christians, when it not only has no countenance from fcripture, but is exprefly contradicted by the author of the epiftle to the Hebrews, in Heb. i. I. God who at fundry times, and in divers manners, spake in time paft unto the Fathers by the prophets, has in thefe laft days fpoken unto us by his Son. Again, chap. ii. 2, 3. If the word spoken by angels was ftedfaft, &c. how shall we escape, if we neglect fo great falvation; which at the firft began to be Spoken by the Lord. What can be more evident than that the writer of this epiftle had no idea of God having fpoken to mankind by his Son before the time of the gospel ?

To the Jews, however, the Arian doctrine must have been more novel than that of the orthodox chriftians in the time of Justin Martyr, and therefore, would probably have been received with more furprize. It was that kind of orthodoxy which was advanced by Justin Martyr, that prepared the way for the Arian doctrine, as will be feen in its proper place.

S E C T I O N III. An Argument against the Divinity of Christ,

from his not being the Object of Prayer.

IT
T must be acknowledged that the pro-

per object of prayer is God the Father, who is called the first person in the trinity. Indeed, we cannot find in the scriptures either any precept that will authorize us to address ourselves to any other person, or any proper example of it. Every thing that can be alledged to this purpose, as Stephen's short ejaculatory address to Christ, whom he had just before seen in vision, &c. is very inconsiderable. Our Saviour himself always prayed to his Father, and with as much humility and resignation as the most dependent being in the universe could possibly do; always addressing him as bis Father, or the author of his being ; and he directs his disciples to pray to the same great being, whom only, he says, we ought to ferve.

Had he intended to guard against all mistake on this subject, by speaking of God

as

as the author of his being in the fame fenfe in which he is the author of being to all men, he could not have done it more expreffly than he has, by calling him his Father and our Father, his God and our God. At the fame time he calls his difciples his brethren (John xx. 17) Go to my brethren, and fay unto them, I afcend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God. Can any perfon read this, and say that the unitarians wreft the fcriptures, and are not guided by the plain sense of them ?

Accordingly, the practice of praying to the Father only, was long universal in the chriftian church. The fhort addreffes to Christ, as thofe in the Litany, Lord have mercy upon us, Chrift have mercy upon us, being comparatively of late date. In the Clementine liturgy, the oldeft that is extant, contained in the Apoftolical Constitutions, which were probably composed about the fourth century, there is no trace of any fuch thing. Origen, in a large treatise on the fubject of prayer, urges very forcibly the propriety of praying to the Father only, and not to Chrift; and as he gives no hint D 3

that

that the public forms of prayer

had

any thing reprehensible in them in that respect, we are naturally led to conclude that, in his time, such petitions to Christ were unknown in the public assemblies of christians. And such hold have early established customs on the minds of men, that, excepting the Moravians only, whose prayers are always addressed to Christ, the general practice of trinitarians themselves is to pray to the Father only.

Now on what principle could this early and universal practice have been founded ? What is there in the doctrine of a trinity consisting of three equal persons, to entitle the Father to that distinction, in preference to the Son, or the Spirit? I doubt not but that, considering the thing ab initio, a proper trinitarian would have thought that, since, of these three persons, it is the sea cond that was the maker of the world, and that is the immediate governor of it, he is that person of the three with whom we have most to do; and therefore he is that person to whom our prayers ought to be addressed. This, I should think, would

have been a natural conclufion, even if Chrift had not been thought to be equal to the Father, but only the maker and the governor of the world under him; fuppofing him to have had power originally given him equal to the making and governing of it, as I have fhewn in my Difquifitions on matter and Spirit, Vol. I. p. 376. For we should naturally look up to that being on whom we immediately depend, knowing that it must be his proper province

to attend to us.

If there fhould have been any reafon in the nature of things, though undiscoverable and incomprehenfible by us, why the world fhould have been made, and fupported, by fome being of communicated and delegated authority, rather than by the felf-exiftent and fupreme being himself (and if the fact be fo, there must have been fome good reafon for it) that unknown reafon, whatever it be, naturally prefents this derived being to us, as the proper object of our prayers.

But fuppofing this fecond perfon in the trinity to be our independent maker, gover

nor