excellencies, and essential perfections communicated from Father to Son: and hence it is, that there is still but one worship, and one object of worship; as one God, one Creator, &c. by reason of the most intimate and ineffable union of the two Persons; which Origen himself h endeavours to express in the fullest and strongest words he could think on.

From what hath been said, we may know what judgment to make of the ancient doxologies. They ought certainly to be understood according to the prevailing doctrine of the primitive Church. They were different in form, but had all one meaning; the same which I have shown you from the primitive writers. The Arians were the first who interpreted some of them to such a sense, as either favoured creature-worship, or excluded the Son and Holy Ghost from proper divine worship. It was low artifice to value one sort of doxology above another, only because more equivocal; and to contend for ancient words, in opposition to the ancient faith. The Catholics understood the subtilty of those men, and very easily defeated it: first, by asserting the only true and just sense of those doxologies, which the Arians had wrested to an heretical meaning; and next, by using, chiefly, doxologies of another form; which had been also of long standing in the Church; and which, being less equivocal, were less liable to be perverted. But the subject of doxologies being already in better hands, I shall here dismiss it, and proceed.

You observe, that "it was the constant practice of the "Apostles to pray and give thanks to God, through Je"sus Christ," (p. 91.) And so it is the constant practice of the Church at this day. What can you infer from

ἡ ̓Αναβέβηκε δὲ πρὸς τὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσι Θεὸν, ὁ ἀσχίσως καὶ ἀδιαιρέτως, καὶ ἀμερίσως αὐτὸν σέβων διὰ τοῦ προσάγοντος ἐκείνῳ υἱῦ, τοῦ Θεοῦ λόγου καὶ σοφίας, &c. p. 382. The same thought is thus expressed by Cyril.

Μήτε διὰ τὸ τιμᾶν τὸν πατέρα νομίζειν, ἕν τι τῶν δημιουργημάτων τὸν υἱὸν ὑποπτεύσωμεν, ἀλλ ̓ εἷς πατὴρ δὲ ἑνὸς υἱοῦ προσκυνείσθω, καὶ μὴ μεριζέσθω ἡ προσκύνησ 5. Cyril. Catech. xi. p. 143. Oxon.

thence? That the Father and Son are not equal, or are not to be equally honoured? Nothing less: but, as the Son stands to us under the particular character of Mediator, besides what he is in common with the Father, our prayers, i generally, are to be offered rather through him, than to him: yet not forgetting or omitting, for fear of misapprehension and gross mistakes, to offer prayers directly to him, and to join him with the Father, in doxologies; as the ancient Church did, and as our own, God be thanked, and other churches of Christendom still continue to do. You add, that "whatever honour is paid to the "Son, is commanded, on account of his ineffable relation "to God, as the only begotten Son," &c. But this ineffable relation is not that of a creature to his Creator; but of a Son to a Father, of the same nature with him. This may be styled ineffable: the other cannot, in any true or just sense. If the Son is to be worshipped, as you seem here to allow, it can be on no other account, but such as is consistent with the Scriptures; on the account of his being one with the Father, to whom worship belongs; and to whom it is appropriated in opposition to creatures, not in opposition to him who is of the same nature with, coessential to, and inseparable from him. The "wor"ship," you say, "terminates not in the Son." How this is to be understood, and in what sense admitted, I have explained above. Strictly speaking, no honour is paid to either, but what redounds to the glory of both; because of their intimate union; and because both are but one God. "But," you say, "the Father begat him:" very well; so long as he did not create him, all is safe: the eternity, the perfections, the glory of both are one. "And," you say, 66 gave him dominion over us." That is more than you can prove; unless you understand it of Christ, considered as God-man, or Mediator.

In some sense every thing must be referred to the Father, as the first Person, the Head and Fountain of all.

iSee Bull, D. F. p. 121. Fulgent. Fragm. p. 629, 633, 638, 642, &c.

