them.”1859 But why do ye wait for a proof from me that the Son also restored life to Himself?
Let Him speak Himself; “I have power to lay down My life.” I have not yet said what I
promised. I have said, “to lay it down;” and you are crying out already, for you are flying
past me. For well-instructed as ye are in the school of your heavenly teacher, as attentively
listening to, and in pious affection rehearsing,1860 what is read, ye are not ignorant of what
comes next. “I have power,” saith He,“to lay down My life, and I have power to take it again.
No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself, and take it again.”1861
14. I have made good what I promised; I have established my propositions with, as I
think, the strongest proofs and testimonies. Hold fast then what you have heard. I will re-
capitulate it briefly, and entrust it to be stored up in your minds as a thing, to my thinking,
of the greatest usefulness. The Father was not born of the Virgin; yet this birth of the Son
from the Virgin was the work both of the Father and the Son. The Father suffered not on
the Cross; yet the Passion of the Son was the work both of the Father and the Son. The
Father rose not again from the dead; yet the resurrection of the Son was the work both of
the Father and the Son. You see then a distinction of Persons, and an inseparableness of
operation. Let us not say therefore that the Father doeth any thing without the Son, or the
Son any thing without the Father. But perhaps you have a difficulty as to the miracles which
Jesus did, lest peradventure He did some which the Father did not! Where then is that saying,
“The Father who dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works?”1862 All that I have now said was
plain; it needed to be barely mentioned; there was no necessity for much labour to make it
understood, but only that care should be taken, that it might be brought to your remem-
brance.
15. I wish to say something further, and here ask sincerely both for your more earnest
attention, and your devotion to Godward. For none but bodies are held or contained in
places suited to the nature1863 of bodies. The Divinity is beyond all such places: let no one
seek for it as though it were in space. It is everywhere invisible and inseparably present; not
in one part greater, and another smaller; but whole everywhere, and nowhere divided. Who
can see? Who can comprehend this? Let us restrain ourselves: let us remember who we are;
and of Whom we speak. Let this and that, or whatever appertains1864 to the nature of God,
be with a pious faith embraced, with a holy respect entertained, and as far as is allowed us,
as far as is possible for us, in an unspeakable sort understood. Let words be hushed: let the
1859 Ps. xli. 10.
1860 Reddentes.
1861 John x. 18.
1862 John xiv. 10.
1863 Corporalibus.
1864 Quidquid est quod Deus est.
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Of the words of St. Matthew’s Gospel, Chap. iii. 13, 'Then Jesus cometh…