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    standing and an honest mind , who does not know a word of Greek and who has only King ' James ' s translation before him , " reasoning upon the subj ect of Christ ' s person : 6 C Such a person might rationally argue in the following * manner : If Jesus Christ , vvbn appeared in the form of a man with all the incidents of frail human nature , had in truth been very and eternal God , — -when this fact was first revealed to his disciples , how-must their minds have been absorbed

    and overwhelmed with astonishment and terror ! At Lystra , when the people inferred from the miracles of the apostles 6 that the gods were come down in the likeness of men , * Acts xiv . II , the whole city was in an uproar . Every one was tilled with amazement , and priests and people assembled tog-ether to worship , and to offer sacrifices to their celestial visitants . All

    this 13 natara 2 , and probable , and exactly what might be expected upon an occasion so extraordinary . —What then must have been the feeling ' s and the conduct of Jews , educated as they had been in such exalted ideas of the Great Supreme , when a discovery so new , so unexpected , so remote from all their conceptions and ideas , so amazing .

    so overwhelming , was made known to them , that the person whom they conceived to be the sun of Joseph and Mary , with whom they had conversed for months and yeais with the greatest farniliaiity , whom many of them had witnessed as having * passed through the various stages of human life , from helpless infancy to vigorous manhood

    was , what ?—no other than the eternal and almighty God , the infinite Jehovah , the Creator of heaven and earth!—How would they feel , how would they act when this surprising and alarming discovery was made ? Would they associate and

    convejse with him as familiarly as before , would they reason with him , would they rebuke him , would they desert him , would they deny him ? Let every one consider with himself what his own feeling's would be after such an awful disclosure . Then look into

    the New Testament , consult the evangelical history , what was the conduct of the disciples of Jesus in the circumstances supposed ? They discover no surprise , they abate nothing of their freedom and familiarity ; from the beginning to the end of his ministry their behaviour is uniform : they

    talk to him as a companion , they love him as a friend , they revere him as a master , they bow to- him as a prophet of the Most High—but nothing is said , nothing is done wliich indicates -the least suspicion that he was in reality any thing more than he was in appearance , much less that he was the eternal Jehovah himself !

    u Let it then be supposed that this important and astonishing fact was not revealed to them till after his resurrection

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    till the day of Pentecost . In this case ther must have understood the language used in John , * upon which so much stress is constantly laid in this important discussion as consistent with the proper humanity of Jesus Christ . And would the apostle Peter , immediately upon this grand discovery when the assembled

    addressing crowd impressed and agitated as his mind must have been with the novelty , the magnitude and the importance of the doctrine , would he have spoken of this tremendous being this 6 very God of very God , ' under no higher character than that of a man approved by God by signs and wonders , who was now exaited to God's right hand ?

    " How deeply are the minds of Trinitarians penetrated with a sense of the grandeur , sublimity and importance of their favourite doctrine ! How seldom , how slightly do they think and speak of Jesus as a inaa , in comparison with the frequency and earnestness with which they think and speak of him as a God ! But how much

    more deeply must the minds of the primitive disciples have heen iinpressed with the stupendous discovery ! It must have seized and kept possession of every faculty of theit souls . In tbe present age the doctrine of a trinity of persons in tbe Deity , and of an incarnate and crucified God , are so common and . familiar that they almost cease to shock

    the mind . But to the primitive believers it must have had all the freshness and the force of novelty 5 it was an idea which would never be out of their thoughts , if must have occupied and filled the imagination , and must have been the constant topic of their meditation , their conversation , and their correspondence . Aiid in sittingdows to write the history of Jesus , his high

    dignity , his divine nature , his condescension in becoming incarnate , must have bees their darling theme , in comparison witli which , all other topics must have been frivolous and nugatory ; and if they were under a necessity of' touching upon then for a lime , they would continually recur to that astonishing fact , which could never be forgotten for a moment , and must ever be uppermost in their thoughts .

    " But how stands the fact ? Observe and wonder . —Matthew , Mark and Luke professing to write a history which should ! * ¦¦ Ml' - •*" "" ¦¦!¦¦¦¦ II I » — ¦ " ' ¦!—¦ I ¦—¦¦¦¦¦— ' ¦ ' ¦—I I M ^—^^ 1 * Viz . " < That he came down from heaven , ' that < he was before Abraham , that < he and the Father are one / that h > j had lory with the Father before the wr | d

    g was , ' and all these expression ?; , winch ait now understood as asserting the pn ^ -exis ence and divinity of Christ , made no parti cular impression upon the apostles , ^ change in their conduct to their masje r a plain proof that they understood his a - gnage in a very different sense from mode Christians . '

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    512 Review . — Belsham s Reply to Burgess .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1815, page 512, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1763/page/48/