Ib. p. 68.
The Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls him (Christ) [Greek:
apaugasma], 'the brightness of his Father's glory, and the character
of his person', (i. 3.) And under these expressions lies that
remarkable mystery of the Son's eternal relation to the Father, which
is rather humbly to be adored, than boldly to be explained, either by
God's perfect understanding of his own essence, or by any other
notion.
Certainly not by a transfer of a notion, and this too a notion of a
faculty itself but notional and limitary, to the Supreme Reality. But
there are ideas which are of higher origin than the notions of the
understanding, and by the irradiation of which the understanding itself
becomes a human understanding. Of such 'veritates verificae' Leighton
himself in other words speaks often. Surely, there must have been an
intelligible propriety in the terms, 'Logos', Word, 'Begotten before all
creation',--an adequate idea or 'icon', or the Evangelists and Apostolic
penmen would not have adopted them. They did not invent the terms; but
took them and used them as they were taken and applied by Philo and both
the Greek and Oriental sages. Nay, the precise and orthodox, yet
frequent, use of these terms by Philo, and by the Jewish authors of that
traditionalae wisdom,--degraded in after times, but which in its purest
parts existed long before the Christian aera,--is the strongest extrinsic
argument against the Arians, Socinians, and Unitarians, in proof that
St.
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