and as great in degree as human nature is capable of suffering, the demerit of one offence can be no greater than of another; nor can it possibly require a more intense punishment. And I very much question whether the greatest sins that have ever been committed, were not still capable of further aggravations. It is past dispute that the greatest part of those offences which mankind daily commit, are; and consequently they cannot be of infinite malignity, because their malignity is capable of being increased and heightened.

To the other thing, namely, that God's infinite justice obliged him to demand a strict equivalent, I have this to say, That God's governing justice, considered as it relates to the dispensing rewards and punishments, has nothing at all to do in this matter. For, though it obliges him to reward all those who are obedient, as he has promised to do, since it is their indisputable and unalienable right to be thus rewarded, and what they may humbly claim consequent upon his promise; yet, certainly, it lays him under no obligation to execute the penalty annexed to his laws, or to punish sinful men in full and rigorous proportion to the desert of their iniquities. For to whom would he be unjust if he should not act thus? Without all question, not to the sinners. And if not to them, none of his subjects besides have any reason to complain, because he is gracious and merciful, kind and forgiving. By God's justice then, as concerned in this affair, must be meant his justice to his being and attributes, to his essential

purity and rectitude, and his wisdom as a governor. And then it comes to all this, that God, as a holy and wise governor, who must ever be supposed forward to take the best measures to support the dignity of his crown, the honour of his government, and the happiness of his subjects, could not pardon the sins of men and receive them into favour, unless some such honourable amends were made for their breach and violation of his laws as would -convince the world how much he favoured virtue and resented vice, and restrain them from presumptuous hope and confidence in his mercy, whilst they continued in the practice of sin. And therefore, whatever would answer those valuable and important ends, be it equivalent to the sufferings of all mankind as the desert of sin, or not, must be looked upon as sufficient satisfaction.

And now, what could give his creatures a clearer notion of his awful holiness and irreconcileable abhorrence of sin and vice, or cut off from them more effectually all expectations of impunity, if they continued to lead irregular lives, than his delivering up the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, his only-begotten and well-beloved Son, to death for their transgressions? His not receiving them into favour, but upon a condition so full of dread and terror as was the inconceivable abasement, the vast and unusual sufferings of that glorious and exalted being, who, next to himself, was the most raised and supereminent person in the universe, the head of the creation, and vastly

And

superior to the most excellent of the angelical order? This must be a more terrible and flagrant demonstration of his inflexible and spotless purity, than could possibly be afforded upon the Trinitarian scheme; wherein a human soul, incomprehensibly inferior to the Arian Logos, is the only sufferer; the divine nature being immutably happy, and consequently not susceptible of affliction and pain. And the sufferings of the man Christ Jesus must be as far at least as those of the Logos from being a strict equivalent. Further, indeed, they could not be, for both are supposed to be but finite beings, though one much above the other, and so equally incapable of infinite suffering in degree. therefore, upon both schemes, since the supreme God is impassible, if sufferings of this kind were strictly and indispensably necessary, it is impossible any satisfaction should be made, but all mankind must have perished. And finally, if every sin be infinitely evil, and God's justice constrained him to demand infinite satisfaction; if the Creator and his creatures could be reconciled on no other terms but these, such a reconciliation must have been impracticable upon both schemes, for this reason also, namely, because, supposing the sufferings of Christ to be of infinite worth, they would be sufficient to atone but for one sin; and if no more than a certain determinate number, elected from all eternity out of the mass of mankind, were to be saved, there must have been as many infinite beings to suffer as they had committed sins, which

are, more than the Christian and Pagan theology together can furnish us with.

I hope by this time I have plainly proved, that upon the Unitarian principles such satisfaction might be made to God for men's transgressions of his laws and contempt of his authority, as would be honourable to his perfections, preserve and establish the reputation of his government among men, that he might as well, at least, upon their principles, as on those of the orthodox, where atonement must be made by an inferior nature, be just to his glory and excellence and the rights of his sovereignty, and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus; and consequently, that they do not destroy that fundamental article of the Christian religion, the salvation of a lost world by Jesus Christ.

It may be said further, that to worship Christ upon the Unitarian scheme is idolatry, which is a fundamental error, and therefore that the scheme itself is an error in Fundamentals. To know whether it be so, or no, it is necessary that we state the notion of idolatry. Idolatry is either giving supreme and absolute divine honours to a created and inferior being, or giving any inferior worship to him without a positive command or ordination from God. The latter as well as the former of these is idolatry; and it is only upon this state of it that we do or can charge the Papists with it, for giving subordinate religious honours to angels and departed saints. It is likewise for this reason that the Israelites worshiping a golden calf is represented as ido

latry*. For, though they were naturally a dull heavy people, it cannot be imagined they were so stupid and senseless, and utterly abandoned of reason, as to think that fictitious image, the work of their own hands, to be the very self-existent Jehovah, who brought them out of Egypt and had so miraculously conducted them through the Red Sea, or that they designed it for anything but a medium through which to convey their supreme adoration and respect to the ultimate object of it, the GOD OF ISRAEL.

Now the worship which the Unitarians pay to Christ is not of the highest kind, nor, properly speaking, divine, because it is all referred ultimately to his God and Father. Whereas, the proper worship of the supreme God must rest and fix in himself, and cannot be referred ultimately to any other, because there is no being superior to him, and, consequently, it cannot be idolatry in that sense of the word, namely, giving supreme and absolute divine honours to a created inferior being. Nor can it be so in the latter acceptation of it, namely, giving inferior worship to such a being without a command or ordination from God, because they have both command and precedent in the holy Scriptures for that worship and religious respect which they offer to Christ. And certainly, the most high God, without any real diminution of his essential incommunicable glory, may order an inferior being to receive inferior worship, which redounds ultimately to his Psa. cvi. 19, 20.