truth; and he sees not that men are going for ever to dishonour him, in placing upon an equality, with him, even to the end of ages, that Jesus who ought to have been considered only as his servant , and prophet: he prophesies that idols shall be overthrown; and he sees not that he himself shall occupy their place: he prophesies that he will form to himself a holy people of every tongue and of every tribe; and he sees not that he comes only to form a new people of idolaters of every nation, who shall place him in the temple as the living God; whose actions, worship, and homages shall all be directed to him; who shall do all for his glory; who shall depend solely upon him, live only for and through him, and have neither force nor energy but what they receive from him: in a word, who shall worship him, who shall love him a thousand times more spiritually, more intimately, and more universally, than ever the pagans had worshipped their idols. This, then, is not even a prophet; and his relations according to the flesh, are guilty of no blasphemy when they say " he is beside himself," and that he bestows, on the dreams of a heated imagination, all the weight and reality of revelations and mysteries.
Behold to what unbelief conducts. Overturn the foundation, which is the Lord Jesus, eternal Son of the living God, and the whole edifice tumbles in pieces: take away the grand mystery of piety, and all the religion is but a dream: deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, and you cut off, from the doctrine of Christians, all the merit of faith, all the consolation of hope, all the motives of charity. Thus, with what zeal did not the first disciples of the Gospel oppose those impious men who, from that time, ventured to attack the glory of their Master's divinity? They well knew that it was striking at the heart of their religion; that it was ravishing from them the only alleviation of their persecutions and sufferings, all confidence in the promises to come, and all the dignity and grandeur of their pretensions; and that, that principle once overthrown, the whole religion dissipated in smoke, and was no longer but a human doctrine and the sect of a mortal man, who, like all the other chiefs, had left nothing but his name to his disciples.
Thus the pagans themselves then reproached the Christians with rendering divine honours to their Christ. Pliny, a Roman proconsul, celebrated for his works, giving an account to the emperor Trajan of their morals and doctrine; after being forced to confess that the Christians were pious, innocent, and upright men, and that they assembled before the rising of the sun, not to concert the commission of crimes, or to disturb the peace of the empire, but to live in piety and righteousness, to detest frauds, adulteries, and even the coveting of the wealth of others; he only reproaches them with chaunting hymns in honour of their Christ, and of rendering to him the same homages as to a god. Now, if these first believers had not rendered divine honours to Jesus Christ, they would have justified themselves against that calumny: they would have rejected that scandal from their religion, almost the only one which shocked the zeal of the Jews and the wisdom of the Gentiles; they would
