deliberated with themselves upon it for three or four months, it was retailed from their scandalous shop as a system of Tritheism, Sabellianism, and what not? I hope God will forgive them! and this is all the answer I shall ever make to such men and such writers.

CHAPTER IV.

THE

TRINITY IN UNITY.

If there be any diversity of nature, or any essential subordination in the persons of the godhead, it must be revealed to us either in their names, or their attributes, or their acts; for it is by these only that they are or can possibly be made known to us in this life. If the scripture has made no difference in any of these, farther than that of a personal distinction (which we all allow) we are no longer to doubt that there is a natural or essential unity in the three persons of the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. It shall therefore be shewn in this chapter, by a sort of proof more comprehensive than what has gone before, that these persons have the same names, the same attributes, the same counsel or will, and all concur, after an ineffable manner, in the same divine acts; so that what the scripture is falsely supposed to have ascribed to God in one person, will appear to be ascribed by the same authority to God in three persons. That therefore,

these three persons are but one God; they are three distinct agents, yet there is but one and the same divine agency; or, as the church has more fully and better expressed it, that "that which we believe of the glory of the Father, the same we are to believe of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, without any difference or inequality "a

I.

The trinity in unity is the one Lord, the creator of the world.

Psalm. xxxiii. 6. By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath (Heb. Spirit) of his mouth. The whole trinity therefore created the world: yet this trinity is but one Lord: for it is written,

Isa. xliv. 24. I am the Lord that maketh all things, that stretcheth forth the heavens ALONE, that spreadeth abroad the earth BY MYSELF. It follows therefore, either that the Word and Spirit did not make the heavens: or, that the Father, with his Word and Spirit, are the ALONE Lord and creator of all things.

II.

The trinity in unity is the one supreme being or nature, distinguished from all other beings by the name Jehovah. For the scripture gives us the following position.

Proper Preface upon the Feast of Trinity.

Deut. vi. 4. The Lord our God is ONE JEHOVAH and again, Psal. lxxxiii. Thou whose name ALONE is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.

Yet Christ is Jehovah.

Jer. xxiii. 6. This is the name whereby he shall be called, JEHOVAH our righteousness.

So is the Spirit also.

Ezek. viii. 1. 3. The Lord JEHOVAH put forth the form of an hand and took me, and the SPIRIT lift me, &c. see also CHAP. II. Art. IV. and XXIV.

Therefore, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are the ONE Jehovah: they are three persons yet they have but one name and one nature. And it is the great advantage of this argument, that the name Jehovah is not capable of any such equivocal interpretations as that of God; it has no plural; is communicable to any derived or created being; and is peculiar to the divine nature, because it is descriptive of it. The author of an Essay on Spirit has endeavored to avoid the force of this proof, by pretending that there are two Jehovahs, one a distinct being from the other. But in this he has exposed the cause he meant to defend, and left the argument in a worse state than he found it: for if there be two, then it is false that there is a most high over all the earth, whose name ALONE is Jehovah; and let him try if he can reconcile it. Dr. Clarke also pretends, in the titles to two of his sections, wherein the collection of texts is very numerous, to have set down the passages wherein it is declared that the second and third persons

derive their being (that is the expression he was not afraid to make use of) from the Father. But he has not produced one such passage; no such thing being declared in the whole bible; and the contrary to it is plainly revealed under this application of the name Jehovah.

III.

The trinity in unity is the Lord absolutely so called; in Hebrew, Adonai; in Greek, • Kupi&.

Rom. x. 12.† The same LORD over all is rich unto all that call upon him.

Luke ii. 11. A Saviour which is Christ the LORD.

Rom. xi. 34. For who hath known the mind of the LORD, or who hath been his counsellor? Which Lord as we learn from the prophet whence this is quoted, is the Spirit; for it is written, Isai. xl. 13. Who hath directed the SPIRIT of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him? That the person of the Spirit is the Lord, is also plain from 2 Cor. iii. 18. Now the Lord is that Spirito δε κυρία το Πνευμα εσιν—me are changed from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord; xabarig ane xvpis Пvevμar, as by the Lord the Spirit; which is all along to be understood of the personal Spirit, because the apostle begins expressly with that at the 3d verse of this chapter. And it was from the

+ The reader is desired to observe, that as I cannot in all cases fix upon a text that does precisely distinguish the person of the Father, I shall therefore be frequently obliged, as in this instance, to set a pas. sage down in the first of the three ranks, that does confessedly denote the true God.

M