every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,' (ut Jesum flexis genibus omnes venerantur, says Schleusner,) of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess, that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.' What then can be higher acts of divine worship, than the bowing of every knee, and the confession of every tongue, that he is Lord, Lord of all things, in heaven and earth? Such worship is but fulfilling the commandment of God, who, when he brought his first begotten into the world, said, Let all the angels of God worship him.' The adoration of St. Stephen and St. Paul, and the practice of the apostles, (1 John v. 14,) and of the primitive church, are the best comment on the meaning of this passage, and are indisputable historical evidences of the deity of Christ.

"The passage before quoted (John v. 22) is not the only one in which Christ claimed religious worship.' He said, whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will do it. Lo I am with you always even unto the end of the world. My grace is sufficient for you.' How these assurances were understood, is evident from the conduct of St. Stephen, St. Paul, St. John, and of the primitive church.

"The judgment and practice of the primitive church are largely, learnedly, and incontrovertibly proved by the Bishop BULL, in his three immortal treatises. Who then, that was not acquainted with the misrepresentations by which Unitarians support their system, would think it possible, that the authority of Bishop Bull could be perverted to the cause of Unitarianism? Yet thus we find in Dr. Carpenter's letters to Mr. Veysie, the authority of this eminently orthodox writer adduced for the purpose of shewing, that it was his opinion, that in the primitive church divine worship was not paid to Christ. In the first and best ages,' says Bishop Bull, the churches of Christ directed all their PRAYERS, according to the Scriptures, to GOD ONLY, through the alone mediation of Jesus Christ.' And soon after, Dr. Carpenter adds, would to God that the time were already come, when all Christians will worship the FATHER, and Him only, in spirit and in truth.' And again, he urges Mr. Veysie to adopt the sentiment of Bishop Bull, that according to the Scriptures, all prayer should be directed to God only.' A grosser misrepresentation of authority never was applied to mislead the incautious reader. The passage of Bishop Bull, as it occurs in his answer to the bishop of Meaux, is as follows: Whereas [in the first and best ages, the churches of Christ directed all their prayers, according to the Scriptures, to God only, through the alone mediation of Jesus Christ,] the Liturgy of the present church of Rome is interspersed with supplications and prayers to angels and saints, the unwarrantableness of which I have above suffici

ciently shewn.' The words included in brackets, Dr. Carpenter has taken out of the entire passage, and has thus completely perverted the bishop's sentiment. The bishop is condemning the worship of angels and saints, not the worship of the Son of God. He says to God only,' in exception to the worship of angels and saints. Prayers which are offered to the Father, or to the Son, or to the Holy Spirit, are offered to God only. But the church of Rome addresses her prayers not to God only, but to angels and saints.

"That prayers ought to be addressed to the Son, as well as to the Father, Bishop Bull has shewn in his Defensio Nicenæ, (p. 110) in which he says that to Christ, as God, the same divine worship is altogether due, as was paid to the Father, on account of the ineffable pre-eminence of divinity which he has in common with the Father.'

"These are Bishop Bull's sentiments, not what Dr. Carpenter has given to the public. Of the same description are Mr. Belsham's suppression of Tertullian's answer to the question, Who shall decide between us on the comparative authority of the canonical and Marcion's Gospel? From such abuse of authorities the public may judge how Unitarians avail themselves of the advantages of this enlightened era,' and may learn what confidence is to be placed in Unitarian accounts of the primitive faith, and in their calumnies against the religion of their country."

Our learned, pious, and orthodox author, whose zeal and in dustry in the best of causes, do honour to the mitre, answers the "Lay Seceder," to whom he addresses himself, in a highly creditable to the cause of genuine Christianity. From this part of his lordship's work there is no danger of quoting at too much length.

"You style yourself a Lay Seceder, saith the bishop, from which title I suppose you have left the church of England, and left it, I have no doubt, under some mistaken views both of Unitarianism and of our church. For in page 12, you say, the existence of God, by whom all things were created, the divine mission, death, and consequent resurrection of Christ: the divine authority of his precepts revealed in the gospel; and the life of immortality in the resurrection of the soul, are the leading tenets maintained by the Unitarians, the essential doctrines which they deduce from Scripture, as clearly and explicitly revealed.' If this be Unitarianism, you need not have left the church of England to seek such doctrine in any Unitarinn congregation. For this (with one exception) is the doctrine of our church, but not the whole of her doctrine, because it is not the whole of the gospel. Christianity acknowledges the divine authority, not of Christ's precepts, but also of his doctrines. And it is in the doctrines that the chief difference consists between Unitarianism

and the church of England. The doctrines which you have quoted, are not, properly, the doctrines of Unitarianism. Its distinguishing doctrines are those which you have not quoted, that Jesus was a mere man, that he had no pre-existence before his birth in this world, that his death was not an atonement for the sins of mankind, and that the Holy Ghost is not a divine person distinct from the Father.

"The gospel teaches us also to believe, that there will be a resurrection of the body. As the soul never dies, there cannot, properly speaking, be a resurrection of the soul. If then you do not admit the resurrection of the body, which does die, you deny the resurrection of the dead: you deny a doctrine which is the great sanction of our religion, a ground of hope to the pious and virtuous, and of terror to the impenitently wicked; and is therefore, in itself, no small portion of Christianity." (p. 4, 5.)

