rite of baptifm, " in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

This distinction of persons in the Deity was accordingly uniformly taught and insisted upon as a fundamental article of Chriftian faith in the first ages of the Church. Of this we have a proof in the epiftles of St. Paul, the beginning and conclufion of which are generally in this folemn form, "Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Chrift;" And, "The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all;" fo careful was that holy Apoftle to keep alive in the minds of the Christian converts the great doctrine in the profession of which they had been baptized.

This doctrine of the essential divinity of Jesus Christ, thus explicitly declared by himself, fo far from being called in question by any of his immediate disciples, became the first rule of religious service in the Apoftolical Church. While Jesus was in the act of lifting up his hands and bleffing his difciples, " he was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, (προσκυνησαντες αύον) and returned to Jerufalem with great joy; and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God." (Luke xxiv. 50, 53.) That the worship" paid to Christ on Mount Oliver, was the highest act of religious service, is evident from this, that the Evangelift here uses the same word to express it, as is adopted in other places for the worship of GOD. Thus when St. John fell at the feet of the angel to worfhip him (προσκυνησαι αυθω,) thinking probably that he was the angel of the covenant, the answer he received was "See thou do it not; I am thy fellow-fervant, and of thy brethren that have the teftimony of Jefus. Worship God; (τω Θεω προσκυνησον.") Rev. xix. 10.

Now when the Apostles paid their religious adoration to their afcending master which would have been idolatry if he was a creature, they had angels for their witnesses, who, instead of reproving them for their miflaken zeal, and mifapplied devotion, thus encouraged their ferviceand affisted them in their faith, "This fame Jefuswhich is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner, as ye have seen him go into heaven." (Acts i. 12.)

The next fervice in which we find the Apoflles engaged, and in which they made a folemn profession of the fame faith, was in the filling up the vacancy occafioned by the apostacy of Judas. After nominating the two disciples for

the

the Apostleship, they offered up this prayer : "Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, shew whether of these two thou hast chosen, that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by tranfgreffion fell, that he might go to his own place."

That this prayer was addressed to Christ may be proved from the nature of the service in which they were employed, and the tenour of his promise to them that " he would on every fuch occasion be with them to the end of the world."

The dying declaration of St. Stephen the protomartyr must alfo be received as a decisive and glorious testimony of the faith of the early church in the divinity of Christ. His ejaculatory address, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," is a prayer of the most fervent kind, and as full a confeffion of the Deity of the Being invocated, as could be uttered in human language. Yet a Socinian of no ordinary name,* when gravelled by this evidence, was weak enough to term it "very inconfiderable." To this he received the following admirable reply from his powerful antagonist.t

"Why is it inconsiderable? Is it because it was only an ejaculation? Ejaculations are often prayers of the most fervent kind: the most expressive of felf-abasement and adoration. Is it for its brevity that it is inconfiderable? What then is the precise length of words, which is requisite to make a prayer an act of worship. Was this petition preferred on an occafion of distress, on which a Divinity might be naturally invoked? Was it a petition for a fuccour, which none but a Divinity could grant? If this was the case, it was furely an act of worship? Is the fituation of the worshipper the circumstance, which in your judgment, lessens the authority of the example? You suppose, perhaps, foune confternation of his faculties, arising from distress and fear. The history juftifies no fuch supposition. It describes the utterance of the final prayer, as a deliberate act of one who knew his fituation, and poffeffed his understanding. After praying for himfelf, he kneels down to pray for his perfecutors: and fuch was the composure with which he died, although the manner of his death was the most tumultuous and terrifying, that, as if he had expired quietly upon his bed, the facred historian fays, " he fell asleep." If, therefore, you would infinuate, that Stephen was not himself, when he sent forth this "short ejaculatory address to Christ," the history refutes you. If he was himself, you cannot justify his prayer

* Dr. Priestley. + Bishop Horsley's Letters, p. 104.

to

to Christ, while you deny that Christ is God, upon any principle that might not equally justify you, or me, in praying to the bleffed Stephen. If Stephen, in the full poffefsion of his faculties, prayed to him who is no God; why do we reproach the pious Romanist, when he chaunts the litany of his faints? If the perfuafion of Christ's divinity prompted the holy martyr's dying prayer, then there is no room to doubt, but that the affertion of Christ's divinity was the blafphemy, for which the Jews, hardened in their unbelief, condemned him."

