216 THE ARIAN INVITED TO ORTHODOX FAITH. not rather clmse.to account for this application of them by thë, personal union of the man Jesus Christ to the divine nature; than.by denying these characters to be appropriate to God ? Is it not more rational and more scriptural to suppose the mats Christ, by his union to God, capable of these names and cha- racters in their. sublimeand exalted sense, than to run counter to so many places of scripture, .which at least seem to appropriate thesenames and characters to God. XII. Does it not tend to take away the distinction betwixt. God andhis creatures, which ought always to be sacred and in- violable, if we make such names and characters as Jehovah, the great, the mighty, the blessed God, the Creator, the preserver of all things, and the object of worship, to be attributed and applied to any thing that is not God ? Or: if we sink them into a low and diminutive sense, in order.to make such .au application of them ? Is a mere distant resemblance of God in some of his properties, or a being appointed under God a deputy governor of the world, a sufficient reason to have all these glorious and incommunicable divine titles, characters, and worship attributed to a mere creature ? XIII. Would not such an attribution of divine names, titles and characters, to a mere creature, have a plain and strong ten- dency to introduce a polytheism and idolatry, too near a-kin to that which is often condemned among the heathens, viz. The owning and worshipping heroes, departed. souls, inferior and superior gods? Would it not have an apparent aspect of God's giving his name, and his glory to another, :contrary. to Ise. xlii. 8. And has it not a manifest and dangerous appearance of breaking the first commandment, which says, Thou shalt have no other gods before me? 3s not Christ Jesus in the Arian scheme represented as another and an inferior god ? Another and an inferior object of worship ? Nor do I see how it is possible, upon that hypothesis, to answer what the learned Dr. \Vaterland bas urged so often, and so successfully against his opponents, viz. That the Arian writers, by their hypothesis, introduce more Gods than one XIV. As the holy scripture leads us into this method of solving the proposed difficulty, of both divine and human pro- perties ascribed to Christ, so does not reason itself dictate and confirm the same ? Since wefind two distinct and seeming incon- sistent propertiesascribed to the person of Christ, viz..divine and Inman, is it not far better, to suppose the single subjects of these properties united into one compound subject, viz. God and man ? And then each single subject may keep its own properties.. Is not this easier than to join two inconsistent properties in the same single subject, which scripture dottis neither necessitate, nor en- courage, and philosophy and reason will not allow ?
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