SECT. IV.

THE ONE SUPREME PERSON OR BEING, THE FATHER, THE ONLY OBJECT OF PRIMARY AND UNCEASING ADORATION.

O God! we praise thee, and confess

That thou the only Lord

And everlasting Father art,

By all the earth adored.

BISHOP PATRICK.

1. THE WORSHIP OF A TRINITY UNSCRIPTURAL AND IMPROPER. God to be ADDRESSED AS ONE.

I dislike this vulgar prayer, "Holy Trinity, one God! have mercy on us," as altogether savoring of barbarism. We repudiate such expressions, as being not only insipid, but profane. - Abridged from JOHN CALVIN: Tractatus Theologici, p. 796.

In reference to this remark, Dr. SOUTH (in Judgment of a Disinterested Person, p. 29) says: "As to that prayer [in the Liturgy of the Church of England], 'O God the Father! have mercy on us; O God the Son! have mercy on us; O God the Holy Ghost! have mercy on us,' — it hath been disliked by divers learned men, particularly by Mr. CALVIN. But 'tis certain, 'tis not the church's intention to own hereby three spirits, or three objects of worship; the object of worship being incontestably, and I think confessedly, but one. The church, by this form of prayer, means only to invocate God by the three distinctions which she owneth to be in him. 'Father,' when said of God, is original intellect; 'Son' is reflex wisdom; and 'Holy Spirit' is divine love."

We quote the whole passage, in the Litany, that the reader may compare it with any of the prayers recorded in the Bible as having been presented to God by Jesus Christ and the apostles, especially with that most simple and sublime of all liturgical forms, the Lord's Prayer. the Lord's Prayer. "O God the Father of heaven! have mercy upon us miserable sinners. O God the Son, Redeemer of the world! have mercy upon us miserable sinners. O God the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son! have mercy upon us miserable sinners. O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God! have mercy upon us miserable sinners."

Whatever may have been "the church's intention," we think it "incontestable" that no terms could more clearly express belief in the existence of three separate objects of worship, or three Gods, than the prayer to which the Genevan Reformer objects. And SOUTH himself seems to have felt that his Sabellian "distinctions" could not be appreciated by the great mass of the worshippers in the English church; for he immediately adds, "Notwithstanding, because of the common people, who by occasion of that

form may entertain Tritheistic notions, Mr. CALVIN advised well, that this and such like offensive forms be taken away. When I say 'offensive,' I mean they are forms at which the ignorant may dangerously stumble, may easily make shipwreck of the faith."

We Christians are taught by the Christian religion to acknowledge and worship the only true God: "and we are in Him that is true, in or by his Son Jesus Christ;" that is, we worship the only true God, by his Son Jesus Christ. . . . . . . The religion of the apostles and primitive Christians. . . expressly teacheth us, that there is but one object of our prayers, and one Mediator by whom we are to make our addresses to God. "There is one God; and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus," says St. Paul, when he gives a standing rule concerning prayer in the Christian church. -ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON: Sermons 71, 191; in Works, vol. v. p. 189, and vol. x. p. 144.

Whatever distinction we are taught to make of the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, we are most carefully warned [by the compilers of our Liturgy] against the division of the Godhead; and all our devotions are addressed to one and the same God, through the mediation of Christ Jesus, agreeably to the whole tenor of Scripture, and particularly to the doctrine laid down in the plainest terms in my text [1 Tim. ii. 5], that "there is but one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.". · DR. BENJAMIN DAWSON: Illustration of Texts of Scripture, pp. 206–7.

No one will assert that God is ever directly addressed in the Bible as a Trinity of co-eternal or self-existent hypostases, or even of unequal but essentially divine agents; but rather invariably as one single Person or Being, the Creator of heaven and earth, the God of the Jews, the Father of Jesus Christ, the Parent of all intelligent beings. Yet, unhappily, the practice of Christian churches has, in general, differed from that of prophets and apostles; and Dr. Dawson's statement would have been nearer the truth of the case, had he said that all the devotions of the English church should, "agreeably to the whole tenor of Scripture," be addressed to one and the same God.

The general practice of Scripture seems to indicate, that, in ordinary worship, we should address the Deity in his unity, manifested to us as, in Christ Jesus, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing to men their trespasses. I confess that I have ever disliked the use of the word "Trinity" in prayer to God, as not being a name whereby God reveals himself to us, and as savoring of scholastic theology. — JAMES CARLILE: Jesus Christ the Great God our Saviour, p. 232.

§ 2. THE FATHER ENTITLED TO SUPREME WORSHIP.

Then do we honor the Trinity in Unity, not when we conceive of the mystery, but when we make a religious use of this high advantage to come to God in the name of Christ by the Spirit, and look for all from God in Christ through the Holy Ghost. Direct your prayers to God the Father. Christ prayed to the Father: "I thank thee, O Father! Lord of heaven and earth." So the saints in their addresses: "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Pray in the name of Christ: "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do." Pray by the Spirit: "Praying in the Holy Ghost;""Likewise the Spirit itself also helpeth our infirmities, because he maketh intercession for the saints, according to the will of God." Christians need not puzzle themselves about conceiving of Three in One, and One in Three: let them in this manner come to God, and it sufficeth; make God the object, and Christ the means of access, and look for help from the Spirit. - DR. THOMAS MANTON; apud Christian Reformer for June, 1839.

