Page:Darby - Christianity Not Christendom.djvu/26

 way of illustration; still, it gave the direction to thought. So he speaks of offerings at the appointed seasons and the appointed place: God has ordained by His supreme will and authority both where and by what persons they are to be performed. (xl.) In a word, the full doctrine of redemption and peace is dropped, the Holy Ghost, as a present thing, unknown (he refers to the Corinthians having had a great effusion of the Holy Ghost), and the clergy set up distinctly, and that on the pattern of Judaism. Two things are objected to in him, and that even as long ago as Photius, that he was unsound as to the divinity of Christ, and the Phœnix. We easily see that the power of the Holy Ghost as inspiration was gone, so that the mere reference to the Phœnix is nothing extraordinary ; what is to me in the matter is, that he refers to heathen priests and their inquiries as true knowledge and, so to speak, divine matters, and the miracle of the Phœnix appears as a plain sanction of heathenism.

As to the divinity of Christ, he is, to say the least, cloudy. It has been answered he calls Him the sceptre of the divine Majesty. This does not prove much, rather worse than nothing. Christ is throughout a man, a priest prescribing our offerings, and, what is strange, quoting Hebrews i., he says, “But unto the Son, saith the Lord, thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee, ask of me,” &c. It cannot, perhaps, be said that he denied the Deity of the Lord, but it certainly is not in his mind, he is insensible to it, he thinks of the blessed Lord in another way; a full known salvation by grace he most assuredly knows not; there is no present Holy Ghost in his mind; and he sets up the clergy on the pattern of Judaism. His epistle is a distinct revelation