replied, " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven1." Now, if Peter meant only to say that he was a good man, or a prophet, what was there in that which he might not see and know without any particular revelation of it to his soul ?
St. Stephen is yet more strong and decisive: for when he was " full of the Holy Ghost," he said, " I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God :" upon which his hearers, filled with indignation, stoned him, calling upon God, and saying, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit"1." Now is it not utterly unaccountable, that a man full of the Holy Ghost, when favoured with a vision of God, and of Jesus standing at the right hand of God, should, in the very hour of death, address himself to Jesus, and not unto the Father, and that too almost in the very words that Jesus himself had used when addressing his heavenly Father, if Jesus were not higher than any created being? If he did not see that the Son of man was also the Son of God, yea, " God over all, equal with the Father, he was deservedly stoned to death, as the vilest blasphemer that ever lived upon the earth.
Who can see the Disciples of our Lord paying him such honour, and doubt what ideas they annexed to that lowly title, "the Son of man?"]
3. What his enemies said of him —
[There can be no doubt but that they understood the terms " Son of man," and, " Son of God," to be equivalent, and that, when used in their highest sense, they denoted equality with God himself. When our Lord stood before the supreme council of the Jews, he said to them, " Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God." Upon which they all exclaimed, Art thou then the Son of God ? to which he answered, " Ye say truly, that I am"."
On another occasion we are told, that the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also, " that God was his Father, making himself equal with God0"
But the strongest testimony of all is, that his enemies actually put him to death for calling himself the Son of man. When the witnesses that appeared against him agreed not in their testimony, the high-priest asked him, " Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed ? And Jesus said, I am : and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." In these words he evidently
1 Matt. xvi. 13—17. m Acts vii. 56, 59.
n Luke xxii. 69, 70. ° John v. 18.
vol. xm. E