracles were not such: for the Jewish mind and memory were
filled with instances of these, and to the performers of which they
never thought of attributing a nature above humanity. If Christ was
more, the fact should have been plainly manifested, for the idea of a
God in a clothing of flesh was one not only foreign but repugnant to
every Jewish imagination. The difference between the Jews and pagans in
this particular is not a little striking. Jesus raised the dead before
their eyes, and yet they thought him but a man having great power from
the Creator. Paul, in company with Barnabas, healed a cripple at Lystra,
and the populace cried out, “The Gods are come down to us in the
likeness of men.” When Paul in Melita shook without harm the viper from
his hand, the spectators who at first considered him a murderer, changed
their minds, and said that he was a God. In proportion then to the
natural and religious repugnance which the Jews had to humanize the
divinity, should there have been clearness in the proof of it on the
part of Jesus. No such proof was given.
The greatest miracles of Jesus disturbed not the conviction of the Jews
in his simple human nature. The woman of Samaria, wondering at once at
his charity and his knowledge, called her neighbours to see a _man_ who
told her all things whatsoever she did. She asked them, then is not this
the Christ? The blind man awakened by his touch from thick darkness into
the marvellous light of God’s creation describes him but as a _man_ who
anointed his eyes. The Jewish officers struck dumb before his wisdom,
declare that never _man_ spake like this _man_. The Jews who stood
around him and saw Lazarus, whose body had been already dissolving, come
forth quickened from the grave, beheld in him but the powerful and the
loving friend. The multitudes of Judea, who in desert and city were
amazed at his wonderful works, simply “glorified God who had given such
power unto men.”
Similar was the impression which he left upon his intimate friends. What
would have been their emotions had they a belief that continually they
were in the bodily presence of the incarnate God? How would they not
have bowed themselves in the dust, and stopped the familiar word as it
trembled on their lips? Instead of approaching with unfearing hearts,
how would they not have stood afar off and apart, and gazed with awe
upon a being who was pacing a fragment of the world he created, instead
of clinging to him as one of themselves? Whenever they saw his
mysterious appearance, would they not call on the mountains to fall upon
them, and the hills to cover them? But not so was it. The lowly, the
humble, and the poor rejoiced to see him, and were glad when he entered
their habitations. They were consoled by the benediction of peace with
which he sanctified his approach and his departure. For him was the
gratulations of loving friends, and for him were the smiles of little
children. In Bethany, Martha, when he came, was busy in much serving,
and the meek and gentle Mary sat at his feet to drink in his heavenly
wisdom. At the last supper John leaned upon his bosom. At the cross,
when the head of Jesus bent heavily in anguish, and solitary torture was
wearing away his life, there again we meet the same disciple, there also
we meet the mother of Jesus and the grateful Magdalene, all three
oppressed with darkest affliction and despair. Some of them we again
behold at the sepulchre in utmost alarm. Now this grief at the cross and
this perplexity at the tomb is consistent with no other supposition than
that they regarded him simply as a man. Why else should they have been
afflicted? What though his enemies were strong, if knowing him to be
God, they must also have known that his power was boundless and his
triumph certain. This sorrow and uncertainty, I repeat, can have no
other foundation than a belief in his simple humanity. And surely if his
mother had only such impression, it is hard to expect that the Jews at
the time, and many Christians since, could have had any other.