or three gods are one God. These contradictions never disgraced our creeds. We only maintain, that the one Divine essence manifests itself to us in three Divine subsistences most intimately joined and absolutely inseparable. With the Scripture, we assert, that, as these subsistences bore each a particular part in our creation, so they are particularly engaged in the securing of our eternal happiness; the Father chiefly planning, the Son chiefly executing, and the Holy Ghost chiefly perfecting, the great work of our new creation.

All the difficulty, with regard to this mystery, consists, then, in believ ing a plain matter of fact; namely, that we are commanded to "be baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," or, to take for our one God, the one Supreme Being, manifesting himself to us as our Friend and Father, in and through the Son, and by the Spirit; Jehovah, who is perfectly acquainted with his own nature, our wants, and our dispositions, having seen, that, to win our love, and to inflame our zeal for his service, it was proper to inform us, that, in his adorable essence, there is a trinity of subsistences; each of whom is specially concerned in the stupendous work of our salvation, and each of whom now bears the most endearing relation to mankind in general, and to the Church in particular.

These Divine subsistences, (for so we beg leave to call them, according to the most literal meaning of the word vosads, used by St. Paul, Heb. i, 3,) were soon called persons by the Latin fathers, as appears from Tertullian, a writer of the second century, who, in his book against Praxeas, frequently mentions the person of the Son, and the Divine Persons, (Personam Filii, divinas Personas, &c.)

The primitive Christians, finding it inconvenient to repeat always at full length the names of the three Divine subsistences, as our Lord enumerates them in his charge of baptizing all nations, began about the same time, both for brevity and variety's sake, to call them the TRINITY; and if, by renouncing that comprehensive word, we could remove the prejudices of Deists against the truth contended for, we would give it up, and always say, "The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost," which is what we mean by the trinity:

In the meantime, if to worship the Son and the Spirit, as comprehended in the unity of the Father's Godhead, be to deserve the name of Trinitarian, we glory in the appellation, provided it do not exclude that of Unitarian; for we do not less worship the unity in mysterious trinity, than the trinity in the most perfect and unfathomable unity.

Hence it appears, that, if the word Unitarian mean a maintainer of the Divine unity against idolaters of every description, there are two sorts of Unitarians, who differ as widely, as the catholic faith differs from Socinianism.

1. The Christian, or Catholic Unitarians, who maintain the Divine unity against all sorts of Polytheists, the Arians themselves not excepted; but who, at the same time, assert, that this unity necessarily includes the Father, the Word, and the Spirit; it being far more unevangelical to suppose, that the Father is the one Supreme Being in the universe, exclusively of his Word and Spirit, than it is unconstitutional to say, that the king is the one supreme legislative power in England, exclusive of the lords and commons.

2. The Jewish, or Socinian Unitarians, who not only confine the Father to a barren, lonesome unity, but, so far as their influence reaches, tear from him his beloved Son, and even despoil him of his paternity. Nor is it surprising, that when we consider them in this light, far from giving them the name of Unitarians, we are tempted to call them disuniters, dividers of God, and manglers of the Divine nature.

Judge, candid reader, between these Unitarians, so called, and us. Like the false mother, who, to deceive Solomon, gave up to the dividing sword, the child she claimed as her own; do not these dividers betray their want of love to the true Scriptural unity? And when they try to disunite God the Father from his beloved Son, with the sword they borrow from Caiaphas and Mohammed, do they not, before the judicious, attack the Divine unity defended by St. John? And is not their attempt far more absurd and unnatural than that of making a rent between the sun and its glorious effulgence?

Man is not only prone to leave the narrow way of truth, but to run from one extreme to the other. When the Divine unity was chiefly revealed, mankind madly ran into idolatry. The Creator was forgotten; almost every creature was deemed a god. But since the Creator has revealed, that, in the unity of the Divine essence, there are three Divine subsistences, human perverseness starts back from that glorious discovery, and the philosophers of this world, under pretence of standing up for the Divine unity, and for the dignity of the Father, refuse Divine honours to the second and to the third subsistence, without which the Deity cannot exist, and the Father can be no Father.

Hence it appears that idolatry and impiety are the two precipices between which the Christian's road lies all the way to heaven. Dr. Priestley supposes that we are fallen into the former; and we fear that he and his admirers rush into the latter. Let us see who are mistaken. It is one of the most important questions that was ever debated. Either we are idolaters in worshipping that which by nature is not God, or the Socinians are impious in refusing Divine worship to that which is really God; and what is more dreadful still, they worship a mangled notion of Deity, and not the God revealed to us in the sacred Scriptures.

