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rite of baptifm, "in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghoft."

This diftinction of perfons in the Deity was accordingly uniformly taught and infifted upon as a fundamental article of Chriftian faith in the firft ages of the Church. Of this we have a proof in the epiftles of St. Paul, the beginning and conclufion of which are generally in this folemn form, "Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jefus Chrift;" And, "The Grace of the Lord Jefus Chrift, and the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Ghoft be with you all;" fo careful was that holy Apoftle to keep alive in the minds of the Chriftian converts the great doctrine in the profeffion of which they had been baptized.

This doctrine of the effential divinity of Jefus Chrift, thus explicitly declared by himself, fo far from being called in question by any of his immediate difciples, became the first rule of religious fervice in the Apoftolical Church. While Jefus was in the act of lifting up his hands and bleffing his difciples, he was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, (gorxuVNOONTES avy) and returned to Jerufalem with great joy; and were continually in the temple praifing and bleifing God." (Luke xxiv. 50, 53.) That the "worfhip" paid to Chrift on Mount Oliver, was the higheft act of religious fervice, is evident from this, that the Evangelift here ufes the fame word to exprefs it, as is adopted in other places for the worship of GOD. Thus when St. John fell at the feet of the angel to worfhip him (gooxumas aula,) thinking probably that he was the angel of the covenant, the answer he received was See thou do it not; I am thy fellow-fervant, and of thy brethren that have the teftimony of Jefus. Worship God; (Tw OEW TEOTXU(τω Θεω προσκυnoov.") Rev. xix. 10.

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Now when the Apoftles paid their religious adoration to their afcending mafter which would have been idolatry if he was a creature, they had angels for their witneffes, who, inftead of reproving them for their miflaken zeal, and mifapplied devotion, thus encouraged their service and affifted them in their faith, "This fame Jefuswhich is taken up from you into heaven fhall fo come in like manner, as ye have feen him go into heaven." (Acts i. 12.)

The next fervice in which we find the Apofles engaged, and in which they made a folemn profeffion of the fame faith, was in the filling up the vacancy occafioned by the apoftacy of Judas. After nominating the two difciples for

the

the Apostleship, they offered up this prayer: "Thou, Lord, which knoweft the hearts of all men, fhew whether of these two thou haft chofen, that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by tranfgreffion fell, that he might go to his own place."

That this prayer was addreffed to Chrift may be proved from the nature of the fervice in which they were employed, and the tenour of his promise to them that " he would on every fuch occafion be with them to the end of the world."

The dying declaration of St. Stephen the protomartyr muft alfo be received as a decifive and glorious teftimony of the faith of the early church in the divinity of Chrift. His ejaculatory addrefs," Lord Jefus, receive my fpirit," is a prayer of the moft fervent kind, and as full a confeffion of the Deity of the Being invocated, as could be uttered in human language. Yet a Socinian of no ordinary name,* when gravelled by this evidence, was weak enough to term it " very inconfiderable." To this he received the following admirable reply from his powerful antagonist.t

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Why is it inconfiderable? Is it because it was only an ejaculation? Ejaculations are often prayers of the most fervent kind; the most expreffive of felf-abasement and adoration. Is it for its brevity that it is inconfiderable? What then is the precife length of words, which is requifite to make a prayer an act of worship. Was this petition preferred on an occafion of diftrefs, on which a Divinity might be naturally invoked? Was it a petition for a fuccour, which none but a Divinity could grant? If this was the cafe, it was furely an act of worship? Is the fituation of the worshipper the cir cumitance, which in your judgment, leffens the authority of the example? You fuppofe, perhaps, fomne confternation of his faculties, arifing from diftrefs and fear. The history juftifies no fuch fuppofition. It defcribes the utterance of the final prayer, as a deliberate act of one who knew his fituation, and poffeffed his understanding. After praying for himfelf, he kneels down to pray for his perfecutors: and fuch was the compofure with which he died, although the manner of his death was the most tumultuous and terrifying, that, as if he had expired quietly upon his bed, the facred hiftorian fays, "he fell asleep." If, therefore, you would infinuate, that Stephen was not himself, when he fent forth this "hort ejaculatory addrefs to Chrift," the hiftory refutes you. If he was himfelf, you cannot justify his prayer

* Dr. Priestley. + Bishop Horsley's Letters, p. 104.

to

to Chrift, while you deny that Chrift is God, upon any principle that might not equally juftify you, or me, in praying to the bleffed Stephen. If Stephen, in the full poffeffion of his faculties, prayed to him who is no God"; why do we reproach the pious Romanist, when he chaunts the litany of his faints? If the perfuafion of Chrift's divinity prompted the holy martyr's dying prayer, then there is no room to doubt, but that the affertion of Chrift's divinity was the blafphemy, for which the Jews, hardened in their unbelief, condemned him."

