The usage of the word _God_, in the New Testament, presents us with some remarkable phenomena. The Athanasian doctrine offers to our belief four objects of thought, to which this word is equally and indifferently applicable; the Triune Divine Being; and each of the three Persons; and its advocates profess to have learned from Scripture the well-adjusted equipoise of these claims upon the great and sacred name. We are hardly then prepared by its instructions, distinct and emphatic as they are, for the following fact; allowing every one of the Trinitarian interpretations to be correct, the word God is used in the New Testament TEN times of Christ; and of some other object, upwards of THIRTEEN HUNDRED times.[178] Whence this astonishing disproportion? _Some cause_,—something corresponding to it in the minds of the writers, it must have had; nor is it easy to understand, how an equal disposition of the Divine Persons in the habitual conceptions of the Authors, could lead to so unequal an award of the grand expression of Divinity. Even the few instances, which for the moment I have allowed, will disappear on a nearer examination. This appears to be the proper place to pass under review the most remarkable passages, which, under Trinitarian exposition, _appear_ to sanction the doctrine of the proper Deity of Christ. (a.) The evangelist Matthew applies to Christ[179] the following words of the prophet Isaiah, which, in order to give the truest impression of the original, I will quote from the translation of Bishop Lowth: “Behold the Virgin conceiveth, and beareth a son; and she shall call his name Emmanuel.”[180] As this name is significant, and means “God with us,” it is argued, that it could not be assigned to any one who was not properly God. Now even if this name were really assigned by the prophet to Christ, the most superficial Hebraist must be aware that it teaches us nothing respecting the nature and person of our Lord. “The fact is unquestionable,” says Dr. Pye Smith, “that the gratitude or hope of individuals, in the ancient scriptural times, was often expressed by the imposition of significant appellations on persons or other objects, in the composition of which Divine names and titles were frequently employed; these are, therefore, nothing but short sentences, declarative of some blessing possessed or expected.”[181] Thus the name _Lemuel_ means _God with them_; _Elijah_, _God the Lord_; _Elihu_, _God is he_. So that to use the words of one of the ablest of living Trinitarian writers, “to maintain that the name Immanuel proves the doctrine in question is a fallacious argument.”[182]