-thus equally forbidding every faithful Christian to worship their
fellow-servants the angels. They are almost the last words in the volume
of inspired truth, and to me, together with those last words, they seem
with "the voice of a great multitude, and of many waters, and of mighty
thunderings," from the very throne itself of the Most High, to proclaim
to every inhabiter of the earth, Fall down before no created being;
adore no created being; pray to, invoke, call upon no created being,
whether saint or angel: worship {57} and adore God only; pray to God
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. Amen." [Rev. xxii. 20, 21.]
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 invocation in order to be Christian 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 [Greek: douleia]) to saints and angels, and would limit
the worship or service called latria ([Greek: latreia]) 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 {58} New promiscuously, without any such
distinction whatever. 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
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