Alexand. and Heb. ii. 5. V here, and in several other places, rendered counfellor, frequently fignifies. one who is favoured by his fovereign with rank, authority, and power, in the management of the affairs of his kingdom, which meaning is particularly fuitable to the Meffiah. In this fenfe Ifaiah ufes the term, Ifa. i. 26; iii. 3; xix. 11; as well as other writers in the Old Teftament. 1 Chron. xxvi. 14; xxvii. 32. Ezra vii. 28; viii. 25; comp. Mark xv. 43; Job iii. 14; xii. 17. Micah iv. 9. This fignification of is alfo countenanced by a previous claufe, and the government fhall be upon his shoulder; and by a fubfequent claufe, in which he is filed the peaceful prince; as well as by the whole of the following seventh verfe. Counsellor of God, means an excellent ruler, or pre-eminent governor. See Effay on the Hebrew Superlative, fect. i. The fenfe in which the Jews, even the most skilful of them, underftood Ifaiah ix. 6, is conveyed to us in the Targum of Jonathan; the Latin translation of which is as follows: Parvulus natus eft nobis, filius datus eft nobis; et fufcepit legem fuper fe ut fervaret eam; et vocabitur nomen ejus à facie admirabilis confilii Deus, vir permanens in æternum Chriftus, cujus pax multiplicabitur fuper nos in diebus ejus. This paffage clearly manifefts, that the Jews did not understand the name of the Supreme Being when applied to the Meffiah, as denoting any thing more than a title expreffive of human dignity and pre-eminence, agreeably to the ufual idiom of their language.) Ifa. xi. 1, 2, further corrigenda et addenda

X see

illuftrates the meaning of ix. 6; especially the Chaldee paraphrafe of thofe verses, the Latin verfion of which is as follows: Et egredietur rex de filiis feffe, et Chriftus de filiis filiorum ejus ungetur. Et refidebit fuper eum fpiritus prophetiæ à facie Domini, fpiritus fapientia, &c.

Thus we fee that when Ifaiah applies the name of the Most High to the Meffiah, the Chaldee paraphrase explains it in different ways, no one of which fignifies properly God. In like manner Malachi iii. 1. Behold, I will fend my meffenger, and he shall prepare the way before me; ("i. e. before the Meffiah, who shall act in my name." Abp. Newcome's note. Jefus himself alfo interprets this of the Meffiah, Luke vii. 27. yet grammatically it refers to Jehovaḥ,) and the Lord 1, upros, whom ye feek, κύριος, fhall fuddenly come to his temple, even the meffenger of the covenant whom ye delight in; behold, he fhall come, faith Jehovah of Hofts. The Lord, the meffenger of the covenant, is diftinguished from Jehovah, who declares that this meffenger fhall come.

Notwithstanding the prophets often defignated the Meffiah by one of the names of the Supreme Being, yet the Jews fo thoroughly understood their meaning, that they expected their Meffiah would be truly a man, a defcendant of Jeffe and David. This appears from the Chaldee paraphrafe, as well as from the plain language of Isaiah liii. 3, and his figurative defeription, xi. 1; and from Zech. vi. 12; and from ver. 30 and 52 of the 1ft chap. of John; alfo

from John iv. 29; Luke xxiv. 19; Acts ii. 22; Gal. iv. 4; and various other parts of Scripture. See Illuftration of John i. 14.

is

The Apostle John, therefore, cannot reasonably be supposed to have put an interpretation upon those expreffions of the prophets which we are confidering, different from the common one; especially as this was the very explanation which Ifaiah himself gives of them. Nor would he fcruple to use the fame language, upon the fame fubject, in the introduction to his gofpel, it being quite familiar and intelligible to him and to the Jews, who were in the habit of underftanding their fcriptures agreeably to the Chaldee paraphrases, which were publicly read in their fynagogues, in order to explain them. While the habits prevailed among his readers of interpreting the Jewish idioms of John, by the Jewish fcriptures and the Jewish paraphrafes, inftead of recurring to the writings of learned and philofophical heathen converts to Christianity, they could never mistake the meaning of θεος ην ο λογος. For the evangelift declares that his gofpel was written for the purpose of proving that Jefus was the Meffiah; John xx. 30, 31. Now the ideas which the Jews entertained of the Meffiah were derived from what the prophets faid of him. By the Meffiah, then, John must mean such a person as the prophets foretold would appear in that character. If then, in the introduction to his gospel, John had afferted that Jefus was truly God, he would have proposed to h's readers a Meffiah whose

very nature and properties were totally different from thofe of the perfon whom the prophets predicted, and whofe advent the Jews eagerly expected. He would also have contradicted the affertions of Mofes, of John the harbinger of the Meffiah, of Jefus himself, and of his apoftles and difciples, that he was a man. See on ver 14, and Deut. xviii. 18. Thus he would in the very entrance to his narrative have barred the avenues to conviction, and have pre vented the influence of every proof that he afterwards adduced of the point which he had in view, because the fame prophets who foretold the appearance of the Meffiah, afferted in exprefs unequivocal terms, that he was a man.

John himself, alfo, in the fame first chapter of his gofpel, in which he fays, ver. 1, the word was a God, has provided ample means of preventing any conftruction of his language, different from the wellknown and commonly received fense of it at that time, and in those parts of the world. When the terms Decs or xupios, or any of the Hebrew appellations of the Supreme Being, are applied in fcripture to a magiftrate or a prophet, upon what ground do we affix a meaning to them different from that. which we affix to the fame words when applied to the Most High? Is it not on account of the clear and diftinct properties of humanity that belong to, and are infeparable from, the magiftrate and the prophet? If then decifive characters of humanity are annexed to the λoy, in the introduction to John's

gofpel, and in feveral other parts of the first chapter, as well as in many other paffages of his writings, and in other books of the New Testament, these will be as proper a guide to the interpretation of eos in this as in any other parts of fcripture. The rule equally applies to all.

Now in the first chapter of the gofpel of John, there are feveral characters which evidently prove the λογος. proper humanity of the λoyos. In the 14th verfe, John himself exprefsly and pointedly afferts, ὁ λογος σαρξ εγενεζο, the word was a man. The evangelift does not write ανηρ, or ανθρωπος, which denote the high and low condition and circumstances of a human being, but he uses the term rag to express his frail and fleshly nature. When John the Baptift, in ver. 30, fpeaks of the proper humanity of Christ, and at the fame time of the fuperior office which he fuftains, he calls Jefus ang. In ver. 41, the fame perfon, the word, is called the Meffiah; and in ver. 45, him of whom Mofes in the law, and the prophets, wrote, Jefus of Nazareth, the son of Jofeph. (Now Mofes, Deut. xviii. 18, 19, wrote, that Jehovah faid, I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I fhall command him. My words he fhall speak in my name. This prophecy is applied to Jefus Chrift by the Apostle Peter, Acts iii. 22, 23; and by. Stephen vii. 37.) John i. 51, Jefus calls himself the fon of man.