Formerly, in religious controversy, there was something positive on one side, against which an opposing negative was asserted. In the great controversy recorded in the Bible, the supremacy of Jehovah and the authority of his Word were explicitly and constantly affirmed by one party, and as directly and perseveringly denied by the other; and the two parties were therefore broadly and unmistakably distinguished. But at present the case is widely different. No active partisan, theological or scientific, now denies the existence of a Supreme Being, or professes to disbelieve the Scriptures. All claim to be believers in God and in the Bible. What they differ about is as to what kind of Being that is whom they call God; whether personality is one of his attributes, and what works and purposes are to be ascribed to him: and as to what the Scriptures teach, how they are to be understood; whether they are inspired or not; whether they are all typical, or what portion or whether the whole of them is in some way figurative; whether miracles were ever wrought; whether the Mosaic account of the creation is to be understood literally, and the like. And if there is at this moment, in the compass of the world, or in the Protestant portion of it, one comprehensive error, conspicuous above all others, it is that of inadequate, partial, defective apprehensions, recognitions, and acknowledgments of what the Scriptures reveal concerning the Person, prerogatives, offices, works, dominion, triumph and glory of the Messiah, and concerning his yet unended conflict with the Arch-apostate. NOTE B--The primary ground of Mediation, &c. The primary ground or reason of that mediation, in the economy of the universe, which is affirmed of the one Mediator in all the relations of God to the World, is the infinite difference between the Deity and creatures in nature, attributes, and mode of existence and action. The relations implied in the existence and agency of creatures are such as cannot be conceived to subsist between beings so diverse in all respects as the infinite and finite, except through an intermediate agent, in the constitution of whose person and office the opposite extremes are united. For in creating, upholding, and governing finite beings, the agency of the Creator and Ruler connects itself with the conditions and relations of time and space; the conditions and relations of matter; of succession of thought, feeling, and action; of that which is external, visible, limited; that which begins and ends. It may therefore be said, that in the nature of things such mediation, the interposition of such an official Person, is necessary; and accordingly the agency of the Mediator in those relations is presupposed, assumed, or expressly recognized, throughout the Scriptures.