Not to worship the Word and the Spirit, when they were not explicitly and directly revealed, was more excusable; but what can be said for the baptized people who set at naught the Deity of two of the Divine hypostases so clearly revealed to them? If the Word and the Spirit partake of Godhead jointly with the Father, can those who deny them Divine honours trust in them for salvation? Do they not take large strides to meet the danger which our Lord describes in these words, "Whosoever shall deny ME before men, him will I also deny before my Father?" And does not a punishment, peculiarly aggravated, await those who perversely and finally "sin against the Holy Ghost;" as, we fear, all baptized people do when they deny his influences upon the soul, as well as his vitality and rationality? For it is evident, that if the Word and the Spirit have an essential place in the Divine nature, by which we were created, to treat them as mere creatures is far worse than not to render unto Cesar the things which are Cesar's; for it is refusing unto God that which is God's it is slighting the proper Son of God on account of that very humiliation by which he came to overVOL. III.

26

come our pride; and it is resisting and grieving that Holy Spirit which t is to comfort us on earth, and to glorify us in heaven.

Having thus taken a general view of the catholic faith, let us now consider the arguments which the wise men of this world bring to make us ashamed of calling upon our Redeemer and our Sanctifier.

CHAPTER II.

A view of the sources whence the philosophers of the age draw their popular arguments against the catholic faith.

THE royal academy of Paris having offered a prize to the man who should write the best copy of verses upon the Divine nature, many wrote largely on the awful subject; but Professor Crousaz sent only two lines, of which this is the sense; "Cease to expect from man a proper description of the Supreme Being: none can speak properly of him but himself." And the judicious academicians agreed to crown this short performance, because it gave the most exalted idea of him whose dazzling glory calls for our silent adoration, and forbids the curious disquisitions of our philosophical pride.

"Canst thou, by searching, find out God?" says he in Job: "this knowledge is as high as heaven, what canst thou do? It is broader than the sea, it is deeper than hell: what canst thou know?" Job xi, 7. "As the heavens are higher than the earth," saith the Lord, "so are my thoughts [much more my nature] above your thoughts," Isaiah lv, 9. It is therefore one of the loudest dictates of reason, that, as we cannot grasp the universe with our hands, so we cannot comprehend the Maker of the universe with our thoughts.

Nevertheless, a set of men who make much ado about reason, after they have candidly acknowledged their ignorance with regard to the Divine nature, are so inconsistent as to limit God, and to insinuate that he can exist only according to their shallow, dark, and short-sighted ideas. Hence it is, that, if he speak of his essence otherwise than they have conceived it to be, they either reject his revelation, or so wrest and distort it as to force it to speak their pre-conceived notions, in direct opposition to the plain meaning of the words, to the general tenor of the Scriptures, to the consent of the catholic Church in all ages, and to the very form of their own baptism.

Is not the learned Dr. Priestley a striking instance of this unphilo. sophical conduct? Great philosopher in natural things, does he not forget himself in things Divine? Candid reader, to your unprejudiced reason we make our appeal. With a wisdom worthy of a Christian sage, he speaks thus in his Disquisitions on matter and spirit: "Of the substance of the Deity we have no idea at all; and, therefore, all that we can conceive or pronounce, concerning it, must be merely hypothetical.” (pp. 109, 110.) But has he behaved consistently with this reasonable acknowledgment? And may we not, upon his just concessions, raise the following query?

When a doctor has granted that we have no idea at all of the Divine substance, &c, is he not both inconsistent and unreasonable, if, so far

uch from pronouncing hypothetically concerning it, he absolutely declares that the Divine substance, of which he has no idea at all, is incompatible with now the three Divine subsistences which the Scriptures call the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost?

But Dr. Priestley, after having granted the former proposition in his Disquisitions, absolutely pronounces the latter in his Corruptions, &c. Is not, therefore, Dr. Priestley both inconsistent and unreasonable?

We truly honour him for his parts, and sincerely love him for his many social virtues; but if he continually attack our Saviour's Divine glory, (which is dearer to us than life itself,) he is too candid to refuse us the liberty of trying to defeat his attacks by plainly pointing out the flaw of his arguments, and the errors of his polemical conduct.

