playhouse and the gambling table, these haunts of depraved sinners, was his delight and the Lord only knoweth what I suffered under these two men for above twelve months, during which time I had no particular visits, living as a sparrow alone; yet in many instances I had strength to resist their words, and felt a hatred to their vice. They both could ridicule religion and all who professed it: while the last would not scruple to deny the scriptures and Jesus the subject of the scriptures; and he was not afraid to declare it, as his opinion, that there never had been such a person in the world. His arguments would sometimes confound me, but when I compared his sensual beastly life, with the lives of some I had known, when young, who were esteemed Christians, this would overcome all he said, and cause me to say, Let me live the life and die the death of the righteous,' for I never saw any thing in the life and practice of an infidel worth imitation. After I left this man I spent six distressing months in body, mind, and circum. stances, and had some severe shocks of conscience to stir me up to seek the Lord Jesus Christ. I will notice two: the first was one Lord's-day evening, I was in a room alone, about 8 o'clock, when a comet passed over London;

the light of the comet superseded the light of the candle, for it was but little inferior to the light of the sun; I saw every thing in the room clearly, but it was only for a few seconds, and then the light of the candle resumed its power. This filled my mind with terror, it filled me with the awful fear of death and judgment,

It was the more awful because that day I had endeavoured to persuade myself that God did not see, that God did not care for his creatures, that it was in vain to serve the Lord or to hope for or to seek his mercy; and that I might be enabled to procure a comfortable livlihood I would sacrifice all my feelMarch, 1842.]

ings and respect for the Sabbath, join more with the world, and so become again at ease; letting the providing for myself and wife have the first place in my heart. For this I was determined, and had that afternoon, before my brother, his wife, and an affectionate acquaintance expressed myself, but this circumstance altered my views, I withdrew from all, and wept bitterly over my folly, and confessed the justice of God if he had that night destroyed me.

The next day I felt very ill and had no strength to work, I became again as a pelican of the wilderness, and from the depression of the mind, and many temporal wants, became weak and depressed in body. My bore the dispensation cheerfully, and by her needle, was a help-meet indeed.

The fourth of march, 1804, our first son was born, and being ill I had only earned 2s 7d the week before; it was the Lord's-day, and I was forced to get up, and then kneeled before the Lord and wept bitterly. My mind was so distressed that I could not at first speak, at length my mouth was opened, and I opened my mind to the Lord in prayer, and whilst I was speaking the Lord began to send relief. It was then past 2 o'clock. Three persons had come to visit us, one went for the doctor, one for my sister in law, and one gave me a guinea and wept. The mistress of the house was sent for, she knew nothing of our being so ill as not to be able to help ourselves, not even to light the fire or prepare food. I went under great risk for a nurse, and before I returned a son was born. There were several friends, and none came empty handed; the goodness of God passed before us for a month, the remembrance of which hath often filled my heart with gratitude since. The Lord was before hand with me. About two months after, when looking at the child I was led to ponder my past life, I could see nothing but wretchedness, misery, and sin from

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HAVING read your strictures on the doctrine of the eternal Sonship of Christ, and as you are open to conviction, as you say, if any of the Correspondents of the Spiritual Magazine can scripturally show you a more excellent way; it is in love and affection to thy soul, and for the glory of God, that I have undertaken the task and if with scriptural authority I show unto you a more excellent way, I pray God the Holy Ghost to apply the truth as it is in Jesus with invincible power to your heart, and then sure I am that all your preconceived notions concerning the Sonship of our most glorious Christ will be hurled to the ground, and you will be willing to receive God's testimony concerning his Son, and will no longer lean to thine own understanding.

I beg to say, before I enter upon the subject, that I have not seen Mr. Gunner's book, therefore am not attempting to justify his assertions.

I will endeavour to reply to your objections as they stand.

First, you ask, Does the Holy Scripture once assert the eternal Sonship of Christ? I reply in the positive, and give you scripture authority in proof. John i. 18. Here he is declared to be in the bosom of

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the Father. And then, in 1 John iii. 8, it is declared that the Son of God was manifested," (evidently in the flesh, as chap. iv. 2,) which is synonimous with .6 God manifested in

the flesh." In chap. iv. 9 it is declared, that the Father sent his only begotten Son into the world; from which it is plain that he existed as the Son before his incarnation, and as the Son (a divine Person). You say that you believe Christ is the

