APPENDIX NO. IV.

EXTRACTS FROM SERMONS AND OTHER WRITINGS BY

AUTHORS PROFESSING THE PREVALENT THEORY.

REFERRED TO AT PAGE 325.

“Nay, God is so ready in his mercy that he did pardon us, even before he redeemed us.—For what is the secret of the mystery that the eternal Son should take upon him our nature, and die our death, and suffer for our sins, and do our work and enable us to do our own? He that did this is God.”

“Indeed we were angry with God, at enmity with the Prince of life; but he was reconciled to us as far, as that he then did the greatest thing in the world for us; for nothing could be greater than that God, the Son of God, should die for us.”

JEREMY TAYLOR.—Sermons, Boston edition of 1816, vol. 2, page 531,

On Miracles of Divine Mercy.

“That God should vouchsafe to become man, to reconcile man to God; that he should come down from heaven to earth, to raise us from earth to heaven; that he should assume our vile and frail and mortal nature, that he might clothe us with glory and honour and immortality; that he should suffer death to save us from hell, and shed his blood to purchase eternal redemption for us!”

TILLOTSON.—Works, vol. 3, page 40, Sermon on Divinity of our Lord.

The hiding the majesty of God under the form of a servant; his descent, not only to the earth, the lowest dregs of the world, the footstool of the Divinity, but to the most abject and forlorn condition in that earth; his taking the similitude of weak flesh, and running through all the degrees of reproaches and punishment, even to the grave itself, were voluntary acts, the workings of his love, that he might rescue us from a deserved hell, to advance us to an undeserved heaven, and make us partakers of that blessedness he had voluntarily quitted for our sakes.”

“In all his sufferings he retained the relation and reality of the Son of God; the unity of his natures remained firm in all his passions, and therefore the efficacy of the Deity mingled itself with every groan in his agony, every pang and cry upon the cross, as well as with the blood which was shed; and as his blood was the blood of God,—Acts, 20. 28,—so his groans were the groans of God, his pangs were the pangs of God.”

CHARNOCK.—Works, vol. 2, pages 876, 900

“Let it be counted folly, or frenzy, or fury, whatsoever, it is our comfort and our wisdom; we care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath sinned, and God hath suffered; that God hath made himself the son of man, and that men are made the righteousness of God.”

HOOKER.— Works, vol. 3, page 341, Discourse of Justification.

“Especially considering the greatness of the person that suffered it; not a mere man, not an angel, not an archangel, but the only begotten Son of God, of the same essence and glory with the Father. This the apostle takes special notice of in this very chapter, where, speaking of the Jews crucifying Christ, he saith “they crucified the Lord of glory,”—1 Corinthians, 2. 8; which is the same as if he had said, they crucified God himself.”

“Especially if you go but a little further into the garden; for there you see: oh, what do you see there? The saddest spectacle that ever mortal eye as yet beheld; even the Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, lying flat upon the ground.”

BEVERIDGE.—Sermons, vol. 1, pages 156, 157, 540.

1 “We should, therefore, revolve often in our thoughts this great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh, dying on the cross, to destroy the works of the devil.”

ATTERBURY.—Sermons, vol. 4, pages 175, 176, Glorifying in Cross of Christ.

“Jesus expires; the dead leave their tombs; the sun withdraws his light; nature is convulsed at the sight of her Creator dying upon a cross.”

“The earth trembles, as refusing to support the wretches, whose sacrilegious hands were attacking the life of Him who fastened the foundations thereof,—Job. 38. 6; and founded it upon its basis.—Psalms, 104. 5.

SAURIN.—Sermons, vol. 6, pages 114, 135; second Am. edition.

