The struggles of justice and mercy, and the triumphs of the lat ter, are very affectingly represented in Jeremiah iii. 19, &c. Hosea xi. 8. But I said; How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land?-How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? shall I deliver thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? shall I set thee as Zeboim? My heart is turned within me, and my repentings are kindled together. In the first of these passages, it is intimated, that though God was disposed to show mercy, yet their conduct put his very perfections to the proof. In the last, we must conceive an offended father as having hold of his son with one hand, and holding up a rod in the other, making alternate appeals, first to his own compassion, then to the conscience of the offender. Justice requires him to be delivered over to punishment, to be made as Admah, and set for an example as Zeboim. But mercy pleads in arrest of judgment, and overcomes. To such a case as this, the divine conduct towards Israel might be compared; but all this mercy, and all that followed, and all that shall yet follow, is through the atonement of Christ. His sacrifice has furnished the answers to these hard questions.

Affectionately yours,

A. F.

VOL. IV.

39

LETTER IX.

ON THE TRINITY; OR, ON THE FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT BEING ONE GOD.

My Dear Brother,

A SUBJECT SO great and so much above our comprehension as this is, requires to be treated with trembling. Every thing that we can think or say, concerning the ever blessed God, requires the greatest modesty, fear, and reverence. Were I to hear two persons engaged in a warm contest upon the subject, I should fear for them both. One might in the main be in the right, and the other in the wrong but if many words were used, they might both be expected to incur the reproof of the Almighty: Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge.

The people of Israel were forbidden to break through the bounds which were set for them, and to gaze on the visible glory of Jehovah. The Bethshemites, for looking into the ark, were smitten with death. Such jugdments may not befal us in these days; but we may expect others, more to be dreaded. As the gospel is a spiritual dispensation, its judgments, as well as its blessings, are chiefly spiritual. Where men have employed themselves in curiously prying into things too high for them, they have ordinarily been smitten with a blast upon their minds, and upon their ministry.

There is a greater importance in the doctrine of the Trinity than Commonly appears, on a superficial inspection of it; chiefly perhaps on account of its affecting our views of the doctrine of the person and work of Christ; which doctrine, being the foundation on which

the church is built, cannot be removed without the utmost danger to the building.

It is a subject of pure revelation. If the doctrine be not taught in the oracles of God, we have nothing to do with it; but if it be, whether we can comprehend it or not, we are required humbly to believe it, and to endeavour to understand so much as God has revealed concerning it. We are not required to understand how three are one, for this is not revealed. If we do not consider the Father, Son, and Spirit, as being both three and one in the same. sense, which certainly we do not, we do not believe a contradiction. We may leave speculating minds to lose themselves and others in a labyrinth of conceits, while we learn what is revealed, and rest contented with it.

In believing three divine persons in one essence, I do not mean that the distinction between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, is the same as that between three human persons; but neither is there any other term that answers to the scriptural idea; and since Christ is said to be the express image of his Father's person, I see nothing objectionable in using this.

The doctrine was certainly less explicitly revealed in the Old Testament, than it is in the New. When the Messiah came, it was expected that he would tell us all things. If the degree in which the doctrine was made known in the Old Testament bears a proportion to that of other important truths, it is sufficient. From the beginning of the creation the name of God is represented under a plural form: with which agrees the moving of the Spirit of God upon the face of the waters; and all things being made by the Word, and without him nothing made that was made. The Angel of the Lord which appeared to Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, &c. in the form of man, was considered and treated by them as God, and received divine worship at their hands. In reference to this, I conceive, it is said in the New Testament, that, being in the form of God, he thought it no usurpation to be as God.

In the New Testament, the doctrine is more explicitly revealed; particularly in Christ's commission to his apostles, to baptize in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. In

the Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, he invokes the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit to be with them. And John, in his First Epistle, introduces the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, as bearing witness to the gospel; or, that God had given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. If, in the first of these passages, the Son and Holy Spirit be considered as divine persons, and as one with the Father, both in nature and in the economy of redemption, there is a fitness in our being baptized into this individual name: but to be baptized into the name of God, a creature, and an energy, must be the height of incongruity. The next passage shows the importance of the doctrine to the existence and progress of vital godliness. It is not a subject of mere speculation, but one on which depends all the communications of grace and peace to sinful men; and it is remarkable, that they who reject it are seldom known to acknowledge any spiritual communion with God, but treat it as fanaticism. The last of these passages has been strongly opposed as an interpolation. It is not for me to decide this question, by a reference to ancient versions of the New Testament; but there are two or three considerations which, after all that I have seen on the other side, weigh with me in its favour. First: From the seventh verse being wanting in some copies and found in others, all that can be fairly inferred is, that there must have been either an interpolation by some copyist, or an omission by some other. The question is, Which is the most probable? If it is an omission in the copies where it is wanting, it might not have been from design, but from mere oversight, especially as the eighth verse begins so much like the seventh; whereas if it be an interpolation, no oversight can account for it, but it must have arisen from wicked, wilful imposture. To which of these suppositions will candour give its vote? Secondly: Supposing the omission or interpolation, whichever it was, to have arisen from design; which is the most probable, and the least likely to have escaped detection-that the Anti-Trinitarians should omit what was unfavourable to them, or that the Trinitarians should introduce what was favourable? An omission would escape detection seven times, where an interpolation would escape it once.