God

"Verbum Caro: the son of God chose flesh and even flesh "in bad shape" like mine."

"Wars and other kinds of murder have their beginning in the hatred of the enemy and in the unwillingness to be patient with evil. Their root is in intemperate self-love and in immoderate affection for temporal possessions. These conflicts are brought into this world because men do not trust the Son of God enough to abide by his commandments."

"There is an uneasy desire among a vast many well-disposed persons to get the fruits of the Christian Faith, without troubling themselves about the Faith itself. This is done under the sanction of Peace Societies, Temperance and Moral Reform Societies, in which the end is too often mistaken for the means. When the Almighty sent His Son on earth, it was to point out the way in which all this was to be brought about, by means of the Church; but men have so frittered away that body of divine organization, through their divisions and subdivisions, all arising from human conceit, that it is no longer regarded as the agency it was so obviously intended to be, and various contrivances are to be employed as substitutes for that which proceeded directly from the Son of God!"

"God is my witness, by whom I am moved to give this forth for the Truth's sake, from him whom the world calls George Fox; who is the son of God who is sent to stand a witness against all violence and against all the works of darkness, and to turn people from the darkness to the light, and to bring them from the occasion of the war and from the occasion of the magistrate's sword..."

"When you realize that every breath is a gift from God. When you realize how small you are, but how much he loved you. That he, Jesus, would die, the son of God .."

"The father is against the son, the brother against the brother: and, Lord, with what conscience! O be thou merciful unto us, and in thine anger remember thy mercy; suffer thyself to be entreated; be reconciled unto us; nay, reconcile us unto thee. O thou God of justice, judge justly. O thou Son of God, which earnest to destroy the works of Satan, destroy his furors, now smoking, and almost set on fire in this realm. We have sinned; we have sinned: and therefore thou art angry. O be not angry for ever. Give us peace, peace, peace in the Lord. Set us to war against sin, against Satan, against our carnal desires; and give us the victory this way. This victory we obtain by faith. This faith is not without repentance, as her gentleman usher before her: before her, I say, in discerning true faith from false faith, lip-faith, Englishmen's faith: for else it springs out of true faith."

"You trust in your own doings to appease God for your sins, and to incline the heart of God to you. Though you are poor, worthless, vile, and polluted, yet you arrogantly take upon you that very work for which the Son of God became man; and in order to which God employed four thousand years in all the great dispensations of His providence, aiming chiefly to make way for Christ's coming to do this work. This is the work that you foolishly think yourselves sufficient for; as though your prayers and performances were excellent enough for this purpose. Consider how vain is the thought which you entertain of yourself. How must such arrogance appear in the sight of Christ, whom it cost so much? It was not to be obtained even by Him, so great and glorious a person, at a cheaper rate than His wading through a sea of blood, and passing through the midst of the furnace of God's wrath."

"Incarnation, central Christian doctrine that God became flesh, that God assumed a human nature and became a man in the form of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the second person of the Trinity. Christ was truly God and truly man. The doctrine maintains that the divine and human natures of Jesus do not exist beside one another in an unconnected way but rather are joined in him in a personal unity that has traditionally been referred to as the hypostatic union."

""When all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him: that God may be all in all." (1 Cor 15:28) ... Are not all things now subject unto Him? ... How, then, will they be brought into subjection? In the way that the Lord Himself has said. "Take My yoke upon you." (Mat 11:29) It is not the fierce that bear the yoke, but the humble and the gentle. This clearly is no base subjection for men, but a glorious one... all things were not made subject before, for they had not yet received the wisdom of God, not yet did they wear the easy yoke of the Word on the neck as it were of their mind. ... Will any one say that Christ is now made subject, because many have believed? Certainly not. For Christ's subjection lies not in a few but in all. ... we divide Christ as long as the human race disagrees. Therefore Christ is not yet made subject, for His members are not yet brought into subjection. But when we have become, not many members, but one spirit, then He also will become subject, in order that through His subjection "God may be all and in all." But as Christ is not yet made subject, so is the work of God not yet perfected; for the Son of God said: "My meat is to do the will of My Father that sent Me, and to finish His work." (John 4:34)"

"But why do you not cease to call Mary the mother of God, if Isaiah nowhere says that he that is born of the virgin is the "only begotten Son of God" and "the firstborn of all creation"?"

