must be done? You at length put on an air of assurance, and intimate to us, (p. 6.) that an inferior God besides the supreme, is not another God; and that two Gods, in the nature of language, must signify two coordinate Gods, or Gods in the same sense. But, as the nature of language hitherto has been always different, and you can give no examples in any writings, sacred or profane, of this new kind of language; that any two Gods, and each of them received and adored as a God, were not two Gods, as well as one God, and another God; you must give us leave to think that this kind of answering is really saying nothing. All the heathens that acknowledged one supreme God, over many inferior deities, will, by your way of reasoning, stand clear of the charge of admitting more Gods than one. Strange! that you should appeal to the nature of language, in a case where the language of mankind, Jews, Pagans, and Christians, bath been always contrary.

You have two or three references at the bottom of the page; which I pass over, as not coming up to the point in hand. If you have any countenance from Eusebius, it will amount to no more than that great man's contradicting himself, and the Catholics before him, as well as those of his own time: his authority therefore, especially for a plain blunder and solecism in language, will be very inconsiderable, and weigh little with us.

As to my argument, concerning Baal, and Ashtaroth, and the Pagan deities; you answer it by telling me, you know not how to excuse it from profaneness. You should have said, (for that the reader will see to be plainly the case,) that you knew not how to evade its force. A rebuke is much easier than a solid reply; which was here wanted. Tell me plainly, if the first Commandment excludes only other supremes, and not inferior deities; why Baal, or Ashtaroth, or any Pagan deity might not have been worshipped along with the God of Israel, without any violation of that Commandment? The Law indeed

VOL. III.

See the Preface to my Sermons.

D

says, you shall have no other Gods before, or besides me; that is, according to you, no other supreme God, or Gods. How then are inferior and subordinate deities, how many, or whatsoever, at all excluded by that law? Here lay the pinch of the difficulty; which, because you could not take it off, you are pleased to dissemble, and to run to another point. You represent it, as if I had intended a comparison between Christ and the Pagan deities; and you remind me of the difference betwixt them; which is only solemn trifling. I made no comparison, nor did my argument imply any: but this is plain, that the texts which exclude only supreme deities, do not exclude any that are not supreme, or not considered as supreme: and so you, by your interpretation of those texts, have, in a manner, voided and frustrated every law of the Old Testament against idolatry. If the very mention of this evident consequence be a thing so profane, what must your doctrine be, that involves this very consequence in it? I showed you, in my Defence, vol. i. p. 168. how, upon your principles, any man might easily have eluded every law of the Old Testament, relating to worship, or sacrifice. One plain and direct answer to that difficulty would have been more satisfactory to the reader, than all your studied diversions.

You proceed to a tedious harangue about mediatorial worship; which shall be considered in its place, but is here foreign, and not pertinent. You should have shown how, by the force of these texts, (which declare the Unity, and ascribe the worship to God alone,) inferior deities can be excluded, but upon this principle, that the texts are to be understood as excluding all other Gods absolutely, and not with your restriction of all other supremes only. You have indeed contrived a way, such as it is, to bring in the worship of Christ: but it is by making so wide a breach in the laws of the Old Testament, that had it been discovered by the Jews of old, there had been room enough to let in all imaginable kinds of inferior deities. They might easily have pleaded, that the texts were intended of one

7

supreme God; and that he alone was to be worshipped as such but as to subordinate deities, as the texts did not reach them, so neither need they be scrupulous about the worship of them. This is the pressing difficulty, to which, after sufficient time to consider, you have not been able to make any tolerable answer. Wherefore it may fairly be concluded, that the argument is unanswerable; and that this Query having bore the test, will now stand the firmer. You seem to think that you have done your part, when you have found out a reason why Christ should be worshipped: but the main thing wanting, was, to give a reason (upon your principles) out of the Law', why any inferior deities, along with the supreme, might not be worshipped also. You do well to plead for the worship of Christ: it is a doctrine of the Gospel, and I think of the Law too. But you had done better, if you had contrived to make the Law and the Gospel hang together; and had not entirely frustrated the main intent and design of one, in order to maintain the other.

