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pel, and yet fo very common amongst us at prefent, that I may be pardoned for speaking of it in the manner it deferves. And let me befeech every serious perfon, who is willing to have his prayers heard, to confider this matter a little better, and use a more correct form; for God, who is jealous of his honour, and has no communion with idols, will certainly reject the petition that fets him upon a level with Baal and Jupiter.

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The true God is He that was in Chrift reconciling the world to himself ; there is none other but He; and if this great Characteristic be denied, or any other affumed in its ftead, a man is left without God; after which, he may call himself a Deift, if he will; but his God is a mere idol of the imagination, and has no corresponding reality in the whole universe of beings.

The modern Jews, by denying their God to have been manifeft in the flesh, are as effectually departed from the true God, as their forefathers were, when they danced before the golden calf, and

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called their idolatrous fervice a feast to the Lord. For the Being of God is not an object of fight, but of faith; it enters first into the heart; and if it be wrong there, the first commandment is broken: if a figure of it be fet up before the eyes, then the fecond is broken likewife. The firft forbids us to have any other God; the fecond to make any graven image of him. Now though we make no image, yet if with the heart we believe in any God different from the true, the Idolatry indeed may be lefs, but the Apoftacy is the fame. And this feems to be the case of the Jew.

The Mahometans are another set of infidels, who abhor idols, but have in exprefs terms denied the Son of God, and set up an idol of the imagination, a God in one Perfon. They inveigh bitterly against the Chriftians for worshiping three Gods; for fo they state the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, as some others have done befide them.

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In answer to all these abominations of the Deift, the Jew and the Mahometan, and to fhew that no unbeliever of any denomination can be a servant of the true God, it is written — whosoever denieth the Son, the fame hath not the Father: and again whosoever tranfgreffeth and abideth not in the doctrine of Chrift, hath not GOD. And let the Socinians, who have not only vindicated the religion of Mahomet, but preferred it to the Christianity of the Church of England, which with them is no better nor other than a fort of Paganism and Heathenifm*, let them confider what a fhare they have in this condemnation.

And to bring this matter home to the Arians; it is to be observed, that every article of the Chriftian Faith depends upon the Doctrine of a Trinity in Unity. If that be given up, the other doc

a 1 John II. 23.

b 2 John 9.

*See Leflie's Theological works Fol. Vol.1. p.218. where the reader may find a great deal more to the fame purpose; and particularly an Epiftle of the Socinians to the Morocco Embaffador, in the time of Charles II, a great curiofity, wherein their whole fcheme is laid open to the bottom by themselves.

trines of our religion must go with it, and fo it has been in fact, that the authors who have written against the Trinity, have alfo difputed away fome other effential parts of Christianity; particularly the doctrines of the Satisfaction and of original fin.

The whole Bible treats of little elfe but our creation, redemption, fanctification, refurrection and glorification by the power of Chrift and the Holy Spirit : and the reader will find hereafter, that there is neither name, act, nor attribute of the Godhead, that is not fhared in common by all the perfons of the Trinity. If, therefore, the perfons of Chrift and the Spirit are not God in the Unity of the Father, then the prayers and praises we offer to them, as the authors of every bleffing, will not be directed to the fupreme Lord and God, befide whom no other is to be worshiped, but to his creatures and inftruments: which overthrows the fenfe of our whole religion; and drives us upon a fort of second-rate faith and worship, which, be

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fide the blafphemy of it, can be nothing but confufion and contradiction. no wonder then, that the Arians and Socinians, with their several under-fects and divifions, who have fallen into this fnare, and departed from the divine Unity, while they pretend to be the only men who affert it, have never yet been able to agree in the forms of religious worship. Some of them allowing that Chrift is to receive divine worship, but always with this reserve, that the Prayer tend ultimately to the perfon of the Father. So that Chrift is to be worshiped, only he is not to be worshiped : and if you fhould venture, when you are at the point of death, to fay with St. Stephen Lord Jefus, receive my Spirit—and confefs the person of JeJus to be the God of the Spirits of all flesh by committing your own Spirit into his hands; you are to take care not to die without throwing in fome qualifying comment, to affure him you do it only in hypocrify, not meaning

a Alts VII. 59.

b Numb. XVI. 22.

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