Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 467

1850.

Defense of an Essay, &c.

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name, to render its vindication to Jehovah, in the passages quoted by Dr. L., so inexplicable? These passages from the Old Testament are, "There is no God with me,'

̧” “I am God, and there is none else,” &c. If we suppose the word God to be a relative term implying dominion," if it be supreme dominion, there is nothing inexplicable, I admit, in vindicating such a title as due only to Jehovah. But what is there inexplicable in the vindication of this name to Jehovah, if we suppose the word to imply the possession of attributes, qualities, nature? Are there any beings beside Jehovah who have the same nature with Him, so that if the word be used in this last sense, it can not be claimed as properly belonging to Him alone? The pas sages quoted by Dr. L. declare that polytheists are wrong, there is only one God; but they do not say whether the word God is used as the name of a Being, regarded as standing in a given relationship, or as possessed of a given nature : in which of these two senses the word is used, we must learn from its general usus loquendi.

From the passages quoted by Dr. L., which give no intimation in which of the two senses the word is used, I must however except the last, as it is very clearly in this case used not "to imply dominion," but nature. The passage is from Ezekiel xxviii, 2, 9.

"Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith Jehovah God, Because thy heart is lifted up and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man and not God.... Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee, I am God? But thou shalt be a man, and no God in the hand of him that slayeth thee." What is the antithe- sis between "a man and not God," if the word God here only "implies dominion" -means "Supreme Ruler" as Dr L. contends it does? Wa- terland was so far seeing anything inexplicable in regarding the word here as an absolute term, that he quotes this very passage to show that the word implies nature, not dominion. He says, "When the Prince of Tyre pretended to be God, he thought of something more than mere dominion to make him so; he thought of strength invincible and power irresistible and God was pleased to convince him of his folly and vanity, not by telling him how scanty his dominion was, or how low his office; but how weak, frail and perishing his nature was; that he was man only, and "not God," and should surely find so by the event. When the Lycaonians, upon the sight of a miracle wrought by St. Paul (Acts xiv, 11), took him and Barnabas for gods, they did not think so much of dominion, as of power and ability beyond human; and when the apostles answered them, they did not tell them that their dominion was only human, or that their office was not divine, but that they