REDEMPTION COULD NOT HAVE BEEN EFFECTED, AND HENCE NEITHER COULD SALVATION HAVE BEEN GIVEN, EXCEPT BY GOD INCARNATE.

1. The Word of the Old and of the New Testament teaches that God became incarnate. 2. All the worship of the church before God became incarnate, foreshadowed and regarded Him after He was incarnate; and hence and from no other source was that worship Divine. 3. God Incarnate is "Jehovah our Justice," "Jehovah our Redemption," "Jehovah our Salvation," and "Jehovah our Truth;" and all these are meant by the two names, Jesus Christ. 4. God not incarnate could not have fought against the hells, and could not have conquered them. 5. God not incarnate could not have been tempted, still less could He have suffered the cross. 6. God not incarnate could not have been seen and known; thus He could not have been approached, and so could not have been conjoined to men and angels, unless through Himself incarnate. 7. Faith in God not incarnate is impossible, but only in Him incarnate. 8. Hence it is that it was said by the ancients, that no one can see God and live, and by the Lord, that no one hath seen the shape of the Father nor heard His voice. 9. Also, that by means of angels God manifested Himself to the sight of the ancients in the human form, which form was representative of God incarnate. 10. Every operation of God is effected from firsts by ultimates, thus from His Divine through His Human. Hence God is the "First and the Last, who was, who is, and who is come." 11. In the ultimates of God are all things Divine together; thus, in our Lord Jesus Christ are all things of His Father. 12. From these things it follows, that redemption could by no means have been effected except by God incarnate. 13. And there could have been no salvation except by God incarnate, thus by the Lord, the Redeemer and Saviour; which salvation is perpetual redemption. 14. Hence it is, that they who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ have eternal life; and they who do not believe in Him have not that life.* * [ANNOTATIONS FROM THE MARGIN.] Redemption itself was the subjugation of the hells and the arrangement of the heavens into order, and thus a preparation for a new spiritual church. Without this redemption no man could have been saved, nor angels have subsisted in their state of happiness. The Lord not only redeemed men, but also angels [see Chapter vi.]. Redemption was a work purely Divine. This redemption could not have been effected except by God incarnate [see Chapter viii.]. The passion of the cross was the last temptation, which, as the Greatest Prophet, He endured and through which also He truly subjugated the hells and glorified His Human: thus that it was not redemption, but the means of redemption. That the passion of the cross was redemption itself, is a fundamental error of the church. This error together with the error of three Divine Persons from eternity, has perverted the whole church to such a degree that there is not any spiritual residue of it remaining:- The errors flowing from [the doctrine] of redemption [held] at the present day [namely] that it is the passion of the cross are to be enumerated. The falsities of faith cannot be conjoined with the good of charity. Predictions in Daniel and the Prophets concerning those successive states. Concerning Christ (Matt. xxiv.).