"Julian (emperor), Against the Galilaeans (c. 362)"

"Even though Jesus may be the only miracleworking Son of God that people know about today, there were lots of people like this in the ancient world."

"The apostle Paul … was conscious of the new in his apprehension of the gospel over against the primitive Jewish-Christian Church, and based the right of his apostolic preaching not upon human tradition, but upon the revelation of the Spirit of Christ in his heart. ... The “Christ according to the Spirit,” as Paul preached him, was certainly not identical with the “Christ according to the flesh,” as he lived in the recollection of the Primitive Church. For Paul had stripped off the Jewish in this individual phenomenon, in order to bring forth and exalt as an object of faith to gentiles and Jews alike the universal religious principle alone. His Christ is the ideal Son of God, i.e. the personification of the religious idea as it lived in the soul of Jesus, of the love of God and men as it had been the impelling principle of his life-work."

"Laudes Christo redempti voce modulemur supplici ..."

"Religions are all founded on miracles — on things we cannot understand, such as the Trinity. Jesus calls himself the Son of God, and yet is descended from David. I prefer the religion of Mahomet — it is less ridiculous than ours."

"A heavy charge may be brought against Friar John himself, in so far that he did not oppose, though we have no reason to believe that he instigated, the severe measures which were adopted in this reign against the Jews. ...Occasionally a prelate would take part against them, urged, by religious motives, to act against those who, in their unbelief, crucified the Son of God afresh. Such was the case with Peckham, and even with the more enlightened Stephen Langton. But the prelates, who were statesmen and lawyers, were generally on the side of Government, whose policy it was to extend protection to that great class, which formed a considerable part of the monied interest of the country."

"The English word “evangelical” comes from a transliteration of the Greek noun euangelion, which was used by the writers of the New Testament to signify the glad tidings-the goods news-of Jesus’ appearance on earth as the Son of God to accomplish God’s plan of salvation for needy humans. Translators of the New Testament into English usually employed the word “gospel” (which means goods news or glad tidings in Old English) for euangelion, as in passages like Romans 1:16-“I am not ashamed of the gospel (euangelion), because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (NIV) Thus, “evangelical” religion has always been “gospel” religion, or religion focusing on the “good news” of salvation brought to sinner by Jesus Christ. Already in the middle ages the word was applied, for example, to Isiah as “the evangelical prophet,” because of how later Christians read this Old Testament book as describing the work of Christ. IT was also applied to the followers of St. Francis, because their abandonment of worldly possessions was regarded as a clear imitation of Jesus’ own life. During the sixteenth century, the word “evangelical” began to take on a more specific meaning associated with the Protestant Reformation. In this usage, the evangelicals were those who protested against the corruptions of the late-medieval Western church and who sought a Christ-centered and Bible-centered reform of the church. Because of these efforts, the word became a rough synonym for “Protestant.” To this day in many places around the world, Lutheran churches reflect this older sense of the term (for example, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America or the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil). In contemporary Germany, evangelisch retains the older meaning attached to the Lutheran churches descended from the Reformation, while evangelikal is a new coinage to designate those who are often called “evangelicals” in other parts of the world."

