altogether chimerical.... Were there any real foundation for such a distinction, we might long since have expected to see an exact catalogue of these plain and necessary doctrines : but no such catalogue has yet been produced, or is likely to be produced hereafter.... What doctrines are of necessity to be believed, what may be overlooked by us without harm or danger, are questions to which no general answer can possibly be given. I have only to repeat, that we are to do what we can. The more we study, the better we understand the Scriptures; the more delight, the more profit we shall receive from them. After all our endeavors, we can but hope to attain to a very obscure and imperfect view of the wisdom of God in the redemption of mankind. So long as we continue in this life, divine things are to be apprehended by faith, not by sight; we only discern them through a glass darkly, and shall not be admitted to a full participation of them, till we pass from a state of trial to a state of glory.... To sum up all in a few words: it was plainly not intended by the author of our being to give us clear, or full, or certain, information on the subject of religion. He has designedly thrown a veil over his own works, both of nature and grace. Without the help of application and study, we shall understand neither the one nor the other; even with those helps we shall understand them very imperfectly; and in what we do understand, we shall never arrive at certainty; never, I mean, till we are placed in another and a higher scene of things." Difficulties which attend the Study of Religion; Dr. T. Balguy; Discourse viii.

Much in the same manner it is observed by a modern writer, (Oxford Tracts. Introduction of Rationalistic Principles, p. 9):

'Religious truth is neither light nor darkness, but both together. It is like the dim view of a country seen in the twilight, with forms half extricated from the darkness with broken lines and isolated masses. Revelation, in this way of

considering it, is not a revealed system; but consists of a number of detached and incomplete truths belonging to a vast system unrevealed; of doctrines and injunctions mysteriously connected together; that is, connected by unknown. media, and bearing upon unknown portions of the system."* It should be remembered, that Dr. Balguy considers even Christian morals to be involved in the same darkness and perplexity; being connected with principles of philosophy, the true nature of which he considers to be as obscure as the doctrines of Christianity.

These observations we do not quote merely as those of individuals; but because, when the sun hath gone down over the prophets, they must be intrinsically and universally true. If the doctrine of the Trinity be the foundation of Christianity, it must, if involved in obscurity, equally involve in obscurity all the other doctrines which are founded upon it. Were it independent of the whole system of theology, the common observation might be true, that other doctrines were plain, while this only was obscure: but it is not independent. Dr. Balguy and the Oxford writers, therefore, are so far right in regarding all the rest of Christianity as involved in equal obscurity; consequently, in regarding all the ordinary explanations of those doctrines as merely human.

These explanations we proceed, in the ensuing chapters, to examine; commencing first with the doctrine of the Incarnation.

* Oxford Tracts. Lectures on the Scripture Proof of the Doctrines of the Church: Lecture ii. p. 14.

CHAPTER II.

INCARNATION.

PATRIPASSIANISM-DEIPASSIANISM.

"HE IS NOT HERE!"-Matt. xxviii. 6.

In this chapter, we propose to consider the subject of the Incarnation in relation to the doctrines of Patripassianism and Deipassianism. Our observations we commence by quoting the remarks of Bishop Pearson (Creed, vol. i. Art. 3):

"We must take heed," says he, "lest we conceive, because the Divine Nature belongeth to the Father, to which the human is conjoined, that therefore the Father should be incarnate, or conceived and born. For as certainly as the Son was crucified, and the Son alone; so certainly the same Son was incarnate, and that Son alone. Although the human nature was conjoined with the divinity, which is the nature common to the Father and the Son; yet was that union made only in the person of the Son. Which doctrine is to be observed against the heresy of the Patripassians, which was both very ancient and far diffused; making the Father to be incarnate, and, becoming man, to be crucified."

In his note upon this passage, he observes:

"The heresy of the Patripassians seems to have reference only to the suffering of our Savior, because the word signifies no more than the passion of the Father. But it is founded in an error concerning the Incarnation; it being out of question, that He which was made man did suffer."

Tertullian, endeavoring to express the absurdity of the Patripassian doctrine, says:

"So after the beginning of time, the Father was born, and the Father suffered, and the Lord God Omnipotent is declared to be Jesus Christ!"

Again, speaking of Praxeas:

"This man declares that God the Father Almighty is Jesus Christ; he contends that it was the Father Himself that was crucified, suffered, and died; nay more, with a profane and sacrilegious rashness, it is maintained, that He Himself sat down at his own right hand."

Dr. Waterland, in explaining why it was the person of the Son who became incarnate, and not the person of the Father, after speaking of supremacy of office, observes (see his Life, vol. i. p. 94):

This, by mutual agreement and voluntary economy, belongs to the Father; while the Son, out of voluntary condescension, submits to act ministerially, or in capacity of mediator. And the reason why the condescending part became God the Son rather than God the Father, is, because He is a Son; and because it best suits with the natural order of persons, which had been* inverted by a contrary economy."+

On the same author it is observed by the Bishop of Durham :

"The distinction between a supremacy of nature or perfections, and a supremacy of order and of office, is ever to be kept in view. It solves many difficulties in our apprehension of this mysterious and inscrutable subject. It makes the language of Scripture, as applied to the several persons in the Godhead, consistent and intelligible; and though it still leaves us uninformed as to that which is nowhere revealed, the mode in which the persons thus subsist under one undivided substance; yet it preserves their united, as well as their dis

* Would have been. See Horberry's Works, Ox. Ed., vol. ii. p. 340.

tinctive, properties unimpaired.

This was a point which

Bishop Bull had particularly labored to establish, and had confirmed by the general concurrence of the Nicene and Ante-Nicene Fathers."

In pursuance of this idea of mutual agreement and voluntary economy, Bishop Pearson observes (Art. iv. Suffered): "The promised Messias was not only engaged to suffer for us; but, by a certain and express agreement betwixt Him and the Father, the measure and manner of his sufferings were determined, in order to the redemption itself which was thereby to be wrought; and what was so resolved was, before his coming in the flesh, revealed to the prophets and written by them, in order to the reception of the Messias and the acceptation of the benefits to be procured by his sufferings. That what the Messias was to undergo for us, was predetermined and decreed, appeareth by the timely acknowledgment of the church unto the Father, Of a truth, against thy Holy Child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles in the people of Israel, were gathered together for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.'... And well may we say that the hand of God, as well as his counsel, determined his passion; because He was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. And this determination of God's counsel was thus made upon a covenant or agreement between the Father and the Son; in which it was concluded by them both, what He should suffer, what He should receive. For beside the covenant made by God with man, confirmed by the blood of Christ, we must consider and acknowledge another covenant from eternity made by the Father with the Son, &c. ... The determination therefore of our Savior's passion was made by covenant of the Father who sent, and the Son who suffered. And as thus the sufferings of the Messias were agreed on by consent and determined by the counsel of God; so were they revealed