zeal for a sort of universal religion, common to be lievers and infidels, betrays a sad indifference for the Christian religion in particular. This error is so monstrous in a land enlightened by the Gospel, and yet so very common amongst us at present, that I may be pardoned for speaking of it in the manner it deserves. And let me beseech every serious person, who is willing to have his prayers heard, to consider 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 sets him upon a level with Baal and Jupiter.

The true God is He that was "in Christ recon<< ciling the world to himself;" there is none other other but He; and if this great characteristic be denied, or any other assumed in its stead, a man is left without God; after which, he may call himself a Deist, 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 manifest in the flesh, are as effectually departed from the true God, as their forefathers were, when they danced before the golden calf, and called their idolatrous service" a feast to the Lord." For

the

the Being of God is not an object of sight, 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 set up before the eyes, then the second is broken likewise. The first forbids us to have any other God; the second, 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 less, but the apostacy is the same. And this seems to be the case

of the Jew.

The Mahometans are another set of infidels, who abhor idols, but have in express terms denied the Son of God, and set up an idol of the imagination, a God in one Person. They inveigh bitterly against the Christians for worshipping three Gods; for so they state the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, as some others have done beside them.

In answer to all these abominations of the Deist, the Jew, and the Mahometan, and to shew that no unbeliever of any denomination can be a servant of the true God, it is written-" whosoever denieth the "Son, the same hath not the Father" and again-"whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the "doctrine of Christ, hath not GOD." And let b 2 John 9.

a John ii. 23.

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 sort of Paganism and Heathenism," let them consider what a share they have in this condemnation.

And to bring this matter home to the Arians; it is to be observed, that every article of the Christian faith depends upon the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity. If that be given up, the other doctrines of our religion must go with it, and so it has been in fact, that the authors who have written against the Trinity, have also disputed away some other essential parts of Christianity; particularly the doctrines of the satisfaction and of original sin.

The whole Bible treats of little else but our creation, redemption, sanctification, resurrection, and glorificaion, by the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit: and the reader will find hereafter, that there is neither name, act, nor attribute of the Godhead, that is not shared in common by all the persons of the Trinity. If,

* See Leslie's Theological Works, Fol. Vol. I. p. 218, where the reader may find a great deal more to the same purpose; and par✩ ticularly an Epistle of the Socinians, to the Morocco Embassador, in the time of Charles II. a great curiosity, wherein their whole scheme is laid open to the bottom by themselves.

there

therefore, the persons of Christ 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 blessing, will not be directed to the supreme Lord and God, beside whom no other is to be worshipped, but to his creatures and instruments: which overthrows the sense of our whole religion; and drives us upon a sort of second-rate faith and worship, which, beside the blasphemy of it, can be nothing but confusion and contradiction. It is no wonder then, that the Arians and Socinians, with their several undersects and divisions, who have fallen into this snare, and departed from the divine Unity, while they pretend to be the only men who assert it, have never yet been able to agree in the forms of religious worship. Some of them allowing that Christ is to receive divine worship, but always with this reserve, that the prayer tend ultimately to the person of the Father. So that Christ is to be worshipped, only he is not to be worshipped and if you should venture, when you are at the point of death, to say with St. Stephen-" Lord Jesus, receive my spirit"-and confess the person of Jesus 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 some

b

qualifying

qualifying comment, to assure him you do it only in hypocrisy, not meaning him but another. Others, again, knowing this distinction to be vain and indefensible, and the same for substance with the Latria and Dulia, by which the church of Rome excuses her adoration of the blessed Virgin, &c. have fairly got rid of it, by denying to the person of Christ any divine worship or invocation at all; which is the case with our Socinian Unitarians here in England; for those of Poland are quite of another mind.

How far such differences as these must needs affect a Liturgy, it is very easy to foresee: and that it will for ever be as impossible to frame a Creed or a Service to please all those who bear the name of Christians, as to make a coat that shall fit men of all sizes *. Prayer and divine worship and religious confession, are the fruit and breath of faith; and "out of the

Hales of Eton, in his sarcastic and malicious Tract upon Schism, proposes it as a grand expedient for the advancing of Unity, that we should consider all the Liturgies, that are and ever have been; and remove from them whatever is scandalous to any party, and leave nothing but what all agree on.' "1 He should have closed this sentence a little sooner; and advised us fairly and honestly to leave nothing; for that will certainly be the event, when the objections of all parties are suffered to prevail; there being no one page of the Liturgy, wherein all, who pretend to worship God as Christians, are agreed.