Q. Can you farther cite any passage to prove that CJirist as a man ascended into heaven, and was there, and cam^e from, God out of heaven, before he showed himself to the world and discharged his prophetical office, so that the talking of Moses with God, in the person of an angel hearing the name of God, was hut a shadow of Christ's talking with God?
A. John iii. 13, 30-32, vi. 29, 32, 33, 38, 41, 42, 51, 57, 58, 62, viii. 29, 42, xiii. 1, 3, xvi. 27-30, xvii. 8.
We are come now to the head of this affair, to that which has been aimed at all along in the former queries. The sum is : " Christ until the time of his baptism was ignorant of the mind and will of God, and knew not what he was to do or to declare to the world, nor what he came into the world for, at least only in general; but then when he was led into the wilderness to be tempted, he was rapt up into heaven,^ and there God instructed him in his mind and will, made him to know the message that he came to deliver, gave him the law that he was to promulge, and so sent him down again to the earth to preach it." Though the Scripture says that he knew the will of God, by being his " only-begotten Son, full of grace and truth," and that he was " full of the Holy Ghost" when he went to the wilderness, being by him " anointed to preach the gospel ;" though at his solemn entrance so to do " the heavens were opened, and the Spirit of God descended on him in the form of a dove," God giving solemn testi- mony to him and charge to " hear him ;" * yet, because Mr B.'s masters are not able to answer the testimonies of Scripture for the divine nature of Christ, which affirm that he was in heaven before his in- carnation, and came down to his work by incarnation, this figment
' Isa. xlii. 1, 19; Phil. ii. 7; Isa. Iii. 13, Ixi. 1.
» Smalc. de Divin. Christi, cap. iv.
» John i. 18; Luke iv. 1 ; Isa. Ixi. 1; Matt. iii. 15-17.
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854 VINDICI^ EVANGELICiE.
is set on foot, to the unspeakable dishonour of the Son of God. Be- foi-e I proceed farther in the examination of this invention and de- tection of its falsehood, that it may appear that Mr B. made not this discovery himself by his impartial study of the Scripture (as he reports), it may not be amiss to inquire after the mind of them in this business whose assistance Mr B. has in some measure made use of.
The Racovian Catechism gives us almost the very same question and answer : —
Q. Whence is it manifest that Christ revealed the will of God perfectly tinto us ?
A. Hence, because Jesus himself was in a most perfect manner taught it of God in heaven, and was sent from heaven magnificently for the publishing of it to men, and did perfectly declare it to them.
Q. But where is it written that Christ was in heaven, and was sent from heaven ?
A. John vi. 38,— ^
— and so do they proceed with the places of Scripture here cited by Mr B. The same Smalcius spends one whole chapter in his book of the Divinity of Christ, whose title is, " De Initiatione Christi ad Mu- nus Propheticum," to declare and prove this thing, that Christ was so taken up into heaven, and there taught the mind of God, Smalc. de Divin. Jes. Christ, cap. \v. ; only in this he seems to be at variance with Mr B., that he denies that Moses saw the face of God, which this man makes the ground of affirming that Christ did so. But here Mr B. is at variance also with himself in the end of the last question, intimating that Moses saw only the face of an angel that bare the name of God ; which now serves his turn as the other did before. Os- torodius, in his Institutions, cap. xvi., pursues the same business with vehemency, as the manner of the man was: but Smalcius is the man who boasts himself to have first made the discovery ; and so he did, as far as I can find, or at least he was the first that fixed the time of this rapture to be when he was in the wilderness. And saith he, " Hoc mysterium nobis a Deo per sacras literas revelatum esse plurimum gaudemus," Idem ibid. And, of all his companions, this man lays most weight on this invention. His eighth chapter, in the refutation of Martiuus Smiglecius, de Verbi Incarnationis Natura, is spent in the pursuit of it; so also is a good part of his book against Ravens- pergerus. Socinus himself ventures at this business, but so faintly and slightly as I suppose in all his writings there is not any thing to be found wherein he is less dogmatical; his discourse of it is in his first answer to the Paroenesis of Volanus, pp. 88-40. One while he says the words are to be taken metaphorically; then, that Christ was