QUESTION IV. 459 Thewee we must infer, that when tire primitive christians worshipped Christ, they cannot be supposed to worship a Mere creature, or any other but the true God of Israel ; for the .Jews would then certainly have charged them with creature-worship or idolatry. Now this true God of Israel was God represented as the Creator, the Author, and the Father of all ; it was that God who sustains the supreme character of dominion and ma-. jesty, and maintains the dignity and the rights of godhead; it was that God who so often foretold the sending of his Son .Jesus Christ, and this is God the Father. It is therefore this one godhead, which is in the Father, which is the same with the godheadof his Son Jesus Christ, but under a distinct persona- lity: It is the same one God whom the christians worshipped, when they worshipped Christ as God manifest in the flesh. It was the same divine nature or godhead which the ancient Jews had been used to worship, as dwelling in the cloud of glory upon the mercy-seat, and was now come to dwell in flesh and blood, to become Emmanuel, " God with us, to become God manifest in the flesh." Now there is such a mutual inhabitation and per- sonal union between the one eternal God, and a creature in the person of Christ, as renders this complex person a proper 'object of worship, and this stands clear of idolatry, even in the sense of the Jews themselves, who were worst to worship God as dwelling in the cloud. And indeed this is the only notion of the worship of Christ that could possibly agreewith their own law, and with their first commandment given in Sinai, and with all their own former ideas of worship, as due only to the one God : and it is the only notion that could have been received by them without difficulty and opposition. If therefore the Son or Word be truly God, this godheadmust be the same in substance with the godhead of the Father whom the Jews worshipped, otherwise he would be another God, and the Jews could not have failed to charge the christians with gross idolatry. Upon the whole therefore there seems just reason to conclude, that whatever sacred and unknown distinctions may be in the divine nature itself, and however these distinctions may lay a foundation for God's discovery of himself under three personal characters, as the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, yet the godhead of the Father seems to be the same one infinite and eternal spirit whichin some particular prin- ciple or power of its own nature, or under some peculiar distinc- tion or relation, is united to the man Christ Jesus; and hereby Jesus becomes one with God, one complex intelligent agent or person, and herebyChrist comes to have a right to those divine titles, the Lord God, the Almighty, Jehovah, the God of Abra- ham, Isaac and Jacob, &c. Andby this means thegreat and fundamental article of all
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