But he has committed judgment to the Son,
as a mediatory king, who
judges by the equity and chancery of the
Gospel.
This article required exposition incomparably more than the simple doctrine of the Trinity, plain and evident ‘simplici intuitu’, and rendered obscure only by diverting the mental vision by terms drawn from matter and multitude. In the Trinity all the ‘Hows’? may and should be answered by ‘Look’! just as a wise tutor would do in stating the fact of a double or treble motion, as of a ball rolling north ward on the deck of a ship sailing south, while the earth is turning from west to east. And in like manner, that is, ‘per intuitum intellectualem’, must all the mysteries of faith be contemplated;—they are intelligible ‘per se’, not discursively and ‘per analogiam’. For the truths are unique, and may have shadows and types, but no analogies. At this moment I have no intuition, no intellectual diagram, of this article of the commission of all judgment to the Son, and therefore a multitude of plausible objections present themselves, which I cannot solve—nor do I expect to solve them till by faith I see the thing itself.—Is not mercy an attribute of the Deity, as Deity, and not exclusively of the Person of the Son? And is not the authorizing another to judge by equity and mercy the same as judging so ourselves? If the Father can do the former, why not the latter?
Ib. p. 171.
And therefore now it is given him to have life in himself, as the Father hath life in himself, as the original fountain of all life, by whom the Son himself lives: all life is derived from God, either by eternal generation, or procession, or creation; and thus Christ hath life in himself also; to the new creation he is the fountain of life: ‘he quickeneth whom he will’.
The truths which hitherto had been metaphysical, then began to be historical. The Eternal was to be manifested in time. Hence Christ came with signs and wonders; that is, the absolute, or the anterior to cause and effect, manifested itself as a ‘phenomenon’ in time, but with the predicates of eternity;—and this is the only possible definition of a miracle ‘in re ipsa’, and not merely ‘ad hominem’, or ‘ad ignorantiam’.
Ib. p. 177.
His next argument consists in applying such things to the divinity of our Saviour as belong to his humanity; ’that he increased in wisdom, &c.:—that he knows not the day of judgment’;—which he evidently speaks of himself as man: as all the ancient Fathers confess. In St. Mark it is said, ’But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels that are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father’. St. Matthew does not mention the Son: ’Of that day and hour knoweth no man, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only’.
How much more politic, as well as ingenuous, it had been to have acknowledged the difficulty of this text. So far from its being evident, the evidence would be on the Arian side, were it not that so many express texts determine us to the contrary.