USEFUL AND IMPORTANT QUESTIONS ,CONCERNING JESUS THE SON OF GOD, FREELY PROPOSED, &c. QóesrioN I.What is the meaning of the Name Son of God, as given to Christ in the New testament, where the Belief of it is necessary to Salvation. INTRODUCTION. IT is of some importance in the doctrine of the gospel, and especialiy in the great article of the blessed Trinity, to know the meaning of the name Son of God, which is so often given to our Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament : for hereby we shall be better able to understand the chief import anddesign of those places of scripture. But here I desire my reader to observe, that I am not en- quiring into the highest and most sublime sense of which it is possible that our Lord himself might have the ideawhen he used that word ; but what is the sense that 'Christ, or the apostles and writersof the New Testament more directly designed to convey to those who heard them, and in what sensethe people generally could and did understand this name. It is evident from several expressions of Christ, that'he well knew that his own words sometimes carried in them a much nóbler and sublimer signification, than barely that which he de- signed to convey to the Jews, or even to his own disciples at'thát time : As when he says to the Jews, " before Abraham was, I am ;' John viii. 5$. And so when he says to his disciples ; John xiv. 10. " I am in the Father, and the Father in rne," they could not know that glorious and sublime relation of Christ to the Father, and his intimate oneness with the Father, which he himself was perfectly acquainted with. My chief business in this discourse therefore is only to show what is the true idea or meaning of the word Sonof God, which our Saviour or the sacred writers designedto conveyto their disciples through all ages and nations by this name, and in whirl i it is possible their hearers could understand Them, or we Who read the same words. And in order to find this sense of it,. 'let ns consider those texts of scripture wherein the belief of Christ 'to be 'the Son of (,od is made the great requisite in order to salvation, and a ue.
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