in the desert a highway for our God Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain, and the glory of the Lord (JEHOVAH) shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." This being spoken of him of whom John the Baptist was to be the forerunner; and the application having been afterward expressly made by the Baptist to our Lord, it is evident that H is the person "to whom the prophet attributes the incommunicable name of JEHOVAH, and styles him 'our God.' "(8)

"Now, all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the LORD by the prophet, saying, behold a virgin shall conceive, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call his name EMANUEL, which being interpreted is God with us." Here another prediction of Isaiah is expressly applied to Jesus. "Thou shalt bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus, and he shall be great, and the Lord God shall give to him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever and ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end." These are the words of the Angel to Mary, and obviously apply to our Lord the words of Isaiah, "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and power there shall be no end, upon the throne of David to order and establish it for ever." It is unnecessary at present to quote more of those numerous passages which speak of the future Messiah under divine titles, and which are applied to Jesus as that Messiah actually manifested. They do not in so many words connect the Angel of Jehovah with Jesus as the same person; but, taken with the passages above adduced, they present evidence of a very weighty character in favour of that position. A plurality of persons in the one Godhead is mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures; this plurality is restricted to three; one of them appears as "the acting God" of the Patriarchal and Mosaic age; the prophets speak of a Divine person to come as the Messiah, bearing precisely the same titles; no one supposes this to be the Holy Ghost; it cannot be the Father, seeing that Messiah is God's servant and God's messenger; and the only conclusion is, that the Messiah predicted is he who is known under the titles, Angel, Son of God, Word of God, in the Old Testament; and if Jesus be that Messiah, he is that Son, that Word, that Servant, that Messenger; and bearing the same divine characters as the Angel of Jehovah, is that angel himself, and is entitled in the Christian Church to all that homage and worship which was paid to him in the Jewish.

recorded in the sixth chapter of his prophecy before adduced; but the evangelist John expressly declares that on that occasion the prophet saw the glory of Christ and spake of him. Christ therefore was the Lord of Hosts whose glory filled the temple. St. Peter calls the Spirit of Jehovah, by which the prophets "prophesied of the grace that should come, the Spirit of Christ." He also informs us that "Christ was put to death in the flesh but quickened by the Spirit, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which some time were disobedient when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the Ark was preparing." Now, whatever may be the full meaning of this difficult passage, Christ is clearly represented as preaching by his Spirit in the days of Noah, that is, inspiring Noah to preach. Let this be collated with the declaration of Jehovah before the flood, " My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he is flesh, yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years," during which period of delay and long-suffering, Noah was made by him, from whom alone inspiration can corne, a preacher of righteousness; and it is clear that Christ, and the appearing Jehovah of the antediluvian world, are supposed by St. Peter to have been the same person. In the 11th chapter of the Hebrews, Moses is said to have esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; a passage of easy interpretation, when it is admitted that the Jehovah of the Israelites, whose name and worship Moses professed, and Christ, were the same person. For this worship he was reproached by the Egyptians, who preferred their own idolatry, and treated, as all apostates do, the true religion, the pure worship of former ages from which they had departed, with contempt. To be reproached for the sake of Jehovah, and to be reproached for Christ, were convertible phrases with the Apostle, because he considered Jehovah and Christ to be the same person.

"In St. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians, we read, 'Neither let us tempt CHRIST, as some of them (that is, the Jews in the wilderness) also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents,' x. 9. The pronoun him, avrov, must be understood after tempted,' and it is found in some MSS., though not sufficiently numerous to warrant its insertion in the text. It is, however, necessarily implied, and refers to Christ just before mentioned. The Jews in the wilderness here are said to have tempted some person; and to understand by that person any other than Christ, who is just before named, is against all grammar, which never allows without absolute necessity any other accusative to be understood by the verb than that of some person or thing before mentioned in the same sentence. The conjunction Kat, also, establishes this interpretation beyond doubt: Neither let us tempt CHRIST as some of them ALSO tempted--tempted whom? The answer clearly is, as they also tempted Christ. If Christ then was the person whom the Israelites tempted in the wilderness, he unavoidably becomes the Jehovah of the Old Testa

(8) Wogan.

This is rendered the more striking, when the passage to which the apostle refers is given at length. "Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God, as ye tempted him in Massah." Now what could lead the apostle to substitute Christ, in the place of the Lord your God?"Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted" Christ, for that is the accusative which must be supplied. Nothing certainly but that the idea was familiar to him, that Christ, and the Angel Jehovah, who conducted and governed the Israelites, were the same person.

