Letter 2.

LETTER 2.

Doctor Priestley is mistaken when he asserts that the prophets always spoke of the Messiah as of a mere man like themselves, and that the Jews never expected that the Messiah could be more than a man. In opposition to this error, this letter proves that our first parents expected a Divine Messiah, and that the Divine person who appeared to the patriarchs and to Moses, was Jehovah the Son, or Christ in his pre-existent state.

REV. SIR,—You might have given us, at least, twenty lines of plain, uncontroverted truth in the beginning of your history; but regardless of so decent a caution, you stun us at once by a glaring, antichristian paradox. In the sixteenth line of your huge work, (for we need not go by pages to reckon up your errors,) speaking of the thoughts which the Jews entertained of the Messiah, you say, “None of their prophets gave them an idea of any other than a man like themselves in that illustrious character, and no other did they ever expect.”

Now, sir, in opposition to this strange assertion, I shall show you, not only that the prophets gave the Jews an idea of a Divine person to appear in the character of the Messiah, and that accordingly they expected such a one; but that even our first parents must have formed a much higher notion of that “seed of the woman which was to bruise the serpent’s head,” than that of “a mere man like themselves.” In proof of this, I shall not produce the expression of Eve upon the birth of Cain, whom, it is highly probable, she thought to be that seed, though according to the Hebrew it is, “I have gotten the man, the Jehovah.” But I shall go upon surer grounds than any particular expression can afford. I shall argue from facts and from the reason of the case. However unwilling you may be to allow it, it is nevertheless, as we have already seen in the former part of this work, an unquestionable truth, that the Logos, the Word, who “was in the beginning with GOD and was GOD,” was the immediate Maker of our first parents, of that beautiful world in which he placed them, and of all the creatures over which he set them, nay, and of all things visible and invisible. Now can we suppose that Adam, who, as he came out of the hands of his Maker, had such knowledge, that at first sight he gave names to all the creatures as they passed in review before him, and names perfectly descriptive of their natures; can we suppose, (I say,) that he did not know who was his Creator, and the Creator of all these creatures he had named? Certainly we cannot. But if he knew who was his Creator, he could hardly be ignorant who would be his Redeemer. For, considering the holy and happy state he and his partner had been in before their fall, the serenity of their minds, the vigour of their bodies, and the beauty and fertility of the blissful spot where their bounteous Lord had placed them; and considering the sad change that had now taken place, the dreadful ruin they had brought on themselves and their posterity by their transgression; considering their crime itself, with its awful retinue, shame, the curse, sorrow, toil, death, and corruption; it was reasonable, surely, to think, that the repairer of the breach, the restorer of a ruined world, would be that Divine person by whom it was created. Thus, when we see an exquisite piece of mechanism, capitally injured in all its parts, we reasonably conclude, that none can completely mend it but the maker, or an artist who equals him in skill.

Nor was it unreasonable for our first parents to think, that their Redeemer would be he whom St. Paul calls “the Lord from heaven:” for, he who made and married them, who gave them the garden of Eden, and warned them not to eat of the forbidden fruit; he who came to them “walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and from whose presence they hid themselves, when they heard his voice;” he, who, after he had convicted them, and had passed sentence of death upon them, so kindly saved them from despair, by the unexpected promise of a deliverer; he, who already carried his merciful condescension so far as to strip them of their “fig leaves, to make them coats of skin,” and to clothe them with needful and decent apparel;—he might, in some future period, condescend to unite himself, some way or other, to the woman’s seed, and become the destroyer of death and the serpent.

The reasonableness of this hope is evident, if he taught our first parents (as it is highly probable he did) to offer in sacrifice the beasts, “of whose skins he made them coats,” and thus already showed himself “our passover, the Lamb of God,” typically “slain from the foundation of the world.” Nor can we more reasonably account for the original notion and the universal custom of expiatory and propitiatory sacrifices, than by the supposition, that mankind were led to this part of Divine worship by a peculiar revelation, or by a positive command of that Divine person, who familiarly conversed with Adam, and who is called God, or Lord God, twenty-six times, in the second and third chapters of Genesis.

The same Scriptures which inform us, that “No man hath seen God [the Father] at any time, but that the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared him,” John 1:18, teach us, nevertheless, that God appeared to several of the patriarchs, and sometimes even in a human shape. Hence it follows, that we must either reject St. John’s declaration, above quoted, or admit that he who thus appeared, is the Son, the Logos. who “was in the beginning with God, and was God.

The truth of this conclusion will appear more clearly, if we take a view of the design and circumstances of these ancient manifestations, these preparatory, and transient incarnations (if I may so call them) of the Word, who in a fixed period was to be really and lastingly manifested in the flesh. Whether we consider his expostulating with Cain, about the murder of Abel, his trying and condemning that murderer, as he had done Adam, and his “setting a mark-upon” the guilty vagabond, “lest any finding him should kill him;” or whether we take notice of the manner in which he directed Noah to build his ark, made him enter into it, shut him in, saved him and his family from the flood, and then “speaking unto him, said, Go forth out of the ark,” &c. Whether we advert to the friendly manner in which he appeared to, and conversed with Abraham, in his various stations and journeys; or, whether we attend to the familiarity with which, accompanied by two of his angels, he came to that patriarch in a human shape, condescended to eat with that friend of God, as he ate with Simon, and was worshipped and invoked by him, as the “Judge of all the earth,” who claimed the absolute right of sparing Lot, and destroying Sodom, as he had spared Noah, and destroyed the whole world by water; and who actually destroyed that wicked city by raining, as Jehovah, fire from Jehovah upon it, when the two angels, who accompanied him, had made Lot and his daughters escape out of that accursed town: whether, I say, we consider these or any other of the Lord’s appearances, he is represented as Jehovah, coming to do beforehand the work of the Messiah.

