To be next to God, seems to be the utmost height, to which even the diabolical pride could aspire: so that here, by the sense which the Socinians put on those words, they' will import, that we are persuaded to be humble from the example of Christ, who did not affect an equality with God: the bare repeating of this seems so fully to expose and overthrow it, that I think it is not necessary to say more upon this place.

1

16.

ART.

II.

Jam. ii. 1.

Rev. i. 8.

The next head of proof is made up of more particulars. Acts xx. 28. All the names, the operations, and even the attributes of John iii. God, are in full and plain words given to Christ. He is 1 John v.20. called God; his blood is said to be the blood of God; God Tit. ii. 13. is said to have laid down his life for us; Christ is called the true God, the great God, the Lord of glory, the King of Rev. xix. kings, and the Lord of lords; and more particularly the 16. name Jehovah is ascribed to him in the same word in which the LXX Interpreters had translated it throughout the whole Old Testament. So that this constant uniformity of style between the Greek of the New, and that translation of the Old Testament which was then received, and was of great authority among the Jews, and was yet of more authority among the first Christians, is an argument that carries such a weight with it, that this alone may serve to determine the matter. The creating, the preserving, and the governing of all things, is also ascribed to Christ in a variety of places, but most remarkably, when it is said, that by him were all things created, that are in Col. i. 16, heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible: whe- 17. ther they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: Matt. xi. all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before 27. all things, and by him all things consist. He is said to have Matt. ix. 6. known what was in man, to have known men's secret thoughts, John xiv. and to have known all things: that as the Father was 13. known of none but of the Son; so none knew the Son but the John v. 25, Father. He pardons sin, sends the Spirit, gives grace and John vi. 39, eternal life, and he shall raise the dead at the last day. When 40. all these things are laid together in that variety of expressions, in which they lie scattered in the New Testament, it is not possible to retain any reverence for those books, if we imagine that they are writ in a style so full of approaches to the deifying of a mere man, that without a very critical studying of languages and phrases, it is not possible to understand them otherwise. Idolatry, and a plurality of Gods, seem to be the main things that the Scriptures warn us against; and yet here is a pursued thread of passages and discourses, that do naturally lead a man to think that Christ is the true God, who yet, accord

John ii. 25.

John xv. 26.

26.

AKT. ing to these men, only acted in his name, and has now a high honour put on him by him.

II.

This carries me to another argument to prove that the Word that was made flesh was truly God. Nothing but the true God can be the proper object of adoration. This is one of those truths that seems almost so evident, that it needs not to be proved. Adoration is the humble prostration of ourselves before God, in acts that own our dependance upon him, both for our being, and for all the blessings that we do either enjoy or hope for, and also in earnest prayers to him for the continuance of these to us. This is testified by such outward gestures and actions as are most proper to express our humility and submission to God: all this has so clear and so inseparable a relation to the only true God, as its proper object, that it is scarce possible to apprehend how it should be separated from him, and given to any other. And as this seems evident from the nature of things, so it is not possible to imagine how any thing could have been prohibited in more express and positive, and in more frequently-repeated words, and longer reasonings, than the offering of divine worship, or any part of it, to creatures. The chief design of the Mosaical religion was to banish all idolatry and polytheism out of the minds of the Jews, and to possess them with the idea of one God, and of one object of worship. The reasons upon which those prohibitions are founded are universal; which are, the unity of God's essence, and his jealousy in not giving his honour to another. It is not said that they should not worship any as God, till they had a precept or declaration for it. There is no reserve for any such time; but they are plainly forbid to worship any but the great God, because he was one, and was jealous of his glory. The New Testament is writ in the same strain: Christ, when tempted of the Devil, answered, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. The Apostles charged Acts xvii. all idolaters to forsake those idols, and to serve the living God. The Angel refused St. John's worship, commanding him to worship God. The Christian faith does in every Rev. xix. particular raise the ideas of God and of religion to a much greater purity and sublimity, than the Mosaical dispensation had done; so it is not to be imagined, that in the chief design of revealed religion, which was the bringing men from idolatry to the worship of one God, it should make such a breach, and extend it to a creature. All this seems fully to prove the first proposition of this argument, that God is the only proper object of adoration. The next is, that Christ is proposed in the New Testament as

Matt. iv. 10.

Acts xiv.

15.

29.

1 Thess. i.

9.

10.

II.

Phil. ii. 10.