Heb. xii. 25, 26. "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh; for if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven. Whose voice then shook the earth, but now he hath promised," &c.

This passage also is decisive as a proof that the Angel of Jehovah, and our Lord, are the same person. "Him that speaketh from heaven," the context determines to be Christ; "him that spake on earth" is probably Moses. The "voice" that then "shook the

See this text, so fatal

(9) HOLDEN'S Testimonies. to the Socinian scheme, triumphantly established against the liberty of their criticisms, in Dr. MAGEE'S Fostscript to Appendix, p. 211, &c.

epistle. "If the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at first began to be spoken by the Lord?" To understand this passage, it is to be noted, that the apostle refers to the judicial law of Moses, which had its prescribed penalty for every "transgression and disobedience." Now, this law was not, like the Decalogue, spoken by God himself, but by angels. For after the voice of God had spoken the ten commandments, the people entreated that God would not speak to them any more. Accordingly, Moses says, Deut. v. 22, "These words," the Decalogue, "the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount, out of the midst of the fire, with a great voice, and he added no more, and he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me." The rest, "both the judicial and the ceremonial law, was delivered, and the covenant was made, by the mediation of Moses: and therefore the apostle says, Gal. iii. 19, The law was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator: hence it is called the law of Moses. And the character given of it in the Pentateuch is this,-these are the statutes, and judgments, and laws, which the Lord made between him and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai, by the hand of Moses."(1)

Nor does the apostle's argument respect the author of the law, for no one can suppose that angels were its authors, nor the giver of the law, for angels have no such authority; but the medium through which it was communicated, or "spoken." In the case of the Decalogue, that medium was the Lord, the Angel Jehovah himself in majesty; but in the body of judicial and ceremonial laws, to which he clearly refers, angels and Moses. The visible medium by which the gospel was communicated, was the Son of God made flesh. That word was "spoken by the Lord," not only in his personal, but in his mediatorial character; and, by that wonderful condescension, its importance, and the danger of neglecting it, were marked in the most eminent and impressive manner.

It has now therefore been established that the Angel Jehovah, and Jesus Christ our Lord, are the same person; and this is the first great argument by which his Divinity is established. He not only existed before his incarnation, but is seen at the head of the religious institutions of his own church, up to the earliest ages. We trace the manifestations of the same person from Adam to Abraham; from Abraham to Moses; from Moses to the prophets; from the prophets to Jesus. Under every manifestation he has appeared in the form of God, never thinking it robbery to be equal with God. "Dressed in the appropriate robes of God's state, wearing God's crown, and wielding God's sceptre," he has ever received Divine homage and honour. No name is given to the Angel Jehovah, which is not given to Jehovah Jesus; no attribute is ascribed to the one which is not ascribed to the other; the worship which was paid to the one by patriarchs and prophets, was paid to the other by evangelists and apostles; and the Scriptures declare them to be the same august person, the image of the Invisible, whom no man can see and live; -The Redeeming Angel, the Redeeming Kinsman, and the Redeeming God.

That the titles with which our Lord is invested are unequivocal declarations of absolute Divinity, will be the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER XII.

THE TITLES OF CHRIST. VARIOUS proofs were adduced, in the last chapter, that the visible Jehovah of the Old Testament is to be regarded as a Being distinct from the FATHER, yet having Divine titles ascribed to him, being arrayed with Divine attributes, and performing Divine works equal to his. That this august Being was the same who af terward appeared as "THE CHRIST," in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, was also proved; and the conclusion of that branch of the argument was, that Jesus Christ is, in an absolute sense, a Divine Person, and, as such, is to be received and adored.

It is difficult to conceive any point more satisfactorily

(1) RANDOLPH, Præl. Theolog.

established in the Scriptures than the personal appearance of our Lord, during the Patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations, under a Divine character; but this argument, so far from having exhausted the proof of his Godhead, is only another in that series of rising steps by which we are, at length, conducted to the most unequivocal and ample demonstration of this great and fundamental doctrine.

