The 8th, 9th, and 10th questions belong not to us. We grant it was and is the will and command of God that Jesus Christ, the mediator, should be worshipped of angels and men, and that he was so wor- shipped even in this world, for " when he brought the first-begotten into the world, he said. Let all the angels of God worship him," Heb. i. 6 ; and that he is also to be worshipped now, having finished his wor-k, being exalted on the right hand of God ; — but that the bot- tom, foundation, and sole formal cause of the worship which God so commands to be yielded to him, is any thing but his being "God, blessed for evermore," or his being the " only-begotten Son of God," there is not in the places mentioned the least intimation.
The 11th and 12th look again the same way with the former, and with the same success. Saith he, —
Q. When men ascribe glory and dominion to Jesus Christ in the Scripture, and ivitfial intimate the ground thereof, is it because they conceive him to be very God, and to have been eternally begotten out of the divine essence, or because he gave him- self to death ? let me hear hoiu they explain themselves 9
A. Rev. V. 9.
Q. Are the angels of the same opinion ivith the saints, when they also ascribe the glory and dominion to him,? let me hear how they also explain themselves?
A. Rev. V. 11, 12.
Of both these places afterward.
At present, — 1. Christ as a lamb is Christ as mediator, both God and man, to whom all honour and glory is due.
2. Neither saints nor angels do give, nor pretend to give, the reason why Christ is to be worshipped, or what is the formal reason why divine worship is ascribed to him, but only what is in their thoughts and considerations a powerful and effectual motive to love, fear, worship, and ascribe all glory to him ; as David often cries, " Bless the Lord, O my soul ! " (or assigns glory and honour to him), because he had done such or such things, intimating a motive to his wor- ship, and not the prime foundation and cause why he is to be worshipped.
Having spoken thus to the adoration of Christ, his last question is about his invocation, which he proves from sundiy places of Scripture, not inquiring into the reasons of it; so that, adding that to the for- mer concession of the worship and honour due to him, I shall close these considerations with this one syllogism : " He who is to be worshipped by angels and men with that divine worship which is
376 VINDICI^ EVANGELIC^.
due to God the Father, and to he prayed unto, called on, believed in, is God by nature, blessed for ever; but, according to the confes- sion of Mr B., Jesus Christ is to be worshipped by angels and men with that divine worship which is due even to God the Father, and to be prayed unto : therefore is he God by nature, over all, blessed for ever." The inference of the major proposition I shall farther confirm in the ensuing considerations of the worship that is ascribed to Jesus Christ in the Scripture.
In the endeavour of Faustus Socinus to set up a new religion, there was not any thing wherein he was more opposed, or wherewith he was more exercised by the men of the same design with himself, than in this, about the worship and invocation of Jesus Christ. He and his uncle Lselius urging amongst others this proposition, " That Christ was not God," Franciscus David, Budaeus, Christianus Fran- ken, Palaeologus, with others, made the conclusion that he was not to be worshipped as God, nor called upon. With some of these he liad sundry disputes and conferences, and was miserably iotricated by them, being unable to defend his opinion upon his hypothesis of the person of Christ. That Christ is to be worshipped and invocated, indeed, he proves well and learnedly, as in many places, so especially in his third epistle to Matthias Radecius; but coming to knit his arguments to his other opinion concerning Christ, he was perpetually gravelled, as more especially it befell him in his dispute with Chris- tianus Franken, anno 1584, as is evident in what is extant of that dispute, written by Socinus himself Of the chief argument insisted on by Franken I shall speak afterward: see " Disput. cum Fran- ken," pp. 2-i, 25, 28, 35, etc. Against Franciscus David he wrote a peculiar tract, and to him an epistle, to prove that the words of Thomas, " My Lord and my God," were spoken of Christ, and there- fore he was to be worshipped (Epist. p. 186) ; wherein he positively affirms that there was no other reading of the Avords (as David vainly pretended) but what is the common use, because Erasmus made mention of no such thing, who would not have omitted it could he have made any discovery thereof, being justly supposed to be no good friend to the Trinity.^ That men may know what to judge of some of his annotations, as well as those of Grotius, who walks in the same paths, is this remarked. Wherefore he and his associates rejected this Franciscus David afterward as a detestable heretic, and utterly