their chief leader, who maintained, that there is one eternal God-namely, the Father, and one who is not eternal-namely, the Son, who was made fome time or other before the foundation of the world. Thus they worshipped two Gods, a great God, and a little God; the former uncreate, the latter created; the former God by nature; and the latter, only by courtesy.

(3.) DEISTS, who fo unfcripturally maintain. the Unity of the Divine Effence, as to admit but one Divine Subfiftence-namely, that of the Father; thus excluding both the Word, and the Holy Ghoft, from their place in the Divine Nature.

There are three forts of these Deifts, befides the Mahometans: (1.) Those who reject and scoff at all the Bible, as Voltaire, Hume, and the like Infidels: (2.) Thofe who reject the New Teftament, and explain away thofe parts of the Old, which do not fuit their notions of the Meffiah, as the modern Jews: And (3.) Thofe who profefs to receive the New Teftament, but reject or explain away what they diflike of it: Of this fort are the Socinians, fo called from Socinus, an Italian, who, at the time of the Reformation, revived the ancient herefy of fome judaizing Chriftians, concerning the mere humanity of our Lord: And, to this class belongs the learned Dr. Priestley, who fays in his Letters to Dr. Horley, I have frequently avowed myfelf not to be a believer in the inJpiration of the Evangelifts and Apoftles, as writers: I therefore hold the fubject of the miraculous conception to be one, with refpect to which any perfon is fully at liberty to think as the evidence fhall appear to him. And, confiftently with this profeffion, he does not fcruple to say in his Hiftory of Corruptions, Vol. II. p. 370-The Apostle Paul often reafons inconclufively, and, therefore, wrote as any other perfon, of his turn of mind and thinking, and in his fituation, would have written, without any particular infpi

ration.

Detesting the Ditheism of the Arians, and equally distant from the error of Deifts, and that

of

EY

of Tritheifts, the faithful maintainers of the Catho lic Faith worship the one Supreme Being, according to the threefold difplay which he hath made of himself. Did we worship three Gods (as fome Deifts fuppofe we do) we should worship three feparate Beings. But, abhorring Polytheifm, we fay with the Scripture, Although there are Three that bear record in heaven, yet (ovTOS OF TRES E 8101, Hi tres Unum funt.) Thefe three Divine Subfiftences are one Substance: These three Divine Perfons are one Jehovah: And we believe and affirm it, for the folid reasons which fhall foon be produced. Never did we fay or think, either that three Perfons are one Perfon, or that three Gods are one God: Thefe contradictions never difgraced our Creeds. We only maintain, that the one Divine Effence manifefts itself to us in three Divine Subfiftencies most intimately joined and abfolutely infeparable: With the Scripture we affert, that, as thefe Subfiftences bore each a particular part in our creation, fo they are particularly engaged in the fecuring of our eternal happinefs; the Father chiefly planning, the Son chiefly executing, and the Holy Ghoft chiefly perfecting, the great work of

Our new creation.

All the difficulty, with regard to this myftery, confifts, then, in believing 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 Ghoft, or, to take for our one God, the one Supreme Being, manifefting himself to us as our friend and Father, in and through the Son, and by the Spirit. Jehovah, who is perfectly acquainted with his nature, our wants, and our difpofitions, having feen, that, to win our love, and to inflame our zeal for his fervice, it was proper to inform us, that, in his adorable Effence, there is a Trinity of Subfiftences; each of whom is fpecially concerned in the ftupendous work of our falvation, and each of whom now bears the most endearing relation to mankind in general, and to the Church in particular.

