strated that Jefus Chrift is exprefsly and literally ftiled the fon of man, and a man,' by the prophets, evangelists, and apostles, and, confequently, could be no other than the joint-offspring of an husband and wife, the contradictory account of the supernatural conception of Mary, contained in Matthew i. and Luke i. being totally unwarranted by the prophecies of the Old Testament, those true tefts of genuine and fpurious Gospels and Epiftles; having thus evangelically overturned the respective nonfenfical systems of Athanafians, Arians, and Socinians, I shall adduce a few arguments drawn from reafon alone, in fupport of the manhood of Jefus, in the strict, the common, and, in fact, the only true, acceptation of the word.

First then I apprehend, it will be readily admitted by every rational Christian, that not the imperfection of the moral law of nature, written on the hearts and confciences of men, but the imperfection of man himfelf, who could, but would not, obey that law, evinced the neceffity of an efpecial and extraordinary revelation of the divine will,

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will, and the exuberant goodnefs of God in vouchsafing it. This Goodness is, with peculiar propriety, ftiled in Scripture, the exceeding riches of the grace, love, and mercy, of God,' and was not confined, like the old covenant, to the pofterity of Abraham, by Ifaac, but extended to all mankind, as well Gentiles as Jews; which laft, to the guilt, in common with the heathens, of forfaking the faid unerring rule of right and wrong, and following rather the law in their members,' than the law of their mind,' fuperadded the crime of disobeying an exprefs pofitive law from God, which they were endued by their Maker with an ability to perform.

Secondly, I am clearly of opinion, that God, when he invefted Jews and Gentiles, upon their compliance with his terms of repentance, and faith in his Meffiah, with the poffeffion of the prefent happy privileges, and with an intereft in the future glorious promifes, of the Gofpel, at the fame time defigned to convince finful mankind, that their general wickedness was wholly imputable to their felf-corruption, and not

to

to any defect in the intellectual powers, which he had beftowed on them for

the purpose of enabling them to discern between good and evil, to choose the one, and refuse the other, and to comply with his pofitive laws. Accordingly, our infinitely great, wife, and good Creator has evidently demonstrated to his human creatures, in the example of the most generous and difinterested philanthropy, the immaculate innocence, and the univerfal obedience to the will of God, even unto death, exhibited by the man, Chrift Jefus, that he had made man perfect,' or capable of an invariable practical obfervance of his eternal, and immutable laws, godliness, righteoufnefs, and temperance, re-published to the world by Chrift, the mediator, or minister, of God's new and merciful Gospel-covenant between himself and man. But if Athanafians maintain, as, if they be confiftent in their inconfiftencies, however fhockingly injurious to all worthy and rational ideas of the Supreme Being, they must maintain, that the essence of the indivifible God is capable of divifion into three portions, that one portion thereof conftitutes God the Son, and that this God the Son, inclofed in the womb of a

virgin, underwent all the gradual process and change, which the feed of man fuftains in a fucceffive progrefs from its feminal ftate, through that of an embryo, to that of a perfect human animated fœtus, and, in this laft ftate, sprang into light from the womb a babe of the mafculine gender; or, if, fhocked at the confequence of this tenet, that a third part of the Supreme Being, who is impaffible, is capable of fuffering, they, in order to furmount this difficulty, involve themselves in another equally infurmountable, for one hyper-metaphyfical abfurdity naturally begets another and another, in an endless progreffion, invent whatthey are pleased to term the hypoftatical union, dividing Chrift into two natures, his divine and his human, as they before had divided the Supreme Being into three parts, and affert, that he fuffered in his human nature, while his divine nature was impaffible, thereby fplitting one Chrift into two Chrifts; it is impoffible, that a being of this motley texture, fo compounded and decompounded, fo truly marvellous and incomprehenfible, could be your promised Meffiah. Nor could the poffibility of man's acquifition of finlefs moral rectitude be

proved

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proved by the moral example of such a being, who could not propofe himself as a pattern of perfect morality to men, who are not his equals, nor indeed to any other order of beings, as he is fuppofed to be without his fellow, an abfolute unique in the universe.

Again, Jefus, could not be your Meffiah, nor, with propriety, prapofe himself as an example of finless moral rectitude to men, if, as the Arians hold, he were an incarnate God, not a God in a fenfe fimilar to that, wherein God fays to Mofes, I will make thee a God unto Pharoah,' that is God's reprefentative in the presence of that king, but a real divine being, and inferior to none but the Supreme Being, representing him as the first and greatest of all created, and finite intelligent existencies, existing with God before all worlds, God's agent in the creation of the univerfe, a Jehovah fubordinate to the fupreme Jehovah, as fuch the fuppofed leader of your fathers through the Red-Sea, and the Wilderness, and the angel of theMofaic covenant, &c.