Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/41

Rh the Scriptures of the New Testament he is no where distinguished by his name Jehovah, as he had been in times antecedent to the incarnation: which is a circumstance that doubtless must have for it's foundation or cause (independent of it's reference to Jewish prejudices) some new condition of the divine existence, or some new relation opened between the Creator and the creature, by the assumption of Humanity.

While men were in the habit of receiving communications from heaven through the medium of prophets, no apparent violence was offered to their reason, nor were they placed in any danger of profanation, by being informed in plain terms, that the revelations so given were dictated by the great Jehovah himself. But when he actually made his appearance in the world in the form of a Man, inasmuch as he was regarded by the people in no other character than that of a mere human being like themselves, had he openly and constantly announced himself as Jehovah, as that very God of their fathers, who in ancient times had commissioned Moses and others to make known his will to them, it would have been impossible for them to have received him in such a high character, impossible to have acknowledged him as the Creator and Preserver of the universe. On the contrary, they would have treated him with still greater contempt, than they generally did; they would have disdained his conversation; and with one consent would have pronounced, what only some amongst them ventured to assert, that "he had a devil, and was mad."

It was therefore a dictate of divine mercy and love, on the part of Jehovah when in the flesh, not only towards the Jewish people, but towards all others, who, by reason of his appearing in the form of a Man, too hastily conclude that he was in reality no more,