In this abstracted light, the Apostles
frequently view Christ themselves. Thus St. Paul:[102] "I live, yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me." And again,[103] "Know ye not your own
selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?"
[Footnote 102: Gal. 2.20.]
[Footnote 103: 2 Cor. 15.5].
Now no person imagines that St. Paul had any idea, either that the body
of Christ was in himself, or in others, on the occasions on which he has
thus spoken.
That Christ therefore, as he held the offices contained in the
proposition, was the spirit of God, we may pronounce from various views,
which we may take of him, all of which seem to lead us to the same
conclusion.
And first let us look at Christ in the scriptural light in which he has
been held forth to us in the fourth section of the seventh chapter,
where I have explained the particular notions of the Quakers relative to
the new birth.
God maybe considered here as having produced, by means of his Holy
Spirit, a birth of divine life in the soul of the "body which had been
prepared;" and this birth was Christ. [104] "But that which is born of
the spirit, says St. John, is spirit." The only question then will be as
to the magnitude of the spirit thus produced. In answer to this St. John
says,[105] "that God gave him not the spirit by measure.
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