But where a reference is made to any thing in the economy of redemption, or any thing involving official acts or relations, official titles are introduced, or a phraseology is employed, by which the intended meaning is expressed. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are clearly distinguished, or their personality, relations and agency are indicated by the nature of the things recorded, or by the connections in which they occur. It is in this view that we understand all those passages in which the divine names and the official titles of the Mediator are interchangeably applied to the same Person. In all such cases the things affirmed are in other passages affirmed of the Messiah, under titles which exclusively belong to him. He is in this manner announced in the Old Testament as Jehovah, the Elohe of Abraham, the Creator, &c. The patriarchs and prophets knew God, as manifested in him in his delegated, official, personal character. That they were enlightened in respect to the invisible Deity absolutely considered, and in respect to the distinction of Persons, is no more to be doubted than that they were enlightened as to the great Revealer. The sublime conceptions proper to this subject were undoubtedly so imparted, received, and cherished as to render the doctrine of mediation and of the delegated personal character of the Mediator an intelligible and practical doctrine. This may be inferred, not only from all that is recorded concerning the religion of the patriarchs, the sacrifices, prayers, types and symbols connected with their worship, but also from the theory of the earliest idolatry, which was a rival system, and was based upon the idea of mediation between a supreme invisible Deity and creatures, and consisted in regarding as mediators created intelligences, supposed to reside in the planetary orbs, and in images or idols as their representatives. It is obvious, indeed, from the nature of the case, that where any notion of mediation and a Mediator prevailed, and was indicated in the rites and institutions of worship, there, and, above all, under a system of revealed religion and acceptable worship, an apprehension more or less distinct, enlarged and just of the invisible Deity, of the concealed as well as of the revealed God, must have been entertained.