A Practical Commentary on the Epistle of Jude

I shall first vindicate and then open the words, divers take words disjunctively, applying the first clause to the father: the second to the Son: So Erasmus translateth it: God who is that only Lord, and our Lord Jesus Christ: But as Beza observeth: this is not the first time that he is taken tripping in those places, which seem manifestly to assert the Godhead of Christ; briefly then that the whole clause is to be understood of Christ, may be proved by these arguments. 1. Because the parallel place in Peter, from whence this ⟨p. 222⟩seemeth to be taken, maketh mention only of Jesus Christ, where [Greek or Hebrew], the word of absolute Sovereignty is ascribed to him [denying [Greek or Hebrew], the Master that bought them,] 2 Pet. 2. 1. 2. Because to me it seemeth that Jude would lay down all the prerogatives of Christ in his Natures, as God as man: In his relation to the world, so a Master, to the Church, so a Lord, 3. By the tenor of the words in the Original, where there is no new Article to divide them and therefore all these Titles belong to the same person, [Greek or Hebrew]. 4. Many old Copies (as Calvin saith) read thus: denying Christ who is only God and only Lord. 5. Because the heresy of these times struck at Christ, more then God the Father, and only at the Father for Christs sake; and therefore John in his Epistles, speaketh often of those that denied Christ: See 1 John 2. 22. and 1 John 4. 3. 'tis true the School of Simon and some other Sex, held forth many fabulous things of God, and introduced multitude of Rulers by whom the world was governed; but this was to exclude Christ, and to make void that Sovereignty which the Scriptures assert to be committed into his hands: The most ancient Heresies were those of the Simonians, Menandrians, Saturninians, who denied the person of Christ; affirming Simon Magus to be Christ. And the Valentinians, who denied his humane Nature, affirming that he brought his substance from Heaven, and only passed through the Virgin Mary, like water through a Conduit: there is but one Objection against this exposition, and that is, if it be meant of Christ; then the Father will be excluded from being God, for Christ according to the sense alleged, is said to be only Master, only God and only Lord; I Answer, The expression doth not exclude either of the Persons of the Godhead, the Father or the Son;