APPENDIX IV.

ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.

THE Creator, in his benevolent wisdom, has formed the mind of man with a propensity to compare and combine its ideas, and to attempt constantly the reference of every particular acquisition to some more general object in the classification of knowledge. When, therefore, we conceive that we have found sufficient evidence for our belief in the Deity of the Redeemer and of the Holy Spirit, it is natural for us to inquire, what relation these positions have to our conceptions of God the Almighty Father, and to the acknowledged fact of the Unity of the Deity.

But, since the object of this inquiry is THAT, which must of necessity be high and deep and broad unmeasurably beyond all human, all created, capacity, it being no other than the ultimate essence and the manner of existence of the INFINITE AND SUPREME NATURE; it becomes us to be sensible of the obvious and extreme inadequacy of our faculties, to embrace all the materials necessary to the process, and to carry on that process to the point of completeness. Many other objects are, or conceivably may be, brought within the limits of human comprehension; though of even the commonest facts in nature, we are ignorant, as to either the interior nature of objects or the immediate causes of change: but that the Essence of the Deity should be comprehended by us, is an infinite impossibility. Assuredly then we cannot hope for success in this awful meditation, if our hearts are not well disciplined by a just estimate of our own intellectual feebleness, by devotional reverence and profound humility, and by an anxious care to draw no hasty or incautious conclusions. The facts of the case are,

1. That the united and harmonious testimony of the Scriptures, the oracles of religious truth, ascribes to the Messiah, and to the Holy Spirit respectively, the designations, the perfections, the works,

and the honours, which are necessarily and exclusively appropriate to the Divine Nature.

2. That numerous and remarkable intimations were given in the writings of the Old Testament, of a plurality of subsistences in the Divine Nature; and that, in some passages, this intimation is referred to specifically three objects.

3. That, in the New Testament also, Divine attributives are predicated of the Father, the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit, conjoinedly.

4. But these are to be combined with another fact, that of the DIVINE UNITY.

i. Some Christians think it the most proper and becoming, under the darkness and infirmities of the present state, to say, "I receive all the facts of the case; I believe them upon the indubitable testimony of inspiration: but I presume not to form any hypothesis for conjoining and generalizing them, because I conceive that so to do is beyond the range of my present faculties. I rely, therefore, with perfect assurance, upon the veracity of the Great Revealer; and am confident that all the facts, necessarily mysterious as they are to my apprehension, are in reality in perfect harmony, and without any discrepancy whatever."

To those who hold this modest language, the late author of the Calm Inquiry was disposed to pay little respect. He not obscurely charges them with acquiescing in conscious absurdities, or with an indolent disinclination to inquire, or with a selfish apprehension of the consequences of free and honest investigation, or with a want of good faith and the use of deceptive language. Calm Inq. pp. 528-530.

Undoubtedly it is a man's duty to apply seriously to his mind and conscience, the queries thus suggested; and a good man will so apply them. But I submit to any upright and intelligent mind, whether a person who thinks it his duty to rest at this point, is chargeable with disingenuous and irrational proceeding; any more than we all are when we repeat the great truth, GOD IS A SPIRIT, though we neither ourselves possess, nor can possibly give to our plain and unlearned hearers," any notion of what a spirit really is.1

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1 "Let us be content with expressing the scripture doctrine in some such manner as the following, to which I think that scarcely any can object who treat with due reverence the declarations of divine revelation: God is ONE, in the most perfect sense; but, since divine honours are attributed to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it follows, that He who bears the name of the Son, who is uncreated, and far superior to all created beings, has the Divine Nature in such intimate union to himself, that he is on that account equal to the Father in nature E E

VOL. III.

ii. Others conceive the distinction of the Father and the Son and the Spirit to be only modal and official; the same one Divine Person assuming different designations, as he reveals himself under different characters.

This hypothesis appears to be irreconcileable with the distinct designations and attributives of the Father, Son, and Spirit, which is the habitual style of Scripture; with the appropriated relations revealed to us as being between those sacred subsistences, (e.g. Ps. xlv. cx. Isa. xlviii. 16. Heb. i. John i. 1; xiv. 16; &c. &c.) and with the intimations of a plurality in the Divine Nature, which form a part of the facts of the case.

iii. Others, with whom the writer of these pages classes himself, think that the Scriptures warrant us in believing,

1. That, in the Infinite and Incomprehensible Divine Essence, there do exist, by a natural and eternal necessity, Three Intelligent and Active Subjects, which (with reverential modesty and an acknowledgment of the inadequacy of human language to furnish a perfectly appropriate and unexceptionable term,) we may call Hypostases, Subsistences, Subsistents, or Persons.

2. That these are not, on the one hand, three different Beings, Natures, or Essences; nor, on the other, three modes of developements of one and the same Person.

3. That the difficulty, or even quoad nos impossibility, of our forming a conception of this medial kind of existence, in a Subject which is necessarily Infinite and Incomprehensible, is not a proof, nor even a just presumption, against the fact.

4. That the consciousness and will of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, while coincident in all the modes of infinite perfection,

and majesty, and we are bound to reverence in him the very nature of the Father: also the Holy Spirit, himself possessing the Divine Nature, is he by whom God works all things, especially those which relate to the conversion and sanctification of men." Muntinghe, Theol. Theor, vol. ii. p. 182; Groningen, 1822.