"Those executioners of tyranny and barbarity arrived at the garden of Khizrabad at seven O’clock at night. They entered the room where the afflicted prince was walking up and down repeating the words referred to: Muhammad mara mi-kushad, ibn-ullah mara jan mi-bakhshad [Muhammad kills me, and the Son of God gives me life; interpreted as Dara’s desire to convert to Christianity at this moment]. They laid hands upon him, and, showing neither compassion nor respect, flung him to the ground and cut off his head. Leaving the body to welter in its blood, they carried the head with all haste to Aurangzeb’s presence. It was then eight O’clock at night, and he was in the garden of the palace. Such was the tragic and lamentable fate meted out to the unhappy prince Dara, first-born and heir to the Mogul empire, loved and cherished by his father, Shahjahan, and respected by the people. Neither his good qualities nor his rank sufficed to deliver him from the evil designs of Aurangzeb, nor from the ill-effects of his own bad qualities."

"I think of the stable where Jesus was born and the smell of oxen, donkeys, sheep and wet wool. The reality of the stable is brought home to me: it was a bare, smelly, dirty and unlikely place for the Son of God to born, a poor place. Yet, isn't that just like God? To do the unexpected? The surprising? The mystery of Christmas is that it happened at all."

"‘’’So when the centurion, who stood opposite Him, saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, he said, "Truly this Man was the Son of God!"’’’"

"As man lives, and moves, and has his Being in the Divine Nature, and is supported by it, whether his Nature be good or bad; so the Wrath of Man, which was awakened in the dark Fire of his fallen Nature, may, in a certain Sense, be called the Wrath of God, as Hell itself may be said to be in God, because nothing can be out of his Immensity; yet this Hell, is not God, but the dark Habitation of the Devil. And this Wrath which may be called the Wrath of God, is not God, but the fiery Wrath of the fallen Soul. And it was solely to quench this Wrath, awakened in the human Soul, that the Blood of the Son of God was necessary, because nothing but a Life and a Birth, derived from him into the human Soul, could change this darkened Root of a self-tormenting Fire, into an amiable Image of the holy Trinity, as it was at first created. This was the Wrath, Vengeance, and vindictive Justice that wanted to be satisfied, in order to our Salvation; it was the Wrath and Fire of Nature and Creature kindled only in itself, by its departing from true Resignation, and Obedience to God."

"Now, if there is anyone dissatisfied with the fact, that there is a whole race of human beings, with the rights of human beings, created with a skin not colored like our own, let him go mouth the heavens, and mutter his blasphemies in the ear of the God that made us all. Tell him that he had no business to make human beings with a black skin. I repeat, I feel no responsibility for this fact. But, inasmuch as it has pleased God to make them human beings, I am bound to regard them as such. Instead of chattering your gibberish in my ear bout negro equality, go look the son of God in the face and reproach him for favoring negro equality because he poured out his blood for the most abject and despised of the human family. Go settle this matter with the God who created and the Christ who redeemed."

"Bound upon the accurséd tree, Faint and bleeding, who is he? By the eyes so pale and dim, Streaming blood, and writhing limb; By the flesh, with scourges torn; By the crown of twisted thorn; By the side so deeply pierced; By the baffled, burning thirst; By the drooping death-dewed brow: Son of Man, ’tis thou!’t is thou! Bound upon the accurséd tree, Dread and awful, who is he? By the sun at noonday pale, Shivering rocks, and rending veil: By earth, that trembles at his doom; By yonder saints who burst their tomb; By Eden promised, ere he died, To the felon at his side; Lord, our suppliant knees we bow: Son of God, ’tis thou! ’tis thou! Bound upon the accurséd tree, Sad and dying, who is he? By the last and bitter cry; The ghost given up in agony; By the lifeless body laid In the chamber of the dead; By the mourners come to weep Where the bones of Jesus sleep; Crucified! we know thee now: Son of Man, ’tis thou! ’tis thou! Bound upon the accurséd tree, Dread and awful, who is he? By the prayer for them that slew,— “Lord, they know not what they do!” By the spoiled and empty grave; By the souls he died to save; By the conquest he hath won; By the saints before his throne: By the rainbow round his brow; Son of God, ’tis thou! ’tis thou!"

