on the Christians, as the worshippers of a crucified man. Here, you see, was a stroke aimed at the very heart of the new religion. And now, how do the Christians defend themselves? Had the charge, like many others, been false, they would certainly have denied it at once. It behoved them so to have done; for the contest was pro aris et focis; for every thing near and dear. They could never have continued to reproach their adversaries with a crime of which they were notoriously guilty themselves. But they do not deny the fact. They acknowledge it universally; and yet, at the same time, affirm, "We worship God alone." * In their practice, then, they showed their belief of Christ's true Divinity. They worshipped him only upon this ground, that he was one God with the Father; and to have done it on any other supposition, had been idolatry, by their own confession. What are we, therefore, to think of our modern unitarians, who repeatedly, and as it should seem, seriously tell us, that all the fathers of the first three centuries were of their opinion?t To say this, is to make them guilty of the grossest idolatry, and to involve them in a monstrous contradiction; they laid it down as a first principle, that God alone was to be worshipped; and, all the while, gave divine honor to one, whom (if these moderns say true) they did not hold to be God by nature, but a creature only. Let any person, with attention and impartiality, survey this argument again and again on every side; and it will appear to be absolutely unanswerable. The earliest Christians professed to worship God alone; but they constantly and uniformly professed to worship Christ; therefore they deemed Christ to be very God. The same is to be said with regard to the Holy Spirit. No matter how the Son was begotten of the Father, or how the Spirit proceeds from both. The mode we have nothing to do with; it is above and beyond us; it cannot be the subject of our reasonings. We are not now entangled in the thorny parts of the subject; we are not disputing about mathematical niceties and distinctions. A plain matter of fact is before us. The premises are fixed by ecclesiastical history, and the writings of the primitive apologists, firm as the everlasting hills; no other conclusion can be drawn from them by the art of man; and the argument is obvious to the common sense of the whole world. During the persecutions under the heathen Θεον μεν μόνον προσκυνόμεν. "All Christian people, for upwards of 300 years afte Christ, till the council of Nice, were generally Unitarians." Mr. Lindsey's Apology, p. 24. emperors, the martyrs, who suffered in them, commonly directed their prayers, as St. Stephen did, personally to Christ, in whose cause they laid down their lives, and into whose hands they resigned their spirits, commending their souls to him, as unto a faithful Creator and Redeemer. In the Dioclesian persecution, as Eusebius informs us, the inhabitants of a city in Phrygia, men, women, and children, while assembled in the church at their devotions, were by their enemies surprised and burnt, "calling upon Christ, God over all."* Many other instances occur in the same historian, where the dying martyrs address their prayers to Christ, under the highest titles and attributes of the Divinity, as the living and true God, the great King over all the earth, omniscient and almighty, the Son of God, and himself true and very God. And, as such, Eusebius says, the highest powers on earth confessed and adored him.t Would you hear the contemporary writers, among the heathens, bearing testimony to the same great and important truth, concerning the object of worship in the earliest days of the Christian church? You shall hear them. Pliny lived in the beginning of the second century, and, as a judge under Trajan, took the confessions of some revolting Christians. He says, they declared to him, "their custom was, to meet on a certain day, before it was light, and, among other parts of their worship, sing an hymn to Christ, as to their God." Towards the close of the same century, Lucian, or whoever was the author of the dialogue styled Philopatris, bearing his name, and certainly written about that time, introduces, in a scoffing way, a Christian catechist instructing a Pagan catechumen. The latter asks, " By whom, then, shall I swear?" that is, whom shall I take to be my God, the object of my worship? The answer is, "By that God that reigns on high, the great immortal, heavenly God, and the Son of the Father, and the Spirit proceeding from the Father, One in Three, and Three in One. Take these for your Jupiter; imagine this to be your God."§ Lucian, then, had evidently learned, and it was well known among the heathens in his time, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, or a Trinity of persons, in the Godhead, constituted the object of Christian worship. The manner in which this testimony * Τον επι πάντων Θεον Χριςον επιβρωμένοι. Euseb. lib. x. cap. iv. See the passages cited by Bingham, in Eccles. Antiq. b. xiii. ch. ii. Carmenque Christo, quasi Deo, dicere secum invicem. Plin. lib. x. Ep. 97. § Lucian. Philop atris, prope fin. affected Socinus well deserves your notice-are to worship only the Lord our God, as the primitive Christians professed to do; and if we are, yet, to worship Christ, as they also professed to do; must it not of necessity follow, that Christ is the Lord our God? "I never met with anything which seems Such was the practice of the Christian church, respecting the worship of its Saviour, from the