wherein, as the 'fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily,' the whole is to be adored, although consisting of the human nature as well as the divine. Now, this by no means gives an open to creature-worship, nor contradicts the doctrine laid down in my last Discourse. If God had prescribed the worship of a delegated creature, it had, no doubt, been our duty to obey. But, God having absolutely forbidden all worship to be paid to creatures, and peremptorily restrained it wholly to himself, we are not at liberty to worship a mere creature. Yet, as we are assured Christ is God, and consequently the one only God; and farther, as we are commanded to worship him; his created nature can be no bar to our duty in that respect; nor can it ever convict us of creature-worship, till it is proved, that he is not God, or that we adore him purely as a creature. The respect we pay to a man, is paid to his whole person, soul and body, but only on account of the former, and therefore cannot be construed into any degree of veneration for a mere body. Nor can our adoring Christ be called creature-worship, because we worship him only on account of his divine nature, which gave that dignity to those sufferings, whereby, considered as man, he was exalted to universal dominion and adoration. The veneration we pay to Christ as man, being heightened by the adoration we pay him as God, becomes one undistinguished act of divine worship, which ought no more to be divided, than the person of the object to which it is paid. Neither, if Christ is truly God, and one with the Father, ought there to be any distinction in the adoration of a Being so essentially one. Accordingly, there is none in that hymn whereby God and the Lamb are adored by every creature, Rev. v. 11–13. If Christ is one undivided person, and divine, the act of worship paid to him ought to be one undivided act of divine worship. And, if he is one Being with the Father, the act of worship paid to both ought to be the same. If the unity of his person notwithstanding the assumption of the human nature, forbids all distinctions of worship in the first instance; much more ought his essential unity with the Father to forbid all such distinctions in the second, notwithstanding his eternal Sonship, which makes no inequality or distinction of

nature.

But here our adversaries put us in mind, that Christ is

called 'the first-born of every creature,' Coloss. i. 15; and the beginning of the creation of God,' Rev. iii. 14. But his being called the first-born of every creature by no means intimates, that he is merely a creature; for the word 'firstborn' is not always to be taken literally. It sometimes signifies pre-eminence, and sometimes dominion. 'The first-born of the poor,' Isaiah xiv. 30, signifies only the poorest of the poor. The first-born of death,' Job xviii. 13, signifies the most dreadful kind of death. God says, 'he will make David his first-born higher than the kings of the earth;' Psal. lxxxix. 27. But this gives David no priority of birth, either as a man, or a king; for he was not born before all other kings, much less before all other men; it only intimates super-eminence of dominion. Neither doth the title of first-born' give Christ this priority, because he was not born before all other men, or creatures, in the same sense with them. If another sense, then, is to be sought for, let us hear St. Paul in the same passage, that taking the whole together, we may the better understand his meaning. The apostle, after having told us, that Christ is the first-born of every creature,' ver. 15, says, All things in heaven and in earth were created by him, and for him,' ver. 16; that he is before all things,' that all things consist by him,' ver. 17; and that he is head of the body, the church; the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence;' ver. 18. Thus his priority of birth is interpreted, by the apostle himself, of his rising the first from the dead to a life immortal and eternal, and with this, you see, is connected his right of supreme dominion over all creatures. We need, therefore, look no farther for the sense of the word 'first-born,' as applied to Christ. It is in the same sense that St. John calls him, Rev. i. 5, the first-begotten of the dead ;' and, chap. iii. 14, the beginning of the creation of God.' In these, and such-like places, the resurrection is spoken of as a creation or birth; and Christ as a man and a creature, derives his triumphant birthright and universal empire over all creatures, from his conquest of death. As the only-begotten Son of God by eternal generation, he went forth to create the worlds, and rested the seventh day, which he therefore hallowed and consecrated into a sabbath. As the Son both

of God and man, he went forth from the womb of a pure virgin to the work of redemption, or the new creation. From this work he rested also, by his resurrection from the dead on the first day of the week, which from thenceforward to commemorate his resting after having made all things new,' Rev. xxi. 5, 2 Cor. v. 17, was kept as the day of rest or sabbath. From hence he derives a new Sonship, as he was appointed the Son of God with power, by the resurrection of the dead,' Rom. i. 4; and acquires also an inheritance of pre-eminence or dominion over all things, Coloss. i. 18. Hence also, as all the faithful are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection,' Luke xx. 36, so Christ, who rose the first, acquired the right of primogeniture in this new kind of birth, and is therefore truly called the first-born of every creature,' both because in this sense he was born first, and because he inherits the Lordship over all. In all this his human nature only is spoken of, without the least eye to that supposed angelic nature whereto the Arians would needs affix the idea of his primogeniture.

