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only. Trust to his mercy; seek no other mediator or intercessor than his own only and blessed Son. "He

who testifieth these things saith, Surely, I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen1."

Thus the New Testament, so far from mitigating the stringency of the former law, so far from countenancing any departure from the obligation of that code which limits religious worship to God alone, so far from suggesting to us invocation to sainted men, and to angels as intercessors with the eternal Giver of all good, reiterates the injunction, and declares, that in order to be Christian invocation it must be addressed to God alone; and that there is one and only one Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of his Father, a merciful High Priest sympathizing with us in our infirmities, ever making intercession for us, able to save to the uttermost those who come unto God through him.

The present seems to be a convenient place for observing, that however the distinction is strongly insisted upon, or rather implicitly acquiesced in by many, which would admit of a worship or service called dulia (the Greek Sovλsía) to saints and angels, and would limit the worship or service called latria (Aarpeía) to the supreme God only, yet that such distinction has no ground whatever to rest upon beyond the will and the imagination of those who draw it. The two words are used in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, and in the original Greek of the New promiscuously, without any such distinction what

1 Rev. xxii. 18, 19.

ever. The word which this distinction would limit to the supreme worship of the Most High, is used to express the bodily service paid by the vanquished to their conquerors, as well as the religious service paid by idolaters to their fabled deities, and by the true worshippers to the Most High. The word which this distinction would reserve for the secondary worship paid to saints and angels, is employed to express not only the service paid by man to man, but also the service and worship paid to God alone, even when mentioned in contradistinction to other worship. It will be necessary to establish this by one or two instances; and first as to "latria." One single chapter in the Book of Deuteronomy supplies us with instances of the word used in the three senses, of service to men, service to idols, and service to God, xxviii. 36. 47, 48: “Because thou servedst1 not the Lord thy God with joyfulness and gladness of heart; Therefore thou shalt serve 2 thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee in hunger and in thirst and nakedness." “The Lord shall bring thee unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known; and there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone." Next as to the word, "dulia." The first book of Samuel (called the First of Kings) alone supplies us with instances of this word being used in each of the same three senses of service from man to man, from man to idols, and from man to his Maker and God. 1 Sam. xvii. 9. "Ye shall be our servants, and serve us." xii. 24. "Only fear the Lord, and serve him in truth with all your heart." xxvi. 19.

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"They have driven me out from the inheritance of the Lord, saying, Go, serve1 other gods."

It is worthy of remark, that the same word" dulia 2 " is employed, when the Lord by his prophet speaks of the most solemn acts of religious worship; not in general obedience only, but in the offerings and oblations of their holy things. Ezek. xx. 40. "In mine holy mountain, in the mountain of the height of Israel, saith the Lord God, there shall all the house of Israel, all of them in the land, serve 3 me; there will I accept them, and there will I require your offerings, and the firstfruits of your oblations, with all your holy things." St. Matthew also uses the same word when he records the saying of our blessed Lord, "Ye cannot serve God, and mammon.”

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I will only detain you by one more example, drawn from two passages, which seems the more striking because each of the two words "dulia," and "latria" is used to imply the true worship of God in a person, who was changed from a state of alienation to a state of holiness. The first is in St. Paul's 1st Epistle to the Thessalonians, i. 9. "How ye turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God." The second is in Heb. ix. 14. "How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself

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1 douλeve. In this case also the Vulgate translates all the three passages alike by the same verb, "servire."

2 It is also remarkable that in all these cases, whether the Septuagint employs the word "dulia," or "latria," the word in the Hebrew is precisely the same, Tay.

3 dovλεúσovoi. Vulg. "serviet." "servire."

5 δουλεύειν Θεῷ ζῶντι.

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Matt. vi. 24. dovλever. Vulg.

without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God."

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The word "hyperdulia," now used to signify the worship proper to the Virgin Mary, as being a worship of a more exalted character than the worship offered to saints and angels, archangels, and cherubim and seraphim, will not require a similar examination. The word was in later times invented on purpose to signify the worship of the Virgin, and is of course found neither in the Scriptures, nor in any ancient classical or ecclesiastical author.

1 λατρεύειν Θεῷ ζῶντι. In each of these two cases the Vulgate uses "servire."

PART I.-CHAPTER III.

SECTION I.

THE EVIDENCE OF PRIMITIVE WRITERS.

BEFORE we enter upon the next branch of our proposed inquiry, allow me to premise that I am induced to examine into the evidence of Christian antiquity not by any misgiving, lest the testimony of Scripture might appear defective or doubtful; far less by any unworthy notion that God's word needs the additional support of the suffrages of man'. On the contrary, the voice of God in his revealed word is clear, certain, and indisputable, commanding the invocation of Himself alone in acts of religious worship, and condemning any such departure from that singleness of adoration, as they are

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Whilst some authors seem to go far towards the substitution of the fathers for the written word of God, others in their abhorrence of that excess have run into the opposite, fancying, as it would seem, that they exalt the Divine oracles just in the same proportion as they disparage the uninspired writers of the Church. The great body of the Church of England adhere to a middle course, and adopt that golden mean, which ascribes to the written Word its paramount authority, from which is no appeal, and yet honours Catholic tradition as the handmaid of the truth.

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