CHAPTER VIII.

ON THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST.

Ir is agreed by all sects of Christians, that Jesus Christ is the only Mediator between God and men. Tim. ii. 5; "For there is one God and one Mediator between [of] God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Yet there is much controversy in the religious world, concerning this Mediator; who and what he is, and how, and in what character he has fulfilled and is fulfilling the mediatorial office. If we were to go to the Bible only for instruction and guidance in this case, I think we should find no foundation for a variety of opinions. We should there find nothing but harmony and consistency; nothing but amazing love, wonderful condescension, and unmerited grace; nothing to perplex and distract the head, but enough to warm the heart, to "lift the soul to heaven!" The great source of conflicting opinions, I think, arises from the establishment of, or the attempts to establish, certain human hypotheses, doctrines, or creeds, the truth of which is at least doubtful, and not clearly supported by any revelation. It will not appear strange, that the minds of Christians have been bewildered, when we look at some of the most incredible, unscriptural doctrines, that have been advanced by great, learned, and pious men, from the third century to the present age; such as, that the Son is the eternally begotten Son of God; and infi

nitely more, and contradictory thereto, that he is the eternal self-existent God himself! And again, in further contradiction, that the Son of God never existed (as Son of God) till he was born of the virgin Mary; that his Sonship commenced with his birth on earth; that till that time he was the Omnipotent Jehovah, and that then, he reduced and humbled himself (his unchangeable Deity) so as to become a material being, in the form of a servant, and in that form was "obedient unto death, even the death of the cross;" and yet that, notwithstanding this immense reduction and humiliation, he still remained the same unchanged and unchangeable Jehovah ! And to crown the climax of impossibilities, he is made a double being; the Supreme God, and a mere man, or in technical language, very God and very man, the Supreme God and a real man. And it is

further advanced, that the ever living, supreme, ever blessed God and Creator, suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried! Lest it should be thought that I have not good authority for the existence of such astonishing, shocking, if not blasphemous doctrines, I will quote largely from Bishop Pearson, on the creeds, page 186, &c., who for learning and orthodoxy stands among the highest. His authority, with the Episcopalians, is about equal to St. Paul's, though they differ in so many respects, that either he or Bishop Pearson must be heretical in doctrine. "Having regard to the articles and creeds of the Church," without noticing the Bible, Bishop Pearson says, "Wherefore, by the immediate coherence of

the articles, [articles of the Church] and necessary consequence of the creeds, it appears plainly, that the eternal Son of God, God of God, very God of very God [the ever living God] suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried. Now the Son of God we have already showed to be called the only begotten, because he was from all eternity generated of the essence of the Father, and therefore is, as the eternal Son, so also the eternal God." In page 142 the Bishop had said, "it is necessary that we should believe the Son to be that eternal God, whom we are bound to worship, whom only we should serve." Then we are not bound to worship and serve the Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of the Universe. this the doctrine of the learned Bishop, and of his adherents? It is not so taught in the Bible. Christ uninformly taught his disciples to worship the Father and him only (in the highest sense) to serve. And he (not like some preachers) "practised what he preached." "I thank thee, O Father," he often said; he never thanked the Son or the Holy Spirit.

Is

But take a little more of Bishop Pearson, if you can bear it. "That person, who was begotten of the Father before all worlds, and so was truly the Lord of glory, and most truly God, took on him the nature of man, and in that nature, being still the same person which he was before, [that is, the blessed God] did suffer and die. When he was buffetted and scourged, there was no other person sensible of those pains, than the eternal Word, [God] which be

fore all worlds was impassible. When he was crucified and died, there was no other person, which gave up the Ghost, but the Son of him, [that is, that being himself] who alone hath immortality." But the Bishop, in the next page, seems to have got alarmed and startled at what he had just laid down; he throws himself into a thick cloud of mystery, and unsays, in fact, all he had before advanced; and brings out other doctrines, as unscriptural and inconsistent as those he had seemingly relinquished. He adds, “While we prove the person suffering to be God, we may seem to deny the passion of which the perfection of the Godhead is incapable. The divine nature is of infinite and eternal happiness, never to be disturbed by the least degree of infelicity, and therefore subject to no sense of misery. Wherefore, while we profess that the Son of God [the very God] did suffer for us, we must so far explain our assertions, as to deny that the divine nature of our Saviour suffered." That the everlasting Jehovah suffered and died, all do, and must deny; but that the only begotten Son of God, the anointed Saviour, really (and not by fiction) suffered and died, is as fully revealed and proved by the Bible, as the existence of God himself. But let us look a little further at the Bishop. He goes on to say, "The sufferings of the Messiah were the sufferings of God, the Son, [the ever blessed God] not that they were the sufferings of his Deity, as of which that was incapable, but of his humanity. For though the human nature was conjoined to the divine,

yet it suffered as much as if it had been alone, and the Divine as little as if it had not been conjoined.” Where then is the amazing, the ineffable love of God displayed, in giving his only Son to suffer and die for sinners, if he did not (and the Omniscient God knew he would not) suffer at all; any more than he would if he had remained in the bosom of his Father? Again, in page 202 of the same work, we read, "And it is certain that our Jesus, the Christ whom we worship, was really and truly crucified." Hence it follows, that the Bishop and those that agree with him, as they hold that the humanity of Christ only suffered, and that is to be worshipped, they must worship four Gods-God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, (which they consider God,) and God the humanity of Christ. This would be going beyond the Articles; and if the Church consider it evangelical, it should be admitted as the 40th Article. I will, at present, make no further comments on the writings of this learned Bishop; I may hereafter on some other points. It appears to me, he has disproved the doctrine of the Trinity, beyond a doubt, if we judge him by his own mouth.

Thus I have stated some of the strange, and as I call them, unscriptural doctrines of some uninspired men, which I consider a great cause of the controversies, and various opinions on the subject of the mediation of the Son of God. In these doctrines, we can find no Mediator, such as the Bible points out. We will therefore confine ourselves, in the examination of the subject, to that unerring standard, the Holy Scriptures.