I am aware that in calling you to worship the Lord Jesus Christ we appear to you to be transferring to him the honour due to God alone. But if you will look into your own Scriptures, you will find that the person who was foretold as your Messiah is no other than God himself. Examine the Psalm before referred to0, and see how David speaks of your
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Messiah : " The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy foot- stool." David here calls him Jehovah : and how could he do that, if that title did not properly belong to him ? This question Jesus put to the Pharisees in his day ; and they could not answer him a word : nor can all the Rabbis upon the face of the earth suggest any satisfactory answer to it now. The only answer that can be given is, that the same person, who as man, was David's son, as Jehovah, was David's Lord, or, as Isaiah calls him, " Emmanuel, God with us." Receive him in the character in which the Prophet Isaiah foretold his advent, as " the Child born, the Son given, the Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace." Call him, as another prophet instructs you, " Jehovah our right- eousness :" and know, that, in thus " honouring Christ, you will honour the Father who sent him."
This then is my first answer ; that in no respect whatever do we call you from God, but wholly and altogether to him ; to Him, as the One true God, in opposition to all idols ; to his law, as fulfilled in Christ, and directing you to him ; and to his Gospel, as the completion and consummation of all the wonders of his love. In as far as we call you from your pre- sent course, it is only from types and shadows to the substance and reality. You remember that at the moment of our Lord's death the veil of the temple was rent in twain, and the most holy place was laid open to the view of all who were worshipping before it. The way into the holiest being thus opened to you all by God himself, we invite all to enter in with boldness, and assure you in God's name that you shall find acceptance with him.
The next thing which we proposed to shew was, that our authority for calling you thus to Christ is not founded on such prophecies or miracles as might have issued from an impostor, but on such as it was impossible for an impostor to produce.
Consider the prophecies : they were not some few dark predictions of mysterious import and of
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doubtful issue, uttered by our Lord himself; but a continued series of prophecies from the very fall of Adam to the time of Christ ; of prophecies compre- hending an almost infinite variety of subjects, and those so minute, as to defy all concert either in those who uttered, or those who fulfilled, them. A great multitude of them were of such a kind that they could not possibly be fulfilled by any but the most inveterate enemies. Who but an enemy would have nailed him to the cross, or pierced him to the heart with a spear, or offered him gall and vinegar to drink, or mocked and insulted him in the midst of all his agonies ? Do not these put his Messiahship beyond a doubt ? I will mention only one prophecy of Christ himself; but it is such an one as no impostor would utter, and no impostor could fulfil. What impostor would rest all the credit of his mission on his being put. to a cruel, ignominious, and accursed death, and rising from the dead the third day? Or if an im- postor were foolish enough to utter such a prophecy, how, when he was actually dead, could he fulfil it ? But the whole Scriptures predicted these things of Jesus, as Jesus also did of himself: and the exact fulfilment of them proves beyond all reasonable doubt his true Messiahship.