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PART SECOND.

DOCTRINES OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.

CHAPTER I.

The Existence of God.

THE Divine Authority of those writings which are received by Christians as a revelation of infallible truth having been established, our next step is seriously, and with simplicity of mind, to examine their contents, and to collect from them that ample information on religious and moral subjects which they profess to contain, and in which it had become necessary that the world should be supernaturally instructed. Agreeably to a principle which has already been laid down, I shall endeavour, as in the case of any other record, to exhibit their meaning by the application of those plain rules of interpretation which have been established for such purposes by the common agreement of the sober part of mankind. All the assistance within reach from critics, commentators, and divines shall however be resorted to; for, though the water can only be drawn pure from the sacred fountain itself, we yet owe it to many of these guides, that they have successfully directed us to the openings through which it breaks, and led the way into the depth of the stream.

The doctrine which the first sentence in this Divine Revelation unfolds is, that there is a GOD, the CREATOR ef heaven and earth; and as this is fundamental to the whole scheme of duty, promise, and hope which the books of Scripture successively unfold and explain, it demands our earliest consideration.

In three distinct ways do the sacred writers furnish us with information on this great and essential subject, the existence and the character of God;-from the names by which he is designated; from the actions ascribed to him; and from the attributes with which he is invested in their invocations and praises; and in those lofty descriptions of his nature which, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have recorded for the instruction of the world. These attributes will be afterward particularly considered; but the impression of the general view of the Divine character, as thus revealed, is too important to be omitted.

The names of God as recorded in Scripture convey at once ideas of overwhelming greatness and glory, mingled with that awful mysteriousness with which to all finite minds, and especially to the minds of mortals, the Divine essence and mode of existence must ever be invested. Though ONE, he is D' ELOHIM, GODS, persons adorable. He is 17' JEHOVAH, Selfexisting.EL, strong, powerful; 7 EHIEH,

This is the most ample and particular description of
the character of God, as given by himself, in the sacred
records; and the import of the several titles by which
he has thus, in his infinite condescension manifested
himself, has been thus exhibited. He is not only JK-
HOVAH, self-existent, and EL, the strong or mighty
God, but "D ROCHUM, the merciful being, who
is full of tenderness and compassion. 11 CHANUN,
the gracious one, he whose nature is goodness itself-
the loving God. D'D 778 EREC APAYIM, long-
suffering, the being who, because of his tenderness, is
not easily irritated, but suffers long and is kind.
RAB, the great or mighty one. TO CHESED, the
bountiful Being; he who is exuberant in his benefi-
cence. DEMETH, the Truth, or True One, He
alone who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

רג

on NOTSER CHESED, the Preserver of bountifulness, he whose beneficence never ends, keeping mercy for thousands of generations, showing compassion and mercy while the world endures. ywai jy xw

NO NOSE ávon vapeshâ vechataah, he who bears away iniquity, transgression, and sin; properly the REDEEMER, the PARDONER, the FORGIVER, the Being whose prerogative it is to forgive sin, and save the soul.

NAKEt lo yinnakeh, the righteous נקה לא ינקה

Judge, who distributes justice with an impartial hand. And 5 PAKED avon, &c., he who visits iniquity, he who punishes transgressors, and from whose justice no sinner can escape: the God of retributive and vindictive justice."(2)

The second means by which the Scriptures convey to us the knowledge of God, is by the actions which they ascribe to him. They contain indeed the important record of his dealings with men in every age which is comprehended with the limit of the Sacred History; and by prophetic de aration they also exhibit the principles on which he will govern the world to the end of time; so that the whole course of the Divine administration may be considered as exhibiting a singularly illustrative comment upon those attributes of his nature, which, in their abstract form, are contained in such declarations as those which have been just quoted. The first act ascribed to God is that of creating the heavens and the earth out of nothing; and by his fiat alone arranging their parts, and peopling them with living creatures. By this were manifested his eternity and self-existence, as he who creates must be before all creatures, and he who gives being to others can himself derive it from none:-his Almighty power, shown both in the act of creation and in the number and vastness of the objects so produced:-his wisdom, in their arrangement, and in their fitness to their respective ends :and his goodness, as the whole tended to the happiness of sentient beings. The foundations of his natural and moral government are also made manifest by his creative acts. In what he made out of nothing he had an absolute right and prerogative of ordering and disposal: so that to alter or destroy his own work, and to prescribe the laws by which the intelligent and rational part of his creatures should be governed, are rights which none can question. Thus on the one hand his character of Lord or Governor is established, and on the other our duty of lowly homage and absolute obe

I am, I will be, self-existence, independency, all-sufficiency, immutability, eternity; SHADDAI, Almighty, all-sufficient; ADON, Supporter, Lord, Judge. These are among the adorable appellatives of God which are scattered throughout the revelation which he has been pleased to make of himself: but on one occasion he was pleased more particularly to declare "his name," that is, such of the qualities and attributes of the Divine nature, as mortals are the most interested in knowing; and to unfold, not only his natural, but those also of his moral attributes by which his conduct towards his creatures is regulated. "And the Lord passed by and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the child-dience. ren's children, unto the third and fourth generation."(1) Agreeably to this, as soon as man was created, ho

(1) Exodus xxxiv.

