Artemon. We never read of his blaming them in the least in this respect. What he condemned them for, was their disobedience to the laws of God, and not receiving himself as his messenger, their great promised prophet, the Messiah, the Christ; but wilfully shutting their eyes against the powerful, convincing evidence which he gave them of his divine mission.

Eusebes. Do we find our Saviour at any time making mention of himself having the same God with the rest of the Jewish nation?

Artemon. There is a striking instance of this in his conversation with the woman of Samaria. Upon her asking him which was the right worship, the Samaritan or the Jewish, he replies, John iv. 22, “Ye (Samaritans) worship what ye do not know: We (Jews) worship what we do know for salvation is of the Jews." In which declaration it is plain that he owns himself to be one of the Jewish people, and a worshiper of the most high God, the Father, in common with them.

Eusebes. Can you assign any acknowledgment of this kind made by Christ, that is more explicit and particular?

Artemon. Yes: there is something exceedingly remarkable in the message which he sent to his drooping apostles, by Mary Magdalene, soon after he was raised from the dead. For he therein bids her acquaint them, for their encourage

ment, that he had the same God and Father with themselves, to whom he was soon to depart, and who would continue his blessing and protection both to them and to himself: "Jesus saith unto her, go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God." John xx. 17.

Eusebes. What do you collect from this message of Christ to his apostles, which seems so very extraordinary?

Artemon. These three important consequences result from it:

1. That the God of the Jews is, by the confession of Jesus, the God of the Christians: for this was their common God, and Father, acknowledged by himself and his apostles:

2. That Jesus cannot be the most high God, nor in any sense to be acknowleged as such, since he confesses himself to have the same God and Father with the rest of mankind:

3. That it is utterly contradictory, and impossible, that Jesus should be the most high God, that he should be any thing but a creature, however great his powers and excellencies, who owns his apostles to be his brethren, i. e. his fellow

* It is worthy of note, that our Saviour, when referring to his highest state of dignity and exaltation, does not disdain to call his virtuous and faithful followers among mankind, his kindred and relations: a circumstance this, which one would hope might in time draw men off from worshiping

mortals. brethren

The most high, the eternal God, has no can have none.

Eusebes. You say that our Saviour Christ, never in his own time blamed the people of the Jews for falling into the idolatry of other nations, or worshiping any other but the one only true God. Did his apostles ever find fault with their countrymen on this account?

Artemon. By no means, far from it: they continually bear testimony, that their countrymen were irreproachably right and exact in this important point; and moreover, that the God of the Jews was the God of the Christians also. To their rulers, who had forbidden them to teach in the name of Jesus," Peter, and the other apostles, answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our Fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree: him

him as the supreme God, whom they are at the same time to consider as their brother. It is in that beautiful representation of the day of judgment, where speaking of himself before hand, as who was to preside at that awful tribunal, he says, "And the king shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done unto me." Matt. xxv. 46. See also Heb. ii. 12, 16, 17, where ver. 16 is wrongly transated, viz. "He took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham:" whereas it ought to be, he layeth not hold of, i. e. he saveth not angels, but he saveth the seed of Abraham. St. Paul also calls Christ, "the first-born," or chief “ among many brethren." Rom. viii. 29.

hath God exalted with his right hand, to be a prince and a Saviour." Acts v. 29-31. See also iii. 13, &c. iv. 24, 27, with many other passages in the book, and in St. Paul's epistles.

Eusebes. Have the Jews, since our Saviour's time, apostatized into idolatry, or fallen away from the worship of Jehovah, the only true God, the Father and Creator of all things, whom Jesus and his apostles acknowledged and worshiped in common with them?

Artemon. I cannot answer your question better than in the words of a very respectable author of our own country, which made such an impression upon me in reading, that I believe I can recollect them very exactly. It is no less a man than the Lord Chancellor King, who gave this testimony to the Jews in this behalf, at the beginning of the present century: "The body of that people have been so immoveably fixed and confirmed," says he, “in the belief of the Unity of God, which is every where inculcated in the Mosaical law, that now throughout their sixteen hundred years' captivity and dispersion, they have never quitted or deserted that principle, that God is one: as is evident from their thirteen articles of faith, composed by Maimonides, the second whereof is, the Unity of the blessed God:—which is there explained to be in such a peculiar and transcendent manner, as that nothing like it can be found. And in their liturgy, according to the use of the

Sepharadim, or the Spaniards, which is read in these parts of the world in their synagogues, in the very first hymn, which is an admiring declaration of the excellencies of the Divine Nature, the repeated chorus is this: All creatures, both above and below, testify and witness, all of them as one, that the LORD is one, and his name one."*

Eusebes. Since you have proved the people of the Jews to have been entirely free from error in the object of their religious worship, in the days of our Saviour and of his apostles, and so to have continued from those times to our own; I desire to know if Jews and Christians are now agreed concerning the object of religious worship?

Artemon. I am sorry to be obliged to answer, that they are not agreed: for, besides Jehovah, the only true God, the Father, whom the Jewish people then worshiped, and still worship, and whom Jesus and his apostles acknowledged, and taught, and worshiped, the greater part of Christians, in all countries, have adopted two other persons, whom they call God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; both of whom they severally invoke in prayer, and worship: which is a great offence and stumbling-block to the Jews, and makes them, look upon Christians as little better than idolaters: a matter this, which most as

56.

King's Critical History of the Apostles' Creed, pp. 55,