with the fullest confidence, conclude that the blessed Jesus is, in its highest and most complete sense of the word, "the Son of God."

Of the pre-existence of Christ before the creation of the world.

A few texts

Seventeenth chapter, fifth verse of St. John. Christ says, "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." Again he says, "I came down from Heaven." "I proceeded forth and came from God."." Before Abraham was I am." "No man hath ascended up to Heaven but he that came down from Heaven." I have already noticed the false and visionary reply of Socinus to this plain text. Again, "What if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?", which ascension his Disciples actually did wit

ness.

That the worlds were created by Christ.

I shall produce only two positive texts. "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power," &c. &c.

Whoever reads the Socinian glosses, and the strange manner in which they explain away the direct meaning of these texts, because they must, consistent with their other declarations, deny the preexistence of Christ, and his creation of the worlds, will not be surprised at St. Paul's applicable expression, " Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."

If the Unitarian statement can stand

for a moment againt the testimony of Scripture, if even in the judgment of common sense it were not perfectly untenable, and if it could bear investigation, then the Christian religion is overthrown. If Christ be not divine, farewell to the hopes of all true believers, their consolation in his atonement is gone for ever. All Christ's gracious promises, which tend so much to promote repentance and amendment of life; and with which the mind conscious of guilt looked for a mediation between the sinner and an offended God, are no more. The strict law of God, who is "of purer eyes than to behold iniquity," stands arrayed in all its terrors before the guilty sinner. To what redemption can he look? He might well say to these Unitarian philosophers and metaphysicians, I had hoped for pardon to my sins through the merits of my blessed Saviour ; I was taught by the Apostles that God had ap pointed the Redeemer as a propitiation

for my sins, and indeed that the Son of God himself had declared that "he came to give his life a ransom for many :" but you, Socinians, tell me this is all a mistake, this is all spoken in figure or allegory; if that be the case, my comfort is gone, my hope is no more. Do not talk to me of the virtues of human nature, do not talk to me even of repentance, which must ever be imperfect. Man repents one day, and sins the next, and requires therefore a renewal of repentance: how shall any flesh be justified by the deeds of the moral law, any more than by those of the ceremonial? Can any mortal be sufficiently weak, or sufficiently presumptuous, to think that Heaven must be the reward of such a variable course of conduct? When I consider that the rejection of our Lord's Divinity is neither more nor less than the rejection of Christianity altogether, (for that is the fact,) and when I consider the despair which it must create in the human mind, it is

astonishing that any, who read and acknowledge the Bible, should endeavour to support so comfortless and so nugatory a doctrine. If such persons rejected the Bible; if they acted upon the principles of their favorite natural religion, and would not admit of divine revelation; however mistaken, however we might deem them deluded infidels, still their mode of reasoning might be accounted for; but these strange arguers allow the mission of Christ, and yet will not allow that there is a Divine Spirit, to whom we are to look up to assist our infirmities, and to pour into our hearts right desires, nor a gracious and Divine Redeemer, in whose merits we may place our trust. Although we are all accountable creatures, and that a day is coming when we must all give an account of every thought, word, and action, and we must all be conscious of our manifold errors; yet the Socinians tell us there is nothing to stand between us and an incensed God, who