1 " Sibi licere praedicans quicquiJ Deo licet; neque magis Sabbato se adstringi. Crassa calumnia." — Grot. Annot. Johan. v. 18.
' " Comparatio est sumpta a discipulo qui magistrum sibi praecuntem diligenter in- tuetur, ut imitari possit." — Id. ibid. v. 19.
' Zanchius de Tribus Eloliim, lib. v. cap. iv. p. 151.
* "Notemus igitur Christum Judseos tauquam in verborum suorum intelligentia
188 VINDICIiE EVANGELICiE.
they sought to slay him ; which if they had done, he should by his death have borne witness to that which was not true. They sought to kill him because he made himself such a Son of God as by that sonship he was equal to God ; Avhich if it were not so, there was a necessity incumbent on him to have cleared himself of that asper- sion, which yet he is so far from, as that in the following verses he farther confirms the same thing.
So he " thought it not robbery to be equal with God," Phil. ii. 6- It is of God the Father that this is spoken, as the Father, as ap- pears in the winding up of that discourse: Verse 11, " That every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." And to him is Christ equal; and therefore begotten of his own essence.
Yea, he is such a Son as is one with his Father: "I and my Father are one," John x. SO ; which the Jews again instantly interpret, with- out the least reproof from him, that he being man did yet aver himself to be God, verse 33.
This place also is attempted to be taken out of our hands by Grotius, though with no better success than the former. 'Eyw Ttai b UuTYip h lGi:.iv. " He joineth what he had spoken with what went before," saith he : " If they cannot be taken from my Father's power, they cannot be taken from mine, for I have my power of my Father ; so that it is all one to be kept of me as of my Father : " which he intends, as I suppose, to illustrate by the example of the power that Joseph had under Pharaoh, Gen. xli., though the verse he in- tend bo false printed.^ But that it is an unity of essence and nature, as well as an alike prevalency of power, that our Saviour intends, [is evident,] not only from that apprehension which the Jews had concerning the sense of those words, who immediately took up stones to kill him for blasphemy (from which apprehension he doth not at all labour to free them), but also from the exposition of his mind in those words, which is given us in our Saviour's following discourse: for, verse 36, he tells us this is as much as if he had said, " I am the Son of God" (now, the unity between Father and Son is in essence and nature principally), and then that "he doeth the works of his Father," the same works that his Father doeth, verses 37, 38, which, were he not of the same nature with him, he could not do; which he closes with this, " That the Father is in him, and he in the Father," verse 38: of which words before and afterward.
hallucinates minime reprehendentcm se naturalem Dei Filium clare professum esse. Deinde, quod isto modo colligunt Christum se Deo asqualera facere recte fecerunt; nee idee a Christo rcfelluntur, aut vituperantur ab evangelista, qui in re tanta nos errare non fuerit passus." — Cartwrightus Har. Evar. in loc.
" Conuectit quod dixerat cum superioribus ; Si Patris potestati eripi non pote- runt, nee meoe poterunt : nam mea potestas a Patre emanat, et quidem ita, ut tan- tundem valeat a me, aut a Patre, cuslodiri. Vid. Geu. xli. 25, 27."
OF THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 89
He, then (that we may proceed), who is so the Son of God as that he is one with God, and therefore God, is the natural and eternal Son of God ; but that such a Son is Jesus Christ is thus plentifully testified unto in the Scripture. But because I shall insist on sundry other places to prove the deity of Christ, which also all confirm the truth under demonstration, I shall here pass them by. The evi- dences of this truth from Scripture do so abound, that I shall but only mention some other heads of arguments that may be and are commonly insisted on to this purpose. Then, —
4. He who is the Son of God, begotten of his Father by an eter- nal communication of his divine essence, he is the Son begotten of the essence of the Father ; for these terms are the same, and of the same importance. But this is the description of Christ as to his sonship which the Holy Ghost gives us. Begotten he was of the Father, according to his own testimony : " Thou art my Son ; this day have I begotten thee," Ps. ii. 7. And he is " the only-begotten Son of God,'' John iii. 18. And that he is so begotten by a com- munication of essence we have his own testimony: "Before the hills, Avas I brought forth," Prov. viii. 25. He was begotten and brought forth from eternity. And now he tells you farther, John v. 26, " The Father hath given to the Son to have life in him- self." It was by the Father's communication of life unto him, and his living essence or substance ; for the life that is in God differs not from his being. And all this from eternity : " The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth ; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth," etc., Prov. viii. 22, etc., to the end of verse 31. " But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting," Micah V. 2. " In the beginning was the Word," John i. 1. " And now, O Father, glorify thou m^e with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was," John xvii. 5. " And again, when he bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, he saith," etc., Heb. i. 6, etc.