“Wonder not, saith St. Cyril, the Catechist, if the whole world was redeemed; for it was not a bare man, but the only Son of God that died for it.” “But a farther height; a perfect immensity, indeed, of worth and efficacy, must needs accrue to the death of our Saviour from his being the Son of God; from his being God, (one and the same in nature with his almighty and all-glorious Father;) for it is the blood of Christ the Son of God, which purgeth us from all sin; yea, God himself did as St. Paul saith in the Acts, purchase the church with his own blood; it is the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity; and ‘Hereby,’ saith St. John, ‘perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us.’ That the immortal God should die, that the Most High should be debased to so low a condition, as it cannot be heard without wonder, so it could not be undertaken without huge reason, nor accomplished without mighty effect.”

BARROW.—Sermons, vol. 4, page 500; vol. 5, page- 12.

“When our Saviour fasted forty days, there was no other person hungry than that Son of God who made the worlds; when he sat down weary by the well, there was no other person felt that thirst but he who was the eternally begotten of the Father, the fountain of the Deity: when he was buffeted and scourged, there was no other person sensible of those pains than that eternal Word, who, before all worlds, was impassible: when he was crucified and died, there was no other person which gave up the ghost but the Son of Him, and so of the same nature with Him who only hath immortality.’”

PEARSON.—On the Creed, page 311.

“This could only be effected by the wonderful scheme in which Mercy and Truth are made to kiss each other; when the same God who, in one person exacts the punishment, in another himself sustains it; and thus makes his own mercy pay the satisfaction to his own justice.”

HORSLEY—Sermons, page 92, On the Water and Blood of Christ.

“It was no less a person than the eternal and only begotten Son of God, who was before all worlds, the brightness of his Father's glory and the express image of his person, who suffered in our stead.”

“That his eternal and well-beloved Son should veil his divine glory, clothe himself with human flesh, subject himself to a life of pain and suffering, and at last make his soul an offering for sin upon a cross!”

WITHERSPOON.—Works, vol. 1, page 57; vol. 2, page 24.

“Behold, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. If God so loved us-observe, the stress of the argument lies on this very point—so loved us— as to deliver up his only Son to die a cursed death for our salvation. Beloved, what manner of love is this, wherewith God both loved us, so as to give his only Son, in glory equal with the Father, in majesty co-eternal? What manner of love is this, wherewith the only begotten Son of God hath so loved us, as to empty himself, as far as possible, of his eternal Godhead; as to divest himself of that glory which he had with the Father before the world began; as to take upon him the form of a servant, being found in fashion as a man; and then to humble himself still farther, ‘being obedient unto death, even the death of the cross!’”

“The Word, God the Son, ‘was made flesh,’ lived and died for our salvation.”

JOHN WESLEY.—Works, vol. 2, pages 44, 45, 407; New York edition of 1831.*

*It is probable that we have done injustice to the distinguished Wesley, by classing him among the friends of the prevalent theory. We have not found a sentence in all his writings indicative of his adhesion to its dogma. The passages quoted and the hymns imputed to him, strongly imply the contrary.

“There is something so stupendous in the voluntary humiliation and death of him who claims to be the only begotten of the Father, the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, that, to convince us of the fact, the most powerful and unequivocal testimony is indispensably necessary.”

“To create man, nothing was required but a word—He spake, and it was DONE. But to recover him from the ruin in which sin had involved him, it was necessary for the eternal Son to become incarnate, and the Lord of life to expire upon a cross.”

“Heaven, and the heaven of heavens could not contain him; yet he dwelt, to all appearance, in the body of an infant;—the invisible Creator clothed in human form,—the Ancient of days, cradled as an infant of days,—He, who upholdeth all things, sinking under a weight of suffering,—the Lord of life; the Lord of glory, expiring on a cross,—the Light of the world sustaining an awful eclipse,—the Sun of Righteousness immerged in the shadow of death!”

“Nor was there any waste of life in that sacrifice; every portion of his infinite energy was requisite to the attainment of such an object; nothing less than the power that upholds all things was adequate to sustain the weight of human sin. He whose almighty influence diffuses itself through the heavens and earth, and preserves all orders of being, He alone endured our punishment; He “trod the wine-press alone.’”

ROBERT HALL.-Works, vol. 1, pages 512, 513, 522; vol. 6, pages 298, 300.