The remarkable circumftance which attended the martyrdom of Stephen, that of the opening of the heavens, and the manifeftation to him of the Shechinah, with Jefus in the midst of the fplendour, is an additional proof of this doctrine, and of the early belief that the "divine glory" was the incommunicable majefty of God. It was not till Stephen faid openly to the council that he beheld the "Son of Man at the right hand of God," that the Jews charged him with the fin of blafphemy, that is, of afcribing, according to them, the glory of the deity to a creature. Thus the first martyr in the Chriftian Church died for bearing witness, not merely to the divine miffion and the prophetic character of Chrift, but to his effential glory, as "God over all, blesfed for ever." If the declaration of Stephen concerning the perfon of Chrift, and his ejaculatory prayer to him, appear "inconfiderable" to modern oppugners of the faith, it is certain that they were not fo underflood by the council of the Jews, before whom he was arraigned, and who knew full well that no creature can be faid to be "in the midst of the divine glory," without blafphemously giving to it the attributes of God.

The apoftolical hiftory affords us another memorable inftance of the belief of this doctrine, and of its effects upon the hearts of the first preachers of the gofpel. The converfion of St. Paul is not a stronger evidence of the truth of Chriftianity itself, than it is of the doctrine of Chrift's divinity. In the language of an eminent writer "it appears to have been a repetition of the fcene at the bufh, heightened in terror and folemnity. Inftead of a lambent flame appearing to a folitary fhepherd amid the thickets of the wilderness, the full effulgence of the Shechinah, overpowering the fplendour of the mid-day fun, burfts upon the commiffioners of the Sanhedrim, on the public road to Damafcus, within a fmall distance of the city. Jefus fpeaks, and is spoken to as the divinity inhabiting that glorious light. Nothing can

exceed

exceed the tone of authority on the one fide, or the fubmiffion and religious dread upon the other.*"

St. Paul, in his apologies, took a pleasure in relating the extraordinary manner of his converfion to the Chriftian faith, and always defcribed in the strongest terms that celeftial glory in which Jefus appeared to him on the road to Damascus. It is obfervable that the apostle did not relate this part of his hiftory, when brought before the Gentiles, but only when the whole, or a principal part of his auditors were of the Jewish perfuafion, who knew that by the "divine glory appearing from heaven," the manifeflation of the SHECHINAH was to be underflood.

The account which Paul gave to king Agrippa is more minute than that contained in the preceding hiftory; and it would be difficult for any one who heard it to fuppofe that the apoftle believed himfelf, or wifhed others to believe, that he had received this commiffion from a deified man: "And I faid, who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jefus, whom thou perfecuteft. But rife, and ftand upon thy feet, for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minifter and a witness, both of thofe things which thou haft feen, and of thofe things in which I WILL APPEAR UNTO

THEE; DELIVERING THEE FROM THE PEOPLE, AND FROM THE GENTILES UNTO WIIOM NOW I SEND THEE, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgivenefs of fins, and inheritance among them which are fanctified by faith that is in me." (Acts xxvi. 15-18.)

Such is the account of the apoftle's converfion, and of the authority by which he acted; an authority which he takes a ípecial care to prove was from above, even from him who inhabited the divine glory, and poffeffed all power in heaven and upon earth.

This view of the faith of Chriftians in the apoftolical age, is taken from great and ftriking facts, and it might easily be corroborated by numerous paffages from the New Teftament, in which the fame prayers and praises are offered to Jefus Chrift, and to God the Father, and in which the essenial attributes of deity are occasionally afcribed to each of the facred Threet.

What

*Bishop Horsley's Letters, p. 105. † See among other places, Matt. xii. 16, 35. John i. 1, 48, 49. Acts v. 3, 4.

31. xxvii. 40. Luke i. Rom. i. 3, 4, 5, 7. 1

Cor.

What the order of Worship was in the church below after the ascension of her Lord, and during the whole of the firft century, may be learned from the fublime description of the united fervice of the faints in heaven and thofe on earth, recorded by St. John, "The four beafts [wa, living creatures] and four and twenty elders fell down before the lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of the faints. And they fung a new fong, faying, Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the feals thereof: for thou waft flain and haft redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and haft made us unto our God kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the beafts and the elders. And the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; faying with a loud voice, Worthy is the lamb that was flain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and bleffing. And every creature which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and fuch as are in the fea, and all that are in them, heard I, faying, Bleffing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that fitteth upon the throne, and unto the lamb for ever and ever. And the four beafts [or living creatures] faid Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever." Rev. v. 8-14.

If it be said that no ftrefs is to be laid upon the figurative defcription of a prophecy that merely paints the great progrefs of the gofpel and the univerfal diffusion of religious truth over the earth, we may juftly anfwer that this only ferves to prove ftill more forcibly the early belief of the divinity of Chrift, and of the worship of him as God among the first dif ciples who were called by his name. Had the oppofite doctrine been true; and if divine worship was not paid to Jefus Chrift in the apoftolical age, fuch a defcription of the faith and worship of the church, militant and triumphant, would certainly never have appeared in the Apocalypfe. And even though this myftical book be rejected from the facred canon, its antiquity will give weight to the teftimony afforded by it to the doctrine and worship of the age in which it was written. The Apocalypfe is cited as a work of au

Cor. iii. 16. Heb. i. 3, 4, 5. Ibid. ix. 14. 1 John ii. 22, 2$. Ibid. v, 20. 2 John vii. 9. Rev. i. 17,

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