liECrION II. 521 used promiscuously in these narratives. Thus it was not pro- perly the cloud, light, or fire, but the angel who was intimately and immediately united togodhead; and it was this angel who as- sumed the names, titles and characters of God, Lord, and Jeho- vah ; for we mayreasonably suppose that the union between God and this glorious angel, that is, the pre- existent soul of Jesus Christ in its non- incarnate or angelic state,was incomparably more near and intimate than the union of the great God with a pillar of cloud or fire; and upon this account the angel may be called God in a more proper manner than the fire, cloud or bush could ever be, because of the intimacyof the union which made-Gott and this angel one complex person. 7. None of the corporeal appearances, or habitations of God, viz. the cloud, the light, the fire, are said in scripture to speak to man, it is only said; that God spake out of them. The cloud, the fire, the bush, are never said to assn ne these names or titles, I am the Lord, I am God Almighty, I am the God of Israel. But now the angel who appeared speaks to men, and he assumes these divine names and titles in the Old Testament, as is abundantly evident in Ex. iii. and in ether places ; and so doth Jest's Christ in the New Testament; Rev. i. ii. and iii. 1 am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, Etc. Thence we may justly infer, there was a nearer and more intimate union between the godhead and that angel than between God and the cloud, or fire, &c. even, such an union as may be called personal, whereby God and the angel may be looked upon as one complex intelligent agent or person and thus' Christ may be called, as I remember one or more 6f those learned writers have called him, the God-angel before he was complete God-man. 8. None of these corporeal appearances or habitations of God, neither the cloud, nor the fire, nor the bright light, are expressly and directly called God by the holy writers in a catego- rical and express manner. He is Emmanuel, or God with us He is Jehovahour Righteousness; He is God over all, blessed for ever; which further shews a more intimate union between the godhead and the man Jesus, than there was between God and the cloud or fire, and it shews also that Christ is a complex per- on or God -man. 9. Observe also, that God did not always or constantly dwell in the same corporeal habitation, that is; cloud, or fire, but God constantly resided in this angel of the covenant, this angel of his presence, who was his own Son : Hekept the same, intellectual habitation always, though he frequently changed his corporeal habitation. God who was always united to this unbo- died human spirit or angel did also sometimes assume a cloud, a fire, a bush, or the figure of a man to appear in under the OM
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