49. If John's declaration be true, that "no man hath seen God at any time" (John iv. 12), then the important question arises, How could Christ be God, as he was seen by thousands of men, and seen hundreds of times?
50. God the Father is declared to be the "One," "the Holy One," "the only One," &c., more than one hundred times, as if purposely to exclude the participation of any other being in the Godhead.
51. This one, this only God, is shown to be the Father alone in more than four thousand texts, thirteen hundred and twenty-six of which are found in the New Testament.
52. More than fifty texts have been found which declare, either explicitly or by implication, that God the Father has no equal, which effectually denies or shuts out the divine equality of the Son. "To whom will ye liken me, or shall I be equal with, saith the holy One." (Isaiah xl. 25.)
53. Christ in the New Testament is called "man," and "the Son of man," eighty-four times,—egregious and dishonorable misnomers, most certainly, to apply to a supreme and infinite Deity. On the other hand, he is called God but three times, and denominates himself "the Son of God" but once, and that rather obscurely.
54. The Father is spoken of, in several instances, as standing in the relation of God to the Son, as "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts iii. 2.) "Ye are Christ's, and Christ is Gods." (i Cor. xi. 3.) Now, the God of a God is a polytheistic, heathen conception; and 1 no meaning or interpretation, as we have shown, can be I forced upon such texts as these, that will not admit a plurality of Gods, if we admit the titles as applicable to Christ, or that his scriptural biographers intend to apply such a title in a superior or supreme sense.
55. Many texts make Christ the mere tool, agent, image, servant, or representative of God, as Christ, "the image of God" (Heb. i. 3), Christ, the appointed of God (Heb. iii. 1), Christ, "the servant of God" (Matt. xii. | 18), &c. To consider a being thus spoken of as himself the supreme God, is, as we have demonstrated, the very climax of absurdity and nonsense. To believe "the servant of God" is God himself,—that is, the servant of himself,—and that God and his "image" are the same, is to descend within one step of buffoonery.
56. And then it has been ascertained that there are more than three hundred texts which declare, either expressly or by implication, Christ's subordination to and dependence on the Father, as, "I can do nothing of myself;" "Not mine, but his that sent me;" "I came to do the will of him that sent me" (John iv. 34); "I seek the will of my Father," &c.
57. And more than one hundred and fifty texts make the Son inferior to the Father, as "the Son knoweth not, but the Father does" (Mark viii. 32); "My Father is greater than I;" "The Son can do nothing of himself" (John v. 19), &c.
58. There are many divine titles applied to the Father which are never used in reference to the Son, as "Jehovah," "The Most High," "God Almighty," "The Almighty," &c.