G2

(2) Dr. A. Clarke in loc.

angels who are perfect comparatively. God's infinite perfection includes all the attributes, even the most excellent. It excludes all dependence, borrowed existence, composition, corruption, mortality, contingency, ignorance, unrighteousness, weakness, misery, and all imperfections whatever. It includes necessity of being, independence, perfect unity, simplicity, immensity, eternity, immortality; the most perfect life, knowledge, wisdom, integrity, power, glory, bliss, and all these in the highest degree. We cannot pierce into the secrets of this eternal Being. Our reason comprehends but little of him, and when it can proceed no farther, faith comes in, and we believe far more than we can understand and this our belief is not contrary to reason; but reason itself dictates unto us, that we must believe far more of God, than it can inform us of."(5) To these we may add an admirable passage from Sir Isaac Newton: "The word GOD frequently signifies Lord; but every lord is not God; it is the dominion of a spiritual Being or Lord that constitutes God; true dominion, true God; supreme, the supreme; feigned, the false God. From such true dominion it follows, that the true God is living, intelligent and powerful; and from his other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect; he is eternal and infinite; omnipotent, and omniscient; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity; and is present from infinity to infinity. He governs all things that exist, and knows all things that are to be known: he is not eternity or infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present; he endures always, and is present every where; he is omnipresent, not only virtually, but also substantially; for power without substance cannot subsist. All things are contained and move in him; but without any mutual passion; he suffers nothing from the motions of bodies; nor do they undergo any resistance from his omnipresence. It is confessed, that God exists necessarily, and by the same necessity he exists always and every where. Hence also he must be perfectly similar, all eye, all ear, all arm, all the power of perceiving, understanding and acting; but after a manner not at all corporeal, after a manner not like that of men, after a manner wholly to us unknown. He is destitute of all body, and all bodily shape; and therefore cannot be seen, heard, or touched; nor ought he to be worshipped under the representation of any thing corporeal. We have ideas of the attributes of God, but do not know the substance of even any thing: we see only the figures and colours of bodies, hear only sounds, touch only the outward surfaces, smell only odours, and taste tastes; and do not, cannot, by any sense, or reflex act, know their inward substances; and much less can we have any notion of the substance of God. We know him by his properties and attributes."

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cord revelations received from this newly discovered Being, and to enforce laws uttered under his command. Nothing of this kind is attempted; and the sacred historian and lawgiver proceeds at once to narrate the acts of GOD, and to declare his will. The history which he wrote, however, affords the reason why the introduction of formal proof of the existence of one true God was thought unnecessary. The first man, we are informed, knew God, not only from his works, but by sensible manifestation and converse; the same divine appearances were made to Noah, to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob; and when Moses wrote, persons were still living, who had conversed with those who conversed with God; or were descended from the same families to whom God "at sundry times" had appeared in visible glory, or in angelic forms. These divine manifestations were also matters of public notoriety among the primitive families of mankind; from them the tradition was transmitted to their descendants; and the idea once communicated, was confirmed by every natural object which they saw around them. It continued even after the introduction of idolatry; and has never, except among the most ignorant of the heathen, been to this day obliterated by polytheistic superstitions. It was thus that the knowledge of God was communicated to the ancient world. No discovery of this truth, either in the time of Moses, or in any former age, was made by human research; neither the date nor the process of it could therefore be stated in his writings; and it would have been trifling to moot a question which had been so fully determined, and to attempt to prove a doctrine universally received.

That the idea of a Supreme First Cause was at first obtained by the exercise of reason, is thus contradicted by the facts, that the first man received the knowledge of God by sensible converse with him, and that this doctrine was transmitted, with the confirmation of successive visible manifestations, to the early ancestors of all nations. Whether the discovery, therefore, of the simple truth of the existence of a First Cause be within the compass of human powers, is a point which cannot be determined by matter of fact; because it may be proved that those nations by whom that doctrine has been acknowledged, had their origin from a common stock, resident in that part of the world in which the primitive revelations were given. They were therefore never in circumstances in which such an experiment upon the power or weakness of the human mind could be made. Among some uncivilized tribes, such as the Hottentots of Africa, and the Aborigines of New South Wales, the idea of a Supreme Being is probably entirely obliterated; some notions of spiritual existences, superior in power to man, and possessed of creative and destructive powers, do however remain, naturally tending to that train of reflection, which in better instructed minds issues in the

