whole human nature, body and foul. And it is likewife very probable, that the Evangelift did purpofely chufe the word flesh, which fignifies the frail and mortal part of man, to denote to us, that the Son of God did affume our nature, with all its infirmities, and became fubject to the common frailty and mortality of human

nature.

The words thus explained, contain that great mystery of godliness, as the Apostle calls it, or of the Christian religion, viz. the incarnation of the Son of God, which St. Paul expreffeth by the appearance or manifeftation of God in the flesh, 1 Tim. iii. 16. And without controverfy great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifefted in the flesh; that is, he appeared in human nature, he became man; or, as St. John expreffeth it in the text, The Word was made flesh.

But, for the more clear and full explication of thefe words, we will confider these two things.

1. The person that is here spoken of, and who is faid to be incarnate, or to be made flesh, namely, the Word. 2. The mystery itself, or the nature of this incarnation, fo far as the fcripture hath revealed and declared it to us.

Firft, We will confider the person that is here fpoken of, and who is faid to be incarnate, or to be made flesh, and who is fo frequently in this chapter called by the name or title of the Word, namely, the eternal and only begotten Son of God; for fo we find him described in the text: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, &c.; that is, fuch as became fo great and glorious a perfon as deferves the title of the only begotten Son of God.

For the explaining of this name or title of the Word, given by St. John to our bleffed Saviour, we will confider these two things.

1. The reafon of this name or title of the Word, and what probably might be the occafion why this EvangeInt infifts fo much upon it, and makes fo frequent mention of it.

2. The description itself, which is given of him un

der

der this name or title of the Word by this Evangelift, in his entrance into his hiftory of the gospel.

I. We will inquire into the reafon of this name or title of the Word which is here given to our bleffed Saviour by this Evangelift; and what might probably be the occafion why he infifts fo much upon it, and makes fo frequent mention of it. I fhall confider thefe two things diftinctly and feverally.

1. The reafon of this name or title of the Word here given by the Evangelift to our bleffed Saviour. And he feems to have done it in compliance with the common way of fpeaking among the Jews, who frequently call the Meffias by the name of the Word of the Lord. Of which I might give many inftances; but there is one very remarkable, in the Targum of Jonathan, which renders those words of the Pfalmift, which the Jews acknowledge to be spoken of the Meffias, viz. The Lord faid unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, &c.; I fay, it renders them thus: The Lord faid unto his Word, Sit thou on my right hand, &c. And fo likewife Philo the Jew calls him by whom God made the world, the Word of God, and the Son of God. And Plato probably had the fame notion from the Jews; which made Amelius the Platonift, when he read the beginning of St. John's gofpel, to fay, "This barbarian agrees with Plato, ranking the "Word in the order of principles;" meaning, that he made the Word the principle or efficient cause of the world, as Plato alfo hath done.

And this title of the Word was fo famously known to be given to the Meffias, that even the enemies of Chriftianity took notice of it. Julian the Apoftate calls Chrift by this name: and Mahomet, in his Alcoran, gives this name of the Word to Jefus the fon of Mary. But St. John had probably no reference to Plato, any otherwife than as the Gnofticks, against whom he wrote, made ufe of feveral of Plato's words and notions. So that, in all probability, St. John gives our bleffed Saviour this title with regard to the Jews more efpecially, who anciently called the Meffias by this name.

2. We will, in the next place, confider what might probably be the occafion why this Evangelift makes fo frequent mention of this title of the Word, and infifts

fo much upon it. And it feems to be this; nay think that hardly any doubt can be made of it, fince the most ancient of the fathers, who lived nearest the time of St. John, do confirm it to us.

St. John, who furvived all the Apoftles, lived to fee thofe herefies which fprang up in the beginnings of Chriftianity, during the lives of the Apoftles, grown up to a great height, to the great prejudice and difturbance of the Christian religion; I mean the herefies of Ebion and Cerinthus, and the feveral fects of the Gnofticks, which began from Simon Magus, and were continued and carried on by Valentinus and Bafilides, Carpocrates and Menander. Some of which exprefsly denied the divinity of our Saviour, afferting him to have been a mere man, and to have had no manner of exiftence before he was born of the bleffed virgin; as Eufebius and Epiphanius tell us particularly concerning Ebion: which those who hold the fame opinion now in our days may do well to confider from whence it had its original.

Others of them, I ftill mean the Gnofticks, had corrupted the fimplicity of the Chriftian doctrine, by mingling with it the fancies and conceits of the Jewish Cabbaliis, and of the schools of Pythagoras and Plato, and of the Chaldean philofophy, more ancient than either; as may be feen in Eufebius de præparat. cvan.; and, by jumbling all thefe together, they had framed a confufed genealogy of deities, which they call by feveral glorious names, and all of them by the general name of Æons or Ages, among which they reckoned Zan, and Aoos, and Mevoy vhs and aipua, that is, the Life, and the Word, and the Only Begotten, and the Fulness, and many other divine powers and emanations which they fancied to be fucceffively derived from one another.

And they alfo diflinguifhed between the maker of the world, whom they called the God of the Old Teftament, and the God of the New and between Jefus and Chrift; Jefus, according to the doctrine of Cerinthus, as Irenæus tells us, being the man that was born of the vir gin; and Chrift, or the Meffias, being that divine power or fpirit which afterwards defcended into Jefus, and

dwelt in him.

If it were poffible, yet it would be to no purpofe, to

go

go about to reconcile these wild conceits with one another, and to find out for what reason they were invented, unless it were to amuse the people with thefe high fwelling words of vanity, and a pretence of knowledge falfely fo called, as the Apoftle fpeaks, in allufion to the name of Gnofticks, that is to fay, the men of knowledge; which they proudly affumed to themselves, as if the knowledge of mysteries of a more fublime nature did peculiarly belong to them.

In oppofition to all thofe vain and groundless conceits, St. John, in the beginning of his gofpel, chufes to fpeak of our bleffed Saviour, the hiftory of whofe life and death he was going to write, by the name or title of the Word, a term very famous among those fects; and fhews, that this Word of God, which was alfo the title the Jews anciently gave to the Meffias, did exift before he affumed a human nature, and even from all eternity; and that to this eternal Word did truly belong all thofe titles which they kept such a canting stir about, and which they did with so much fenfeless nicety and fubtilty distinguish from one another, as if they had been fo many feveral emanations from the Deity. And he fhews, that this Word of God was really and truly the Life, and the Light, and the Fulnefs, and the Only Begotten of the Father: 4. In him was the life, and the life was the light of men; and, y 5. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not; and, y 6. 7. 8. 9. where the Evangelift, fpeaking of John the Baptift, fays of him, that he came for a witness, to bear witness of the light; and that he was not that light, but was fent to bear witness of that light and that light was the true light which coming into the world enlightens every man; and y 14. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth; and y 16. And of his fulness we all receive, &c. You fee here is a perpetual allufion to the glorious titles. which they gave to their Eons, as if they had been fo many feveral deities.

In fhort, the Evangelift fhews, that all this fanciful genealogy of divinc emanations, with which the Gnofticks made fo great a noife, was mere conceit and imagination; and that all these glorious titles did really

meet in the Meffias, who is the Word, and who before his incarnation was from all eternity with God, partaker of his divine nature and glory.

I have declared this the more fully and particularly, because the knowledge of it seems to me to be the only true key to the interpretation of this difcourfe of St. John concerning our Saviour under the name and title of the Word. And furely it is a quite wrong way for any man to go about by the mere ftrength and fubtilty of his reafon and wit, though never fo great, to interpret an ancient book, without understanding and confidering the hiftorical occafion of it, which is the only thing that can give true light to it.

And this was the great and fatal mistake of Socinus, to go to interpret fcripture merely by criticizing upon words, and fearching into all the fenfes that they are poffibly capable of, till he can find one, though never fo forced and foreign, that will fave harmless the opinion which he was beforehand refolved to maintain, even against the most natural and obvious fenfe of the text which he undertakes to interpret; juft as if a man fhould interpret ancient ftatutes and records by mere critical skill in words, without regard to the true cccafion upon which they were made, and without any manner of knowledge and insight into the history of the age in which they were written.

I fhall now proceed to the fecond thing which I propofed to confider, namely,

II. The description here given of the Word by this Evangelift in his entrance into his hiftory of the gofpel: In the beginning (fays he) was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The fame was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In which paffage of the Evangelift four things are faid of the Word which will require a more particular explication.

1. That he was in the beginning.

2. That he was in the beginning with God.

3. That he was God.

4. That all were made by him.

1. That he was in the beginning; ev dp, which is

the