the object of divine worship. I do not in proof of this urge the instances of those who fell down at Christ's feet and worshipped him, while he was on earth; for it may be well answered to that, that a prophet was worshipped with the civil respect of falling down before him, among the Jews; as appears in the history of Elijah and Elisha: nor does it appear that those who worshipped Christ, had any apprehension of his being God; they only considered him as the Messias, or as some eminent prophet. But the mention that St. Luke makes in his Gospel, of the disci- Luke xxiv. ples worshipping Christ at his ascension, comes more home 52. to this matter. All those salutations in the beginning and conclusion of the Epistles, in which grace, mercy, and peace are wished from God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, are implied invocations of him. It is also plain, that it was to him that St. Paul prayed, when he was under the 2 Cor. xii. temptations of the Devil; as they are commonly under- 8, 9. stood; Every knee must bow to him: the angels of God Heb. i. 5. worship him: all the hosts in heaven are represented in St. Rev. v.8. to John's visions as falling down prostrate before him, and the end. worshipping him as they worship the Father. He is proposed as the object of our faith, hope, and love; as the Person whom we are to obey, to pray to, and to praise; so that every act of worship, both external and internal, is directed to him as to its proper object. But the instance of all others that is the clearest in this point, is in the last words of St. Stephen, who was the first martyr, and whose martyrdom is so particularly related by St. Luke: he then in his last minutes saw Christ at the right hand of God; and in his last breath he worshipped him in two short prayers, that are upon the matter the same with those in which our blessed Saviour worshipped his Father on the Cross; Lord Acts vii. Jesus, receive my spirit: Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. From this it seems very evident, that if Christ was not the true God, and equal to the Father, then this Protomartyr died in two acts that seem not only idolatrous, but also blasphemous; since he worshipped Christ in the same acts in which Christ had worshipped his Father. It is certain, from all this deduction of particulars, that his human nature cannot be worshipped; therefore there must be another nature in him, to which divine worship is due, and on the account of which he is to be worshipped.

It is plain, that when this religion was first published, together with these duties in it as a part of it, the Jews, though implacably set against it, yet never accused it of idolatry; though that charge of all others had served their purposes the best, who intended to blacken and blast it.

11.

I

ART. Nothing would have been so well heard, and so easily apprehended, as a just prejudice against it, as this. The argument would have appeared as strong as it was plain: and as the Jews could not be ignorant of the acts of the Christian worship, when so many fell back to them from it, who were offended at other parts of it; so they had the books, in which it was contained, in their hands. Notwithstanding all which, we have all possible reason to believe that this objection against it was never made by any of them, in the first age of Christianity: upon all which, say, it is not to be imagined that they could have been silent on this head, if a mere man had been thus proposed among the Christians as the object of divine worship. The silence of the Apostles, in not mentioning nor answering this, is such a proof of the silence of the Jews, that it would indeed disparage all their writings, if we could think, that, while they mentioned and answered the other prejudices of the Jews, which in comparison to this are small and inconsiderable matters, they should have passed over this, which must have been the greatest and the plausiblest of them all, if it was one at all. Therefore, as the silence of the Apostles is a clear proof that the Jews were silent also, and did not object this; and since their silence could neither flow from their ignorance, nor their undervaluing of this religion; it seems to be certain, that the first opening of the Christian doctrine did not carry any thing in it that could be called the worshipping of a creature. It follows from hence, that the Jews must have understood this part of our religion in such a manner as agreed with their former ideas. So we must examine these: they had this settled among them, that God dwelt in the cloud of glory, and that, by virtue of that inhabitation, divine worship was paid to God as dwelling in the cloud; that it was called God, God's Throne, his Holiness, his Face, and the Light of his Countenance: they went up to the Temple to worship God, as dwelling there bodily, that is substantially, so bodily sometimes signifies, or in a corporeal appearance. This seems to have been a Person that was truly God, and yet was distinct from that which appeared and spake to Moses; for this seems to be the importance of these words: Exod. xxiii. Behold, I send an Angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee to the place which I have prepared: beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions; for my name is in him. These words do plainly import a person to whom they belong; and yet they are a pitch far above the angelical dignity. So that Angel must here be understood in a large sense, for

20.

one sent of God; and it can admit of no sense so properly, ART. as, that the eternal Word, which dwelt afterwards in the man Christ Jesus, dwelt then in that cloud of glory. It was also one of the prophecies received by the Jews, that the Hag. ii. 9. glory of the second Temple was to exceed the glory of the first. The chief character of the glory of the first was that inhabitation of the divine presence among them; from hence it follows that such an inhabitation of God in a creature, by which that creature was not only called God, but that adoration was due to it upon that account, was a notion that could not have scandalized the Jews, and was indeed the only notion that agreed with their former ideas, and that could have been received by them without difficulty or opposition. This is a strong inducement to believe that this great article of our Religion was at that time delivered and understood in that sense.

If the Son or Word is truly God, he must be from all eternity, and must also be of the same substance with the Father, otherwise he could not be God; since a God of another substance, or of another duration, is a contradiction.

The last argument that I shall offer is taken from the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews: to the apprehending the force of which, this must be premised, that all those who acknowledge that Christ ought to be honoured and worshipped as the Father, must say that this is due to him either because he is truly God, or because he is a person of such a high and exalted dignity, that God has upon the consideration of that appointed him to be so worshipped. Now this second notion may fall under another distinction; that either he was of a very sublime order by nature, as some angelical being, that though he was created, yet had this high privilege bestowed upon him; or that he was a prophet illuminated and authorized in so particular a manner beyond all others, that, out of a regard to that, he was exalted to this honour of being to be worshipped. One of these must be chosen by all who do not believe him to be truly God: and indeed one of these was the Arian, as the other is the Socinian hypothesis. For how much soever the Arians might exalt him in words, yet if they believed him to be a creature made in time, so that once he was not; all that they said of him can amount to no more, but that he was a creature of a spiritual nature; and this is plainly the notion which the Scripture gives us of angels. Artemon, Samosatenus, Photinus, and the Socinians in our days, consider our Saviour as a great prophet and lawgiver, and into this they resolve his dignity. In opposition to both these, that

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