Watts - BX5200 .W3 1813 v.6

140 THE CHRTSTISN DOCTRINEOF THE TRINITY. it is very strange to suppose, what some would persuade us, that after all his services and sufferings he should be rewarded only with subordinate and inferior worship, who had so long before enjoyed the supreme. The objectors will enquire then, what is that advancement of honour whichChrist received as the reward of his sufferings ? I answer, he was worshipped before as God, now as god-man and mediator : Before.he might be worshipped as a os aáy , God the word, newas God the word in flesh, as God incarnate ; that the whole human nature might see and know itself united to the object of divine worship. Ilow far the blessed sònl of our Lord Jesus may know and receive its distinct share of the thanks and praiseswhich ascend from thé'saints on earth, is' :a secret not so clearly discovered in scripture: Surely such sacred and inimi- table zeal for his Father's glory, such astonishingcompassion to lost mankind, such a life and such a death, such a conflict and such a victory, deserve the highest honours and glories that we can pay to a creature. And doubtless his exalted human nature receives them from all the blessed spirits above. Glory, and honour, and immortality, were the rewards promised to every son of Adam who fulfilled the law of God ; Rom. ii. 7. and much more are they become due to the second Adam, the man Christ Jesus, who fulfilled the law in every point, and, byhis most illustrious obedience, magnified it and made it honourable beyond expression. We may add further also, that since the man Jesus bath re- ceived so glorious an advancement atthe right-hand of God, we may reasonably suppose, that his human powers havea vast and extensive cognizance of his churches on earth ; and that the par- takes of all those circumstances of the honour done to his whole sacred person, which are not purely divine and incommunicable: though we have no warrant to separate and divide the human nature from the divine, in the honours which we pay him. Still it is the godhead of Christ that is the standing and eternal groundof all that divine and religioús worship, which we are bound to give him, though we borrow many motives from his life, his love and his death. And since the great God has so often in his word assumed this sort Of worship to^himself, as his own prerogative and his distinguishing "character, I am per- suaded hewould' never have enjoined nor indulged worship to be paid to Jesus Christ in such a manner as is done in scripture, how great soever his services had been to God or man, if he had not the fulness of the godhead -dwelling in him bodily. ' This shall suffice to answer the objection. 'arising from this distinction of higher and, lower worship. I might now run through the several particular acts of divine worship, which the scripture makes the peculiar rights of

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