me, saying, I am the first and the last; I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death." Rev. i. 17, 18. When we consider all this, we cannot but see, that this apostle must have been in an especial manner qualified to write on the subject contained in this epistle now before us, which he begins with speaking of the Person of Christ; the eternity of Christ; the reality of Christ's incarnation: the ocular proofs and demonstrations he, and the other apostles and disciples, had of this greatest of all truths, God manifested in the flesh. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life.” Thus he begins the first chapter of this epistle. The word beginning is the same with Moses' beginning—the same with which this apostle begins his gospel-the same of which the God-Man speaks, when he says, "The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old." The gospel of John begins thus, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made." The professed design of John in writing his gospel, is expressed by him thus : "These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name." John xx. 31. His end and design in writing this epistle is thus declared by him, "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” 1 John v. 13. This sacred memorial of the apostle, is to show how all saints may come to undeniable certainty, and have clear and undubitable evidence of their own personal interest and salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ; and thus going on in renewed and reiterated acts of faith on him, might also have increasing communion with him. As his gospel was to confirm saints in the knowledge and belief of the distinctive Personality of Christ, of his being co-equal and co-essential with the Divine Father; of his being the true Messiah; of his having performed the whole work and office for which he became incarnate; so this was written by the same apostle, to show the whole church, it was their high calling and privilege, to have, and hold communion with this most adorable Person, and with the Father in him; and to express to them, the blessed fruits and effects produced in their minds herefrom, through the in-dwelling of the Holy Ghost, some of which were openly expressed in life and conversation. This is an outline of the whole of this sacred apostolic letter, which is entitled, The First Epistle General of John. It is not directed to any particular person, nor to any particular church. No. It is a Catholic epistle. It belongs to all saints, and that from the time it was written, down to us, and throughout all generations. It may not be amiss, as it may assist the memory, to divide these words before me, into the following particulars.

1. To consider Him of whom John is speaking. That which was from the beginning.

2. What he says of Him. He had been heard, he had been seen,

he had been handled.

3. The persons who had thus seen Him.

4. The title he gives this most wonderful one. The Word of life. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life."

I am 1st. to consider Him of whom John is here speaking, That which was from the beginning.

Beloved, the subject is deep. It is altogether divine. The Lord keep me from saying anything hereon, but what the clear scripture will justify me in. Of all mysteries contained in the revelation the Lord God hath given us in the word of his grace, that which concerns his own nature, and existence, must be confessed to be the deepest and most sublime. In this revelation, Jehovah hath made known himself, as existing as Father, Son, and Spirit, distinctly and Personally in one and the same ineffable Essence, so that the one is not before, nor after the other, neither greater nor less than the other; but they are co-equal and coeternal in the one self-existing Essence; which is the fountain of the persons. That which distinguishes the Persons is as essential as the Godhead itself. What God is in his nature, persons, life, blessedness, glory, immortality, and eternity, is, and ever will be, incomprehensible. "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea." Job xi. 7, 8, 9. The whole scripture openly expresses the self-existence, life, being, blessedness, eternity, and glory of God; and the same scriptures express the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, as co-existing by essential union in the Essence, as being the one only true and living God. The first term by which the Divine Majesty is expressed in the Bible is an evidence of this. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." It is acknowledged by the learned, both Jews and Christians, the word God is plural: and it fully appears to be so, as in Gen. i. 26, we read, And God said, let us make man. As the nature of God is an infinite fountain of blessedness to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, so the Three in Jehovah needed not go forth into any acts to complete their blessedness. Yet out of the immensity of goodness which is contained in the incomprehensible Essence, it pleased the Eternal Three to manifest and make known their nature, persons, perfections, and blessedness, openly and visibly, the foundation of which in the divine mind was by the joint will of the essential Three, to set up one of the Persons in the essence to be God-Man, in one Person, in whom the essence, persons, and glory of the Godhead should shine forth to the uttermost manifestation and display thereof. The Son of God, of the same essence with the Father and the Spirit, was fixed on to be predestinated to be God-Man, in whom all the glory of the Godhead should be manifested, so far as they possibly could, consistent with God's incomprehensibility, to the uttermost. It should be carefully attended unto, that the foundation of all this, was laid in the Son of God. He, as a Person in the Godhead, was the Person who was chosen to be the image of the invisible God. He was predestinated to take into Personal union an individual humanity, consisting of body and soul, by which he gave Personality to it. Thus, he became God-Man from before all time. This great and glorious mystery, contained in the inspired volume, the

first hint given of it, is in these words, And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. This image of God was Christ, GodMan. It was after the pattern-likeness of him, Adam, the first man, was formed and Christ himself is expressly styled the image of God, and this as God-Man. "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist." Colos. i. 15, 16, 17. The God-Man was chosen for God himself to delight in; therefore the Divine Father speaks of him thus: Behold mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth. He is revealed as the first and the last, in all the will, thoughts, purposes, decrees, as the one object of God's infinite complacency. In the 8th chapter of Proverbs, he there says, "The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was." He concludes this subject at the 30th verse, saying, "Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him." Prov. viii. 22, 23. 30. As Christ, God-Man, was set up from everlasting, as the image of the invisible God, in whom the whole glory of the divine Essence, and the Persons in the same, were manifested to the uttermost, so far as God willed, and to the uttermost of the capacities of intellectual creatures, so God chose the church in him, and created the heavens and the earth, in the intuitive knowledge he had of him. He engaged him to be the Saviour of the elect; revealed him immediately upon the fall as such; promised to give him, and send him into the world, clothed with our nature, to save his people in himself with an everlasting salvation. The greatest promise which was ever given, concerned the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ into our world. He was to be incarnate. Before which he appeared in Person, in such glory and majesty, as to be testimonials of his eternity and divinity. He was seen by Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was seen by Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. He was seen by Joshua, Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, and that as wearing the insignia of God-Man. And his saints embraced the promise of his open incarnation with unspeakable joy and delight. When the period was full up, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. This was one of the greatest events which ever took place, or ever can. Our apostle, and others with him, saw this great sight; God incarnate, God in our nature. God manifest in the flesh. Immanuel God with us. And of this he is here speaking. That which was from the beginning. The humanity of Christ was not a Person, but a thing; it is so called by the angel Gabriel, who speaking to Mary, the mother of it, says, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." Luke i. 35. The Person of Christ was from the beginning. He was as GodMan before the world, and had a glory with the Father before the world was. He says to the Jews, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am." John viii. 58. This most glorious one, who was God-Man before the world was; who became incarnate in the fulness