“The more profoundly mysterious this doctrine is, the less are we at liberty to employ human terms for its explication; terms, which must themselves be explained, and upon the meaning and precise definition of which the most learned men are not agreed." Ypey, Geschik der Systemat. Godgeleerdheyd; vol. ii. p. 206. "Whoever is right, I am sure, if the gospel be true, that the Socinians are altogether wrong. And I see no material difference between them and the Arians; for, without entering into minutiæ which we cannot understand, Christ and the Father are ONE; and the Saviour's participation of the Divine Nature is that which gives efficacy to his sacrifice." The late Rev. Thomas Tayler, probably the last surviving pupil of Dr. Doddridge, who died at the age of 97, Oct. 23, 1831: from the recital of the late Dr. Winter.

are yet not identical, but have respectively some distinctive property, the nature of which is to us unknown.

5. That the Divine Essence, being not a divisible quantity, but an Infinite Subject, is not participated, which would be predicable of only a finite subject; but is infinitely, that is wholly and undividedly, possessed by each of the Divine Persons. This, I humbly conceive to be the UNITY OF THE GODHEAD; or, as Mr. Howe expresses it, the "most intimate, natural, necessary, eternal, UNION of the Sacred Three." Letter on the Defence of Sherlock, p. 17.

This consideration appears to me satisfactorily to preclude the objection of our opponents, that we make three objects of worship. It may, I conceive, be justly laid down as an axiom, that the proper and formal object of all lawful religious worship is THE DIVINE BEING, under the most absolute and generic mode of consideration; or THAT which is the CONCRETE of all divine attributives. Whether, therefore, our immediate address in prayer and praise be the Deity conceived of absolutely, or the Father of mercies, or the Saviour, or the Sanctifier, we are equally directing our adoration to THE SAME Divine Object, under different aspects or modes of consideration. The revealed order in the œconomy of redemption and grace, and the authority of Scripture, lead to the persuasion, that the most usual mode of our devotional addresses should be to the Father, with explicit reference to the mediation of the Son and the influence of the Holy Spirit: but, we conceive that the same order, and the same authority, warrant our calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our seeking the communion of blessings from the Holy Spirit. I would humbly submit, that there is a peculiar propriety in the mode of distinct address to the Saviour, when we are referring to his characters and offices; for instance, when we ascribe glory to the Lamb who was slain to redeem us by his blood; when we advert to his blessed dominion, whose throne is for ever and ever, and the sceptre of his kingdom a sceptre of righteousness; when we are oppressed with infirmities and afflictions, and seek his power and grace to be made perfect in our weakness; and when, in the solemnities of death, we commit our eternal interest to Him who receives our spirits. In like manner, we may implore immediately from the Holy Spirit, instruction, sanctification, guidance, consolation; or whatever blessings have an especial reference to his gracious operations, as revealed in the Scriptures.

6. That, whatever difficulties present themselves to us, in the contemplation of this subject, are reasonably to be imputed to the nature of the object contemplated, which must be of necessity infinitely

beyond the grasp of any other than the Divine Intellect itself; and to the range of the human faculties, limited at best, and still more contracted and disqualified by our sinful condition.

Obs. 1. There appear to be very reasonable grounds for supposing that this doctrine, or some other resembling it, would be a necessary deduction from the fact of the ABSOLUTE PERFECTION of the Divine Nature. The notion of Supreme and Infinite Perfection cannot but include EVERY POSSIBLE excellency, or, in other words, every attribute of being which is not of the nature of defect. It must be premised that creation had a beginning. At whatever point that beginning may have been, whatever multiples of ages imagination or hypothesis can fix upon, to carry that point backwards, the point will stand somewhere. Before that position, therefore, a duration without beginning must have elapsed. Through that period, infinite on one part, it is incontrovertible that nothing can have existed except the Glorious Deity. But, if the Unity of the Divine Nature be such a property as excludes every kind of plurality, the properties of active life, tendency to diffusion, and reciprocity of intellectual and moral enjoyment, (which are perfections of being,) must have been through that infinite duration, in the state of absolute quiescence. It seems to follow that from eternity down to a certain point in duration, some perfections were wanting in the Deity: the Divine Mind stood in an immense solitariness ;- -the infinitely active Life, which is a necessary property of the Supreme Spirit, was from eternity inactive ;- -no species of communication existed ;there was no developement of intellectual and moral good, though in a subject in which that good has been necessarily, infinitely, and from eternity inherent.- -I feel the awful ground on which I have advanced, in putting these suppositions; and I would humbly beseech the Divine Majesty to pity and pardon me, if I am guilty of any presumption :- -I am, also, fully attentive to the attribute of ALL-SUFFICIENCY as a necessary property of the Blessed and Adorable Nature. But when I have given every consideration of which I am capable, to this most profound of subjects, I cannot but perceive it as a strong and even invincible deduction of reason, that the denial of such a plurality in the Infinite Essence as shall admit of a developement from eternity of the ever active life, and a communion from eternity in infinite good, is a denial to the Supreme Nature of something which is essential to Absolute and Infinite Perfection.

I add, therefore, that, whatever improper use may have been made of the terms by impious familiarity, and whatever ridicule may have been cast upon them by profane opposition, the venerable