This objected passage, you may perceive, instead of proving him only a creature, proves him the Creator, and consequently God.

There is no passage of Scripture whereof the Arians and Socinians make so much use, as that in the thirteenth of St. Mark's Gospel, where Christ saith, speaking of the destruction of the world, or of Jerusalem, 'Of that day, and that hour, knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.' St. Matthew has not recorded these words neither the Son' when he relates the prediction of our Saviour, wherein he intermixes the signs of the two events mentioned. The words in St. Matthew seem indeed to be tantamount. They are these: Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.' If Christ is the one only true God, as I shall soon in the clearest manner prove from Scripture, it may, I must own, seem very strange, that, as such, he should be ignorant of this, or any other event. However the Socinians have no right to press us with this text, since they deny the prescience of God himself. But the words are certainly spoken of Christ as the Son of man, in which sense he is said to grow in wisdom;' and as a prophet, who

was commissioned to foretell some things, and to reserve others, with the silence, in respect to the latter, of those who are wholly ignorant of them. The words of St. Paul, Coloss. ii. 3, Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' appear to be the best comment on these of our Saviour; for, at the same time that they attribute omniscience to Christ, they give us to understand, that the abysses of his knowledge are not to be revealed. He so plainly gave the signs whereby the approaching ruin of Jerusalem was to be known, that none of the Christians were found there when the city was begirt by the Romans. This was sufficient for them, without the foreknowledge of the precise times and seasons, which the Father had put in his own power,' Acts i. 7; because the determination thereof was part of that providence which depended on his own prerogative or office, and therefore was not to be revealed by the Son. But if, merely as a man, and a prophet, the revelation of the day and hour was not committed to him, we are not to conclude from thence, that, purely as the Son of God he was ignorant of that or any thing else, since we in other places perceive he knew all things,' John xvi. 30; and that the Father concealed nothing from him; for the Father,' saith Christ, John v. 20, 'loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doth.' That Christ, neverthe less, sometimes speaks as a mere man might do, nay, and as one ignorant of that which he knew perfectly well, is plain from his words on some other occasions. Did he not know he was to die the death of the cross? Was he not sensible the prophets had predicted it? Matt. xxvi. 54, and his Father unalterably decreed it? Acts ii. 23. Did he not foretell it himself? John xii. 32. Did he not even resolve it? John x. 18. Could he have been the Messiah, or our Redeemer, without it? Yet, the night he was betrayed, he fell on his face in the garden, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;' Matt. xxvi. 39. Will the Arians infer from these words, that Christ did not foresee his own death, as absolutely certain? If they neither will, nor can, why will they urge us with his words concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, or of the world? Since it was proper for Christ thus to express himself in a prayer to his Father, concerning the possibility of

averting an event whereof he must have had a certain and infallible foreknowledge; why is his foreknowledge as to the precise time wherein Jerusalem, or the world, was to be destroyed, to come under the least suspicion on account of an expression of like import in effect, returned in answer to an inquiry, concerning which they who made it, had no right to satisfaction? Christ therefore tells them not the hour, nor the day; but he gives them the signs of both events as one, and said, 'Take heed, watch and pray; for ye know not when the time is. Were we to conclude as the objectors do, we must infer the ignorance of the Creator from his saying, 'He repented that he had made man,' and the rest of the animal creation, Gen. vi. 7; and that he had set up Saul to be king,' 1 Sam. xv. 11; as if he had not foreseen either the depravity of mankind, or the defection of this prince. If we are so captiously to interpret Scripture, what will the Arians do with that which is said in the fifth of Isaiah concerning God's vineyard or people? 'I looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes; I looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.' Was God absolutely disappointed? Had he no foresight of the iniquity and oppression whereof his people were guilty? St. Augustine observes, on this subject, that when God said, after trying Abraham, 'Now I know that thou fearest God ;' we ought to understand him as saying, Now I have caused thee to know, that thou fearest God, inasmuch as God knew it before; and that, when our Saviour saith, John xv. 15, All things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you,' we ought not to understand absolutely all things, but only all they were then able to receive; because, in the next chapter, he tells them, ' He had yet many things to say unto them, which they could not then bear,' and which, therefore, the Spirit was to teach them after his departure. I instance these passages to shew, that, as the exercise of our Saviour's attributes was in some measure limited by the ignorance, incapacity, disinclination, or unbelief, of those on whom they were exercised, so those attributes are sometimes spoken of as if they were limited in themselves. It is in this sense we are to understand the words of the evangelist, Mark vi. 5, 6, 'He could do there