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relating to Him had gone before; namely, in Hebron; for, first, it suited singularly with the harmony and consent which God used in his works, that the promise should, as it were, begin to take place among those patriarchal bones to whom the promise was first given, and the punctual description of the visit of the Blessed Virgin, and of the circumstance related, as well as the distinct reference to this city, would all seem rather to refer to Christ than to John; for the babe could not know what he did when he leaped in the womb, any more than Elisabeth herself. Either, then, this was the first time it had moved at all, or at this time there was something extraordinary; for Elisabeth exclaimed: "When the voice of the salutation of the mother of my Lord sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy." The selection of Hebron, too, was remarkable; for the parents being of the priests might indifferently have been born in any of the tribes whatsoever; only the Holy Ghost gives us to observe this, which is not to be passed over, that John, who should bring in baptism in the stead of circumcision, was born in the very place where circumcision was first ordained 1.

Mary did not remain with Elisabeth until the birth of John, but, as may be inferred from the text, returned to her own house before it

Dr. Lightfoot.

occurred. Nothing miraculous attended John's birth; for, after the ordinary period of gestation, when Elisabeth's "full time came that she should be delivered, she brought forth her son." It is observable that the Baptist's nativity is the only one (that of Christ excepted) which the Christian Church has thought proper to celebrate. The days appointed for the commemoration of other saints are generally those on which they respectively ceased from their labours and entered into their everlasting rest : the day of a good man's death being, indeed, the day of his birth, and this world no more than the womb in which he is formed and matured for his admission into that where there is neither sorrow nor pain. But the nativity of John being designed by the remarkable incidents that accompanied it to turn the eyes of men towards ONE that was far greater, ONE, the latchet of whose shoes he confessed himself not worthy to unloose, the Church keeps a day sacred to it, and directs us to begin our meditation by considering, as all Judea did when it happened, "what manner of child that should be" that was so wonderfully born 3. The Evangelist acquaints us that the fame and expectation of this child was "noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judea," and that accordingly "fear came on all that dwelt

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round about them." Of the father and mother we hear no more after John's birth; but Zacharias is said to have been killed in the temple for refusing to deliver up his son, and Elisabeth to have fled with the child for refuge to the wilderness, where she died; and thus this orphan was left "in the deserts, where he was till the day of his shewing unto Israel".”

SECT. III.-The Divinity, Humanity, and Office of Christ.John i. 1-14.

THE immediate design of St. John in writing his Gospel was, as we are assured by the earliest Christian writers, to refute the Cerinthians, and other heretics, whose tenets, though they branched out into a variety of subjects, all originated from erroneous opinions concerning the person of Christ and the creation of the world'. Against the heresy of Cerinthus, who considered our Saviour to be no more than a real man, the son of Joseph and Mary, and produced in the ordinary mode of generation, did the aged and venerable Evangelist bestir himself to take away the errors which had thus been disseminated among men. We accordingly see one feature in the complexion of infant Christianity, one circumstance in the history of our rising religion, which has been little noticed, but is very striking itself, and results entirely from this: The venerable founder of 'Bishop Tomline.

Dean Stanhope.

our faith, and the dignified preachers of it to the world, as late as St. John himself, do never propose the doctrine of Christ's Divinity as a new article of belief, as one that had been hitherto unknown to the Church of God, and that was now brought to light by the Gospel. They do not lay it before their hearers or their readers in formal propositions. They bring it not forward to their understandings with a solemnity of introduction that should show their own sense of its surprising nature, and prepare the minds of their people for the first reception of it. On the contrary, they pass imperceptibly into the subject. They insinuate rather than proclaim it. They speak of it in such a manner as proves it to have been familiar to their own minds, and to the minds of their countrymen. Whenever they notice it, they notice it as a doctrine which had always been professed by the Church of God, had always been believed by its members, and now wanted only to be applied to the person of Jesus. This remark, which is so necessary to the right understanding of the Scriptures, is additionally demonstrated to be true by the evident contrast which appears in the writings of St. John compared with all the other writings of the New Testament concerning this doctrine. In his time the doctrine having been doubted, denied, and opposed, this last of the

Apostles, whose life appears to have been continued for the very purpose, set himself to mention the doctrine in a very different manner: he no longer notes it in the easy and transient mode of his predecessors, but asserts it in peremptory terms, and dwells upon it in circumstantial language; and this too at the very commencement of his Gospel, in order to impress the doctrine upon the minds and spirits of the readers for ever3. St. John mentions in due order and in regular gradation the glory which Jesus had with the Father before man, or the world, which he inhabits, had a being. His glory with respect to the creatures, the works of his hands: his glory as the sole author of life and immortality: his glory with respect to man in general as fallen into a state of ignorance and sensuality: his glory with respect to the Jews to whom He first manifested Himself: his glory with respect to Christians, to whom He gave power to become the sons of God, in order to effect which He Himself became man," The Word was made flesh "."

But "the Word was made flesh" in a manner wholly and essentially different from John the Baptist or any created man, and it was necessary to the scheme of redemption, by the Redeemer offering Himself as an expiatory Sacrifice, that the manner of our Lord's conception should be

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