The learned doctor, continuing to speak as a true philosopher, says, "We know there must be a first cause, because things do actually exist, and could never have existed without a cause, and all secondary causes necessarily lead us to a primary one. But of the nature of the existence of this primary cause, concerning which we know nothing but by its effects, we cannot have any conception. We are absolutely confounded, bewildered, and lost, when we attempt to speculate concerning it. This speculation is attended with insuperable difficulties. Every description of the Divine Being in the New Testament gives us an idea of something filling and penetrating all things, and therefore of no known mode of existence." (Disquisitions, pp. 111, 146.)

Upon these second concessions we raise this second argument: a doctor who grants that we know nothing of the first cause but by its effects; that we have no conception of its nature, that it has no known mode of existence, and that this speculation is attended with insuperable difficulties, must have an uncommon share of assurance or inattention, if he pretend to argue the catholic Church out of the belief of the trinity, because we have no (clear) conception of its nature, because it has no known mode of existence, and because (in our present state) the speculation of it is attended with some insuperable difficulties.

But Dr. Priestley has made all these fair concessions in his Disquisitions, and yet he pretends to argue us out of our faith in the trinity, because we have no clear conception of its nature, &c. Hath not, therefore, the doctor an uncommon share of assurance, or of inattention?

Continuing to speak like a Christian philosopher, he says, "In two circumstances that we do know, and probably in many others of which we have no knowledge at all, the human and Divine nature, finite and infinite intelligence, most essentially differ. The first is, that our attention is necessarily confined to one thing, whereas he who made, and continually supports all things, must equally attend to all things at the same time; which is a most astonishing but necessary attribute of the one supreme God, of which we can form no conception, and consequently, in this respect, no finite mind can be compared with the Divine. Again: the Deity not only attends to every thing, but must be capable of either producing or annihilating any thing: so that in this respect also the Divine nature must be essentially different from ours." (p. 106.) "There is, therefore, upon the whole, manifold reason to conclude, that the Divine nature, or essence, beside being simply unknown to us, has properties most

essentially different from every thing else." (p. 107.) must remain, the incomprehensible." (p. 108.)

«God is, and ever

Upon this set of unavoidable concessions, made by Dr. Priestley, we raise this third argument: a philosopher who grants that God is the incomprehensible, that the human and Divine nature (of consequence human and Divine personality) most essentially differ-and that the Divine essence has properties most essentially different from every thing else a philosopher, I say, who publicly grants this, must be one of the most prejudiced of all men if he reject the sacred trinity, into whose name he was baptized, because the trinity is in some sense incompre. hensible, and because he insists that three Divine persons must be divided and separated like three human persons; just as if he did not himself maintain that the Divine essence, or personality, hath properties most essentially different from men, angels, and every thing else.

We could fill several pages with arguments equally demonstrative of the inconsistency and irrationality of the learned doctor's attacks upon the catholic faith: but, not to tire out the reader's patience in the second chapter of this work, we shall produce but one more set of the philo. sophical concessions of which Dr. Priestley loses sight in his theological works.

"In the first place," says he, "it must be confessed, with awful reverence, that we know but little of ourselves, and therefore much less of our Maker, even with respect to his attributes. We know but little of the works of God, and therefore certainly much less of his essence. In fact, we have no proper idea of any essence whatever. It will hardly be pretended, that we have any proper idea of the substance even of matter, considered as divested of all its properties." (Disquisitions, pp. 103 and 104.)

From these last concessions, and from the tenor of Dr. Priestley's Corruptions, it appears, that men who confess they know little of God's works, and much less of his essence; and who have not even any proper idea of the essence of a straw, pretend, nevertheless, to know clearly what is consistent with the Divine essence; insomuch, that setting up as reformers of the three creeds, they try to turn the doctrine of the trinity out of the Church, and the Lamb of God out of his Divine and everlasting throne.

Now is not this as absurd as if they said to the catholics, we have indeed been all baptized in the name of the God of the Christians, that is, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:" but we new Gnostics, we modern reformers, who know nothing of the Father's essence, nor even of the essence of an insect-we are, nevertheless, so perfectly acquainted with the Divine essence as to decide that it is absolutely inconsistent with the nature of the Father, to have a living Word, of a proper Son, and a rational Spirit; and, therefore, reforming our God himself, we strike the Word and the Holy Ghost out of the number of the Divine persons, whom at our baptism we vowed to serve jointly for ever.

O ye philosophers of the age, can men of sense admire your philo. sophy any more than men of faith admire your orthodoxy? May we not hope, that when the blunders of your logic are brought to light, they will be a proper antidote for the poison of your errors? And will your