DISSERTATION IV. '3 7 thatboth the divine and inferior ideas ascribed to Christ in big pre- existent state belonged to one simple Logos ? Will all their invented relief of natural subordination, or economical subordin- ation, of strong metaphors, and catachreses, ever fairly reconcile the variety, and seemingconctradiction oftheirexpressions, with- out such a supposition as this, of a complex, or twofold nature in Christ ? We may reasonably suppose, that they had derived from scripture, and from the apostles, and the traditions of apostolic men, the great doctrine of the Logos, being the eternal divine word, or wisdom, whereby God contrived and created the world They had also derived from the same springs the doctrine of the Logos, who was the Son of God, the beginning of the creation, thefirst-born of every creature, the only begotten of the Father; and that though he was produced, as they express, by his will and power, yet it was in some such immediate and superior way, as is rather called generation than creation in scripture, that in all things Christ might havethepre-eminence ; Col. i. 18. Now hence perhaps might .arise some of their mistakes, or as Bishop Bull calls them, their strange, hard, and uncautious expressions. 1. Because scripture, or apostolic tradition, doth not directly call this inferior, or angelic Logos, who was the Son of God, a creature, and rank himwith other created beings, some of them might raise him entirely up to godhead, and give him the very same, simple numerical idea, with the eternal Logos, or the divine wisdom. -2. Because this angelic Logos was truly the Son of God, and his only begotten Son, therefore they might attribute a sort of Sonship to the eternal Logos, or divine wisdom, entirely ab- stracted from this angelic being.-3. When they found supreme and inferior characters attributed to a person whose namewas the , Logos, or Word of God, they did not infer the union of the divine eternal Logos, andof this first-born Son of God, who is also called the Logos, into one complex person, but they, by an easy mistake, might blend them together intoone simple sub- stance; and thus they attributed inconsistent properties and actions to one and the same simple subject. Whereas scripture seems to inform us, that these different properties might bemore safely and happily attributed to this glorious person, composedof the divine and the angelic Logos united, that is the human out of Christ with the indwelling godhead, SECT. IX.--Çonçlusipp. Upon the whole it appears, that the ancient Jewish writers give us an account of a divine metnra, or Logos, or word, which is of the very essence of God, and is represented as a power of thedivine nature, and they speak alsoof another Logos or Word,
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