O most unhappy mistranslation of 'Hypostasis' by Person! The Word is
properly the only Person.
Ib. p. 3.
Now, upon your hypothesis, we must add; that even the Son of God
himself, however divine he may be thought, is really no God at all in
any just and proper sense. He is no more than a nominal God, and
stands excluded with the rest. All worship of him, and reliance upon
him, will be idolatry, as much as the worship of angels, or men, or of
the gods of the heathen would be. God the Father he is God, and he
only, and 'him only shall thou serve'. This I take to be a clear
consequence from your principles, and unavoidable.
Waterland's argument is absolutely unanswerable by a worshipper of
Christ. The modern 'ultra'-Socinian cuts the knot.
Query II. p. 43.
And therefore he might as justly bear the style and title of 'Lord
God, God of Abraham', &c. while he acted in that capacity, as he did
that of 'Mediator, Messiah, Son of the Father', &c. after that he
condescended to act in another, and to discover his personal relation.
And why, then, did not Dr. Waterland,--why did not his great
predecessor in this glorious controversy, Bishop Bull,--contend for a
revisal of our established version of the Bible, but especially of the
New Testament? Either the unanimous belief and testimony of the first
five or six centuries, grounded on the reiterated declarations of John
and Paul, and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, were erroneous,
or at best doubtful;--and then why not wipe them off; why these
references to them?--or else they were, as I believe, and both Bull and
Waterland believed, the very truth; and then why continue the
translation of the Hebrew into English at second-hand through the
'medium' of the Septuagint? Have we not adopted the Hebrew word,
Jehovah,? Is not the [Greek: Kyrios], or Lord, of the LXX.
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