Thefe

Thefe Divine Subfiftences, (for fo we beg leave to call them, according to the moft literal meaning of the word Hypoftafis, ufed by St. Paul, Heb. i. 3.) were foon called Perfons by the Latin Fathers, as appears from Tertulian, a writer of the fecond century, who, in his Book against Praxeas, frequently mentions the Perfon of the Son, and the Divine Perfons (Perfonam Filii, divinas Perfonas, 3c.)

for

The primitive Chriftians, finding it inconvenient to repeat always, at full length, the names of the three Divine Subfiftences, as our Lord enumerates them in his Charge of baptizing all Nations, began about the fame time, both brevity and variety's fake, to call them the TRINITY; and if, by renouncing that comprehenfive Word, we could remove the prejudices of Deist against the truth contended for, we would give it up, and always fay, The Father and the Son, and the Holy Ghoft, which is what we mean by the Trinity.

In the mean time, if to worship the Son and the Spirit, as comprehended in the Unity of the Father's Godhead, is to deserve the name of Trinitarian, we glory in the appellation, provided it does not exclude that of Unitarian-for we do not lefs worship the Unity in myfterious Trinity, than the Trinity in the most perfect and unfathomable Unity.

Hence it appears, that, if the word Unitarian means a maintainer of the Divine Unity against Idolaters of every defcription, there are two forts of Unitarians, who differ as widely, as the Catho lic Faith differs from Socinianism:

(1.) The Chriftian, or Catholic Unitarians, who maintain the Divine Unity against all forts of Polytheists, the Arians themselves not excepted; but who at the fame time, affert, that this Unity. neceffarily includes the Father, the Word, and the Spirit; it being far more unevangelical to fuppofe, that the Father is the one Supreme Being in the univerfe, exclufively of his Word and Spirit,

than

than it is unconftitutional to fay, that the King is the one fupreme legiflative power in England, exclufive 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 furprizing, that, when we consider them in this light, far from giving them the name of Unitarians, we are tempted to call them Difuniters, Dividers of God, and Manglers of the Divine Nature.

Judge, candid Reader, between these Unitarians fo called, and us. Like the falfe mother, who, to deceive Solomon, gave up to the dividing fword, the child fhe claimed as her own; do not these Dividers betray their want of love to the true, fcriptural Unity? And when they try to difunite God the Father from his beloved Son, with the fword they borrow from Caiaphas and Mahomet, do they not, before the judicious, attack the Divine Unity defended by St. John? And is not their attempt far more abfurd 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 fince the Creator has revealed, that, in the Unity of the Divine Effence, there are three Divine Subfiftences, human perverfe nefs ftarts back from that glorious difcovery-and the Philofophers of this world, under pretence of ftanding up for the Divine unity, and for the dignity of the Father, refufe divine honours to the fecond and to the third Subfiftences, 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

D

road

road lies all the way to heaven. Dr Priestley fuppofes that we are fallen into the former; and we fear that he and his admirers rufh into the latter. Let us fee who are mistaken. It is one of the most important questions that were ever debated. Either we are Idolaters in worshipping that which by nature is not God, or the Socinians are impious in refufing divine worship to that which is really God; and what is more dreadful ftill, they worship a mangled notion of Deity, and not the God revealed to us in the facred Scriptures.

Not to worship the Word and the Spirit, when they were not explicitly and directly revealed, was more excufable; but what can be faid for the baptized people, who fet at nought the Deity of two of the Divine Hypoftafes fo clearly revealed to them? If the Word and the Spirit partake of Godhead jointly with the Father, can those who deny them divine honours truft in them for falvation? Do they not take large ftrides to meet the danger which our Lord defcribes in these words, Whofoever shall deny Me before men, him will I alfo deny before my Father? And does not a punishment, peculiarly aggravated, await thofe who perverfely and finally fin against the Holy Ghoft as we fear, all baptized people do, when they deny his influences upon the foul, as well as his vitality and rationality? For it is evident, that, if the Word and the Spirit, have an effential place in the Divine Nature, by which we were created, to treat them as mere creatures, is far worse than not to render unto Cæfar the things which are Cæfar's; for it is refufing unto God, that which is God's-it is flighting the proper Son of God, on account of that very humiliation, by which he came to overcome our pride; and it is refifting and grieving that Holy Spirit, which 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 confider the arguments which the wife men of this world bring to make

us