DISSERTATION IV. 307 eternal reason, wisdom, or word, in a personal manner ; and that not only because the scripture favours this dialect, or man- ner of speaking; but because the eastern nations frequently represent human as well as divinepowers, in a personal manner; and the early christians learning their christianity from the apos- tles, and other converted Jews, were initiated and trained up in the phraseology of the eastern and Jewishwriters. It is granted, indeed, that we know howgreat the distinc- tion is betwixt God the Father, and his eternal Word or wis- dom : It is justly supposed to be great enough to lay a sufficient foundation for such a distinct personal representation, as the scriptural language and style give us. This divine Logos seems to be representedboth in scripture, and in the primitive writers, as much distinct from the Father as the same essence admits of, or as distinct as may be, without being another conscious mind. Now this seems to be something more than a mere attribute; and therefore I call the-Logos a divine power* ; imitating herein both the ancient Jews and the primitive fathers, who call him frequently F.o¢.a, and NW, and Amt.; TU ©ra, and particularly Clemens Alexandrines, who makes him eiras-p.ts Tsg rrrpyaa. But since God and his co-essential Word do not seem to have two distinct consciousnesses, or to be two conscious minds; this eter- nal Logos can hardly be-called a person, in the common and literal sense of the term, as a distinct man or angel, but only in figurative and metaphorical language, as some zealous Trinita- rians have expressed it. Let it be noted here also, that most of the ancient fathers which have been now cited, do not suppose this eternal Logos, to be an eternal Son ; but that he becamea Son by a certain genera- tion, prolation, or filiation, which some of them call creation, some time before the world vvas created. .Some of the ancients, indeed, seem to apply the word Son, to this eternal Logos : And some of them have explained their meaning, that theLogos was wá..861 , sr tugsta, r, arr%arxrosg, that is, conceived in the heart, in the bowels of the Father ; that he was potentially in the Father, from eternity, though not actually produced : Which was also the express sense of some in the Nicene times, and of the emperor Constantine, as Eusebius relates it, in his letter to the people of Caesarea. Or there is another sense wherein the Logos, or eternal divine wisdom, may be called a Son as well as a person, by a figure of speech.: For in the ancient eastern and scriptural idioms, any thing that has either a logical or a physical sort of * to what sense the Logos, or divine Word differs from an attribute; how it appears to be something analogous to a divine power ; and how it is taken some- times to signify the divine nature itself, exerting a particular power; the dis- course on the Distinction of persons in the Trinity accounts for it. See Die. aertatioo VII. v 2
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