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fip, and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. If, therefore, Chrift be the Lord our maker, we are fully authorized to worship and bow down before him.

5. If the logos be Chrift, Arians cannot refuse to give him the appellation of God. For John fays, ch. i. 1. and the word was God. Thus, I believe all Arians interpret the paffage. It is, therefore, not a little extraordinary,`that they should pretend that they do not acknowledge two Gods. They will fay that Chrift is God in an inferior fense, as Mofes is called a god with respect to Pharoah. But according to the Arian hypothefis, Chrift is God in a very different fenfe from that in which, Mofes could ever be fo. He is a God not in name only, but in power. They do not even acknowledge a great God, and a little one; but a very great God, and another greater than he. On this account, the Arians were always confidered as polytheifts by the ancient trinitarians; while the unitarians were regarded as Jews, holding the unity of God in too strict a fenfe. For thefe reafons I own that, in my opinion, thofe who are usually called Socinians

Socinians (who confider Chrift as being a mere man) are the only body of chriftians who are properly entitled to the appellation of unitarians; and that the Arians are even lefs entitled to it than the Athanafians, who alfo lay claim to it. The Athanafian system, according to one explanation of it, is certainly tritheism, but according to another it is mere nonfenfe.

Some may poffibly fay, "It is not neceffary that Chrift should of himself have wisdom and power fufficient for the work of creation; but that, nevertheless, God might work by him in that business, as he did in his miracles on earth; Chrift fpeaking the word, or ufing fome indifferent action (fuch as anointing the eyes of the blind man) and God producing the effect."

The two cafes, however, are effentially different. That Chrift, or any other prophet, fhould be able to foretel what God would do (which, in fact, is all that they pretended to) was neceffary, as a proof of their divine miffion; whenever there was a propriety in God's having intercourfe with men, by means of a man like themVOL. I. felves.

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felves. But what reason can there even be imagined why God, intending to make a world by his own immediate power, fhould first create an angel, or a man, merely to give the word of command, whenever he fhould bid him to do fo; when, by the fuppofition, there was no other being existing to learn any thing from it?

Befides, a being naturally incapable of doing any thing cannot properly be faid to be an inftrument by which it is done. I use a pen as an inftrument in writing, because a pen is naturally fitted for the purpose, and I could not write without one. But if, befides a pen, without which I could not write, I should take a flute, and blow on it every time that I took my pen in hand in order to write, and fhould fay that I chose to write with fuch an inftrument, I fhould lay myself open to ridicule. And yet fuch an inftrument of creation would this hypothefis make Chrift to have been.

I must take it for granted, therefore, that Christ would never have been employed in the work of creation, if he had not been originally endued with power fufficient for

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the work. In that cafe, without the communication of any new powers, or any more immediate agency of God, he would be able to execute whatever was appointed him. Thus, Abraham, having a natural power of walking could go wherever God ordered him; and a prophet, having the power of Speech, could deliver to others whatever God fhould give him in charge to fay. Any other hypothefis appears to me to be inadmiffible.

Such being the hypothefis that the Arians have to defend, they ought certainly to look well to the arguments they produce for it. The greater, and the more alarming, any doctrine is, the clearer ought to be the evidence by which it is to be fupported. I do not in this work undertake to confider particular paffages of fcripture; but I have fhewn that the general tenor of it, as well as confiderations from reason, are highly unfavourable to the Arian hypothefis, and it will be feen, in the course of this work, that it has as little fupport from biftory.

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SECTION VI. Of the Argument against the Pre-existence of

Christ from the Materiality of Man; and of the Use of the Doctrine of the Trinity.

I Might have urged another kind of argument against both the divinity and

preexistence of Christ, viz. from the doctrine of the materiality of man, which I presume has been sufficiently proved in my Disquifitions on Matter and Spirit. I have there fhewn that there is no more reason why a man should be supposed to have an immaterial principle within him, than that a dog, a plant, or a magnet, should have one; because in all these cases, there is just the fame difficulty in imagining any connexion between the visible matter, of which they confift, and the invisible powers, of which they are poffessed. If universal concomitance be the foundation of all our reasoning concerning causes and effects, the organized brain of a man must be deemed to be the

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