EPHESIANS.

EPHESIANS i. 2.

From God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ."

(UNITARIANISM.)

"You see how the Apostle constantly distinguishes God from Christ. Indeed there is no passage in the New Testament in which Christ is so much as called God, though in an inferior sense." Priestley.

No. 1.

EPHESIANS i. 7.

"His blood."

(DOMINICANS AND FRANCISCANS.)

"About 1351 the Dominicans and Franciscans had begun a warm dispute, what kind of worship is due to our Saviour's blood, whether the more divine latreia, or the inferior duleia. It was renewed in 1462. James of Marchia, a celebrated Franciscan, in one of his sermons, maintained, that the blood

which Christ shed on the cross did not belong to his divine nature, and so was not the object of divine and immediate worship. The Dominicans furiously opposed this, and called him before the Inquisition, which condemned him of heresy. After several ineffectual attempts to suppress this debate, Pius, in 1464, thought proper to silence both parties, declaring, that both might lawfully hold their respective opinions, till the vicar of Christ should deliberately consider and determine the point, which it seems has never yet happened."

"The manner of speaking that some have allowed themselves, from this representation of Christ's death by his blood, viz. that a drop of Christ's blood was sufficient for the redemption of the whole world, is á very crude and unjustifiable expression, that hath nothing in reason or Scripture to support it; for the great stress which Scripture lays, is constantly upon the death of Christ, and not upon any shedding of his blood, which implies less than his actually dying."

Belsham.

EPHESIANS i. 13.

"Ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit."

(WESLEY.)

"The Anpopopia Tioтews, the seal of the Spirit, the love of God shed abroad in my heart, and pro

ducing joy in the Holy Ghost, joy which no man taketh away, joy unspeakable, and full of glory; this witness of the Spirit I have not," said Wesley, "but I patiently wait for it. I know many who have already received it, more than one or two in the very hour we were praying for it. And having seen and spoken with a cloud of witnesses abroad, as well as in my own country, I cannot doubt but that believers who wait and pray for it, will find these Scriptures fulfilled in themselves. My hope is that they will be fulfilled in me."

This full assurance, or plerophory of faith, as it is termed by Wesley, was defined to him by Gradin, a Swede.

"I had," said the Swede, " from our Lord, what I asked of him, the Anpopopia TiσTEws, fulness of faith, which is repose in the blood of Christ; a firm confidence in God, and persuasion of his favour, with a deliverance from every fleshly desire, and a cessation of all, even inward sins. In a word, my heart, which before was agitated like a troubled sea, was in perfect quietness, like a sea that is serene and calm."

"This," says Wesley, "was the first account I ever heard from any living man of what I had before learned myself from the oracles of God, and had been praying for, with the little company of my friends, and expecting for several years."

Wesley.

EPHESIANS i. 17.

"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ."

(UNITARIANISM.)

"What plainer proof can there be, that Jesus Christ is the creature of God, and not his equal? Dr. Chandler observes, that it can never in any sense be said of Christ, that he is God of the eternal Father.' Here it is evident,' says Dr. Priestley, that all the illumination the Apostle prayed for was to come from God the Father, who is here called the God of our Lord Jesus Christ; the same, no doubt, who was the author of his being, whom he reverently worshipped, and whom he taught his disciples to worship: so far was he from teaching the worship of himself.'

Belsham.

EPHESIANS i. 20.

“And set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places." (UNITARIANISM.)

In the figurative language of the Apostle, all who enjoy the light of divine revelation, whether Jews or Christians, are said to dwell in heaven. See chap. ii. 6. And the unbelieving world are spoken of as inhabitants of earth. But the Jewish notion of heaven, borrowed not from divine revelation, which is silent upon the subject, but from the oriental philosophy, which they appear to have imbibed in the Babylonian captivity, (see Mr. Lindsey's valuable

observations in the Sequel to his Apology, p. 456, and seq.) represented the celestial world as peopled by myriads of beings who were of different ranks and orders; angels, archangels, principalities, powers, &c. Agreeably to this figurative representation, Jesus Christ is said, after his resurrection, to be seated at the right hand of God in heaven, i. e. to be advanced to the highest dignity in the Christian dispensation; above all principality, power, and might, &c. that is, above all the officers and ministers of the Jewish or Christian dispensation, expressed by the well-known phraseology of the present age and the age to come. This interpretation makes the Apostle's discourse consistent, intelligible, and pertinent; but it gives no countenance either to the commonly received opinion of the existence of a celestial hierarchy, or the popular doctrine of the superiority of Christ to angels, and other supposed celestial spirits." The Gospel dispensation," says Mr. Lindsey, p. 464, "is represented under the idea of a new regulation of these heavenly communities, in which Christ is placed at the head

"The Jewish dispensation having been represented as heavenly places,' the superiority of Christ to the officers of that dispensation is naturally described as an exaltation above the supposed ranks