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.
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