DISSERTATION IV. The Sentiments of the ancient fetes, and primitive Christians concerning the Logos, or Word, compared with Scripture. SECT. I.The General Senses of the Term Logos, and its application to Christ. Our blessed Saviour hath a variety ofnames and titles given him in scripture, to describe his personal glories, and his sacred offices in the divine economy. These must be borrowed from human things, and from the languages of men, in order to bring them within the reach of our understandings. We cannot frame ideas of things divine and heavenly, as they are in themselves, and therefore it hath pleased God to condescend to lead us into some imperfect con- ceptions of them, by revealing them to us, under the names and resemblances of things on earth. TheLogos, or Word of God, is a name whereby Christ is often represented in the New Testa- ment, and particularly in the writings of St. John. Now it may assist us considerably in tracing out some of the glories of his person, if we search into the meaning of this naine, .nd the reason of its application to our blessedLord. The term Locos, in Greek heathen authors, does not only signify word, but it is used as commonly to express reason. In this sense the Platonic philosophers apply it to God as well as man. And not only the ancient Greeks, but Philo the Jew uses the term " logos" in this latter sense, even when it is applied to God ; and denotes hereby the reason, or wisdomof God. In his treatise " De mundi opificio," he tells us, that the idea by which God made the world, and which he calls the xoo¡e . ros15,, or the xoaµóY ix amv that is, the ideal, or intelligible world: couldhave no place but in the logos of God, as an intelligible or ideal city is in the mind, or reason, of the architect. And he adds a little afterward, that if a man will use plain words, he will say, the ideal world is nothing else than the logos of God the Creator ; as an ideal city is nothing else than the reasoning of the builder ; o :u zpxLTSxlovO aoy,aµos. And this opinion, saith he, I have from Moses, and not from myself. The archetypal exem- plar, the idea of ideas is the logos, the word of God. He sometimes supposes it to be a divine power, or .iuvz¡ , that regu- lates or conducts the agency of other powers, viz. principality and goodness, which office particularly belongs to the divine rem,- son, or Wisdom. And in several places of his writings, he seems to put such a sense upon this term, the logos of God, as we most properly refer to divine wisdom or reason. s 3
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