DISSERTATION M. Q3S. I have read, with some diligence and care, what the author of the " Sober Appeal, ". and others, even the most ingenious of the modern Anti-trinitarians have written on the subject, where they endeavour to prove, that religious worship under the New Testament is not so peculiar aprerogative of the supreme trod, but that it may be given to our Lord Jesus Christ, though he be, in their sense, but a mere exalted creature ; and that The New Testament requires religious worship to be paid to him as such: After all, I cannot see sufficient reason to abandon my former ar- gument on this head, wbieh I have published in my " Christian Doctrine of the Trinity," though, perhaps, I may take an ad- vantage from this study, to correct some of my sentiments, while I endeavour to guard and defend the most important of them. In the pursuit of this subject, I shall attempt to establish the common protestant doctrine of the worship of Jesus Chris', the Mediator, upon the foundation of his godhead, and answer the most considerable objections I have. met with in any of those writers. The method I shall take in this discourse, is to lay down several successive propositions, to support the argument for the divinity of Christ, drawn from the payment of religious wor- ship to him, and then chew, that divine, or religious worship, may be paid to him as Mediator, even though the pan Jesus is a part of the complex person of the Mediator who is religiously worshipped. Proposition 1. " Worship is some peculiar honour or re- spect paid to au intelligent being, either real or imaginary." , . The word worship, in old English, was used for honour in general, whether this be paid by the body or the mind, or both And inward esteem or respect for any being may be called wor- ship, though this word frequently implies also someexternal forms_ of bodily reverence, such as bowing, kneeling, or pros- tration. It is also supposed to be paid to an intelligent being ; for though the heathens worshipped stocks and stones, and the papists pay a sort of worship to the relicks of thç saints, and to their images, yet it is always built upon this supposition, that there is some God, or some inferior spirit, or power that dwells in these images, or attends and takes notice of the respect that is paid to themselves, by the means or medium of the image, relick, or other inatertal beings ; unless, in Some cases, idolaters have been so stupid as to imagine, the wooden idol itself had acquired intellectual powers. II. " Human or -civil worship, is that human honour which is paid to any of our fellow-creatures on earth, upon the account of some excellency which a man may possess or some special relati on or character which a human person may oustaiu."
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