The modern Jews, by denying their God to have been manifest in the flesh, are as effectually departed from the true God, as their forefathers were, when they danced before the golden calf, and called their idolatrous service a feast to the Lord. For the being of God is not an object of sight, but of faith; it enters first into the heart; and if it be wrong there, the first commandment is broken: if a figure of it be set up before the eyes, then the second is broken likewise. The first forbids us to have any other God; the second, to make any graven image of him. Now though we make no image, yet if with the heart we believe in any God different from the true, the idolatry indeed may be less, but the apostacy is the same. And this seems to be the case of the Jew.

The Mahometans are another set of infidels, who abhor idols, but have in express terms denied the Son of God, and set up an idol of the imagination, a God in one person. They inveigh bitterly against the Christians for worshipping three Gods; for so they state the doctrine of a trinity in unity, as some others have done beside them.

In answer to all these abominations of the Deist, the Jew, and the Mahometan, and to shew that no unbeliever of any denomination can be a servant of the true God, it is written-whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father and again-whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not GOD. And let the Socinians, who have not only vindicated the religion of Mahomet, but preferred it to g 2 John 9.

f 1 John ii. 23.

the Christianity of the Church of England, which with them is no better nor other than a sort of paganism and heathenism,* let them consider what a share they have in this condemnation.

And to bring this matter home to the Arians; it is to be observed, that every article of the Christian faith depends upon the doctrine of a trinity in unity. If that be given up, the other doctrines of our religion must go with it, and so it has been in fact, that the authors who have written against the trinity, have also disputed away some other essential parts of Christianity; particularly the doctrines of the satisfaction and of original sin.

The whole Bible treats of little else but our creation, redemption, sanctification, resurrection and glorification, by the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit ↑ and the reader will find hereafter, that there is neither name, act, nor attribute of the godhead, that is not shared in common by all the persons of the trinity. If, therefore, the persons of Christ and the Spirit are not God in the unity of the Father, then the prayers and praises we offer to them, as the authors of every blessing, will not be directed to the supreme Lord and God, beside whom no other is to be worshipped, but to his creatures and instruments: which overthrows the sense of our whole religion; and drives us upon a sort of second-rate faith and worship, which, beside

* See Leslie's Theological works, fol. vol. i. p. 218. where the reader may find a great deal more to the same purpose; and particularly an epistle of the Socinians, to the Morocco embassador, in the time of Charles II. a great curiosity, wherein their whole scheme is laid open to the bottom by themselves.

the blasphemy of it, can be nothing but eonfusion and contradiction. It is no wonder then, that the Arians and Socinians, with their several under-sects and divisions, who have fallen into this snare, and departed from the divine unity, while they pretend to be the only men who assert it, have never yet been able to agree in the forms of religious worship. Some of them allowing that Christ is to receive divine worship, but. always with this reserve, that the prayer tend ultimately to the person of the Father. So that Christ is to be worshipped, only he is not to be worshipped: and if you should venture, when you are at the point of death, to say with St. Stephen-Lord Jesus, receive. my spirit—and confess the person of Jesus to be the God of the spirits of all fleshi by committing your own spirit into his hands; you are to take care not to die without throwing in some qualifying comment, to assure him you do it only in hypocrisy, not meaning him but another. Others, again, knowing this distinction to be vain and indefensible, and the same for substance with the Latria and Dulia by which the church of Rome excuses her adoration of the blessed Virgin, &c. have fairly got rid of it, by denying to the person of Christ any divine worship or invocation at all; which is the case with our Socinian Unitarians here in England; for those of Poland are quite of another mind.

How far such differences as these must needs affect a liturgy, it is very easy to foresee: and that it will for ever be as impossible to frame a creed or service to please all those who bear the name of Christians, as i Numbers xvi, 22.

h Acts vii. 59.

to make a coat that shall fit men of all sizes.* Prayer and divine worship and religious confession, are the fruit and breath of faith; and out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speakethk so that until we are agreed in matters of faith, there is neither hope nor possibility of our agreeing in any form of worship. God is the fountain-head, and religion the stream that descends from it. Our sentiments as to religion, always flow from the opinion we have formed of the divine nature; and will be right or wrong, sweet or bitter, as the fountain is from whence they are derived. It is the having a different God, that makes a different religion. A true God produces a true religion; a false God, a false religion. Jews, Turks, Pagans, Deists, Arians, Socinians and Christians, all differ about a religion, because they differ about a God.

These few observations will be sufficient, I hope, to raise the attention of the reader; and persuade him, that a right faith in God is a much more serious affair than some would make it; that it is of the last concern, and hath a necessary influence upon the practice and holiness of our lives; that as no other devo

k Matthew xii. 34.

*Hales of Eton, in his sarcastic and malicious Tract upon Schism, proposes it as a grand expedient for the advancing of unity, that we should "consider all the liturgies, that are and ever have been; and remove from them whatever is scandalous to any party, and leave nothing but what all agree on." He should have closed this sentence a little sooner; and advise us fairly and honestly to leave nothing; for that will certianly be the event, when the objections of all parties are suffered to prevail; there being no one page of the liturgy, wherein all who pretend to worship God as Christians, are agreed.

tion is acceptable with God, but that which is sea- : soned with love and charity and uniformity, the very mark and badge whereby his disciples are to be known from the men of this world, it is the principal duty of every Christian to know in whom he ought to believe, that with one mind, and with one mouth we may glorify God for a right notion of God, will as surely be followed by a sound faith, and an uniform profession in all other points, as a false faith and a discordant worship will grow from every wrong opinion of him.

All that can be known of the true God, is to be known by revelation. The false lights indeed of reason and nature are set up and recommended, as necessary to assist and ratify the evidence of revelation : but inquiries of this kind, as they are now managed, generally end in the degradation of Christ, and the Christian religion:* till it can be shewn therefore that the scripture neither does nor can shine by a light and authority of its own, the evidence we are to rest in, must be drawn from thence: and as we all have the same scripture, without doubt we ought all to have the same opinion of God.

But here it is commonly objected, that men will be of different opinions, and that they have a right to judge for themselves; and that when the best evidence the nature of the case will admit of is collected and laid before them, they must determine upon it as

1 Rom. xv. 6.

* You may have a proof of this from the Essay on Spirit, by compar ing the book with its title, which runs thus-The Doctrine of the Trinity considered in the light of Reason and Nature, &c.