which are, and which are yet to be. Wherefore, in such passages as our text, wherein glory is said to have accrued unto God from the Son of man, it cannot be meant that the eternal and unchangeable Majesty of Heaven received any right or property in any thing which before he had not possessed; but that by the peril and travail of that same great enterprise of his Son against the powers and potentates of evil, there did come forth into manifestation, that is, into the region of creation and of knowledge, some form of the Divine nature and feature of the Divine excellency, some secret of the Divine counsels and everlasting monument of the Divine power, which heretofore was undiscovered and undiscoverable, and to the creatures all the same as if it had not been. For, dear brethren, if you will but cut the cords and rise a little above the artificial structures which we raise upon the ground of God's clear and unobstructive word, you will at once perceive that, from the beginning, every thing which hath been done by the Godhead, in the work of creation or of providence, or of regeneration, is but a discovering or revealing of that which was from all eternity beheld by God in his own Son, who is the express image of the person of God, in whom, as in a glass, he contemplateth all things, and beholdeth them as realities ere yet to any creature they have a being, ere yet there was a creature to whom they might be manifested. This is the mystery of the Son's eternal and essential Divinity in the bosom of the Father, that in him the Father beholdeth all things, all purposes, all possibilities, all realities, and in him enjoys them all with full and perfect fruition, ere ever they are, and while they are growing into outward being; yea and

into him shall recapitulate them all again, after they have run through their appointed transitions. Not that the things which are created shall ever again cease to be; for they were seen from eternity in the Son's fulness, and therefore must last for ever: nor that they shall be only as they were from everlasting, in the being of the Son; but that they shall hereafter be outwardly existing, even as He, the Head of them all, shall be outwardly existing: they shall stand fast for ever in him, united in him, and by him preserved and protected from all encroachment and change; and by him led and directed in the worship and obedience of the Most High God. And herein also consisteth the mystery of the Holy Ghost, that by his operation all things which from eternity have their reality in the Son become manifested in time and place, and are sustained in their outward manifestation; yea, even the Son himself, became outwardly manifest in manhood by the power of the Holy Ghost, and by his power was exalted from the grave to his present supereminency. It is the mighty working of the Holy Spirit which is conducting all things through the same perilous voyage of outward and separate existence, to reconduct them back again into a condition of outward stability and unchanging reality, such as by the Father from all eternity they were really and substantially seen in the person of his own Son, in the eternal Word, and all-perfect image of himself. The only change or alteration, therefore, consisteth in revelation or in manifestation: there is nothing which hath not been eternally known to. and present in, the Son; even the possibility of sin itself, which is, as it were, the chaotic basis out of which the manifestation of holiness and righteous

ness cometh. These remarks I throw out for the use of those who are of a higher mood; and delight to arise into the true mystery of the doctrine of the Trinity, and to understand the higher and more precious portions of the word of God.

But the same truth may be rendered more simple, and obvious to the meanest capacity, in the following way. If we could suppose any thing to be added to God which was not in him nor pertained to him from everlasting, we must suppose that before such addition he was incomplete, or is now more than complete. If we could suppose any thing to be recovered which was lost, or to be remembered which was forgotten, or to be reassumed which was rejected, to be reformed which was amiss, or to be changed which needed change, we must suppose mutation, or deviation, or disappointment in Him who is the rock of ages and refuge of all distressed things, the stability and support of all being, the eternal and unchangeable I AM, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, in whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning. So that, when words of this import and signification are applied in the holy Scriptures unto our God, as that he repenteth, and removeth, and restoreth, and reformeth that which he hath already constituted and done, they are but significant of the changes which the mutable universe, and we a part of it, are passing through in this our outward and separate voyage, until we shall be safely brought back and reconstituted in unchangeable union to the Lord Jesus our Head. They are the words of human language, proper to express that imperfect and unstable condition in which all things at present are, and shall continue to be, until the

days of restitution; and being applied to God, they express not any change in Him, but in us who behold Him. As we speak of the risings, and the settings, and the revolutions of the sun, though he abideth stedfast in the heavens, or hath but a motion which to the eye is imperceptible; as we speak of his being clouded and obscured and eclipsed, though he shineth with a constant brightness; and as we speak of the irregularities of the heavenly motions, and the unsettledness of all sublunary things, though it be certain they do all obey a constant and invariable law, which neither is nor can be changed save by the good will and pleasure of God; speaking in all these instances in accommodation to the appearances which offer themselves to the sense, and against the realities which we discover by the reason: so speaketh God in holy Scripture concerning himself, accommodating his word to that language which is necessary to man's present condition, and presenting himself as full of repentance towards him that repenteth, pure to the pure, and froward to the froward, and upright to the upright; yet is it most certain that within, and under, this popular form of speech, there is also in his word a deeper revelation concerning the oneness and unchangeableness of his being, concerning the harmony of all his operations, and the great end of all his works; into which revelation of his stedfast and constant being he is ever seeking to draw men out of the changes and fluctuations in which he findeth them, and to which he doth assimilate and accommodate himself, in the first instance, by the only language which they are able to understand. As any discreet man, who would teach astronomy to unlettered and ignorant people, must begin from the

appearances of the heavens, and employ a language conformed thereto, until he shall have ascended with his disciples into the great principles of things; of the heaven's rest, and the earth's rotation; of the sun's central place, and the earth's revolution, and the regular motions of all the planets; after which, he employeth another language derived from the facts, and not from the appearances: so the teacher of Divine truth must proceed, as indeed the Holy Spirit in the declaration of Divine truth hath proceeded, beginning by the use of the popular language of God's repentance and changeableness towards us as we change towards him, which is the Arminianism of Divine truth, mistaken by all the Methodists and the great body of our Evangelicals for the whole of it; but truly it is only the popular accommodation thereof, in order to lead the people into the true principles of God's unchangeableness, and the eternal sacrifice of his Son, of the eternal constitution of the church and election of all saints in him, of their perseverance, their assurance and certain glory, with all other the higher truths of the mystery of godliness, which are THE TRUTH, and alone entitled to the name of THE TRUTH; discarded though they be at present as high Calvinism, and even decried as soul-destroying Antinomianism; yea, and all the subsidiary and subordinate language of entreaty and promise and condition, is only adopted for the purpose of introducing our waywardness to the knowledge of His counsels, which are one in their purpose and regular in their progression, all leading to the one glorious end of manifesting unto his creatures the wonders of his eternal being, and securing them in the blessedness of the same. This manifestation of himselfis