422 QUESTIONS CONCEIiNINO JESUS. rulers, teachers or prophets, gods, as well aásons of God, he who is appointed the most glorious prophet and ruler, might have been justified by the languageof scripture, if he had as- sumed the name God to himself, in direct and express language, andmuch more abundantly is he justified when he has only called himself the Son of God. And indeed it is worth our observation here, that though the Jews built part of their accusation upon his saying, I and my Father are one, Jesus does not directly answer to those words, norundertake to vindicate or explain them ; because he might design in those words to intimate his godhead or his one- ness with God the Father : Therefore he neglects and drops this part of the ground of their charge, and applies'himself entirely to answer their accusation, as it was built upon his calling God his own Father, and himself the Son of God : And this he did because he knew that this naine did not necessarily imply equality with God, and so he could boldly refute their inference and re- nounce the charge. Yet it should be observed also, that before Christ leaves them he leads them to his godhead, that is, to his most intimate union with the godhead of the Father, verse 38, That ye may know and believe that the Father is in me and I in him ; that he and his Father are one, as he before expressed his godhead. Thus 1 have explained myself at large in what I think to he the very scope and force of our Saviour's argument ; and in- deed if we take the word Son of God to signify necessarily in that place an equality with the Father ; we plainly take away the force of our Saviour's argument and defence, and we leave the accusation of the malicious Jews in its full force against him5. In short, our Saviour's answer must necessarily mean one of these two things, viz. Either when he called himself the Son of God, he did design to let them know that he was equal to God, but that he was noblasphemer, because it was a great truth : Or he designed to tell them that his words did not necessarily signify that he was equal to God, and therefore he was no blasphemer ; that their inference was not just, and that they carried the charge further than his words would bear. One of these two most, think, be our Saviour's design, Now that he did not design the first of these, timt is, to shew that lie was equal to Sod, seems evident to me, because his answer cannot reach this sense ; and if strained to this sense, it 'is very obscure and far-fetched : It might also have been spoken In tnuáh plainer language twenty ways, if it had been his design i The learned Dr. Waterland, whose zeal for' the Daily of Christ, and whose skill in the defenceof it, aresufrleiently known, himself confesses that She Jews could not from Christ's own expression clearly convict him of meaning more than that he was Clod, in the improper sense of the word, as it. had tieeu Used pt. Ixxxü. 6. lsee his Vindication of Christ's Disinity, page 55.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=