Page:Complete Works of Menno Simons.djvu/399

Rh sons; of which one person and son should have dwelt in the other; and of which one person and son should have suffered and the other not; and the one that suffered should have been the son of Mary and not of God. I think this may well be called forsaking the Lord who has bought them, and preaching a strange Christ whom the Scriptures never knew.

O, reader, dear reader, how lamentably the deceitfulness of the old serpent robs us, through the reasoning of the learned, of this noble, exalted, and precious Messiah, and points us to an impure, sinful, earthly, and created being; never minding that the Holy Spirit openly testifies that the Word of God was made flesh, John 1, and that this same incarnated Word is our Emmanuel, and our God, Matt. 1: 25; the Lord who justifies us, Jer. 23; the first and only begotten, John 1; God's own Son, Rom. 8; descended from heaven, John 3: 13; the living bread from heaven which was not his invisible godhead, as the learned say, but his visible flesh, as he himself testifies, John 6: 51; come forth from God, John 16: 30; the first and last, Rev. 1: 11; who humbled himself and did not assume the form of a great emperor or king, but of an humble servant; came down to the level of man; assumed the form of man; obeyed his Father unto death, nay, unto the death of the cross; truly God and man, man, and God. God at all times, of God and in God; God's eternal word, who, in due time, according to the promise made to the patriarchs, became a miserable, suffering, and mortal man in Mary, the pure virgin, who was of the seed of Abraham, and married to a man of the house of David, named Joseph (upon which Joseph, the evangelists base their genealogy); not divided, as the learned teach, but an undivided, only Christ and Son of God; pure and spotless; planted in her of the seed and Word of his Father, by the Holy Spirit of God; conceived of her through faith; fed and nourished in her virgin body and in due time became man, as Isaac was brought forth of Sarah, and John of Elisabeth; born of her according to the promise; obedient to the law; a light to the world; a preacher of grace; an example of righteousness; and at last, not on account of his own sins, for he knew not sin, but for our sins, he was innocently condemned to death, nailed to the cross, died, buried, arose, and ascended to his Father in heaven, where he dwelt before; and there he is our only and eternal Mediator, Advocate, Intercessor, Expiator, and High Priest, with God, his Father, Mark 16; Acts 1; John 6; 16; and thus the Almighty and eternal God, our merciful, heavenly Father, alone receives the honor and praises, through this his Christ, our eternal Messiah, his first and only begotten Son and eternal word; and not through the impure and sinful flesh of Adam, as the learned teach.

Observe, reader, which of these confessions is the most powerful and has the strongest foundation in the Scriptures; and in which of the two the greater love of God, and higher honor to Christ is perceptible. Whether God had taken a man of the seed or flesh of Adam, as the learned teach, or whether he had given his eternal word, power, wisdom, nay, the heart of his own body, (to make a common expression), in death, for us, as all the Scriptures teach us that he did.

O what an inestimable word is this, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, &c.," John 3: 16. Again, "In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world," and again. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins," 1 John 4: 9, 10. Mark, he has sent his Son and not a man of the seed of Adam who had no father. Paul says, "He spared not his own Son," Rom. 8: 32, and other explicit sayings.

Answer. Abraham was commanded of God that he should leave the land of his fathers, and of his kinsmen, and that he