very beginning, and during the first three ages; long before Arianism appeared in the world, or any of those difficult questions were raised, which afterwards perplexed men with unintelligible subtleties, occasioned by the restless endeavors and sophistry of the Arian party. What shall we, then, say to these things? What can we say? but that He, to the invovocation of whose name salvation is promised; He, whose name his disciples, before they were called Christians, invoked, and were known to be his disciples by so doing; He, in whose name the apostles were accustomed to give their benedictions, and concerning whom St. John says, that, "whatever we ask of him according to his will, we shall have the petitions we desired of him;" He, who was worshipped by men, without reproving them for it, on earth, and to whom, in heaven, all the angelic hosts, with the spirits of the redeemed, and the whole creation of God, give glory and honor; He, whom the church universal professed, from the beginning to adore; and into whose hands the dying martyrs, from Stephen downward, committed their departing spirits; He, to whose service and worship, with that of the Father and the Holy Ghost, every Christian is dedicated, in baptism; that this Person is, indeed, what St. Paul certainly styles him, "God over all, blessed for ever ;" and that we all may, and ought to use the words of St. Thomas, uttered not, as is pretended, by way of exclamation to the Father, but in an immediate address to the Son "Then Thomas answered, and said unto him)-My Lord, and my God." § For consider well with yourselves—if we *Nec vero nobis quidquam hactenus legere contigit, quod trini istius Dei, a Christianis jam tuu recepti et culti, fidem facere videatur magis, quam quæ ex dialogo, qui Philopatris inscribitur, et inter Luciani opera numeratur, ad id probandum affertur. Socin. adv. Eutrop. c. xv. p. 689. Op. ↑ Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, p. 370. + Rom. ix. 5. § John, xx. 28. If millions of his servants, from all the different parts of the world, are to invoke him by prayer, and he hears the prayer of the heart, as well as that of the lips, must he not be omniscient and omnipresent to do this? The argument has often been urged with sucIt holds equally strong against creature-worship. If St. Paul blamed the heathen, because they gave divine worship to those who were not gods by nature, shall we be blameless, when we worship Christ, unless he be by nature God? † If divine worship be due to Christ, must he not be possessed of that divine dignity and excellence, which are the proper foundation of it? And can these be communicated to a creature? Between the creature and its Creator, and the honor due respectively to each, must not the difference be ever infinite? Socinus, who held Christ to be a mere man, and yet held divine worship to be due to him, was confounded and silenced by this very argument, in a conference with one of his disciples, who carried its principle to its proper conclusion, and denied Christ to be at all the object of divine worship. But do not the Scriptures affirm, that Christ is to be worshipped in consequence of his sufferings, and exultation, and the power with which he was then invested? Undoubtedly. And do not the same Scriptures inform us, that God was worshipped in consequence of his having created the world, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? He was then worshipped in the new relation of Creator, as Christ was worshipped upon his ascension, in the new relation of Redeemer. But God was worshipped before the world was created, and will be worshipped after its dissolution. The Son of God was worshipped before he entered upon the work of redemption. He had glory with the Father before the foundation of the world; § he existed “in the form of God," before he existed in the "likeness of man;" that is, he was God before he was man: and, as God, he will be worshipped to eternity, when his mediatorial kingdom, as Mussiah, shall be at an end. The worshippers of Christ are charged with idolatry. If he be a mere man, or, | Redeemer. Minds honest and ingenuous, indeed, if he be a creature, there is foun- like yours, will find no difficulty in forming dation for the charge. But if, at his birth, a right judgment upon the subject. In or"God" was "made manifest in the flesh,"*der to do it, there is no necessity for you to of what crime are they guilty, who deny him the honor due to him, and turn his humiliation, on their account, into an argument against the Divinity? And let it be observed, that if we are guilty of idolatry, the whole church of Christ has been guilty of it, in the grossest manner, from the days of the apostles to the present hour. It hath been asserted, that the worship of Christ is inconsistent with his office of Mediator. But why? It seems rather to be implied, than excluded; since a Mediator must communicate with both parties; and our method of communicating with Christ must be by praying to him. Is there any contradiction, or incongruity, in the conduct of our devotions, if we sometimes beseech the Father to pardon and bless us, for the sake of his dear Son: and, at other times, entreat the Son to bestow upon us those mercies which the Father has granted for his sake? The same is to be said of the Spirit and his comforts, given by the Father through the Son. In one word, if the divine Persons, in the economy of man's redemption, have graciously condescended to assume these offices, and to act in these characters, shall we