QUESTION I. 419 less they firmly believed Jesus to be the Messiah and the Son of God, in a sense sufficient for salvation. When Peter in the name of the rest had made so glorious a confession, Mat. xvi. 16, Thou art Christ the Sonof the living. God, he could not mean that Christ was the great and glorious God ; for in ver. 22. he took uphis master very short, and began to rebuke hint. Surely he would not have rebuked the great God his maker, at least not immediately after such a confession of his godhead. Now, if the apostles themselves were in a state of grace and salvation, when they can hardly be supposed to believe, Christ to be the true and the eternal God, and yet they believed and professed him to be the Son of God, then that name Son of God doth not necessarily imply and include his divinity. But to return to the objection. That which I take to be the plainest, the clearest, and the most scriptural solution of this difficulty is this which follows, II. It is evident that the design of the wicked Jews in these places of the history was to bring the highest accusation against our Saviour, and to load him with the grossest calumnies that all their wit or Malice could draw from his words or actions ; Luke xi. 54. Layingwait for him, ancbAzking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might acct.& him. If ever he spake of his kingdom, though he owned his kingdom was not of this world ; John xviii. 36. yet they in their malice would construe it into sedition and rebellion, and make him an enemy to Cxsar.. And so when he called God his own Father, and declared him- self to be the Son of God, they in the fury of their false zeal construe it into blasphemy ; as though to own himself to be the Son of God, were to assume equality with God : whereas Christ shows them plainly, that these words (lid not necessarily imply such a sense ; and this is sufficiently manifest by the defence which Christ made for himself in both those places of the history. Give me leave to repeat briefly what I said before. If we look into John v. 13. when the Jews accused him that by calling " God his Father he made himself equal with God," he Both by no means vindicate that sense of his name Son of God, but rather denies his equality with God considered as a SON, ver. 19, &e. Verily, verity I say the Son can do nothing of him- self: The Father sheneth the Son all things that he dots, and he will skew hint greater works than these. Thence 1 inter, that he path not shewn lain all yet ; and ver. 30. I can of myself do nothing. I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father who bath sent me, 85c. All which expressions sufficiently evince, that he did not intend to signify his own godhead, or equality with God, when he called himself the Son of God; for in his ed2
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