Mighty God," &c.; and yet by denying his eternal Sonship, you deny his distinct personality, and consequently his proper Godhead, as one with the Father and the Holy Ghost, whether you are aware of it or no, as is plain from your comment on Luke i. 35. The first reason you give why you reject the eternal Sonship of Christ is, that no part of Holy Scripture (you say) asserts it. This I have with scripture authority refuted, by the passages already quoted. And secondly, you say, If true, then Christ would be an Arian's God. To which I reply in the positive, no; and boldly assert that Christ is the Son of God, not by office, emulation, derivation, nor profession, but by nature; pos sessing, as the Son of God, the same nature as the Father and the Holy Ghost, and that from all eternity. His equality with the Father (as the Son) is plainly declared in John v. 18, and equal honor is to be paid to him as the Son, as verse 23 declares. Again, in Luke x. 22, the equality of Christ, as the Son of God, with the Father, is plainly declared. Again, in Heb. i. 2, Christ as the Son is de clared to have been with the Father when he made the world; and as you, Sir, declare you are no pre-existerian, you must (unless you have a seared conscience) admit that the Son here spoken of refers to the Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ, for he did not then exist as man. Again, in verse 8, the Father declares his eternal dominion as the Son of God; and then in verse 9 his human nature is spoken

of. and in his human nature he is called the Fellow of his brethren; and be it remembered, that Christ was anointed in his complexity as God and man, the Son of God and Son of Man in one person, and thus he is the Lord's Christ: so that Christ in his human nature is true and pro. per man the Son of Man; in his divine nature true and proper Godthe Son of God: and in his complexity God and Man, or the Son of God and Son of Man in one person, possessing two whole and distinct natures in one person. This is a great mystery, but am I to reject the truth because it is too great for my poor finite mind to grasp; and although the truth is not contrary to sound reason, yet it is above reason. I say, am I to reject the truth, because I cannot comprehend it? and say with Nicodemus, "How can these things be?" No, but my desire is to believe what God hath condescended to reveal of himself, resting assured that it is infallibly true, because God hath said it: and, I add, it is impossible for any creature to know more of the incomprehensible Jehovah, than he is pleased to discover of himself; and all the attempts that man hath made or may make to explain the mode of the existence of the holy Three in One Jehovah-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--will only serve to show their weakness and folly. And the utmost stretch of our knowledge cannot rise higher than the Acknowledgement of the mys tery of God (the Holy Ghost), and of the Father, and of Christ.".

I would notice, as I proposed, your objections as I go on, and remind you, in your quoting Heb. i, 8, 9, a clause from each verse, you have made it speak language quite contrary to what is therein declared. I say with you, that right reason, founded on scripture, equally rejects the notion of two supreme Gods, or of one inferior to the other which conclusion we dare not follow, by Christ's being God, as

he is the Son of God, for saith he (the Son) "I and my Father are one."

That the human nature of Christ is not a person is plain, if you take into consideration that the Son of Man never existed separated from, but in union with the Son of God: of, if you please, the human nature of Christ never existed separated from, but in union with his divine nature: for from the moment the human nature of Christ was begotten by the Holy Ghost in the virgin's womb; from the very time that the human nature of Christ was prepared by the Father (as saith the Son to the Father, "A body hast thou prepared me"); the Son of God took that very nature into union with his divine. Oh! how mysterious, but no less true for being mysterious. Therefore it does not follow that because the Son of God took a perfect human nature in union with his divine, that he as man was a person, for the reason before given. It is true that Pilate called him "that just person," but be it remembered that Pilate was ignorant of Christ as a person in the Eternal Trinity, the Son of God; but viewing him as the Son of Man only, Pilate's calling him in his human nature a person, has therefore no weight whatever in favour of your argument.

Dear Sir, when you asserted that no one instance can be produced, wherein Christ received divine wor ship as the Son of God while on earth, had you quite forgotten that scripture, Heb. i. 6, where it is said,

grace altogether, when you talk of the man Christ not praying to the Son of God. Oh, Sir, the assertion you here make militates with equal force against the Godhead of the Holy Ghost, as it does against the eternal Sonship of Christ; and one would think from your own assertion, that you were a professed Sabellian. But to return, is not the covenant of grace plainly revealed in God's most holy word? in which covenant each sacred Person (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,) in the ever-blessed Trinity, solemnly stipulated with each other for the salvation of an innunerable number of the children of Adam; and did not the Father make to Christ, as the Redeemer of his people, in this covenant, exceeding great and precious promises? and while tabernacling here below, Christ pleaded the fulfilment of those promises made to him in covenant on behalf of the church himself the Head, his people members of his body. And I would here add, that all that Christ is doing, hath done, or will do on behalf of his body, the church, was, and is, and will be according to his covenant engagement and covenant responsibility. So that this, as well as all the rest of thy arguments against the Son of God being God, as he is the Son of God, fall to the ground.

