N01335:18
Those taught by God the Father, to know God the Son
Those taught by God the Father, to know God the Son; are blessed. A sermon preached at Boston lecture, July 3d. 1712. / By Solomon Stoddard, A.M. Pastor of the Church of Christ at Northampton. ; [Seven lines from John]
printed by B Green for Benj. Eliot, 1712
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
PROP. I. It is a difficult thing to be indeed convinced that Jesus of Nazareth is God. The Jews deny this, and so do the Socinians in the sense that the Scriptures teach it. It is easy to be convinced of some truths, because sense and reason do teach them: but this is a thing known purely by revelation: Natural reason makes no discovery of it, and carnal reason has many objections against it. Men are naturally blind, and the Devil by carnal reasonings makes them more blind, 2 Cor. 4 4.
PROP. I. It is a difficult thing to be indeed convinced that Jesus of Nazereth is God. The Jews deny this, and so do the Socinians in the sense that the Scriptures teach it. It is easy to be convinced of some truths, because sense and reason do teach them: but this is a thing known purely by revelation: Natural reason makes no discovery of it, and carnal reason has many objections against it. Men are naturally blind, and the Devil by carnal reasonings makes them more blind, 2 Cor. 4 4.
1. There is a seeming impossibility in it. There is an infinite distance between God and ⟨p. 6⟩Man, and that they should be United in One is beyond our comprehension. That God should be Man and Man should be God, seem to imply a contradiction. There is a seeming necessity that if there be two Natures in Christ, there must also be two Persons, and that if there be but One Person, there is likewise but one Nature. It is absolutely impossible that the divine Nature should be an humane Nature, or that the humane Nature should be a divine Nature. And it seems impossible that the same Person should be both God and Man. Hence there arose so many Heresies in the Primitive Church. The Manichees and Arians denied the Divine Nature of Christ: some of them said, He was a mere Man. The Marcionites denied the Humane Nature of Christ, they said He only appeared in an humane Shape, as in the time of the Old Testament: and as the Angels did often appear. The Eutychians denied Him to be distinct God and Man, they confounded the two Natures, said He had one Nature made of a Divine and Humane. Many Men have been confounded to conceive, That the Natures are distinct and yet the Person the same. And the Socinians at this day, though they acknowledge that