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of time; who took hold of our nature, and became true and very man, God and man united in one Christ. He was seen by our apostle, who says, And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." John i. 14. John lived in the days of Christ's incarnation; he had the honour to see Christ, the Messiah, and was favoured with his company and communion with him. This was grace and glory inexpressible. Such as we can have no tolerable conceptions and ideas of. Were we but to carry this thought with us, in our reading his writings, that he was one of those persons who actually saw Christ in the flesh, I conceive it would stamp what we read in him, with eternal importance and weight on our minds. I proceed to consider what he says of him.

2. He had heard, he had seen, he had handled him. So had others also. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life." These various terms of hearing, seeing, looking, handling, are designed to express the reality of our Lord's incarnation. That he had a real body. It was a palpable one. It was seen. It was touched. It was heard. Our Lord spake; his voice was heard. He was looked upon and seen with the bodily eyes of those who conversed with him; he was felt and handled, and found to be as really and truly man, as he was really and truly God. The truth of this was denied by some heretics in the apostolic age. To refute which the apostle expresseth himself as he here doth. There was satisfaction given, and such demonstration given to every sense of body and mind, that Christ had a body like our own, that no greater proof could be given. He was made in all things like unto his brethren. It was in our nature he obeyed. Bore the sins of many, in his own body on the tree. It was in his human soul, he felt and sustained the whole curse and righteous displeasure of his Father's wrath, due to the sins of the whole election of grace.—It was in his body he died the death due to sin.—It was in his body he was crucified.-It was in his body he rose from death to life immortal. He appeared to his disciples in the very same body in which he had been crucified. In the same body he ascended. In it he is glorified at the right hand of the Majesty on high, angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him. In the same body he will appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation. The apostle Paul says, "God hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead." Acts xvii. 31. The apostle says, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life." To realize to those to whom he then wrote, and to the Church of Christ, down to the end of time, the certainty, reality and importance of our Lord's incarnation. All that Christ was from everlasting, he hath manifested it in time. When he became one with his people, by his open incarnation, all the everlasting love of God, in him, to them, shone forth in all its radiancy and glory; in all its majesty and splendour. Christ in laying aside the glory which he had with the Father, before the world was, and taking on himself the form of a servant, fully proved his delights were with the elect sons of men. He hereby became what he was not before.

He was in the form of God. He now laid it aside. He was found in fashion as a man. He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. All which John saw, in the views he had, of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ in his incarnate state. It is one of the greatest mysteries in the word, next to that of the doctrine of the ever blessed and glorious Trinity, the person of Christ. Which, for the substance of it is this, a Person in the Godhead dwelling personally in the human nature which he took into personal union. Our nature was not, is not taken up into union with the Godhead, but into personal union with a Person in the Godhead. To declare the grace of this, and set forth the full glories of God-Man, of God the Son, dwelling personally in the Man Christ Jesus, and his personal incommunicable glory, which is the very result and consequence of this, is impossible. Neither can his grace expressed in his incarnation, be ever fully explored. The mystery of the incarnation is the wonder of elect angels, as it is and ever will be the wonder of elect men. That the God-Man, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead personally, should come forth from the Father, and come into our world, and take a body prepared for him by the Father, which was accordingly formed, articulated, and framed by the Holy Ghost, is one of the greatest displays of grace, which the mind of God was ever engaged in. Hereby the Son of God, the heir of all things, the brightness of glory, the Lord of glory, the King of glory, was in our world in his open incarnate state. Thus heaven was opened; God was seen; and this great promise made good to the elect church of human race upon earth. "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." Isaiah ix. 6. The incarnation of God-Man, was symbolically set forth by the Tabernacle and the Temple. To live therefore when all this, and the glory contained in these figures, was realized by the manifestation of Christ in the flesh, must have reflected a glorious blaze of supernatural light, upon the enlightened minds of saints, to whom the glory of the Lord was revealed, as he was to the Apostles. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life." The Person of Christ is a most trancendantly excellent subject. The incarnation of Christ, a deep and most momentous subject. It may be, in no human writings, these are so fully opened, as in the second volume of Dr. Goodwin's folio works, with one or two other authors. For him, who had been in the form of God, and shone forth to the delight of the Holy Three, as the object of their infinite delight, to veil his glories, to suspend the shine of them, to appear in the likeness of sinful flesh, to become a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and for the riches of everlasting love and grace to be manifested and displayed to the church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven hereby, is grace worthy of God. We can only cry out, when we have the real apprehension of it, O the depth ! I proceed to consider,

3. The persons who had thus seen him, "Which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life." They were the apostles themselves. He speaks in their and his own name here. Not but other