In your comment on Luke i. 35. you have made pretty havoc of the word of God, and in substance denied the doctrine of the Trinity (Lord! what is man when left to his own thoughts), by saying that God the Father, by the Holy Ghost, produced that holy thing in the virgin's womb, which when born into the world, was to be called the Son of God, which Son of God you say was a human nature. Here, Sir, you blot out not only the eternal Sonship of Christ, but the Second Person in the Trinity (I say second in order and in point of order only) altogether. But in this verse above cited we have the doctrine

of the Trinity set forth most blessedly, in opposition to your remarks upon it. It is said of the human nature of the Son of God, that it was begotten (as the learned tell us the Greek word should have been rendered in Matt. i. 20) of the Holy Ghost, that it was prepared by the Father (Heb. x. 5); and this human nature, begotten by the Holy Ghost and prepared by the Father, was taken into personal union with the Son of God, by the Son of God himself. Thus in this verse cach distinct person in the Trinity is spoken of, and each jointly concurring and co-operating in the incarnation of Christ the Father preparing, the Holy Ghost begetting, and the Son of God assuming the humanity thus prepared and begotten and taken into union with his divine, and thus became the Son of God and the Son of man (or God and man, which are synonimous terms) in one (not two) person. And, I add, Christ is God and man in one person by union and in no other sense. May the dear

Lord make use of his own truth for his own glory is the prayer of

A SINNER SAVED BY GRACE.

Islington.

EDITORS' REPLY TO BIBLICUS.

THAT every one of our readers should coincide with our expressed opinion of every new work which in our review department may pass under observation, is scarcely to be expected; but, that the writer, who under the signature of Biblicus, censures us for commending the tract of Mr. Thomas Gunner, on the Sonship of Christ, should be decidedly hostile, as well to the work in question as to our recommendation of it, can awaken no surprize, for who ever heard of an Arian or a Sabellian, whether an open or a disguised one, who could acquiesce in a scriptural display of Israel's triune Jehovah ?

Biblicus asks us, whether a public

reviewer should not take heed lest in commending a work he should sanc. tion error under the name of truth? Surely he should: but then it is by no means a necessary consequence, that what Biblicus may assert to be error, is indeed such; or that what he designates truth, is in accordance with the truth of God!

Biblicus denies the eternal Sonship of Christ, and calls upon us to prove it from the scriptures. We readily admit that he has a right to refer us to the law and to the testimony, as that to which all things relative to our spiritual and eternal interests should be tested; but it must also be recollected, that there are mysteries in the infinite Jehovah - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three distinct Persons in the unity of one Essence; the union of the two natures, divine and human, in the one Mediator ;the union which subsists between Christ and every member of his mystic body and each of these are subjects for our faith! Reason cannot explain how any of these things are; and we think very lightly of that man's professed belief in the doctrine of the holy Trinity, who admits it only on the mere arguments of man, though supported from the word of. God.

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That man, and that man only is an experimental, unwavering heliever in the doctrine of the Trinity, who, having been quickened to divine life by God the Holy Ghost, has, under His gracious and saving teachings, been brought to see his election to eternal life by God the Father, and by the same blessed Spirit is led to the Lord Jesus Christ as his Lawfulfiller, his Surety, his Redeemer: this man will indeed believe and hold fast, with a tenacious grasp, the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Hence then, while the scriptures are our unerring standard both for doctrine and prac tice, there are mysteries which cannot be fully explained. But Biblicus demands proof; and, in humble depen

dance upon His gracious guidance who has promised to lead his people into all truth, we will proceed with all possible brevity to bring forward some few scriptural arguments which clearly prove the doctrine of the eternal Sonship of Christ. We do not expect to satisfy Biblicus, or any other such sophistical reasoner: our only object is to guard the weak in faith against the cunning craftiness of men who lie in wait to deceive, and to maintain the truth of God as he has revealed it in his own word.

The eternal Sonship of Christ does not detract from his being equal, coeternal, and co-essential with the Father; for in the opening the canon of scripture, the creation of this world is ascribed to Jehovah in his plurality of Persons: see Gen. i. 26, "Let us make man;" ver. 2, The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters;" and the apostle declares,

Without him (Christ) was not anything made that was made:" here then we have a Trinity of Persons in one Jehovah, revealed to the church as existing ere time began; and this Trinity of Persons are manifestively made known to the church of the living God, as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Now in nature a man cannot be a father without a son, and the same moment that he has a son he becomes a father, and not before; thus the father and the son are both so constituted at one and the same time. And we think Prov. viii. 21-32 fully confirms the Sonship of Christ to be eternal. We know this passage is wrested by some in proof of the pre-existence of the human soul of Christ; but the period here referred to is prior to the creation, and if we admit the human soul of Christ to have existed at any time prior to the Incarnation, it must have been created at some given period, as its advocates do not say that it is eternal, nor indeed could it be; and to say it was created in eternity is a contradiction, because when a crea