On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    r powers of a person who cannot himself exercise them , but the exercise of which depends upon the will and agency of another ? Mr . Belsham reasons , as if he believed Jesus Christ to be an

    independent being , which on other occasions , he would not allow . But supposing them to be voluntary , were they given him for the purpose of procuring to himself the conveniences' and luxuries of

    life ? If they were , where was his fidelity and gratitude to the giver of them , in choosing to live in indigence and poverty ? If they were not given him for that purpose , but only to he exercised for the benefit of cTthers , and tor

    the confirmation of his divine mission , would not the exercise of them for his personal advantage feave been a criminal prostitution of them to a purpose for which

    they were never designed ? Did the poverty of Jesus Christ then consist in his not being criminal ? and had he been guilty of such a

    prostitution , would he have been enriched by it ? Let us hear his own decision upon this question : i 4 What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?"

    On Mr . Belsham's strict ana * logy between Jesus Christ and the avaricious miser and benevolent rich man , I shall not make any reflexions , but leave the reader to his own , and only put the following case : Suppose a person of great opulence , desirous of benefiting others , were to make a poor man the instrument and channel of his benevolence , withput giving him any personal interest in , or power over any part

    Untitled Article

    of his property ; would that man by the mere possession , without the power of enjoyment ^ be any richer than he was before ? Or

    would there be either truth or propriety in saying that on that account he was rich and poor at the same time ? I conclude then that the poverty of Jesus Christ was simultaneous with his

    existence while he was here , and that his riches must Eiave been in a prior state of existence , and that the assertion of the apostle , that " he was rich and became poor , " furnishes a clear proof of such a

    slate I . now proceed tp Phil . ii . 6 — 8 y as a further proof of the p re-existence of Jesus Christ . IVho being in the form of God , thought it not robbery to be equal with God ; but made himself of

    no reputation ^ and took upon him the form of a servant ' , and was made in the likeness ' of men ^ and being found in fashion as a man , he humbled himself and becaine obedient unto deathy even the deakji of the cross * The apostle here affirms that Jesus Christ was in

    the form of God , but emptied himself , or u divested himself of it % " that he took on him the form of a servant , that he was made in the likeness of men , that being found in fashion as a man , lie humbled himself and becaine obedient unto death . These are

    the several steps of our Lord ' s humiliation , which clearly shew that the apostle considered Christ ' s being in the form of , God as preceding , and not simultaneous with his being in the form of a servant , and his being made in the likeness of rneh ^ and that these

    circum-? Improved Version .

    Untitled Article

    Mr . Marsorns Defence of the Pre-e xistence of Christ . Let . V . 721

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1808, page 721, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1706/page/29/