[684.
freely give us all things3?" What argument would it be to say, " He that gave us a creature, how shall he not also give us himself, and all the glory of heaven ? " But if Christ be God, equal with the Father, then is the argument clear, obvious, and unanswerable.]
In the psalm before us the divinity of Christ is plainly asserted —
[Our blessed Lord himself appeals to it, in order to con- found and silence his malignant adversaries. Both Pharisees and Sadducees had endeavoured to ensnare him by difficult and perplexing questions : and, when he had answered, he put this question to them; " What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he ? " and when they said, " The Son of David," he asked them, " How then doth David in Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, &c? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?" And then we are told, " No man was able to answer him a wordV Had they been willing to acknow- ledge Christ as their Messiah, they needed not to have been at any loss for an answer ; for they knew him to be a son of David ; and he had repeatedly declared himself to be God, insomuch that they had again and again taken up stones to stone him for blas- phemy. But this passage proved beyond all doubt that the Messiah was to be " the root, as well as the offspring of David;" the Lord of David, as well as David's son.
And here it is worthy of notice, that we see in this appeal what was the interpretation which the Jews of that day put upon the psalm before us. They all understood it as relating to the Messiah : and all the attempts of modern Jews to put any other construction upon it are futile in the extreme.
But by comparing the parallel passage in St. Mark, we see what the Jews of that day thought of the doctrine of the Tri- nity0. Our Lord speaks of the Holy Ghost as inspiring David, (which none but Jehovah could do,) to declare what Jehovah the Father had said to Jehovah the Son. If the doctrine of the Trinity had not been received among them, would they have been silent, and not known what to answer him ? And would they from this time have been deterred by it from asking him any more questions?
Be it known then, that Christ is very God, and very man: he is that " Word, who was in the beginning with God, and was Godd;" " God manifest in the fleshe." He is, as the prophet calls him, " the Mighty Godf," or, as St. Paul calls him, " the
Great God and our Saviour Jesus Christg," blessed for everh."]
God
over
all
a Rom. viii. 32. d John. i. 1, 14. g Tit. ii. 13.
b Matt. xxii. 41- e 1 Tim. hi. 16. 11 Rom. ix. 5.
-46. c Mark xii. 35—37. f Isai. ix. 6.