But no instance has been known of the knowledge of God having thus, or by any other means, originating in themselves, been recovered; if restored to them all, it has been by the instruction of others, and not by the rational investigation of even superior minds in their own tribes. Wherever there has been sufficient mental cultivation to call forth the exercise of the rational faculty in search of spiritual and moral truth, the idea of a First Cause has been previously known; wherever that idea has been totally obliterated, the intellectual powers of man have not been in a state of exercise, and no curiosity as to such speculations has been awakened. Matter of fact does not therefore support the notion, that the existence of God is discoverable by the unassisted faculties of man; and there is, I conceive, very slender reason to admit the abstract probability.

It is observable that neither Moses, the first of the inspired penmen, nor any of the authors of the suc-apprehension of one Supreme and Divine intelligence. ceeding canonical books, enters into any proof of this first principle of religion, that there is a GOD. They all assume it as a truth commonly known and admitted. There is indeed in the sacred volume no allusion to the existence of atheistical sentiments, till some ages after Moses, and then it is not quite clear whether speculative or practical atheism be spoken of. From this circumstance we learn, that, previous to the time of Moses, the idea of one supreme and infinitely perfect God was familiar to men; that it had descended to them from the earliest ages; and also that it was a truth of original revelation, and not one which the sages of preceding times had wrought out by rational investigation and deduction. Had that been the fact, we might have expected some intimation of it: and that if those views of God which are found in the Pentateuch were discovered by the successive investigations of wise men among the ancients, the progress of this wonderful discovery would have been marked by Moses; or if one only had demonstrated this truth by his personal researches, that some grateful mention of so great a sage, of so celebrated a moral teacher, would have been made. A truth too so essential to the whole Mosaic system, and upon which his own official authority rested, had it originated from successful human investigation, would seem naturally to have required a statement of the arguments by which it had been demonstrated, as a fit introduction to a book in which he professed to re(5) Lawson's Theo-Politica.

A sufficient number of facts are obvious to the most cursory observation, to show that, without some degree of education, man is wholly the creature of appetite. Labour, feasting, and sleep divide his time, and wholly occupy his thoughts. If therefore we suppose a First Cause to be discoverable by human investigation, we must seek for the instances among a people whose civilization and intellectual culture have roused the mind from its torpor, and given it an interest in abstract and philosophic truth; for to a people so circumstanced as never to have heard of God, the question of the existence of a First Cause must be one of mere philosophy. Religious motives, whether of hope or fear,

have no influence where no religion exists, and its very first principle is here supposed to be as yet undiscovered. Before, therefore, we can conceive the human mind to have reached a state of activity sufficiently energetic and curious even to commence such an inquiry, we must suppose a gradual progress from the uncivilized state to a state of civil and scientific cultivation, and that without religion of any kind; without moral control; without principles of justice, except such as may have been slowly elaborated from those relations which concern the grosser interests of men, if even they be possible; without conscience; without hope or fear in another life. That no society of civilized men has ever been constituted under such circumstances, is what no one will deny; that it is possible to raise a body of men into that degree of civil improvement which would excite the passion for philosophic investigation without the aid of religion, which, in its lowest forms of superstition, admits in a defective degree what is implied in the existence of God, a superior, creative, governing, and destroying power, can have no proof and is contradicted by every fact and analogy with which we are acquainted. Under the influence and control of religion, all states, ancient and modern, have hitherto been formed and maintained. It has entered essentially into all their legislative and gubernative institutions; and Atheism is so obviously dissocializing, that even the philosophic atheists of Greece and Rome confined it to their esoteric doctrine, and were equally zealous with others to maintain the public religion as a restraint upon the multitude, without which they clearly enough discerned that human laws, and merely human motives, would be totally ineffectual to prevent that selfish gratification of the passions, the enmities, and the cupidity of men, which would break up every community into its original fragments, and arm every man against his fellow.

but who has received no idea of God by any revelation, whether from tradition, Scripture, or inspiration, how is he to convince himself that God is, and from whence is he to learn what God is? That of which as yet he knows nothing, cannot be a subject of his thought, his reasonings, or his conversation. He can neither aflirm nor deny till he know what is to be affirmed or denied. From whence then is our philosopher to divine, in the first instance, his idea of the infinite Being, concerning the reality of whose existence he is, in the second place, to decide ?"(8)