"As long as we dwell in the shadow, we cannot see the sun itself; but Now we see through a glass darkly, says St. Paul. Yet the shadow is so enlightened by the sunshine that we can perceive the distinctions between all the virtues and all the truth which is profitable to our mortal state. But if we would become one with the brightness of the Sun, we must follow love, and go out of ourselves into the Wayless, and then the Sun will draw us with our blinded eyes into Its own brightness, in which we shall possess unity with God. . . . In his outpouring, He wills to he wholly ours: and then He teaches us to live in the riches of the virtues. In His indrawing touch all our powers forsake us, and then we sit under His shadow, and His fruit is sweet to our taste, for the Fruit of God is the Son of God, Whom the Father brings forth in our spirit. This Fruit is so infinitely sweet to our taste that we can neither swallow It nor assimilate It, but It rather absorbs us into Itself and assimilates us with Itself."

"’’’Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about [a]two miles away. And many of the Jews had joined the women around Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother."

"Thirdly, he must have lost himself in a waylessness and in a darkness in which all contemplatives wander around in enjoyment and can no longer find themselves in a creaturely way. In the abyss of this darkness in which the loving spirit has died to itself, there begin the revelation of God and eternal life. For in this darkness there shines and is born an incomprehensible light which is the Son of God, in whom one contemplates eternal life. And in this light one becomes seeing."

"Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name."

"’’’Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. Therefore the sisters sent to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.”"

"The ninth chapter shows us the new step of sovereign grace in the conversion of Saul to be the witness of an ascended Christ, Who owns the saints as part of Himself, and calls the persecutor to be His chosen vessel to bear His name before Gentiles, kings, and children of Israel, the deepest in truth, the largest in heart, the most abundant in labour of all the apostles. No wonder the gospel of Christ's glory marked him, who first saw and heard the Lord thus; yet a simple disciple baptised him who forthwith, in the synagogues, preached Jesus as the Son of God."

"This bread and wine are the simple but eloquent monument to the infinite love of the Son of God, around which we gather with tender, tearful gratitude, because He loved us'so, and because we know that our garlands of affection and consecration are pleasing to Him."

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

"As men, we have God for our King, and are under the law of reason: as Christians, we have Jesus the Messiah for our King, and are under the law revealed by him in the gospel. And though every Christian, both as a deist and a Christian, be obliged to study both the law of nature and the revealed law, that in them he may know the will of God, and of Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent; yet, in neither of these laws, is there to be found a select set of fundamentals, distinct from the rest, which are to make him a deist, or a Christian. But he that believes one eternal, invisible God, his Lord and King, ceases thereby to be an atheist; and he that believes Jesus to be the Messiah, his king, ordained by God, thereby becomes a Christian, is delivered from the power of darkness, and is translated into the kingdom of the Son of God; is actually within the covenant of grace, and has that faith, which shall be imputed to him for righteousness; and, if he continues in his allegiance to this his King, shall receive the reward: eternal life."

"Labour therefore diligently, that not only out of the time of temptation, but also in the time and conflict of death, when thy conscience is thoroughly afraid with the remembrance of thy sins past, and the devil assaileth thee with great violence, going about to overwhelm thee with heaps, floods and whole seas of sins, to terrify thee, to draw thee from Christ, and to drive thee to despair; that then I say, thou mayest be able to say with sure confidence: Christ the Son of God was given, not for the righteous and holy, but for the unrighteous and sinners.... If he gave himself to death for our sins, then undoubtedly he is no tyrant or judge which will condemn us for our sins. He is no caster-down of the afflicted, but a raiser-up of those that are fallen, a merciful reliever and comforter of the heavy and broken-hearted. Else should Paul lie in saying: "which gave himself for our sins.""

"God never gave a man a thing to do concerning which it were irreverent to ponder how the Son of God would have done it."

