dent to it. I answer, In a history of the rebellion in the year 1745, the name of his Royal Highness, the commander in chief, would often be mentioned in connexion with his equipage and exploits; but none would infer from hence that he thereby became the king's son.

It is further objected, that sonship implies inferiority, and therefore cannot be attributed to the divine person of Christ. But whatever inferiority may be atteched to the idea of Sonship, it is not an inferiority of nature, which is the point in question: and if any regard be paid to the Scriptures, the very contrary is true. Christ's claiming to be the Son of God, was making himself, not inferior, but as God or equal with God.

Once more: Sonship, it is said implies posteriority, or Chat Christ, as a Son, could not have existed till after the Father. To attribute no other divinity to him, therefore, than what is denoted by sonship, is attributing none to him; as nothing can be divine which is not eternal. But if this reasoning be just, it will prove that the divine purposes are not eternal, or that there was once a point in duration in which God was without thought, purpose, or design. For it is as true, and may as well be said, that God must exist before he could purpose, as that the Father must exist before he had a Son: but if God must exist before he could purpose, there must have been a point in duration in which he existed without purpose, thought, or design; that is in which he was not God! The truth is, the whole of this apparent difficulty arises from the want of distinguishing between the order of nature and the order of time. In the order of nature, the sun must have existed before it could shine; but in the order of time, the sun and its rays are coeval: it never existed a single instant without them.

In the order of nature, God must have existed before he could purpose; but in the order of time, or duration, he never existed without his purpose: for a God without thought or purpose, were no God. And thus in the order of nature, the Father must have existed before the Son; but in that of duration, he never existed without the Son. The father and the Son therefore, are properly eternal.

ON THE OBEDIENCE AND DEATH OF CHRIST:

IN ANSWER TO TWO QUERIES,

In the Evangelical Magazine, Vol. iv.

QUERY 1. Did not the law of God require of Christ, considered as man, a perfect obedience on his own account? If it did, how can that obedience be imputed to sinners for their justification?

QUERY 2. How does it appear to be necessary that Christ should both obey the law in his people's stead, and yet suffer punishment on the account of their transgressions, seeing obedience is all the law requires ?

TO the first I should answer, The objection proceeds upon the supposition that a public head, or representative, whose obedience should be imputable to others, must possess it in a degree over and above what is required of him. But was it thus with the first public head of mankind? Had Adam kept the covenant of his God, his righteousness, it is supposed, would have been imputed to his posterity, in the same sense asthe righteousness of Christ is imputed to believers; that is, God, to express his approbation of his conduct, would have rewarded it, by confirming him and his posterity in the enjoyment of everlasting life: yet he would have wrought no work of supererogation, or have done any more than he was required to do on his own account.

But though, for argument's sake, I have allowed that the human nature of Christ was under obligation to keep the law on his own account; yet I question the propriety of that mode of stating things. In the person of Christ, the divinity and humanity were so intimately united, that perhaps we ought not to conceive of the latter as having any such distinct subsistence as to be an agent by itself, or as being obliged to obey, or do any thing of itself, or on its own account: Christ, as man, possessed no being on his own account. He was always in union with the Son of God; a public person, whose very existence was for the sake of others. Hence his coming under the law is represented not only as a part of his humiliation, to which he was naturally unobliged, but as a thing distinct from his assuming human nuture; which one should think it could not be, if it were necessarily included in it. He was made of a woman, made under the lawmade in the likeness of men, he took upon him the form of a servant*-being found in fashion as a man, he became obedient unto death. Gal. iv. 4. Phil. ii. 7, 8.

As to the second question, Obedience is not all that the law requires of a guilty creature: (and in the place of such creatures our Saviour stood,) a guilty creature is not only obliged to be obedient for the future, but to make satisfaction for the past. The covenant made * See Doddridge's Translation of Phil, ii. 7.

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with Adam had two branches: obey, and live; sin and die. Now the obedience of Christdid honour to the preceptive part of the covenant, but not to the penal part of it. Mere obedience to the law would have made no atonement, would have afforded no expression of the divine displeasure against sin; therefore, after a life spent in doing the will of God, he must lay down his life: nor was it possible that this cup should pass from him.

As obedience would have been insufficient without suffering, so it appears that suffering would have been insufficient without obedience*: the latter was preparatory to the former. "Such an High Priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. (Heb. vii. 26.) And such a meetness could not have appeared, but by a life of obedience to God. As a Mediator between God and man, it was necessary that he should be, and appear to be an enemy to sin ere he could be admit ted to plead for sinners. Such was our Redeemer to the last, and this it was that endeared him to the Father. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness alove thy fellows. Finally: The sufferings of Christ. could go only to the removal of the curse, they could afford no title to eternal life, which being promised on condition of obedience, that condition must be fulfilled in order to ensure the blessing. Hence it is by the righteousness of one that we partake of justification of life. Rom. v. 18.

* I use the terms obedience and suffering, the one to express Christ's conformity to the precept of the law, the other his sustaining the penalty of it, though, in strict propriety of speech, the obedience of Christ included suffering, and his suffering itcluded obedience. He laid down his life in obedience to the Father.

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The great ends originally designed by the promise and the threatening, were to express God's love of righteousness, and his abhorrence of unrighteousness; and these ends are answered by the obedience and sufferings of Christ, and that in a higher degree, owing to the dignity of his character, than if man had either kept the law, or suffered the penalty for the breach of it. But if Christ had only obeyed the law, and had not suffered; or had only suffered, and not obeyed, one or other of these ends must, for aught we can perceive, have failed of being accomplished. But his obedience unto death, which includes both, gloriously answered every end of moral government, and opened a way by which God could honourably, not only pardon the sinner who should believe in Jesus, but bestow upon him eternal life. Pardon being granted with a view to Christ's atonement, would evince the resolution of Jehovah to punish sin; and eternal life, being bestowed as a reward to his obedience, would equally evince him the friend of righteousness.

THE NECESSITY OF SEEKING THOSE THINGS FIRST, WHICH ARE OF THE FIRST IMPORTANCE.

A GREAT part of the evil which prevails in the world, consists in an entire neglect of what God commands, or in doing what he hath expressly forbidden; but not the whole of it. There may be an attachment to many things, which in themselves are right, and yet the whole may be rendered worse than void by the want of order, or a regard to things according to their impor