"Would a single individual, or even a single pair of the human race, or indeed several pairs of such beings as we are, if dropped from the hands of their Maker in the most genial soil and climate of this globe, without a single idea or notion engraved on their minds, ever think of instituting such an inquiry; or short and simple as the process of investigation is, would they be able to conduct it, should it somehow occur to them? No man who has paid due attention to the means by which all our ideas of external objects are introduced into our minds through the medium of the senses; or to the still more refined process by which reflecting on what passes in our minds themselves, when we combine or analyze these ideas, we acquire the rudiments of all our knowledge of intellectual objects, will pretend that they would. The efforts of intellect necessary to discover an unknown truth, are so much greater than those which may be sufficient to comprehend that truth, and feel the force of the evidence on which it rests, when fairly stated, that for one man, whose intellectual powers are equal to the former, ten thousand are only equal to the latter."(9)

"Between matter and spirit, things visible and invisible, time and eternity, beings finite and beings infinite, objects of sense and objects of faith, the connexion is not perceptible to human observation. Though we push our researches therefore to the extreme point, whither the light of nature can carry us, they will in the end be abruptly terminated, and we must stop short at an immeasurable distance between the creature and the Creator."(1)

From this we may conclude, that man without religion cannot exist in that state of civility and cultivation in which his intellectual powers are disposed to, or capable of such a curse of inquiry as might lead him to a knowledge of God; and that, as a mere barbarian, he would be wholly occupied with the gratifica- These observations have great weight, and though tion of his appetites or his sloth. Should we however we allow, that the argument which proves that the suppose it possible, that those who had no previous effects with which we are surrounded must have been knowledge of God, or of superior invisible powers, caused, and thus leads us up through a chain of submight be brought to the habits of civil life, and be en- ordinate cause to one First Cause, has in it a simplicity, gaged in the pursuit of various knowledge (which it- an obviousness, and a force, which, when we are preself however is very incredible), it would still remain viously furnished with the idea of God, makes it at first a question, whether, provided no idea from tradition or sight difficult to conceive, that men, under any degree of instruction had been suggested of the existence of spi- cultivation, should be inadequate to it; yet, if the human ritual superior beings, or of a supreme Creator or Ruler, mind ever commeneed such an inquiry at all, it is such a truth would be within the reach of man, even highly probable, that it would rest in the notion of an in an imperfect form. We have already seen, that a eternal succession of causes and effects, rather than truth may appear exceedingly simple, important, and acquire the ideas of creation, in the proper sense, and evident, when once known, and on this account its de- of a supreme Creator. Scarcely any of the philosomonstration may be considered easy, which neverthe-phers of the most inquisitive ages of Greece, or those less has been the result of much previous research, on of their followers at Rome, though with the advantage the part of the discoverer.(6) The abundant rational of traditions conveying the knowledge of God, seem to evidence of the existence of God, which may now be have been capable of conceiving of Creation out of noso easily collected, and which is so convincing, is there- thing, (2) and they consequently admitted the eternity fore no proof, that, without instruction from Heaven, the of matter. This was equally the case, with the theisthuman mind would ever have made the discovery. ical, the atheistical, and the polytheistical philoso"God is the only way to himself; he cannot in the least phers.(3) It was not among them a subject of dispute; be come at, defined, or demonstrated by human reason; but taken for a point settled and not to be contradicted, that for where would the inquirer fix his beginning? He matter was eternal, and could not therefore be created. is to search for something he knows not what; a nature Against this notion, since the revelation of truth to without known properties; a being without a name. man, philosophy has been able to adduce a very satisIt is impossible for such a person to declare or imagine factory argument; but, though it is not a very reconwhat it is he would discourse of, or inquire into; a na- dite one, it was never discovered by philosophy while ture he has not the least apprehension of; a subject he unaided by the Scriptures. In like manner philosophy has not the least glimpse of, in whole or in part; can now furnish cogent arguments against an infinite which he must separate from all doubt, inconsistencies, succession of causes and effects; but it does not appear and errors; he must demonstrate without one known probable that they could have been apprehended by or sure principle to ground it upon; and draw certain necessary conclusions whereon to rest his judgment, without the least knowledge of one term or proposition to fix his procedure upon; and therefore can never know whether his conclusion be consequent, or not consequent, truth or falsehood, which is just the same in science, as in architecture, to raise a building without a foundation."(7)

"Suppose a person, whose powers of argumentation are improved to the utmost pitch of human capacity,

(6) Vide Part I. c. iv.

(7) Ellis's Knowledge of Divine Things,

(8) Hare's Preservative against Socinianism.
(9) Gleig's Stackhouse Intro.

(1) Van Mildert's Discourses. (2) Vide Part I. c. iv. (3) Few, if any, of the ancient pagan philosophers acknowledged God to be, in the most proper sense, the Creator of the world. By calling him Anuspyos the Maker of the world,' they did not mean, that he brought it out of non-existence into being; but only that he built it out of pre-existent materials, and disposed it into a regular form and order." See ample proofs and illustrations in c. 13, Part 1. of LELAND'S Necessity of Revelation.