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little lower than the angels / but it refers to his official character as Messiah , which has been wrougly confounded with his person and nature , and thus caused
so many disputes among Christians ;) he says , that God has anointed him above his fellows y referring , I think , either to the angels or the prophets mentioned in this chapter ; otherwise , I should be thankful to know what it means . Does
all this phraseology lead us to suppose that Jesus can be the only true and adorable God ? Far from it . By the angels being commanded to worship him , therefore , is only meant , that as the message of Jesus to mankind was superior in value and importance to any thing that
Jehovah had ever before transacted by means of augels or any other instruments for the welfare of mankind , so their inferiority to hiia is represented by appropriate and expressive acts of reverence - To say , that worship must here mean supreme homage , is to assume the
decision of the question by our own authority , to say what the context cannot warrant , and what the word in other places does not require . A single objection only remains on this point , and is noticed by the article under consideration . Jehovah is represented as saymg
to Jesus , « Thy throne , O God , is for ever and ever . ' Here , too , Unitarians have laboured under an odium for understanding the word God in an inferior sense to the supreme Jehovah . I maintain , in the first place , that in order to make the verse consistent with the
miroerous expressions above cited , we are compelled to understand it in such an inferior sense . In the second place , this view of the passage is confirmed by the very next verse , where it is said , 'Therefore , God , even thy God , hath anointed
thee , ' &c . ; thus evidently making Jesus inferior lo some other being . In the third place , our Savieur tells us that , according to Hebrew phraseology , those were called gods lo whom the word of God name - See John x . 85 . Thus he furnishes Unitarians vvitli an irresistible
argument out of his own mouth . But , Sn the fourth place , in order to see a reason , if possible , still more unanswerable , look back to the xlvth Psalm , from which this very verse , Thy throne > O God % &c , is extracted . You will find the verse , not an address to Jehovah ,
but an address to the king of Israel . The Psalm begins thus : * My heart is inditing a good matter : I speak of the thiugs which I have made touching the king : And then the Psalmist proceeds throughout , in exact accordance with this design . Iu conformity with oriental hy-
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perbole , he addresses the king by Uie title of 0 God ; * because the authority power , and prerogatives of eastern kings ' rendered them , as it were , gods upoj earth . Here is no straining of passages —no forced interpretations . All is as plain as a child ' s first lesson to any one who will look at the Psalm . The Jews of aftertimes regarded the whole compo - sition as not only originally applicable to King Solomon , ( see Rosen mullei ' s Commentary on this Psalin , ) but as prophetic also of their Messiah . In just this light it was , that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews most forcibly applied it . Unitarians acknowledge the
felicity and the correctness of the application . They receive Jesus as the true Messiah ; they are willing , along with St . Paul , to pay him more regard , worship or reverence than to all the prophets , messengers or angels of God ; they cannot conceive where the clanger ot the error of their principles lies while
they thus exalt the official character of Jesus as highly as their opponents do , and especially , they cannot comprehend how , in cherishing these sentiments , aud favouring these views , and worshiping the Father alone , t as the supreme and all-originating Spirit , they ' shut
themselves out of heaven / Is there not quite as much danger of such a fate to be apprehended for those who , without any just or well-considered cause , take up a hasty prejudice against what they incompletely understand , and consign some of the fairest characters in the community ,
and some of the best men who have ever lived , on account of a difference in the explication of ancient Jewish words and phrases , uot only to an exclusion from the precincts of Christianity , but to the regions of eternal woe ?" The Wesleyan , by a strange inadvertence , states that Reason ,- at which he sneers , would lead to the
conclusion from some passages of Scripture , that " God the Holy Ghost" is the greatest person in the Trinity ; upon which the Rcmarker says he is
sur-? " The passage might very properly he translated , ' God is thy throne , * instead of * Thy throne , O God / &c . This would at once close the argument as to this verse . But I wish not to take
advantage of it . Unitariariisni is uw " affected by either interpretation . *' t " * The hour cometh , and now us when the true worshipers shall worsh ip —whom ? The Trinity ? No ! But ' t ^ e Father , in spirit and in truth / J ° lv . 23 •'
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460 Unitarian Controversy , Charleston , S . C >—U , S .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1826, page 460, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2551/page/16/
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