Arians and Socinians, but especially the latter, are in the habit of saying much on the progress of science, and the light which modern criticism has cast upon many difficult passages of the Holy Scriptures. They, in effect, treat divinity, as if, like a human science, it were capable of indefinite improvement; not considering that all the Articles of the Christian Faith are so clearly and fully revealed in the Oracles of God, as to stand in no need of critical acumen for their establishment. God, in revealing the doctrines which he would have believed, has not left them involved in such ambiguous language as may admit of opposite interpretations: No; for so far is this from being the case, that it requires unhappy ingenuity to make any passages of Scripture even seem to favour either Arianism or Socinianism; and many passages, if explained in accordance with either of those hypotheses, are literally the most palpable nonsense. Arian and Socinian criticism, in general, tends not only to obscure the light of revealed truth, but to bring Revelation itself into contempt. But while we would express our gratitude to the God of all grace, for having so plainly and fully revealed every article. of the Christian Faith; we would not forget his goodness, in raising up, time after time, men of eminent learning, as well as piety, for the defence of the truth; men who have been able to meet and confute their heterodox opponents in the field of criticism. Properly speaking, there are no new discoveries to be made in religion; and it is certain, that they who go in quest of such, involve both themselves and their adherents in dangerous and destructive errors.

"You talk much (says the Bishop) of the present enlightened period, the improving spirit of the times, the advancement of religious knowledge, and the lights, which Unitarians have derived from the progress of free inquiry. Of these high-sounding

pretensions, I shall say more in the conclusion of this letter. In the mean time I content myself with observing that as far as concerns the progress of religious truth, you have made no advancement beyond the three first centuries; and as to the new light which Unitarians are said to have derived from free inquiry, there is not an heretical opinion which they profess, which was not professed by the heretics of the same three centuries; which was not examined and condemned by the fathers and councils of the primitive church." (p. 17, 18.)

"In answer to my most willing concession, that the discovery of any insurmountable difficulties in the doctrine of the Trinity, unknown to our ancestors, would have been some reason for repealing the statutes against blasphemy,' you ask, has the progress of biblical criticism, and of free inquiry, added nothing to the means of interpreting the sacred writers, which is not favourable to the prevailing creed?' I say, most unreservedly, it has added nothing. In classing and appreciating the manuscripts of the Scriptures, and in the assortment of various readings, a great deal has been done; and something in partial improvements of the sacred text; but nothing has been done, that in the slightest degree detracts from the evidences of the established faith; and for this plain reason, because THE BIBLE, AND NOTHING BUT THE BIBLE, is the religion of the Church of England.

"Free inquiry implies large views, and diligent research. But in the modern use of the word, free inquiry is but another term for free thinking and free speaking. A great clamour may be raised by any one about liberty of free inquiry without advancing one step beyond the stock of his own crude conceptions; with no other lights but the ignes fatui of fortuitous and endless speculation, and no other direction, but the hardy impetus of an unlearned and undisciplined mind. We hear much of the progress of intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, but no discoveries are stated which bear at all on our present subject, the right interpretation of Scripture, which make us better masters of scriptural knowledge, and give us either a deeper interest in religious truth, or a clearer insight into the mysteries of Revelation, than were possessed by our REFORMERS, or by the great men who were born in the succeeding century, and lived long before the commencement of the present inquisitive era. subject is strictly confined to the knowledge necessary to the right interpretation of the Scripture; and to the ascertaining the essential doctrines of Christianity. For these doctrines can be ascertained only by a right interpretation of the Scripture. And with a view to such knowledge, it may be asserted without injustice to the learned of the latter half of the eighteenth century, and of

Our

the short period that has survived it, that they gain nothing by comparison with the works of the great and enlightened men, who compose the list of ecclesiastical writers, from CRANMER to WARBURTON, Subjoined to this letter, and who are all natives of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. If we take Jewell and Hooker, as the standard of the sixteenth century; and Pearson, Barrow, Bull, and Stillingfleet, for general Scripture knowledge, with Walton, Lightfoot, Pococke, Castell, Hammond, Poole, Patrick, Whitby, and Lowth, for what is more especially called biblical learning, in the seventeenth century; what do we find in the improving spirit of the times,' which can afford any means of interpreting Scripture, and of ascertaining the essential doctrines of Revelation, which they had not? Unitarians say that in their inquiries after the essential principles of Christianity, they have availed themselves of the advantages peculiar to the present age.' If the present has any such advantages for the right interpretation of Scripture doctrines, which our ancestors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had not, Unitarians are so far from having availed themselves of them, that (I repeat what I have before mentioned) as far as concerns the progress of religious truth, they have made no advancement beyond the three first centuries." (p. 42—44.)

The Bishop, after briefly noticing the harshness and severity with which, notwithstanding their boasted liberality, some Socinian writers treat those who are scripturally orthodox, says, "It may be of some use to keep in mind, that the chief pane gyrists of this enlightened period,' this inquisitive age,' this age of reason,' have been Priestley and Payne, and the whole race of the perfectability and revolutionary school. It may be of equal use to remember, that, by the blessing of Providence, we are now, not less unexpectedly than happily, advanced to a NEW ERA—a new era of old principles ;-and it will be happy for posterity, if we take pains to hold fast our principles, and keep cur eyes upon all those arts by which the illumenés of the last five and twenty years endeavoured, and had almost contrived, to cheat the world out of those prepossessions and prejudices, as they were called, which Scripture, reason, and experience have sanc tioned and established." (p. 45, 46.)

The list of orthodox, ecclesiastical writers which occurs at page 47, beginning with Archbishop Cranmer, and ending with Bishop Warburton, is composed of 84 names. The Bishop's observations upon the longevity of a great majority of those emirent men, are well worthy of attention.

"To those, saith he, who are fond of political arithmetic, the following scale of lives in the above list will not be uninteresting. VOL. XXXIX. JANUARY, 1816.

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