SECTION I. 493 The Godof glory appeared to our father Abraham when Ize was in Mesopotamia, and said unto him, get thee out of thy coun- try, BCc. And when he came into the land of Canaan ; Gen. xii. 11. The Lord appeared unto Abraham, and said, Unto thy seed will 1 give this land; and there he built an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him; or, as the Hebrew expresses it, who was seen by him. 'These seem to be visible appearances surrounded with light or glory, and therefore it is said, the God of glory appeared tohim. Gen. xv. 1. After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abraham in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward : And Abraham said, Lord God what wilt thou give me? Sfe. Here was a vision, and here was a voice ; the person that appeared was the Lord God or Jehovah Elohim : and yet it is said, The word of the Lord came to him in a vision : probably this signifies Jesus Christ, the Logos or Word of God. And yet, ver. 7. he assumes the name of Jehovah I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees: and ver. 17. a smoaking furnace and a burning lamp passed between the pieces of the divided sacrifice in token of God's making a covenant with Abraham ; as it follows, ver. 18. In that same day, the Lord, or Jehovah, made a covenant with Abrahams. Gen. xvi. 7. The angel of the Lord found Hagar in the wildernesss, and said unto tier, I will multiply thy seed exceed- ingly ; and though he be called the angel of the Lord, in four places of this narrative, yet ver. 13. She called the name of the Lord, or Jehovah, that spake to her, Thou God seest me. The person who appeared therefore seems to be one who was an angel of the Lord, and was also the Lord or Jehovah. Gen. Mere let it be observed, that the ancient Jews, such as the targumists or commeetators oa scripture, and Philo, represent the Memra, the Logos, that is the Word of the Lord, as appearing to the patriarchs in almost all these places where God is said to appear : and of this divine Word they give us two different ideas, as I have sheen elsewhere: The one is, that it signifies something in and df the true and sternal godhead, some distinct principle in the divine nature itself, which is called the Word or Wisdom of God, wherebyGod revealed him- Self to men. The other is the idea of some most excellent angel in whom God resided, and by whom God manifested himself, and who was upon that account Balled the Word of God. Their writings lead us plainly to both these ideas : Dior is it at all unreasonable to suppose, that both these ideas may be united in one, and thus compose a sort of complex person, an angel inhabited by true godhead under the idea of divineWisdom. Some have called this person a god- angel in all these visible appearances; and why may not our blessed Saviour be this god-angel by reason of his human soul pre-existentandunited to godhead in ils uninearoats or angelic state, that is, before he became complete God -man, and afterward he was mofle a little lower than the angels by dwelling in flesh and blood ? See more of this matter in other writings. But this I dobut just mention as I pass along, and in the margin otdy, because I would not enter into any modus of explaining the internal distinctions in the godhead in these discourses: especially since these discourses agree well enough with any known scheme of :eternal distinctions to the godhead.
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