therefore say, they are not divine? This consideration alone seems to afford a general and satisfactory answer to all the objections founded on those texts, which intimate disparity and inferiority; which speak of sending, and being sent, and the like. How mournful is the reflection, that this very consideration, which ought to fill our hearts with wonder, love, and praise, should be made occasion of denying the Lord that bought us, and the Spirit that consecrates us to glory and immortality! Lord, what is man, behold, with compassion, his miserable depravity; and open his eyes, that he may behold it plunge into all the metaphysical depths of the controversy. The dispute lies in a small compass. It turns upon a fact, whether Christ was, or was not, the object of divine worship, in the apostolical times and those immediately succeeding. The evidence has been clearly, I would hope, though briefly, stated to you, in the preceding discourse. But I would wish you to search, and collect it more at large for yourselves; those of you, especially, who are preparing to teach others the truth, and to guard them against the various errors which mark these latter days. The Scriptural part of the evidence lies in a little compass. The remainder may be found in the epistles of the apostolical fathers, the apologies of Justin Martyr, and one or two more, and the ecclesiastical history of Eusebius. Should I say, that all these might be read, with ease, in two months, I should say no more than the truth. And so much, at least, of primitive antiquity ought to be studied by every divine; indeed, by every Christian, who has leisure and ability. For why should any man continue ignorant of that which is so soon, and so easily known? Be conversant in the Scriptures, and acquaint yourselves well with the doctrine and the practice of the church in its earliest and purest days, when you first enter upon the ministry; and the efforts of unhappily misguided men will in vain be afterwards exerted to move you from the rock of your salvation. Remember Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and consider how great things he hath done for you; things which, had they been left for a creature to effect, had been uneffected at this hour; they must have ceased, to eternity; "none of them can by any means redeem his brother, or give to God a ransom for him." To withhold prayer from your Saviour is But you, my brethren, (I address myself impious perverseness; to withhold praise to the younger part of my audience,) have and thanksgiving, is impious ingratitude. not so learned Christ. You know in whom Heaven resounds with Salvation to the you have believed; and you know the im- Lamb triumphant; and shall earth be sulportance of believing Him to be, what He lenly silent? Christ rejoiced in his afflicreally is. The question we have been discus-tions, and esteemed them glory, for your sing is not of a trifling or indifferent nature. sake. No temptation could prevail upon It relates to the prime and leading articles of the Lord, in the hour of suffering and sorall religion. It is not a point of specula-row, to relinquish his gracious purpose, and tion merely our daily practice is concerned desert the cause of his disciples; let no in its determination; according to which, temptation prevail upon them to desert and we are led either to honor or dishonor our disown the cause of their Lord. Would himself! 1 Tim. iii: 16. any man persuade you to refuse divine worship to your Redeemer? reject the at tempt (whoever makes it) with a noble the venerable old bishop) have I served scorn; and whatever others may think, or him, and never yet received anything but however they may act, upon the occsion, good at his hands.: how, then, shall I now do you call to mind the generous confession blaspheme my King and my Saviour?” uttered by the martyr Polycarp, when the Roman proconsul had urged him to deny Christ."Fourscore and six years (said *Martyrium Polycarpi apud Cotelor. Patr. Apostol. t. ii. p. 198. DISCOURSE LXVII. A FAST SERMON. DEUT. XXIII. 9. When the host goeth forth against thine enemies, then keep thee from every wicked thing. As a minister of that Gospel which was cause, of those dissensions and animosities, first published by the Prince of Peace, who which it was designed for ever to extirpate. came to reconcile all things in heaven and" Whence come wars and fightings among earth, and bequeathed peace, as his last and you? Come they not hence, even of your best legacy, to his disciples, I could rather desires," which your religion should mortihave wished it might have been my pro- fy and subdue? Doubtless, the sight of vince to congratulate you this day on the Christian, Catholic, Faithful, and Apostolic approach of its re-establishment in the princes, sending their numerous regiments world; on the delightful prospect of times, to slaughter one another in the field of batwhen the whole earth should once more sit tle, forms a shocking contrast to the spirit quiet, and be at leisure to attend to better of the meek and lowly Jesus-so shocking, things than ingenious and well concerted that some have been thereby induced to plans of mutual destruction; when "na-maintain the utter unlawfulness of all war. tion should not lift up sword against nation, But what, then, is to be done? Who can neither should they learn war any more." prevent a restless and ambitious state from These ought to be the effects of religion; these would be its effects were it universally understood and practiced; these will be its