648 sea GLORY OS C*aIST AS GOD *MAN. English or foreign writers, and 1 do not find them impossible to be answered. I dare not assume that air of assurance which Bishop Fow- ler has done in several parts of his writings on this subject, when he tells us, " that there is no christian doctrine more clearly de., livered than this, and even immediately by our Saviour himself, andoften repeated by him ; and let the opposers of it be as ma- gisterially positive as they will, yet there is not more plain and undeniable evidence for any one article of faith than there is for this doctrine; and that this is the sense in which most certainly the disciples of our Lord understood his declarations." See his f0 Reflections on his Opposer,, Dr. William Sherlock, pages 3, and 23." Yet I think I can join with him when he asserts that " our Saviour never said a syllable which so much as seems to contradict the plain literal natural sense of the words by which se chose to express this doctrine ; and that it is worthy of our Ob- servation that there is no one text in the bible, that the Bishop knows of, whose plain and natural sense so much as seems to thwart the plain sense of those scriptures that he bas produced to support it ; and he adds, what controverted point is there in religion of which we can say the like ?" I easily persuade myself that most christians will agree with me thus far, That if this doctrine be true, it gives a natural and easy solution of a great number of difficulties in the word of God, it adds beauty as well as clearness tomany expressions in the New and Old Testament, and it enables us to answer many inconveniencies and appealing absurdities which the Arians fling upon the common explications of the Trinity. But if there be any sufficient argument to refute this doctrine and to prove it false, I am not so fond of it as to persist obsti- nately in the defence, nor make all things truckle and yield to this supposition. The great doctrine of the deity of Christ, and his sacred office of mediator, may perhaps be maintained without it; but then we must return again to explain some of these difficult texts of scripture by hard tropes and figures ; we must speak of Christ as God-man before his taking our nature upon him by way of " ° prolepsis," or anticipation. We must apply many interior expressions of scripture to the divine person of Christ, consider- ed in his office as mediator, which might otherwise and much better be applied to his human soul ; we must construe some phrase into truth economically which can never be true in their real and natural sense. We must indulge some catachresis or improprieties of language in the bible, which might be literally and properly expounded by the scheme now proposed : We must solve other expressions by the doctrine of communication of properties between the divine and human natures of Christ, in the same manner as we did before ; some of which solutions, I confess, are certainly necessary and always will be so, to ex-
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