SECTION I. 317 always represented as invisible, whom no man kath seen nor can see: But Jesus Christ is described as the image of the invi- sible God, the brightness of his Father's glory, the express image of his person, he in whom the Father dwells ; I am in the Father, and the Father in me. He is that Word of God by whom the great and blessed God manifests himself, and his mind and will, as a man manifests his mind or will by his word : He represents himself one with God the Father, I and the Fa- tiler are one.- And St. Paul calls him God manifest in the flesh. Now as the prophet Isaiah and the apostle John compared toge- ther assure us that Christ was the person who appeared in one of these most glorious and illustrious appearances of God under the Old Testament, so there is the most abundant probability from all these things considered, that Jesus Christ was that angel who generally appeared in ancient times to the patriarchs and to the Jews, assuming the peculiar and incommunicable names of God, and manifesting the invisible God to men. That expression of St. Paul; 1 Cor. x. 9. adds weight to this argument, Neither let us tempt Christ as some ofthem tempted and were destroyed by serpents. St. Paul well knew that when God sent his angel to lead Israel in the wilderness, hebid them, Beware of him, provoke him not, he will not par- don your sins, for my name is in him : And the apostle here seems plainly to .refer to this same person, this angel, even Christ, whom they tempted or provoked, and he did not pardon them, but sent serpents to destroy them ; and yet the person who was thus tempted and provoked, is also called the Lord God. Deut. vi. 16. Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God, as ye tempted him in Massaki. VI. Thence also I think we may infer, that there is sucjt a peculiar union between the great God and the man Jesus Christ in his angelic, as well as in his incarnate state, as that he is properly represented as God-man in one complex per- son : he that was the angel of the presence of God, and in whom God dwelt under the ancient dispensations, has new took flesh and blood upon him, and is God manifest in the flesh ; he that is of the seed of David, was and is God over all blessedfor ever. Amen. To all this let me subjoin some testimonies both of Ancients and Moderns asthey are cited by Bishop Bull in his ";Defence of theNicence Faith," section i. chapter i. section xi. Trypho the Jew in his dialogue with JustinMartyr maintains, that there were two present in the appearancemade to Moses in the burning bush, viz. " God andan angel; that the angel appeared in the flame of fire, and that God in the angel spake with Moses." To which Justin replies, that that may very well be granted xk3
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