As supreme Prophet, he leads Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, opens the eyes of Agar, instructs Moses and all the prophets, Bezaleel and all the ingenious artists. As supreme High Priest, he directs Abraham and Aaron how to offer up proper sacrifices. As “Lord of Hosts,” or “Captain of the Lord’s Host,” he overthrows five kings before Abraham; Pharaoh before Moses; the kings of Canaan before Joshua, and the Philistines before David. As Angel of the covenant, he strengthens, wrestles with, and blesses Jacob; he visits, directs, and animates Gideon; he assumes a human shape to promise a son to Abraham, and to Manoah: and as he said to the Jews, “Before Abraham was, I am,” so speaking to Moses from the burning, unconsumed bush, which was an emblem of his eternal power and glory, he shows that, with his Father, he is “the First and the Last,” and declares their common name, “I am that I am.”

These manifestations of Jehovah’s glory had circumstances characteristic of the Son’s person, as appears by the accounts handed down to us in the sacred writings. When “Moses, Aaron, and seventy-two of the elders of Israel went up, and saw the God of Israel,” it is said, “There was under his feet, as it were, a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness: and that upon these nobles he laid not his hand.” He appeared therefore as a man, since he had “feet and hands,” which it cannot be shown the Father ever did.

Accordingly the apostle, speaking of the preference which Moses’ faith gave to the God of Israel over the idols and riches of the Egyptians, says that “Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt,” Hebrews 11:26, the Israelites being then as much reproached by the Egyptians for worshipping “the God of Israel,” as we are by you, sir, for worshipping the Logos. And St. Paul, alluding to these words of Moses: “The children of Israel tempted Jehovah, saying, Is Jehovah among us or not?” Exodus 17:7; says to the Corinthians, “Let us not tempt Christ, as some of them [the children of Israel] also tempted [him] and were destroyed of serpents, 1 Corinthians 10:9; which shows the apostle believed that Jehovah, leader of Israel through the wilderness, was the very Logos, who sustained openly the office of Messiah, when he was at length manifested in human flesh.

And as the Scriptures show that these transient manifestations of Jehovah are in general to be understood of Christ in his Divine nature, or in his “form of God,” see Philippians 2:6, your own reason, sir, prejudiced as it is, must see the propriety of this doctrine. For if there be, in union with the Father’s Godhead, a Word, a Son, “whose goings out are from everlasting,” “who was in the beginning with God [the Father] and was God,” insomuch that he can say, as “the only begotten Son of the Father, I and my Father are one,” in a sense which can be true only with respect to him who is the proper Son, and the “express image” of the Father, see Romans 8:32, in the original, and Hebrews 1:3;—if there be, I say, such a Being, whom St. John calls the Logos, and whom the Father names his “well beloved Son;” and if the Scriptures testify, that the Father sent this Son to redeem mankind, and to bless all nations; is it not more reasonable to believe that the Father occasionally sent him first to redeem the Israelites from the Egyptian captivity, and to bless that favoured people, than to believe that the Father, who never personally appeared, no, not for the redemption of all mankind, appeared, nevertheless, sometimes as a man, and sometimes as an angel, for the redemption of the children of Israel from their house of bondage?

A Son, even the proper Son of God, may, with the greatest propriety, be sent by his Father, to do works worthy of omnipotence, such as the redemption of a world, or the deliverance of a favourite people; but to suppose the Father personally to appear as a partial Saviour in a cloud or in a flame, on a mountain or in a temple; to suppose him to show himself sometimes as an angel, and sometimes as a man, is contrary both to the analogy of faith and the dictates of reason.

Beside, the Scriptures inform us, that “by faith Moses endured as seeing Him who is invisible,” because “he dwells in the light, which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, nor can see,” Hebrews 11:27, and 1 Timothy 6:16. And they declare, that if the Father be visible, it is in his Son, John 14:9. From these rational and Scriptural premises, I conclude that Jehovah, who appeared to Moses, and to the seventy-two elders, and who said to the people of Israel, “I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the house of bondage,” is that “express image of the Father,” that “Prince of life,” who said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father: I and the Father are one.”

The reviewersf86 have proved to you, sir, that this was the opinion of Justin, one of the most ancient and respectable fathers, who had the honour of sealing the truth of the Gospel with his blood, one hundred and thirty years after our Lord. And Bishop Bull confirms the proofs brought against you, where he writes, “That the Son of God was he who appeared to Moses in the bush, and said, ‘I am the existent Being,’ Justin, in his dialogue with Trypho, eagerly contends. The case is this: That description of God, in Moses, I AM, equally agrees to the Father and the Son, as to one God; always saving the distinction of persons: Which is excellently explained by Justin, after this manner:—God the Father is [o wn] the Existent, as always existing of himself; God the Son is [o wn] the Existent, as existing with the Father, and eternally begotten of him.” (Bull by Grabe, vol. i, p. 347.) Meaning to resume the important subject the first opportunity, I now release you, and subscribe myself your sincere friend, and obedient servant, in the Word made flesh.

JOHN FLETCHER.