You have some observations, p. 9, 10, 11, which seem to me foreign to the business of this Query: they may deserve some notice in a more proper place.

QUERY II.

Whether the texts of the New Testament (in the second column) do not show, that he (Christ) is not excluded, and therefore must be the same God.

THE sum of my argument is, that since all other adorable Gods are excluded by the texts of Isaiah; and yet it appears from the same Scripture, that Christ is adorable, and God, it must follow, that he is not another God; but the same God with the Father.

This Scripture argument I confirm from testimonies of antiquity, declaring,

1. That other Gods only, (not God the Son,) or idols, are excluded by the texts which concern the Unity.

2. That God the Son is not another God.

3. That he is the same God, or one God, with the Father.

4. That the one God of Israel (confessedly God supreme) was Christ, speaking in his own Person; being God, not as God's representative, but as God's Son, of the same substance with the Father.

This is the sum of what I endeavoured to make out, under the second Query. I am first to consider what you have to offer, in order to take off the force of my evidence; and next, to examine any counter-evidence which you may have produced to balance mine. In this method I design to proceed: and let the reader, who desires to see distinctly into the merits of the cause, take it along with him. My Scripture argument was formed upon the following texts: Joh. i. 1. Heb. i. 8. Rom. ix. 5. Phil. ii. 6. Heb. i. 3. Let us now examine them in their order.

JOHN i. 1.

My argument here is, that the Aóyos, Word, is called God, not in any improper, or loose, figurative sense; but in the proper and strict sense of the word God. Therefore he is not excluded among the nominal Gods; therefore he is one and the same God with God the Father.

"

You reply, p. 15. that God the Word, is not God in as "high a sense as the Father himself." The reason why he is not, or cannot, you assign, because by him, or through him, "all things were made; which cannot,' you say, be truly affirmed of the one supreme God and "author of all." On the contrary, I affirm, that since "all things were made by him," he is not of the number of the things made; therefore no creature; therefore God in the strict sense; and, since God is one, the same God.

The most which you can justly infer from the Father's creating all things by or through Christ, is only this; that they are two Persons, and that there is a priority of order betwixt them; not that the Són is not God in as high a sense, or in the same sense as the Father.

What you cite from Eusebius signifies little; except it

be to expose the weakness of a great man: whose authority is of no value with me, any farther than he is consistent with himself, and with the Catholics before, and in, and after his own times. Not to mention that his authority is late; and I may almost as well produce Athanasius, Hilary, and the elder Cyril against you, as you produce Eusebius against me: who, after all, is so different from himself, in different places of his works, that, upon the whole, it is extremely difficult to know what judgment to make of him. To return to John i, 1.

In my Defence, vol. i. p. 8. I give the reader a view of your real and intended construction of St. John. The Word was with the one supreme God, another God inferior to him, a creature of the great God.

This representation, you say, is unjust, p. 45. It seems, your own real sense, when put into plain terms, is too frightful for yourself to admit. You endeavour therefore to wrap it up, and disguise it, in these words: "The "Word was with the one supreme God and Father of all; "and the Word was himself a divine Person,-in subordi"nation to the one supreme God, and by him did the one "supreme God and Father of all make all things." All the difference between this and mine is, that I spoke out your whole sense, and you insinuate it, or mince it; being ashamed to say all that you mean. This divine Person you speak of, you own to be God, neither dare you say otherwise; you do not allow him to be the same God; therefore your meaning is, and must be, that he is another God: so far my representation is manifestly just. But farther, this same divine Person you, with your whole party, deny to be necessarily existing; therefore you make of him a precarious being, which is nothing but another name for creature; therefore he is, upon your principles, a creature of the great God: and so my interpretation, or representation of your reserved and real meaning, is true and just to a tittle. Your next attempt is, not to represent, but to corrupt and mangle my construction of St.