DISQUISITION FOURTH,

Of the sentiments of the fathers and others, concerning the eternal origination of the Son in the necessary energies of the paternal intellect.

IN a subject so far above the comprehension of the human mind, as the doctrine of the Trinity must be confessed to be in all its branches, extreme caution should be used to keep the doctrine itself, as it is delivered in God's word, distinct from every thing that hath been devised by man, or that may even occur to a man's own thoughts to illustrate it, or explain its difficulties. Every one who hath ever thought for any length of time upon the subject, cannot but fall insensibly and involuntarily upon some way or other of representing the thing to his own mind. And if a man be ever so much upon his guard to check the licentiousness of imagination, and bridle an irreverent curiosity upon this holy subject, yet if he read what others have written, orthodox or heretics, he will find opinions proposed with too much freedom upon the difficulties of the subject; and among different opinions he cannot but form some judgment of the different degrees of probability with which they are severally accompanied ; nor can he so far command himself, as not in

some measure to embrace the opinion which seems the most probable. In this manner, every one who meddles at all with the subject, will be apt to form a solution for himself of what seem to him the principal difficulties. But since it must be confessed, that the human mind in these inquiries is groping in the dark every step that she ventures to advance beyond the point to which the clear light of revelation reaches, the probability is, that all these private solutions are in different ways and in different degrees, but all in some way and in some degree erroneous; and it will rarely happen, that the solution invented by one man will suit the conceptions of another. It were therefore to be wished, that in treating this mysterious subject, men would not, in their zeal to illustrate what after their utmost efforts must remain in some parts incomprehensible, be too forward to mix their private opinions with the public doctrine. Many curious questions were moved by the heretics of antiquity, and are now revived by Dr Priestley, about the nature and the limit of the Divine generation. Why the Father generates but one Son? Why that Son generates not another? Why the generation is not infinite? Instead of answering such questions, it seems to me that except when the necessity may arise, as indeed it too often will, of " answering a fool according to his folly," it should be a point of conscience with every writer to keep any particular

opinions he may have formed, as much as possible out of sight, that divine truth may not be debased with a mixture of the alloy of human error, and that controversies may not be raised upon points in which no man or set of men can be authorised or qualified to prescribe to the belief of others. Upon these principles I should wish to decline all dispute upon the metaphysical difficulties of the subject, even with an adversary better qualified than I take Dr Priestley to be for such discussions. I should think indeed that I had already been guilty of an indiscretion, in the avowal that I have made in my Charge* of my own opinion about the manner in which the Son's eternal existence, without any diminution of its own necessity, may be connected with the Father's, were it not that what I am there attempting to illustrate, is not so much the Scripture doctrine itself, as the manner in which that doctrine was understood by the Platonizing fathers.

I said, and I still say, that it was their common principle "that the existence of the Son flows necessarily from the Divine Intellect exerted on itself." I shewed how the Son's eternity will follow from this principle. And I discovered what indeed I might have concealed, that I myself con

cur in this principle with the Platonists; for I said, that it seems to me to be founded in Scripture."* By which I meant not to assert that it is so expressly declared in Scripture that I would undertake to prove it by the Scriptures to others, in the same manner that I would undertake to prove that the world was created by Jesus Christ; or that the one like the other ought to be made a branch of the public confession of the church; or that the belief or disbelief of this particular principle is a circumstance that may in the least affect the integrity of any Christian's faith. It was not alleged as a principle on which I meant at all to rest the credit of the Scripture doctrine; it was mentioned only as a principle which, true or false, was embraced by a certain set of writers, and serves to explain certain things said by them, which without it are unintelligible, or at least liable to misinterpretation. At the same time, I discovered my own opinion about this principle, that I think it true, or likely to be true; for it seems (that is the word I used) to be founded in Scripture. Many phrases of holy writ seem to me to allude to it; and to those who first thought of it, I doubt not but that the same allusions seemed couched in the same phrases. Yet I will not un

Charge IV. sec. 5.

dertake to teach every one to read the same sense in the same expressions. When I shewed, that from this principle once admitted, a strict demonstration might be drawn of the eternity of the second person, it was not that I set any value upon that demonstration as adding in the least degree to the certainty of the Scripture doctrine. Upon such points the evidence of Holy Scripture is indeed, the only thing that amounts to proof. The utmost that reasoning can do, is to lead to the discovery, and by God's grace to the humble acknowledgment of the weakness and insufficiency of reason; to resist her encroachments upon the province of faith; to silence her objections and cast down imaginations, and prevent the in, novations and refinements of philosophy and vain deceit. Had philosophical reasoning upon points of express revelation been held as cheap by Dr Priestley as it is by me, the present controversy never had arisen. But this demonstration of the Son's eternity, was produced for no other purpose but to shew the disagreement between the immediate consequences of the principle from which it was deduced, and certain notions which Dr Priestley would ascribe to those who held that principle. But Dr Priestley mistaking for an illustration of Scripture what is only an illustration of writers whose meaning had been perverted by him, conceiving that the whole Catholic doctrine of the Trinity would be confuted, if a