We preach Jesus, therefore, as very God; as the agent, and end of all things; for by him and for him were all things in heaven and earth created. Col. i. 16. We preach his blood as deriving all its efficacy to atone for sin, and purge the conscience, from the infinite dignity of his divine nature. We believe his righteousness to be “the righteousness of God” in all respects consummate, and divinely glorious; 2 Cor. v. 21; and that, abstracted from the fulness of the Godhead, it could have no more availed towards the justification of a sinner before God, than the righteousness of Gabriel. We believe that it was the incomprehensible yet real union of the divine nature to the human, in the person of the Lord Christ, that enabled him to make “a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for sin,” to bruise the serpent’s head, to conquer death, and to tread the wine-press of the wrath of God. We believe Jesus to be God-man, and point lost sinners to him as the object of their trust and adoration; and we are fully persuaded, that, take away the truth of our Lord’s proper Deity, and you discard the rock on which the church is built, and subvert the foundation of his people’s hopes. If unbelievers start the old trite objection of proud reason, that this doctrine too is unworthy of acceptation, because incomprehensible, our answer is in the words of the apostle, “Great is the _mystery_ of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh.” 1 Tim. iii. 16. 4. As to the decrees and dispensations of Almighty God, which originate in “the good pleasure of his will,” Ephes. i. 5, and are made subservient to his glory, I would wish to think of them with caution and humility, and to speak of them with the most profound reverence: And though I cannot but acknowledge that my thoughts recoil with horror at the idea of God’s dooming sinners to hell by a positive decree of reprobation, or of his taking a delight and complacency in the misery of any of his creatures; yet I cannot withhold my hearty assent to that authority, which declares, that believers were “chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world;” Ephes. i. 4; that they are “elect according to the fore-knowledge of God;” Pet. i. 2; that they are “chosen to salvation,” 1 Thes. ii. 13, as the certain end of that choice; and, as the 17th article says, “that the godly consideration of our election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to such as _feel_ in themselves the working of the spirit of Christ.”