effects at a more auspicious era of the Christian church, and in a happier clime, as all the prophets have foretold which have been since the world began. attacking its neighbor. In these cireumstances, such men must either defend themselves, or be defended by others, or God must interpose miraculously in their defence, or all must quietly submit to con quest and captivity by an unjust invader Had this last been intended, that rigid Let none, meanwhile, be offended and moralist, the Baptist, would not have stumble at that stumbling-stone laid in their regulated, but prohibited the military proway by the frequency of wars, among na-fession; nor would Christians have served, tions professing Christianity. They owe as we know they did, with fidelity and not their origin to religion, but to the want diligence, in the armies of the Pagan emof it. The fault is in the ground, not in perors. the seed, which is good, but is either stolen away, or withered, or choked by the passions growing up with it, and sometimes, even making it the cause, the very innocent The lawfulness of a war must, therefore, be rested now, under the Gospel, upon the same foot on which it hath ever stood from the beginning, namely, the justice of it; and upon a supposition that our cause is What God has thus joined together it is good as we humbly trust it is-we may the error of the times to put asunder; to undoubtedly accept the permission, or rather think only of our fleets and armies, and to commission, implied in the first words of forget our faith and practice. There are the text; "When the host goeth forth few to whom it occurs, that the latter can against thine enemies "-The people of have any influence on the success of the God may still be brought under a necessity former. Fleets and armies must undoubtof engaging in war, defensive or offensive, edly go forth; they must have pay; they to maintain their rights, or to avenge their must have provision; they must have arms; wrongs; and that, whether against foreign they must have skilful leaders: but when enemies or rebellious subjects: much more, all the arrangements are made, if God go if the latter, after having erected the stand- not forth with them, vain is the help of ard of independency, should unite with the man! "The horse is prepared "-he ought former, and exclaim concerning those who to be prepared-" against the day of batnourished and brought them up, like the tle; but salvation is of the Lord." This children of Lot, when Asur had acceded to idea, which never should be absent from the league "Come, and let us root also our minds, and the correspondent affection them out, that they be no more a people; which it is calculated to awaken in them, and that the name of Israel may be no more are expressed, in one of the prayers used in remembrance!" In circumstances like upon these occasions, with a propriety, digthese, I say, when all is at stake, the peo-nity, and pathos, which nothing can exceed ple of God may carry on a war, as the only nothing can withstand. "O Lord God means left them to obtain an honorable and of our salvation, in whose hands are the permanent peace, which, in many cases, issues of life and death, of good and evil, can only be the fruit of victory; and heroes and without whose aid the wisest counsels of might again be celebrated by an apostle frail man, and the multitude of an host, and (should such heroes arise, with an apostle all the instruments of war, are but weak to celebrate them) who, through faith, have and vain; incline thine ear, we pray thee, "subdued kingdoms," as well as "wrought to the earnest and devout supplications of righteousness." thy servants; who not confiding in the Between these two achievements, seem- splendor of anything that is great, or the ingly so very different (and often, alas! stability of anything that is strong here bereally so) the latter part of the text points low, do most humbly flee, O Lord, unto out a nearer connection, than might, per- thee for succor, and put their trust under haps, have been imagined ever to subsist. the shadow of thy wings." These have "When the host goeth forth against thine been the sentiments of Britons, from age to enemies, then keep thee from every wicked age; and let them continue to be so, till thing." If, even with right on thy side, time and the world shall finish their course thou wouldest conquer and triumph, re- together. In uttering them, we speak the member to prepare the way by repentance words not of superstition, bigotry, or enthuand reformation. If thou desirest to be-siasm, but of truth and soberness, if there come great, let ambition first excite thee to be good. The qualities are associated in the style imperial of heaven-" the Lord of HOSTS-the HOLY ONE of Israel." The characters therefore of the Warrior and the Christian are not incompatible. The first convert to the Gospel from among the nations was a military man; Cornelius the centurion. That profession may unite with the clerical in the common cause; and the general may still go before, as of old, with the prophet by his side. While the hands of Joshua are extended in the field, those of Moses may be elevated in prayer; and the ministers of religion may animate the people to overcome the adversary without them, by opposing and vanquishing, as a preliminary step, the enemy within them, the most dangerous enemy both to individuals and communities. be a God who governs the world; and if For let us reflect, what an aggravation it must needs be of national wickedness in the |