God maybe considered here as having produced, by means of his Holy Spirit, a birth of divine life in the soul of the "body which had been prepared;" and this birth was Christ. [104] "But that which is born of the spirit, says St. John, is spirit." The only question then will be as to the magnitude of the spirit thus produced. In answer to this St. John says,[105] "that God gave him not the spirit by measure." And St. Paul says the same thing: [106] "For in him all the fulness of the godhead dwelt bodily." Now we can have no idea of a spirit without measure, or containing the fullness of the godhead, but the spirit of God.
[Footnote 104: John 3.6.]
[Footnote 105: John 3.34.]
[Footnote 106: Coloss. 2.9]
Let us now look at Christ in another point of view, or as St. Paul seems to have viewed him. He defines Christ [107] "to be the wisdom of God, and the power of God." But what are the wisdom of God, and the power of God, but the great characteristics and the great constituent parts of his spirit?
[Footnote 107: 1 Cor. 1. 24.]
But if these views of Christ should not be deemed satisfactory, we will contemplate him as St. John the Evangelist has held him forth to our notice. Moses says, that the spirit of God created the world. But St. John says that the word created it. The spirit therefore and the word must be the same. But this word he tells us afterwards, and this positively, was Jesus Christ.
It appears therefore from these observations, that it makes no material difference, whether we use the words "Spirit of God" or "Christ," in the proposition that has been before us, or that there will be no difference in the meaning of the proposition, either in the one or the other case; and also if the Quakers only allow, when the spirit took flesh, that the body was given as a sacrifice for sin, or that part of the redemption of man, as far as his sins are forgiven, is effected by this sacrifice, there will be little or no difference between the religion of the Quakers and that of the objectors, as far as it relates to Christ[108].
[Footnote 108: The Quakers have frequently said in their theological writings, that every man has a portion of the Holy Spirit within him; and this assertion has not been censured. But they have also said, that every man has a portion of Christ or of the light of Christ, within him. Now this assertion has been considered as extravagant and wild. The reader will therefore see, that if he admits the one, he cannot very consistently censure the other.]