sonable, and is attended with no other difficulties than those which equally attend a past eternity.

The eternal generation of the Word is not found in Scripture, nor is he called the Son of God upon any account antecedent to the incarnation. So says Dr Bennet, and so say some other writers on both sides of the controversy. Yet there are expressions in the New Testament, from which, I think, it may be collected that our Saviour was Son of God before his earthly nativity. But (howsoever that be) since there is one God and Father, and First Cause of all, the difference between Son of God, and Word of God is to us nominal and imperceptible, and both certainly imply a derivation.

St John, says that all things were made by the Word, St Paul says that God made all things by his Son; whence it appears that the Word, and the Son, are one and the same person, receiving his existence from one and the same Father.

One of the texts on which the ancients founded the generation of the Son before his incarnation, is in Psalm cx. 3. according to the LXX. Before the morning star I begut thee: a text which certainly is full to the purpose, if we admit this ancient translation of it to be right, and our present Hebrew text to want emendation.

To settle the controversial bounds between the Arians, the Semiarians, and the Athanasians or Consubstantialists of those days, and to determine how far they agreed, and how far they differed, and how far they were or were not consistent with themselves, is, if not an impossibility, yet certainly a very difficult task. They were not to be blamed for their inquiries about this subject; their disputes with Jews and Pa

gans

gans must have unavoidably led them into it: but they should not have reviled and persecuted one another, or required an assent, under pain of excommunication, banishment, infamy, and beggary, to expressions not used by sacred writers. Is this the reverence and respect which ought to be paid to the Holy Scriptures?

Our Saviour is represented as submitting to sufferings and to death for our sakes, and then exalted by his Father to the highest glory and dominion; and because in a submission to transient sufferings so amply rewarded, there might seem to be no great example of compassion and condescension, and of that love which passeth knowledge, therefore the writers of the New Testament have given us some account of his antecedent condition, and inform us that he who was rich became poor for our sakes, and quitted a state of splendor and happiness, and humbled and emptied himself, εκένωσε καὶ ἐλαπείνωσεν ἑαυτὸν, when he became man. This leads us directly to inquire into the dignity of his nature, concerning which, after all our enquiries, we can know no more than the Holy Scriptures have told us; and from those passages it seems (to me at least) to be a fair inference, that the Son possessed from all eternity all that the infinite love and infinite power and infinite wisdom of the Father could communicate.

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But here it will be asked perhaps, What was the doctrine of the Nicene fathers? and what did they mean by Consubstantiality?

It is impossible to answer this question without using logical and methaphysical terms.

By the word ouros, they meant, not of the same numerical or individual substance, but of the same generical

* That μocios means of one substance in kind, hath been shewed

rical substance or subsistence. As amongst men, a son is μ with his father, that is, of the same human nature; so, in their opinion the Son of God is Moos with the Father, that is, of the same divine na

ture.

By this word, therefore, they intended to express the same kind of nature, and so far a natural equality.

But according to them, this natural equality excluded not a relative inequality; a majority and minority, founded upon the everlasting difference between giving and receiving, causing and being caused.

They had no notion of distinguishing between person and being, between an intelligent agent, and an intelligent active substance, subsistence, or entity.

When they said that the Father was God, they meant that he was God of himself, originally, and underived, Θεὸς ἀγέννητος, and ὁ Θεός.

When they said that the Son was God, they meant that he was God by generation or derivation, Oròs γεννητός.

The Unity of God they maintained, and they defended it, first, by considering the Father as the First Cause, the only underived and self-existing; secondly, by supposing an intimate, inseparable, and incomprehensible

by Petavius, Curcellæus, Cudworth, Le Clerc, &c. and to prove it would be actum agere.

Ὁμούσιος τῷ Πατρὶ κατὰ τὴν θεότητα, καὶ ὁμούσιος ἡμῖν κατὰ τὴν ar@pwróτnla. Of one substance with the Father, as to his divinity; and of one substance with us, as to his humanity. Concil. Chalcedonense, So say the writers of the fifth century who were called orthodox: but they who speak thus, must have understood by oμotoros, of one substance in kind, if we suppose them to have had any ideas affixed to their words, and to have been consistent with themselves, which is more indeed than I would affirm,

prehensible union, connection, indwelling, and co-existence, by which the Father was in the Son, and the Son in the Father; and, thirdly, by saying that in the Father and the Son there was an unity of will, design, and consent, and one divine power and dominion, originally in the Father, and derivatively in the Son.

Such seems to have been their system, and my design is, barely to represent it, and to do it justice.

In process of time Christians went into a notion that the Son was ταυλούσιος and μονούσιος, of the same individual substance with the Father, and with the Holy Spirit; and they seem to have done this, with a view to secure the doctrine of the unity.

The school-men took up the subject, and treated it in their way, which they called explaining, and which men of sense call impenetrable jargon.

Of all the modern writers upon this controversy, they who have undertaken to prove the doctrine of the Trinity by Cabbalism have talked in the most singular manner; though, I doubt not, with very honest and upright intentions.

A notable specimen of this way of talking is produced in Clarke's Letter to Wells. The author, whosoever he was, informs us, that Job xii. 12. with the ancient is wisdom, means With the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit; that the maid in Job xxxi. 1, 2. is the Virgin Mary; that Christ sent himself, and consequently prayed and returned thanks to himself, interceded with himself, &c. that whilst he was upon earth the kingdom of heaven was held in commission, and managed by the angels, &c. &c. He should have added to all his proofs the spurious text in 1 John v. 7. There are three that bear record, &c.

One

One Meyer wrote a book, De Mysterio S. S. Trinitatis ex solius Veteris Testamenti Libris demonstrato. The text which he urges as the most clear and conclusive of all, is Deut. vi. 4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord: in which he is not at all singular, many of his cabbalistic brethren having made the same remark on the same text.

Rabbi Judah hath preserved a tradition, that the ancient Jews in their Liturgy, used this form of prayer, I and HE, save, I pray: and this Galimatias is a mystical representation of the Trinity, according to some persons who were learned men, but too much addicted to Rabbinism. See Jac. Alting Gram. Hebr. Exerc. iii. and Vitringa in Jesai. xliii. p. 469.

The famous Postellus observed, that there were eleven thousand proofs of the Trinity in the Old Testament, interpreted rightly, that is, étuμoroyixoμusinonabbaλιτικώς.

"Your friend (says Clarke to Nelson) being a sincere and sober-minded man, has entered only a lit"tle way into these traditionary explications of Scripture; but those who have gone far into them, "have given such visionary and cabbalistical inter

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pretations, especially of the Old Testament, as give "too sad occasion for infidels to look upon all reli"gion as enthusiasm, and particularly have caused "the study of the Hebrew language, which of itself "is a plain, easy, inartificial language, to be brought by men of weak judgment abusing it, into the ut"most contempt."

Abbadie, a man of vivacity and of a warm imagination, wrote two treatises in the one he proved with much spirit and elegance the truth of natural and re