The remarkable circumstance which attended the martyrdom of Stephen, that of the opening of the heavens, and the manifestation to him of the Shechinah, with Jesus in the midst of the splendour, is an additional proof of this doctrine, and of the early belief that the " divine glory" was the incommunicable majesty of God. It was not till Stephen said openly to the council that he beheld the "Son of Man at the right hand of God," that the Jews charged him with the fin of blafphemy, that is, of afcribing, according to them, the glory of the deity to a creature. Thus the first martyr in the Chriftian Church died for bearing witness, not merely to the divine mission and the prophetic character of Christ, but to his essential glory, as "God over all, blefsed for ever." If the declaration of Stephen concerning the person of Chrift, and his ejaculatory prayer to him, appear " inconfiderable" to modern oppugners of the faith, it is certain that they were not so understood by the council of the Jews, before whom he was arraigned, and who knew full well that no creature can be faid to be "in the midst of the divine glory," without blafphemously giving to it the attributes of God.

The apoftolical history affords us another memorable instance of the belief of this doctrine, and of its effects upon the hearts of the first preachers of the gospel. The converfion of St. Paul is not a stronger evidence of the truth of Chriftianity itself, than it is of the doctrine of Christ's divinity. In the language of an eminent writer " it appears to have been a repetition of the scene at the bush, heightened in terror and folemnity. Instead of a lambent flame appearing to a folitary shepherd amid the thickets of the wilderness, the full effulgence of the Shechinah, overpowering the splendour of the mid-day fun, bursts upon on the commissioners of the Sanhedrim, on the public road to Damafcus, within a small distance of the city. Jesus speaks, and is spoken to as the divinity inhabiting that glorious light. Nothing can exceed the tone of authority on the one fide, or the fubmiffion and religious dread upon the other.*"

St. Paul, in his apologies, took a pleasure in relating the ⚫ extraordinary manner of his conversion to the Christian faith, and always defcribed in the strongest terms that celestial glory in which Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus. It is observable that the apostle did not relate this part of his hiftory, when brought before the Gentiles, but only when the whole, or a principal part of his auditors were of the Jewish perfuafion, who knew that by the "divine glory appearing from heaven," the manifestation of the SHECHINAH was to be understood.

The account which Paul gave to king Agrippa is more minute than that contained in the preceding history; and it would be difficult for any one who heard it to suppose that the apostle believed himself, or wished others to believe, that he had received this commiffion from a deified man: "And I faid, who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom thou perfecutest. But rise, and stand upon thy feet, for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness, both of those things which thou haft feen, and of those things in which I WILL APPEAR UNTO THEE; DELIVERING THEE FROM THE PEOPLE, AND FROM THE GENTILES UNTO WIHOM NOW I SEND THEE, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of fins, and inheritance among them which are fanctified by faith that is in me." (Acts xxvi. 15-18.)

Such is the account of the apostle's converfion, and of the authority by which he acted; an authority which he takes a special care to prove was from above, even from him who inhabited the divine glory, and possessed all power in heaven and upon earth.

This view of the faith of Chriftians in the apoftolical age, is taken from great and striking facts, and it might easily be corroborated by numerous passages from the New Testament, in which the same prayers and praises are offered to Jesus Chrift, and to God the Father, and in which the essential attributes of deity are occafionally afcribed to each of the facred Threet.

* Bishop Horsley's Letters, p. 105. ↑ See among other places, Matt. xii. 31. xxvii. 40. 16,35. John i. 1, 48, 49. Acts v. 3, 4.

Rom. i. 3, 4,

What

Luke i. What the order of Worship was in the church below after the afcenfion of her Lord, and during the whole of the first century, may be learned from the fublime description of the united service of the faints in heaven and those on earth, recorded by St. John, "The four beasts [wa, living creatures] and four and twenty elders fell down before the lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of the faints. And they sung a new fong, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the feals thereof: for thou wast slain and haftredeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and haft made us unto our God kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the beasts and the elders. And the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands ; saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the lamb that was flain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the fea, and all that are in them, heard I, saying, Bleffing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that fitteth upon the throne, and unto the lamb for ever and ever. And the four beasts [or living creatures] faid Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever." Rev. v. 8-14.

If it be faid that no stress is to be laid upon the figurative description of a prophecy that merely paints the great progress of the gospel and the univerfal diffusion of religious truth over the earth, we may justly answer that this only serves to prove still more forcibly the early belief of the divinity of Christ, and of the worship of him as God among the first difciples who were called by his name. Had the opposite doctrine been true; and if divine worship was not paid to Jefus Christ in the apoftolical age, such a description of the faith and worship of the church, militant and triumphant, would certainly never have appeared in the Apocalypse. And even though this mystical book be rejected from the facred canon, its antiquity will give weight to the teftimony afforded by it to the doctrine and worship of the age in which it was written. The Apocalypfe is cited as a work of au

Cor. iii. 16. Heb. i. 3, 4, 5. Ibid. ix. 14. 1 John ii. 22, 23. Ibid. v. 20. 2 John vii. 9. Rev. i. 17.

thority