PROPOSITION VIII. - 141. God, and yet ascribes them toChrist : Súch as, " Believingor trusting inhim ;" John xiv. 1. " Let not your heart be troubled, saith: Christ ; ye believe in God, believe also in me ;" Rom. xv. 12. " In him shall the Gentiles trust." " Calling upon him, and praying to him ;" Rom. x. 13. " For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, that is, Christ, shall be saved." Paul prayed to him, to take away his thorn in the flesh ; 2 Cor. xii. S. " For this I besought the Lord thrice, that it might de- part fromme." " Adoring and praising him ; Rev. v. 13. " And every creature which is in heaven, and on earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I, saying, blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." " Swearing by his name ;" Rom. ix. 1. " I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost" Now all these divine honours done to our Lord Jesus, are foretold in the Old Testament, and required or prac- tised in the New Testament, and would be so many affronts to the supreme majesty and dignity of the blessed God the Father, if. Jesus Christ were not one and the same God with him, as we Shall shew in the following propositions. A variety of other textsmight be cited to make good these seventh andeighth pro- positions ; but I chuse rather, in this place, to content myself with citing those which are most unexceptionable, and have no just ground of controversy belonging to them. To sum up all, let me make this one remark. That the places of scripture which I have brought to show what are the peculiar and distinguishing characters of godhead, are so plaits and easy'to be understood, and those scriptures,which apply these very saine characters toour Lord Jesus Christ are so obvious, so evident, so naturally applicable to him, even in the divinest sense of them, that it needs a good deal of skill, and wit, and criti- cism to divert them to another sense : If it needed but half so much art and critical subtilty to apply those scriptures to Jesus Christ, as it does to turn them away from him, one might be tempted indeed to doubt his godhead, or to deny it. It is plain that the Arian and Socinian doctrines which deny our Lord Jesus Christ to be the true"and eternal Gód, cannot be supported in opposition to such obvious evidences of scripture, without more skill and learning, more subtilty and nice arts of distinction to evade the sense of plain words, than the bulk of common christians can ever be furnished with. Day-labourers and tradesmen, children and servants, of the meanest rank, reading their bibles, would naturally be led into the belief of Christ's divinity ; for they could never find out how to explain away such manifest expressions concerning the godhead of Christ, and make theta signify a mere creature. Thence I would Rake
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