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The Council of Antioch, in its Epistle, states:-" In the whole Church Christ is believed to be GOD; and man of the seed of David according to the flesh." This Council sat in 264.

The Council of Arles expressed its opinion on the subject of the Trinity, by declaring the baptism of such as refused to own that doctrine to be void. In a Canon drawn up concerning the proper mode of dealing with heretics on their return to the bosom of the Church, the Council put forth the general sense of the Church, in words to this effect:-"That if any relinquished their heresy, and came back to the Church, they should ask them the Creed; and if they found that they were (had been) baptised in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, they should only receive imposition of hands, but if they did not confess the Trinity, their baptism was declared void." This Council was held in the year 314.

(From Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy.)

LIKE begetteth like, and the spreading tree of being

With each of its trefoil leaves pointeth at the trinity of God.

Let him whose eyes have been unfilmed, read this homily in all things,
And then, of duller sight, despise not him that readeth :

There be three grand principles; life, generation, and obedience;

Shadowing in every creature, the Spirit, and the Father, and the Son.
There be three grand unities, variously mixed in trinities,

Three catholic divisors of the million sums of matter:

Yea, though science hath not seen it, climbing the ladder of experiment,
Let faith, in the presence of her God, promulgate the mighty truth;
Of three sole elements all nature's works consist:

The pine, and the rock to which it clingeth, and the eagle sailing around it;
The lion, and the northern whale, and the deeps wherein he sporteth;
The lizard sleeping in the sun; the lightning flashing from a cloud;
The rose, and the ruby, and the pearl; each one is made of three;
And the three be the like ingredients, mingled in divers measures.
Thyself hast within thyself body, and life and mind:

Matter, and breath, and instinct, unite in all beasts of the field;
Substance, coherence, and weight, fashion the fabrics of the earth;
The will, the doing, and the deed, combine to form a fact:
The stem, the leaf, and the flower; beginning, middle, and end;
Cause, circumstance, consequent; and every three is one.
Yea, the very breath of man's life consisteth of a trinity of vapours,
And the noonday light is a compound, the triune shadow of Jehovah.
Shall all things else be in mystery, and God alone be understood?
Shall finite fathom infinity, though it sound not the shallows of creation?
Shall a man comprehend his Maker, being yet a riddle to himself?
Or time teach the lesson that eternity cannot master?

If God be nothing more than one, a child can compass the thought;
But seraphs fail to unravel the wondrous unity of three.
One verily He is, for there can be but one who is all mighty;
Yet the oracles of nature and religion proclaim Him three in one.
And where were the value to thy soul, O miserable denizen of earth,
Of the idle pageant of the cross, where hung no sacrifice for thee?
Where the worth to thine impotent heart, of that stirred Bethesda,
All numbed and palsied as it is, by the scorpion stings of sin?
No, thy trinity of nature, enchaned by treble death,
Helplessly craveth of its God, Himself for three salvations:
The soul to be reconciled in love, the mind to be glorified in light
While this poor dying body leapeth into life.

LECTURE IX.

THE FOREKNOWLEDGE OF GOD; ESPECIALLY IN REFERENCE TO

THE MESSIAHSHIP OR CHRISTHOOD OF JESUS.

The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Rev. xix. 10.

THE title of this lecture may perhaps surprise some of my readers. Does any one really deny, that God foreknew that Jesus would be the Messiah? You may well ask the question. I confess, that of all the marvellous things I ever met with, nothing astounded me so much as the first perusal of Mr. Barker's remarks on this subject. The absurdities and inconsistencies of Atheism, Deism, Mahommedanism, or any other ism, absolutely sink into nothing by the side of such an overwhelming mystery, as the fact of a man well read in Scripture, allowing its truth (even in the loosest sense of the word,) and yet denying the foreknowledge of God;-above all, with respect to the person and office of Jesus Christ. Yet so it is, Not only does he deny our Lord's Deity, his Pre-existence, and his miraculous conception, but he actually asserts, that God did not know at the time of his birth, whether he would turn out a good man or a bad man; that he did not know, until he had tried him, whether he would do for the Messiah or not; that Jesus was never prophesied of as an individual; that it is quite possible God may have tried many other persons before to see if they would answer his purpose for the Messiah; and that there is no means by which he can know, how a free agent will act under any given circumstances, except by trying him! What a proof of the depth of folly, into which man's boasted reason will sink, when left to itself! -and that by the very attempt to assert its own wisdom! Human reason cannot reconcile God's foreknowledge with man's free agency; and therefore, instead of bowing before the difficulty and confessing its blinduess, it must stand up for its own dignity, and boldly deny the possibility of it. What a warning does this give us against the infidel principle of rejecting every thing that cannot be reconciled to human reason. For nothing, but a blind determination to stick to this principle at whatever cost, could have hurried any one into such a monstrous absurdity, or such a daring assault on the throne of the Almighty. The doctrine of God's foreknow

ledge is far from a merely speculative point, as some assert. Deny it-and what becomes of all the prophecies in scripture ? They must be a tissue of impostures: for how can anything be foretold, if it is not foreknown? Let us then examine the general grounds on which this doctrine is rejected, before we consider its particular application to the person of Jesus Christ. The main argument brought forward against it is, that it is irreconcileable with man's free agency: "I don't see how God can foreknow the moral actions of free agents are, as near as I can remember, Mr. Barker's very words. All such "imaginations," and "high things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God," we have already endeavoured in Lecture III. to "cast down" with the "spiritual weapons "of God's word. We shall therefore only remind you again of the answer, which St. Paul gives to this very objection, supposed to be made against this very doctrine. From the 10th to the 18th verses of the 9th chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, he has been proving (to say the least) the Foreknowledge of God; and then, seeing its apparent inconsistency with man's free agency and responsibility, he supposes some one to objectWhy doth he (God) yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?" Or, to put it in its modern form-" If God knows that I shall commit a particular sin, it must be certain that I shall commit it; and if so, I can't help committing it; and if I can't help it, there can be no fault or sin in the act: not being a free agent, I cannot be responsible." This is the sort of reasoning we continually hear, precisely agreeing with the Apostle's words, "Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?" And now what answer does he give to it? Does he enter into any deep metaphysical argument, to show how God's Foreknowledge can be reconciled to man's free agency, to remove all the difficulties out of our way, and make it plain and simple to human reason? No such thing! He gives what we have all along said is the only proper answer to such " "imaginations "-"Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?"* I know that learned men have said