The next argument is stated at the head of this chapter. If the titles given to Christ are such as can designate a Divine Being, and a Divine Being only, then is he, to whom they are by inspired authority ascribed, Divine; or, otherwise, the Word of TRUTH must stand charged with practising a direct deception upon mankind, and that in a fundamental article of religion. This is our argument, and we proceed to the illustration. The first of these titles which calls for our attention is that of JEHOVAH. Whether "the Angel Jehovah" were the future Christ or not, does not affect this case. Even Socinians acknowledge Jesus to be the Messiah; and, if this is one of the titles of the promised Messiah, it is, consequently, a title of our Lord, and must be ascribed to him by all who believe Jesus to be the Messiah. So many instances of this were given, in the preceding chapter, that it is unnecessary to repeat them; and indeed the fact, that the name Jehovah is applied to the Messiah in many passages of the Old Testament, is admitted by the manner in which the argument deduced from this fact is objected to by our opponents. "The Jewish Cabalists," says Dr. Priestley, "might easily→ admit that the Messiah might be called Jehovah, without supposing that he was any thing more than a man, who had no existence before his birth."-"Several things in the Scriptures are called by the name of Jehovah; as, Jerusalem is called Jehovah our Righteousness."(1) They are not, however, the Jewish interpreters only who give the name Jehovali to Messiah; but the inspired prophets themselves, in passages which, by the equally inspired evangelists and apostles, are applied to Jesus. No instance can be given in which any being, acknowledged by all to be a created being, is called Jehovah in the Scriptures, or was so called among the Jews. The peculiar sacredness attached to this name among them was a sufficient guard against such an application of it in their common language; and as for the Scriptures, they explicitly represent it as peculiar to Divinity itself. "I am JEHOVAH, that is my name, and my glory will I not give to another." "I am JEHOVAH, and there is none else, there is no God besides me." Thou, whose NAME ALONE is JEHOVAH, art the most high, above all the earth." The peculiarity of the name is often strongly stated by Jewish commentators, which sufliciently refutes Dr. Priestley, who affirms that they could not, on that account, conclude the Messiah to be more than a man. Kimschi paraphrases Isaiah xliii. 8, “JeHOVAH, that is my name"-"that name is proper to me." On Hosea xii. 5, "JEHOVAH his memorial," he says, "In the name El and Elohim, he communicates with others; but, in this name, he communicates with none." Aben Ezra, on Exodus iii. 14, proves, at length, that this name is proper to God.(2)

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"It is, surely, a miserable pretence to allege, that this name is sometimes given to places. It is so; but only in composition with some other word, and not surely as indicative of any quality in the places themselves, but as MEMORIALS of the acts and goodness of JEHOVAH himself, as manifested in those localities. So "Jeho vah-Jireh, in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen," or, "the Lord will see or provide," referred to His interposition to save Isaac, and probably to the provision of the future sacrifice of Christ. The same observation may be made as to Jehovah-Nissi, Jehovah-Shallum, &c. they are names not descriptive of places, but of events connected with them, which marked the interposition and character of God himself. It is an unsettled point among critics, whether Jah, which is sometimes found in composition as a proper name of man, as Abijah, Jehovah is my father, Adonijah, Jehovah is my lord, be an abbreviation of Jehovah or not, so that the case will afford no ground of argument. But, if it were, it would avail nothing, for it is found only in combined form, and evidently relates, not to the persons who bore these names, as a descriptive appellation, but 'to some connexion which existed, or was supposed to

(1) History of Early Opinions. (2) HOORNBECK, Socin. Confut.

exist, between them and the JEHOVAH they acknowledged as their God. The cases would have been parallel, had our Lord been called Abijah, “Jehovah is my father," or Jedediah, "the beloved of Jehovah." Nothing, in that case, would have been furnished, so far as mere name was concerned, to distinguish him from his countrymen bearing the same appellatives; but he is called Jehovah himself, a name which the Scriptures give to no person whatever except to each of the sacred THREE who stand forth, in the pages of the Old and New Testaments, crowned with this supreme and exclusive honour and eminence.

Nor is it true, that, in Jeremiah xxxiii. 16, Jerusalem is called "Jehovah our Righteousness." The parallel passage in the same book, chap. xxiii. 5, 6, sufficiently shows that this is not the name of Jerusalem, but the name of "THE BRANCH." Much criticism has been bestowed upon these passages to establish the point, whether the clause ought to be rendered, "And this is the name by which the Lord shall call him, our Righteousness;" or, "this is the name by which he shall be called, the Lord our Righteousness;" which last has, I think, been decisively established; but he would be a very exceptionable critic who should conclude either of them to be an appellative, not of Messiah, but of Jerusalem, contrary both to the scope of the passage and to the literal rendering of the words,-words capable of somewhat different constructions, but in no case capable of being applied either to the people of Judah, or to the city of Jerusalem.