When we speak of or contemplate the divine nature absolutely, and without reference to particular dispensations, God the Father is generally the first in our conceptions, as far as he can be the object of conception, but not to the exclusion of the divine nature either of the Son or Holy Ghost. In these dispensations, in the heavenly economy, we have a manifest and obvious reason for addressing our prayers and petitions, public and private, for the most part, to the first person of the Holy Trinity. WILLIAM HAWKINS: Discourses on Scripture

Mysteries, pp. 29, 30.

It appears from what has been said, that we ought to regard and acknowledge the Father as the Head of the Sacred Trinity, and the primary object of religious homage. . . . We often read of Christ's praying unto the Father, but never read of the Father's praying unto Christ. He taught his disciples to pray in the same form in which he prayed, and to say, "Our Father which art in heaven;" and to ask the Father, in his name, for every thing they wanted. And how often did the apostles offer up their devout and fervent prayers for others to "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"! This common mode of expression, in their addresses to the throne of grace, plainly implies that they meant to acknowledge the Father as the primary or supreme object of adoration. Though the heavenly hosts pay divine homage to the Son of God, yet they more immediately and

directly address the Father in their most solemn and grateful devotions. They say, "Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever." These examples of Christ, of the apostles, and of the heavenly hosts, not only warrant but require Christians to address their prayers and praises to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the primary object of divine homage and adoration. DR. NATHANAEL EMMONS:

Works, vol. iv. pp. 137–8.

In the same pages from which this extract is taken, Dr. EMMONS inconsistently speaks of "all the three persons in the Godhead as “equal in every divine perfection;" and approves the conduct of "the great body of the most pure and pious Christians" who have "denied Christian communion and fellowship to those who have openly embraced the Unitarian error;" that is, as we understand it, to those who, like himself, regard the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as "the primary or supreme object of adoration."

The revealed order in the economy of redemption and grace, and the authority of Scripture, lead to the persuasion, that the most usual mode of our devotional addresses should be to the Father, with explicit reference to the mediation of the Son and the influence of the Holy Spirit. DR. J. PYE SMITH: Scripture Testimony to the Messiah, vol. ii. p. 455.

In the Scriptures . . . we are directed and encouraged to address ourselves to him [God] as our heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, the Son of his love; and in his name to offer up our prayers and praises, our confessions and thanksgivings, with the profoundest humility, becoming creatures deeply sensible of their own unworthiness. THOMAS HARTWELL HORNE: Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, vol. i. p. 149.

§ 3. THE SON RARELY, THE HOLY GHOST (AS A PERSON DIFFERENT FROM THE FATHER) NEVER, IN THE BIBLE, ADDRESSED IN PRAYER.

All prayer is regularly directed to the Father, and concluded in the name of the Son.... But all prayer is addressed to the Father or to the Son, and never to the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is a gift; and a gift is not to be asked from the gift, but rather bestowed by the liberal giver. · WILLIAM DURAND; apud Sandium, p. 213.

Nearly in the same words, HUGH DE ST. CHER, who says that "prayer should be offered up rarely to the Son."

That the Holy Ghost is God is nowhere said in Scripture; that the Holy Ghost is to be invocated is nowhere commanded, nor any example of its being done recorded. JEREMY TAYLOR: Works, vol. xiii. pp. 143-4.

When you make your prayers, you use to pray to the Father, and likewise in the name of Christ; but you do not at all or seldom read, in all the Scriptures, of prayers made to the Holy Ghost? And why? Because it is his office to make the prayers themselves, which you thus put up to the other two persons; and therein lieth his honor. DR. THOMAS GOODWIN: Exposition of the Epistle to the Ephesians, part i. p. 16.

It is true we have no precept or example for paying distinct and direct homage to the Holy Ghost; but, &c. DR. NATHANAEL EMMONS: Works, vol. iv. p. 138.

The words [in 1 Thess. iii. 11] are certainly decisive for the opinion, that prayers to the Son are not inadmissible, even if they refer to external relations; but the very circumstance that such occur no more in the New Testament, and then the whole analogy of faith, are, surely, decidedly opposed to making prayers to the Saviour frequently, much more predominantly and almost exclusively, in all external circumstances, as is done in the community of Moravian brothers. The entire ancient church knows of no prayers to Christ which have reference to externals. If, therefore, beginners in the life of faith often confess themselves to be uncertain whether they shall address their prayers to the Father or to the Son, or even to the Holy Ghost perhaps, it is to be assumed as a general rule, according to the rightly understood relation of the Trinity, that external relations must be brought before the Father in prayer, but the religious moral relations before the Son and the Holy Ghost, or, in fine, that one should pray for every thing of the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Ghost. HERMANN OLSHAUSEN on 1 Thess. iii. 11.

The distinction, here spoken of, between relations which are external and those of a religious and moral kind, as a ground for addressing different persons in the Godhead, was entirely unknown to Jesus Christ and the apostles. The great Master taught his disciples, in all that related to prayer, or divine worship, to address no other person or being than Him who was the sole object of his own praises and petitions; and, except in a few cases of a peculiar character, the apostles faithfully obeyed his strict and unqualified behest.

A list of the texts showing the propriety of our restricting supreme adoration to the greatest of all beings, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus