gst themselves; the ineffable order and
economy of the ever-blessed co-eternal Trinity.
"Comprehend!" No. For how can any spiritual truth be comprehended? Who
can comprehend his own will; or his own personeity, that is, his I-ship
(Ichheit'); or his own mind, that is, his person; or his own life? But
we can distinctly apprehend them. In strictness, the Idea, God, like all
other ideas rightly so called, and as contradistinguished from
conception, is not so properly above, as alien from, comprehension. It
is like smelling a sound.
Query XVIII. p. 269.
From what hath been observed, it may appear sufficiently that the
divine [Greek: Logos] was our King and our God long before; that he
had the same claim and title to religious worship that the Father
himself had--'only not so distinctly revealed'.
Here I differ 'toto orbe' from Waterland, and say with Luther and
Zinzendorf, that before the Baptism of John the 'Logos' alone had been
distinctly revealed, and that first in Christ he declared himself a Son,
namely, the co-eternal only-begotten Son, and thus revealed the Father.
Indeed the want of the Idea of the 1=3 could alone have prevented
Waterland from inferring this from his own query II. and the texts cited
by him pp. 28-38. The Father cannot be revealed except in and through
the Son, his eternal 'exegesis'. The contrary position is an absurdity.
The Supreme Will, indeed, the Absolute Good, knoweth himself as the
Father: but the act of self-affirmation, the I Am in that I Am, is not a
manifestation 'ad extra', not an 'exegesis'.
Ib. p. 274.
This point being settled, I might allow you that, in some sense,
distinct worship commenced with the distinct title of Son or Redeemer:
that is, our blessed Lord was then first worshipped, or commanded to
be worshipped by us, under that distinct title or character; having
before had no other title or character peculiar and proper to himself,
but only what was common to the Father and him too.
Rather shall I say that the Son and the Spirit, the Word and the Wisdom,
were alone worshipped, because alone revealed under the Law. See
Proverbs, i. ii.
The passage quoted from Bishop Bull is very plausible and very eloquent;
but only 'cum multis granis salis sumend'.
Query XIX. p. 279.
That the Father, whose honour had been sufficiently secured under the
Jewish dispensation, and could not but be so under the Christian also,
&c.
Here ag
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