The force of the argument from the application of the name Jehovah to Messiali may be thus stated:

Whatever belongs to Messiah, that may and must be attributed to Jesus, as being the true and only Christ; and accordingly we have seen, that the evangelists and apostles apply those passages to our Lord, in which the Messiah is unequivocally called Jehovah. But this is the peculiar and appropriate name of God; that name by which he is distinguished from all other beings, and which imports perfections so high and appropriate to the only living and true God, such as self-existence and eternity, that it can, in truth, be a descriptive appellation of no other being. It is, however, solemnly and repeatedly given to the Messiah; and, unless we can suppose Scripture to contradict itself, by making that a peculiar name which is not peculiar to him, and to establish an inducement to that idolatry which it so sternly condemns, and an excuse for it, then this adorable name itself declares the absolute Divinity of him who is invested with it, and is to him, as well as to the Father, a name of revelation, a name descriptive of the attributes which can pertain only to essential Godhead.

that "it is not probable that the LXX. should think Kyptos to be the proper interpretation of, and yet give it to Jehovah, only in the place of Adonai; for, if they had, it would have followed, that when Adonai and Jehovah had met in one sentence, they would not have put another word for Adonai, and placed Kuptos for Jehovah, to which, of itself, according to their observation, it did not belong."-"The reason also of the assertion is most uncertain; for, though it be confessed that the Masoreths did read Adonai when they found Jehovah, and Josephus before them expresses the sense of the Jews of his age, that the TEтpayappatov was not to be pronounced, and before him Philo speaks as much, yet it followeth not from thence that the Jews were so superstitious above three hundred years before, which must be proved before we can be assured that the LXX. read Adonai for Jehovah, and for that reason translated it Kuptos."(4) The supposition is, however, wholly overturned by several passages, in which such an interchange of the names could not be made in the original, without manifestly depriving them of all meaning, and which absurdity could not, therefore, take place in a translation, and be thus made permanent. It is sufficient to instance Exodus vi. 2, 3, "I am the Lord (Jehovah): I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH Was I not known unto them." This, it is true, is rather an obscure passage; but, whatever may be its interpretation, this is clear, that a substitution of Adonai for Jehovah would deprive it of all meaning whatever, and yet here the LXX. translate Jehovah by Kuptos.

Kuptos, Lord, is, then, the word into which the Greek of the Septuagint renders the name Jehovah; and, in all passages in which Messias is called by that peculiar title of Divinity, we have the authority of this version to apply it, in its full and highest signification, to Jesus Christ, who is himself that Messias. For this reason, and also because, as men inspired, they were directed to fit and proper terms, the writers of the New Testament apply this appellation to their Master, when they quote these prophetic passages as fulfilled in him. They found it used in the Greek version of the Old Testament, in its highest possible import, as a rendering of Jehovah. Had they thought Jesus less than God, they ought to have avoided, and must have avoided, giving to him a title which would mislead their readers; or else have intimated, that they did not use it in its highest sense as a title of Divinity, but in its very lowest, as a term of merely human courtesy, or, at best, of human dominion. But we have no such intimation; and, if they wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit of Truth, it follows, that they used it as being understood to be fully equivalent to the title Jehovah itself. This their quotations will show. The evangelist Matthew (iii. 3) quotes and applies to Christ the celebrated prophecy of Isaiah xl. 3: For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his application of it, representing John as the herald of Jesus, the "JEHOVAH" of the prophet, and their "Kuptos." It was, therefore, in the highest possible sense that they used the term, because they used it as fully equivalent to Jehovah. So, again, in uke i. 16, 17: "And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to THE LORD THEIR GOD, and he shall go before Iм in the spirit and power of Elias." "HIM," unquestionably refers to "the Lord their God ;" and we have here a proof that Christ bears that eminent title of Divinity, so frequent in the Old Testament, "the LORD GOD," Jehovah Aleim; and also that Kupios answered, in the view of an inspired writer, to the name Jehovah. On this point the Apostle Paul also adds his testimony, Romans x. 13, "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the LORD shall be saved; which is quoted from Joel ii. 32, "Whoever shall call on the name of JEOVAH shall be delivered." Other passages might be added, but the argument does not rest upon their number; these are so explicit, that they are amply sufficient to establish the important conclusion, that in whatever senses the term "Lord" may be used, and though the writers of the New Testament, like ourselves, use it occasionally in a lower sense, yet they use it also in its highest possible sense and in its loftiest signification, when they intended it to be under(4) Discourses on Creed.