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"I said, ye are gods; even all ye, sons of the Most

"HIGH:

"But ye shall die as Man; and fall, as one of the "Princes."

And the cause of their punishment was before expressed in the indignant interrogatory at the beginning of the Psalm:

"How long will ye judge iniquitously, and accept the persons of the wicked?

2. That the plural, and emphatically, is, in numberless passages, taken in a singular sense, and applied to THE ONLY TRUE GOD, is most unquestionable, as in the very beginning of Genesis: "GOD created the Heavens and the "Earth;" where the singular verb creavit, decides the singular import of the nominative D. And this decides the singu

3,

,בוראיך lar import likewise of the plural form

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Thy Creator, Eccl. xii. 1, not "thy Cre

"ators," according to Parkhurst's Trinitarian Mysticism; and of, "y," His Maker,” Ps. cxlix. 2, not "his Makers;" in defiance of all the versions, ancient and modern.

And thus, in that explicit declaration, or confession of faith, Deut. iv. 35: “ THE M 2 "LORD

האלהים

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"LORD is THE GOD; [there is] none else "beside HIM"-where the emphatic term ought to be rendered "THE GOD," as it is, more correctly, in the application of this passage, in our translation, of 1 Kings, xviii. 39, where the Israelites acknowledged the superiority of the TRUE GOD above Baal, by an animated repetition: THE "LORD is THE GOD! THE LORD IS THE "GOD!"—and not Baal, the idol of the Sidonians, or the intelligence supposed to reside in the sun. In both places, the pronoun, rendered "He" by our translators, by a well-known idiom in the Hebrew language, frequently supplies the place of the present tense of the verb substantive "is" and by the same analogy, the pronoun N, I, involves "am," in GoD's assertion of his supremacy, Isa. xlv. 5, "I AM. "THE LORD, and [there is] none else, beside "Me [there is] no God;" in this passage the emphatic article is clearly understood before, as in the parallel passages, though not expressed.

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The application of D to THE MESSIAI is also expressed, Ps. xlv. 6, " Thy

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“throne,

"throne, O GOD, is for ever and ever,' &c. and is clearly distinct from its application to THE FATHER, in the next verse:

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passage,

Therefore GOD, THY GOD, anointed thee "with oil of gladness above thy fellows," as incontrovertibly established by St. Paul's citing the Septuagint version of this to prove the divinity of JESUS CHRIST; Heb. i. 8. And it is unquestionably applied also to THE SON, in Manoal's exclamation to his wife, after they had seen him visibly ascend into heaven in the flame of the sacrifice, which, by his directions, they offered unto THE LORD, Judg. xiii. 22. “ We “shall surely die, because we have seen GOD!” (8.)-They plainly understood Him to be "THE ANGEL OF THE LORD," emphatically so styled, as being "THE ANGEL

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OF HIS PRESENCE," Exod. xxxiii. 14, Isa. lxiii. 9, or " ANGEL OF THE COVENANT," Mal. iii. 1, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, Exod. iii. 2, and styled himself"THE LORD," assuming the highest title of the Godhead, Exod. vi. 3.--Because "the name of THE LORD" was " intimately "vested in Him," Exod. xxxiii. 21,-even

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under the patriarchal dispensation, as THE ORACLE OF GOD, Gen. xv. 1, Rev. xix. 13, "whose face no man could see, and live," Exod. xxxiii. 20; and who, not many years before, Judg. ii. 1-4, upbraided the people for their breach of the Covenant, in not destroying the idolatrous Canaanites and their altars and in the case of Manoah, when he came as a DELIVERER from Philistine bondage, declared that his "name was SECRET, or rather "WONDERFUL," Judg. xiii. 18, for so is the original term, &, more correctly rendered by the Septuagint, Davμaçov; and by the Alexandrian version also, in that enumeration of the titles of the incarnate "SON OF GOD," Isa. ix. 6, "His name "shall be called WONDERFUL," &c. And in that sublime and tremendous description of JESUS CHRIST inflicting vengeance on all his enemies, Rev. xix. 16, " He hath 66 THE NAME written on his vesture and on “his thigh; ' KING OF KINGS, and LORD "OF LORDS."-His NEW NAME, or additional authority, Rev. iii. 12, "which no "one knoweth, save the Receiver," Rev. ii. 17, but which was expressly foretold. by

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the

the unerring word of prophecy, to be communicated to Him, in and throughout the universe, see Dan. vii. 13, 14, compared with Rev. v. 6-13.

the

How was it possible, then, for the B. C. so far to forget himself, and the reverence. due to the mysterious subject, as to pen following passage ?" It must be granted, that in both these passages, (Ps. xlv. 6, and Judg. xiii. 22,) the name of Elohim "is given to a single person and cannot, it “should seem, in these instances, imply plu"rality of persons. The solution of the difficulty is, that the passages are only "two; and in both we must admit a sort of "CATACHRESIS, [i. e. an abuse of terms !"] p. 152.

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Is this to discharge skilfully and faithfully, the perilous and delicate functions of saCRED CRITICS? Is this, "to HONOUR "THE SON, according as we HONOUR THE "Father?" Or do not such rash and revolting solutions rather tend to " DISHONOUR "both THE FATHER and THE SON"-by sheltering ignorance of their glorious and awful names and persons, under hard words? M 4

and

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