"The rhythms of the knowledge that comes from faith are slow. That is why revelation must also be hidden, veiled. Man's freedom is unable to bear the full weight of God's revelation. Thus the parables spring from the heart of Jesus urgency of the gospel; they are spontaneous, not artificial, they spring from life itself. The parables are, in this perspective, one of the most beautiful fruits of the mystery of the Incarnation, the frontier to which language is pushed by the Son of God, so that it may be adapted to communicate the mystery of the Kingdom in respect to the concrete situation of man."

"All true development tends ever to God. Its objective aim is the restoration by the second Adam of the Divine image forfeited by the first; and, incidentally, it transmutes grief into gladness and sighs into songs. But it is always a development in Christ, since it is only " in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God " that any of our race can come "unto a perfect man.""

"’’’But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.’’’"

"This is what the Son of God desires of you: that he might be able to embellish, perfect and gain you lustre with the fullness of his gifts. Since he is so taken by your Beauty, which flows and gushes from him to you, as I have said, what he desires of you is that he might have the supreme pleasure of an eternity enjoying you and his gifts. Thus, everyone who proceeds to live in a way that is contrary to his own self, lives in God; his whole being is God-orientated; he sees nothing but God and himself."

"As an act of kindness Mr. Woodsworth visited Mr. Paine every day for six weeks before his death. He frequently sat up with him, and did so on the last two nights of his life. He was always there with Dr. Manley, the physician, and assisted in removing Mr. Paine while his bed was prepared. He was present when Dr. Manley asked Mr. Paine "if he wished to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God," and he describes Mr. Paine's answer as animated. He says that lying on his back he used some action and with much emphasis, replied, "I have no wish to believe on that subject." He lived some time after this, but was not known to speak, for he died tranquilly."

"... Newton was harbouring a terrible secret. He believed that the central Christian doctrine of the Trinity was a diabolical fraud and that all of modern Christianity was tainted by its presence. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was not equal in any sense to God the Father, although he was divine, and was worthy of being worshipped in his own right. Newton did not arrive at these beliefs as a result of pursuing some dilettantish hobby; nor were they the result of studies he pursued at the end of his life. Instead, they lay at the heart of a massive research programme on prophecy and that he carried out early in his career. This was at least as strenuous, and, in his eyes, at least as "rational" as his work on physics and mathematics."

"Therefore, as I have said, one must not call this gift and grace spiritual prayer,"

"I have said that God is pleased with nothing but love; but before I explain this, it will be as well to set forth the grounds on which the assertion rests. All our works, and all our labours, how grand soever they may be, are nothing in the sight of God, for we can give Him nothing, neither can we by them fulfil His desire, which is the growth of our soul. As to Himself He desires nothing of this, for He has need of nothing, and so, if He is pleased with anything it is with the growth of the soul; and as there is no way in which the soul can grow but in becoming in a manner equal to Him, for this reason only is He pleased with our love. It is the property of love to place him who loves on an equality with the object of his love. Hence the soul, because of its perfect love, is called the bride of the Son of God, which signifies equality with Him. In this equality and friendship all things are common, as the Bridegroom Himself said to His disciples: I have called you friends, because all things, whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you."