But this does not make two worships, supreme and inferior; being all but one acknowledgment of one and the same essential excellency and perfection, considered primarily in the Father, and derivatively in the Son; who, though personally distinguished, are in substance undivided, and essentially one. All your arguments, on this head, amount only to a petitio principii, taking the main thing for granted; that a distinction of persons is the same with a difference of nature; and that a subordination of the Son, as a Son, to the Father, implies an essential disparity and inequality betwixt them; which you can never make out. Instead of proving the Son to be a creature, and that he is to be worshipped notwithstanding, (which are the points you undertake,) all that you really prove is, that the Son is not the Father, or first Person, nor considered as the first Person in our worship of him; which is very true, but very wide of the purpose. What follows in your reply, (p. 91, 92, 93.) does not need any farther answer; being either barely repetition, or comments on your own mistake of the meaning of the word individual; of which enough hath been said before. You are pleased (pag. 94.) to make a wonder of it, that I should quote Heb. i. 6. in favour of my hypothesis. But if you consider that the angels are there ordered to worship the Son; and that that text is a proof of the Son's being Jehovah (see Psal. xcvii.) and that worship is appropriated to God only, by many texts of Scripture, and the concurring sense of antiquity, as I have shown above; there will be little farther occasion for wondering, in so clear a case. In that very chapter (Heb. i.) it is sufficiently intimated what it was that made the Son capable of receiving worship and adoration. He is declared to have "made the worlds;" to be the "shining-forth of his Father's glory, and the express image of his Person;" and to "uphold all things "by the word of his power," (ver. 2, 3.) Strong and lively expressions of his divine, eternal, uncreated nature; such as might give him the justest claim to the worship and adoration of men and angels. In the close, you have a

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"did

remark about the error of Arius; which, you say, "not consist in making the Son distinct from, and really "subordinate to the Father, (for that was always the "Christian doctrine.") Here you come upon us with general terms, and equivocal expressions; leaving the reader to apprehend that the Christian Church believed the Son to be a distinct, separate, inferior being; in short, a creature, as Arius plainly, and you covertly assert: whereas there is not an author of reputation, among all the ancients, before Arius, that taught or maintained any such thing. A subordination, in some sense, they held; and that is all; not in Arius's sense, not in yours. Well, but you proceed to tell us wherein his error consisted, viz. "in presuming to affirm, upon the principles of his own "uncertain philosophy, and without warrant from Scripture, that the Son was oux Twv, and that TOTE OTE "." Arius had so much philosophy, or rather common sense, as to think, and so much frankness and ingenuity, as to confess, that there neither is nor can be any medium between God and creature. He was not so ridiculous as to imagine that God first made a substance, and then out of that preexisting created substance made the Son; besides that, even this way, the Son had been, in the last result, ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων : nor was he weak enough to believe that any thing, ad extra, had been coeval or coeternal with God himself. If he had, he need not have scrupled to have allowed the like privilege to the Son; the first and best of all Beings, except God himself, in his opinion.

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But since you think your own philosophy so much better than Arius's, will you be so kind as to tell us plainly, whether the Son be of the same divine substance with the Father; or of some extraneous substance which eternally preexisted; or from nothing? The first you deny directly, as well as Arius; and the second also, by plain necessary consequence: and why then should you differ upon the third, which is the only one left, and must be true, if both the other be false? If Arius was rash in affirming this, he was equally rash in denying the Son's coeternity with the

Father, and again in denying his consubstantiality; and so your censure of him recoils inevitably upon yourself. Then, for the other error of Arius, in asserting that the Son once was not; as having been produced, or created, by the Father; in your way, you correct it thus: True, the Son was produced, brought into existence, had a beginning, and was not, metaphysically, eternal; but yet, for all that, it was an error, in philosophy, for Arius to say, that he once was not. Unhappy Arius! detested by his adversaries, and traduced by his own friends, from whom he might reasonably have expected kinder usage. Let me intreat you, hereafter, to be more consistent: either value and respect the man, as the great reviver and restorer of primitive Christianity; or renounce his principles, and declare him a heretic, as we do.

QUERY XVIII.

Whether worship and adoration, both from men and angels, was not due to him, long before the commencing of his mediatorial kingdom, as he was their Creator and Preserver; (see Col. i. 16, 17.) and whether that be not the same title to adoration which God the Father hath, as Author and Governor of the universe, upon the Doctor's own principles?

YOU answer, that "though the world was created by "the Son, yet no adoration was due to him upon that "account, either from angels or from men; because it

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was no act of dominion, and he did it merely ministe"rially, (p. 94.) just as no adoration is now due from us "to angels, for the benefits they convey to us; because "they do it merely instrumentally." This is plain dealing; and however I may dislike the thing, I commend the frankness of it. You are very right, upon these principles, in your parallel from angels: had the ancients thought the office of the Son ministerial, in your low

k Pag. 51, 63.