and, 'is no
eternity; angels might equally be termed eternal.'

One point on which Waterland insists constantly and strongly is that the
scheme of those who would pay divine honours to Christ, and yet deny
that He is very God, cannot escape from the charge of polytheism. 'You
are tritheists,' he urges, 'in the same sense as Pagans are called
polytheists. One supreme and two inferior Gods is your avowed doctrine;
that is, three Gods. If those texts which exclude all but one God,
exclude only supreme deities, and do not exclude any that are not
supreme, by such an interpretation you have voided and frustrated every
law of the Old Testament against idolatry.' Dr. Clarke and his friends
distinguished between that supreme sovereign worship which was due to
the Father only, and the mediate, relative, inferior worship which was
due to others. 'What authority,' asks Waterland, 'is there in Scripture
for this distinction? What rules are there to regulate the intention of
the worshipper, so as to make worship high, higher, or highest as
occasion requires? All religious worship is determined by Scripture and
antiquity to be what you call absolute and sovereign.' 'Scripture and
antiquity generally say nothing of a supreme God, because they
acknowledge no inferior God. Such language was borrowed from the Pagans,
and then used by Christian writers. So, too, was the notion of
"mediatorial worship" borrowed from the Pagans, handed on by Arians, and
brought down to our own times by Papists.'

But Dr. Clarke and his friends maintained that they were not Arians, for
they did not make Christ a creature. 'Impossible,' replies Dr.
Waterland; 'you assert, though not directly, yet consequentially, that
the Maker and Redeemer of the whole world is no more than a creature,
that He is mutable and corruptible; that He depends entirely upon the
favour and good pleasure of God; that He has a precarious existence and
dependent powers, and is neither so perfect in His nature nor exalted in
privileges but that it is in the Father's power to create another equal
or superior. There is no middle between being essentially God and being
a creature.' Dr. Clarke cannot find a medium between orthodoxy and
Arianism. He has declared against the consubstantiality and proper
divinity of Christ as well as His co-eternity. He cannot be neutral. In
condemning Arians he has condemned himself. Nay, he has gone further
than the Arians. 'Sober Arians will rise up in jud