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As I am now about to conclude, I must call back the mind of my reader, and having brought my argument to an end, refer to him the issue upon which he is to determine.

Either Jefus Chrift is one with the Father, God, or he is not; either the Holy Ghoft is one with the Father and the Son, God, or he is not.-On fuppofing that the negative fide of this dilemma can be affumed, (and for argument's fake it must be supposed, however irkfome) a confequence enfues, horrible to thought. The God of peace becomes a firebrand of contention; tenfold confufion proceeds from God, "who is not the author of confufion;" the Spirit of truth is a lyar; the fimple and guilelefs zeal of the apoftle, is crafty and defigning duplicity; the wifdom of the omniscient, folly, beneath the foolishness of men; and the revelation of the God of truth, from end to end, fcarce the word of defigning falfehood, it must have proceeded from a dupe to his own artifices. I fhudder while I write but it is acknowledged that the fcriptures are the word of God, and the application of this defcription to them I will leave with men who can perfift in the denial of this great mystery: Whereas, on the other hand, three perfons and one God being acknowJedged, a fact is established concerning the things of God, incomprehenfible to us, who have not fpiritual things to compare with fpiritual, and which therefore, though it may transcend, can never contradict our reafon. Our belief, which is all that is required, may be yielded to the evidence of the fact without any violence offered to our understanding; and therefore, however incomprehenfible the object of the teftimony may be, there can be no difficulty in making the affirmative, which does not equally attend upon pronouncing the

negative

negative of the propofition, and one of the two we are under an abfolute neceffity of adopting.

In whatfoever God acts, he must condefcend. The whole extent of created nature bears to him but a like proportion as an atom; he is equally the God of a fraction as of the univerfe; and fraction is as commenfurate to his infinity as the universe. But his love is infinite, and we have been the object of it, an object as obfervable by him as all worlds; for, little as we are, we bear the fame proportion to him. Let us then lay afide that pride, which, in the pretence of humility, withdraws mankind from the eye of his Maker; from that microscopick eye, by which even the hairs of our head are numbered; that equal and all-pervading eye, which as accurately fees and marks the fall of a sparrow, as the crush of worlds. When we thus confider him, doubts will vanifh; we fhall fee that we may poffibly be within his contemplation, the objects of his favour; we shall acquiefce in a revelation of the benefits he has conferred upon us, and acknowledge that we have been the objects of his favour; our ignorance fhall be diffipated, our pride depofed; and reason (rightly fo called) affuming her proper dignity, conduct us with certainty fo far as her own prefcribed boundaries extend; instruct us where to pause; teach us the limits of our own faculties, and the illimitable extent of our Maker's; put an end to idle fpeculation; point out God as our revealed Benefactor, not the fubject of our inquifitive curiofity; dictate confidence and hope in him; and make us, because he has revealed it," to acknowledge the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Chrift.”

FINIS.

TO THE

TEXTS of SCRIPTURE quoted in the third Chapter, according to the Order in which they stand compared.

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