PROPOSITION Null. 339 the Lord and the king ;" Mat. xviii. 26. C0 The servant fell down. and worshipped his Lord " Rev. iii. 9. where Christ himself says to the church of Sardis, " I will make them como and worship before thy feet :" And perhaps some who knew not, that Christ was God, might pay this sort of worship to him on earth. Worship, in this sense, signifies only an extraordinary degree of honour paid to any superior person or character, even as we use the word in English,. when we call several charac- ters,. or societies of men, worshipful. Butthis is not divine or religious worship, such as was. appointed to be paid.to Christ in his exalted, state, and was never forbid even in his statc,of hu- miliation. Now in religious and divine worship there ism) mention made of two sorts or degrees of it. But if such distinctions were necessary, to be observed in our worshipping Me Father and the Son, it seems necessary that the, scripture 'should have plainly and expressly. told its of .it somewhere, lest,we run into the danger and heinous guilt of idolatry; by paying, the some di- vine worship to both. There are so many plain expressions that encourage proper divine worship to be paid to Christ, and no plain expressions that give usany notibn of a meaner or inferior divine worship, that either the scripture seems:defective in a most material point of religion, or ..Jesus .muSt,be worshipped with.proper divine honours as. the Father. IL " If Christ were to be worshipped merely with inferior worship, this would be to set upan. inferior god ; and thus the christian religion, whose professed design was to abolish poly-, theism among the nations, and to root out the worship of many gods, some of higher and some of lower rank, even this very christian religion would but more effectually establish it hereby ; and the apostles would evidently build up again the things they destroyed. The very applying the name ofGod so frequently to our Lord Jesus Christ, and ascribing any :thing of divine char racters or worship,to trim, if he be not the true and living God, would seem to be an unpardonable fault and gross absurdity in those men, I mean the evangelists and the apostles: For they professed,to be sent from God to destroy the heathen supersti- tion, whiçh consisted much in the worship of superior and, inferior deities, and to turn the Gentiles from these vanities to the knowledge and worship of theone true and living. God ; See Acts xiv. 1$. Acts xvii. 23, 24. Gal. iv.. 8. III. It is evident, that when Christ. appeared to the pa- triarchs as the Lord Jehovah, and assumed the glorious names and titles of God in his converse with them, he was worshipped . with supreme honour as the supreme God; for they, thought him to be so, according to his own assertions, I .ant the Lord. They could have no notion of supreme and subordinate worship. Now
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