"My aim in that was, to justify the character of Jesus against the fictions of his pseudo-followers, which have exposed him to the inference of being an impostor. For if we could believe that he really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods and the charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind, that he was an impostor. I give no credit to their falsifications of his actions and doctrines, and to rescue his character, the postulate in my letter asked only what is granted in reading every other historian. ... I say, that this free exercise of reason is all I ask for the vindication of the character of Jesus. We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications. Intermixed with these, again, are sublime ideas of the Supreme Being, aphorisms and precepts of the purest morality and benevolence, sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence and simplicity of manners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors, with an eloquence and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed. These could not be inventions of the groveling authors who relate them. They are far beyond the powers of their feeble minds. They shew that there was a character, the subject of their history, whose splendid conceptions were above all suspicion of being interpolations from their hands. Can we be at a loss in separating such materials, and ascribing each to its genuine author? The difference is obvious to the eye and to the understanding, and we may read as we run to each his part; and I will venture to affirm, that he who, as I have done, will undertake to winnow this grain from its chaff, will find it not to require a moment's consideration. The parts fall asunder of themselves, as would those of an image of metal and clay. ... There are, I acknowledge, passages not free from objection, which we may, with probability, ascribe to Jesus himself; but claiming indulgence from the circumstances under which he acted. His object was the reformation of some articles in the religion of the Jews, as taught by Moses. That sect had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust. Jesus, taking for his type the best qualities of the human head and heart, wisdom, justice, goodness, and adding to them power, ascribed all of these, but in infinite perfection, to the Supreme Being, and formed him really worthy of their adoration. Moses had either not believed in a future state of existence, or had not thought it essential to be explicitly taught to his people. Jesus inculcated that doctrine with emphasis and precision. Moses had bound the Jews to many idle ceremonies, mummeries and observances, of no effect towards producing the social utilities which constitute the essence of virtue; Jesus exposed their futility and insignificance. The one instilled into his people the most anti-social spirit towards other nations; the other preached philanthropy and universal charity and benevolence. The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever dangerous. Jesus had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion: and a step to right or left might place him within the gripe of the priests of the superstition, a blood thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law. He was justifiable, therefore, in avoiding these by evasions, by sophisms, by misconstructions and misapplications of scraps of the prophets, and in defending himself with these their own weapons, as sufficient, ad homines, at least. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore. But that he might conscientiously believe himself inspired from above, is very possible."

"If he was in his room and you wanted to see him, you didn’t just knock and wait for him to respond. What you did was knock and say “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us”, and when he responded with an “Amen”, you walked in."

"Since the Devil is the adversary of Christ he should occupy a position equivalent to his and be the Son of God as well. Satan would be the first Son of God and Christ the second."

"The Son of God became a Man for our sake. To redeem us He died upon the cross. To re-present His bloody sacrifice of the cross in an unbloody manner, to memorialize it until the end of time and to apply its fruits, He instituted the New Testament priesthood and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is this priesthood and this Mass that the reformers have tried to take from us. But God has not allowed them to be completely successful. I have no doubt myself that He raised up Archbishop Lefebvre to contribute to the continuation of the priesthood and the true Mass. And now by God's mercy we also are in a position to help contribute to the continuation of the priesthood and the true Mass. For this we are grateful to him and to the late Bishop Alfred Mendez who, as one priest said, took a 'most courageous step for the preservation of our holy Catholic Faith in this age of modernism.'"

"God entrusted two sublime two missions to Saint Joseph, the greatest of all the saints: that of husband to the Queen of Angels and Saints, the Blessed Virgin Mary; and that of foster father to the Son of God, Jesus. Such a task is even more ineffable and inexpressible than human words can express."

"Believe in Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Redeemer, the Son of God, who came to earth and walked the dusty roads of Palestine-the Son of God-to teach us the way of truth and light and salvation, and who, in one great and glorious act offered an atonement for each of us. He opened the way of salvation and exaltation for each of us, under which we may go forward in the Church and kingdom of God. Be not faithless, but believe in the great and wonderful and marvelous blessings of the Atonement."

"Now, O son of God, set in the valley of true humility, walk in peace without pride of spirit, which, like a precipitous mountain, offers a difficult, or near-impossible, ascent or descent to those who attempt to scale it, and on its summit no building can be built. For a person who tries to climb higher than he can achieve possesses the name of sanctity without substance, because, in name alone without a structure of good works, he glories in a kind of vain joy of the mind."

"’’’“His [Christ’s] point of view, of the literal divine-son ship of every lowliest and most sinful and sinning spirit, committed him logically to the assertion of the implicit equality of all spirits with each other, far as concerns their moral powers and destination no matter what their actual and contingent state; and also of their potential equality with God. His doctrine may well be summarised in the consecrated phrase, usually applied only to himself, "The son of man is the son of God."” ‘’’"