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difpenfable: for, to bring the matter to one fhort point, this doctrine came either from the HEBREWS to the GENTILES, or from the GENTILES to the HEBREWs; and both conviction and profeffion induce me to adopt and to defend the former hypothefis.

CHAPTER

CHAPTER III.

The Investigation continued, and the Statements in the preceding Chapter corroborated by a Multitude of corresponding Paffages in the New Teftament. The State of the Jewish Nation at the Period of the Meffiah's Advent.

The principal Caufe of their Rejection of him fated to be their altered Sentiments concerning his Character, in Confequence of their Corruption by the Splendid Court and luxurious Manners of the Roman Governors, refident among them.-Chrift, however, directly appropriated to himself many of the most Striking Allufions to the Meffiah in the Old Teftament; and, by their own Confeffion, made himself equal with God. The Influence and Operations of the Third Perfon in the Holy Trinity being more frequently and particularly infifted on in the New Teftament, the Dif cuffion on the Character of the Paraclete refumed, and the Sceptical Argument that a mere Quality, or Principle, is meant by the To Пvεuμa Ayiov is confuted: Each Hypoftafis, therefore, being proved separately to poffefs

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all the fublime Functions that stamp Divinity on the Poffeffor, each was truly God.

HE light of revelation beamed not upon

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mankind with an inftantaneous effulgence. The facred truth which dawned in thofe words, pronounced by a benignant God, after the fall; the feed of the woman shall bruise the head of the ferpent; which was, afterwards, more clearly revealed in the promise to Abraham, that in HIS SEED all the nations of the earth fhould be blefed; which fhone with highly-increased luftre in the picturesque and fervid eloquence of Ifaiah, and which broke forth with meridian fplendour in the rapturous ftrains of the later prophets, who immediately preceded the appearance of the Meffiah, was of too awful and too fublime a nature to be at once unfolded, and too myfterious to be immediately or fully comprehended. The characters, however, of the Meffiah; of him, whofe name was to be called, WONDERFUL, COUNSELLOR, THE MIGHTY GOD, THE EVERLASTING KING; were ftrongly marked, and the important functions he was to dif charge were too accurately defined to be either mistaken or mifapplied. Those characters were confirmed by the ftamp of tradi

tional authority; they were illustrated in the allegorical way, common among the Jewish doctors, by a variety of expreffive fymbols and figures, which, however afterwards borrowed by the Pagans, to elucidate and to adorn less pure systems of theology, could not originally have entered into the conception of any one but a Hebrew, because they arofe from particular modes of interpreting their own writings. Some inftances of this kind have been already adduced, and more will be exhibited hereafter. As our Saviour himself and his apostles were Hebrews, and confequently must have been acquainted with the gradual manner in which that revelation was made, as well as all the figurative allufions by which the future Meffiah was fhadowed out, either in the facred writings, or in their traditional code, it might be expected that they would adopt both the fame progreffive method of unfolding celeftial truths, as well as endeavour to render themselves more intelligible to their audience, by occafionally addreffing them in the fame allegorical manner in which the facred precepts of religion had been constantly enforced. In fact, they did fo; and that in a far more extenfive degree than is generally understood. I have before noticed the very judicious obfervation

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fervation of Dr. Wotton, how much a diligent perufal of the MISNA, and other rabbinical compilations, may affift in discovering the true fenfe of our Lord's difcourfes and St. Paul's epistles, in which thofe compofitions are fo conftantly referred to. Indeed there are many paffages in both that are utterly unintelligible without that kind of knowledge; and all, without the light reflected from it, lofe a great portion of their force and beauty. I fhall presently exemplify what is thus affirmed by a few out of a very great number of ftriking facts, which I have neither room nor leifure to recite. One of the grand objections, urged against the eternal Divinity of the LOGOS, is that, if this doctrine formed a neceffary part of a Christian's creed, so important a truth would have been decifively revealed, and in exprefs terms, by our Saviour himself. In reality, both this folemn truth and that of a Trinity are throughout his difcourses fuiciently evident for the conviction of any, but the voluntary iceptic. Any more luminous or extensive display, than what we find in the New Testament, of the mysterions arcana, to be completely unfolded in the vast periods of eternity, and, in the gradual unfolding of which, a great portion of the happiness pro

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