Probably the most remarkable specimen of scriptural interpretation, which the theological literature of any age or country could afford, is the view taken by Mr. Barker of this chapter. According to him, St. Paul's object was to shew, that God's promises and threats are all conditional, and "that God has a right”— to do what?-to reward and punish men according to their works!!! That God certainly does so, and has a right to do so, I suppose no one will deny; but will any one be kind enough just to read the chapter through, and bear in mind (especially at verse 11 and 16), that this is the drift of the Apostle's argument ! Will you further ask yourelf, how St. Paul could ever imagine any one to object against such a doctrine, "Why doth he yet find fault? for who hath resisted his will?" Just fancy a minister preaching on the doctrine, that God's promises and threats are conditional, that God has a right to regulate his own treatment of any person by that person's conduct,-and some one objecting, that such a statement was inconsistent with man's responsibility!

a great deal, and perhaps a great deal more might be said, to explain away the difficulties connected with this subject: but when all has been said that can be said, there will remain difficulties to a reflecting mind; and you will find yourself at last obliged to be content with leaving the matter just where the Apostle left it. Scripture distinctly asserts both the entire Foreknowledge of God and the entire responsibility of man; and therefore to all difficulties, as to how these things can be, we need only say "Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God." The more deeply any enlightened Christian has attempted to dive into this mystery, the more thoroughly he will be convinced, that it is impossible ever to untie the knot, that it must after all be cut-either in St. Paul's way, by "casting down' man's 'imaginations with the Word of God, or in Mr. Barker's way, by casting down the Word of God with man's imaginations.

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The doctrine of Predestination is always brought forward in connection with Foreknowledge; but with this the present Lecture has nothing whatever to do. Even orthodox Christians here differ so much amongst themselves, that I feel it would be unwise to say anything; though few probably could agree with Mr. Barker, that some things, predestined by God, never come to pass"! On the subject of Predestination, I would humbly advise my readers to think more than argue, and pray more than think: above all, never to look at it, but in the light in which Scripture presents it. Remember, you may be blinded by looking at the sun with your naked eye; but through a coloured glass you may gaze on it without hurt or inconvenience. The Bible is this glass. Through it "the deep things of God" are presented to us in such a light, as we are able to bear. All we have to do is, to pray for heavenly guidance, that we may "spiritually discern" them; then just take them, as they are there stated, without regard to any consequence that may appear to be involved in them; and leave God to vindicate his own ways.

The whole of the remaining part of Mr. Barker's reasoning about Foreknowledge (at least as far as I have seen) may be summed up in the cases of Eli, and of Nineveh. In the first of these, God promises a blessing to the family of Eli, which they forfeit by transgression; in the second, he threatens Nineveh with a punishment, which they avert by repentance. "Here," says Mr. Barker, "the thing predestinated and foretold did not take place." We reply, that they were neither predestined nor foretold; they were promised and threatened: and the non-fulfilment of them only showed that in both cases a condition was implied, though not expressed. The only possible argument therefore, which can be drawn from these, and similar passages against the Foreknowledge of God, is, that all prophecies are but conditional promises or threats:

a position so palpably absurd, that no one surely would venture upon it. This will be seen at once, when we come to instance a few of them.

But before doing so, another text must be noticed, which at first sight seems much more to the purpose, though I never remember seeing it brought forward; "And it came to pass, when Pharoah had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent, when they see war, and they return to Egypt." Ex. xiii. 17. The "peradventure" here might very naturally lead us to infer, that God did not know whether they would repent or not; but we have only to look at a few other passages, to see at once, that such a way of drawing an inference would lead us very far astray. Take four "And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.” Gen xi. 5. "And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know," Gen. xviii. 20, 21. “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes." Gen. xviii. 26. "For now I know, that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. Gen. xxii. 12. Now the first of these passages would seem naturally to imply, that God had to come down, in order to see the tower; the second, that he had to come down, in order to ascertain whether the report that had reached him of the doings at Sodom was true; the third, that at the time he was speaking to Abraham he did not know, whether there were fifty righteous in Sodom or not; and the fourth, that he did not know until that event, whether Abraham feared him or not: * all quite as obviously as the word "peradventure" in Ex. xiii. 17, implies, that he did not know whether the Israelites would repent or not. Do you admit all those inferences? Certainly not, you say; other Scriptures will not allow us to do so: in these cases, God no doubt spoke, to use St. Paul's words, "after the manner of men Exactly: and just so other Scriptures, which prove God's entire Foreknowledge of all things, will not allow us to admit an inference contrary to it from this passage. To a few of these Scriptures then we shall now direct your attention.

A careless reader might think, that this text supported Mr. Barker's theory about Foreknowledge; but if it proves anything, it would prove that God could not without trying him, tell the state of Abraham's heart at the present time. The trial did not shew, whether Abraham would fear God at some future time, but that he did fear him then. And could not "the searcher of hearts" read Abraham's heart? Could he not tell, whether it was an obedient heart, without having some outward action to judge by ?

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