.I. ART. is not a direct atheist, that the thoughts of the Supreme Mind give impressions and motions to matter. So our thoughts may give a motion, or the determination of motion to matter, and yet rise from substances wholly dif ferent from it. Nor is it inconceivable, that the Supreme Mind should have put our minds likewise under such a subordination to some material motions, that out of them peculiar thoughts should arise in us. And though this union is that which we cannot distinctly conceive; yet there is no difficulty in it, equal to that of our imagining that matter can think or move itself. We perceive that we ourselves and the rest of mankind have thinking principles within us; so from thence it is easy enough to us to apprehend, that there may be other thinking beings, which either have no bodies at all, but act purely as intellectual substances; or if they have bodies, that they are so subtilized as to be capable of a vast quickness of motion, such in proportion as we perceive to be in our animal spirits, which, in the minute that our minds command them, are raising motions in the remotest parts of our bodies. Such bodies may also be so thin as to be invisible to us; and as among men some are good and some bad, and of the bad some seem to be determinedly, and, as to all appearance, incurably bad; so there may have been a time and state of liberty, in which those spirits were left to their choice, whether they would continue in their innocency, or fall from it; and such as continued might be for ever fixed in that state, or exalted to higher degrees in it: and such as fell from it might fall irrecoverably into a state of utter apostasy from God, and of rebellion against him. There is nothing in this theory that is incredible: therefore if the Scriptures have told us any thing concerning it, we have no reason to be prejudiced against them upon that account: besides that, there are innumerable histories in many several countries and ages of the world, of extraordinary apparitions, and other unaccountable performances, that could only have been done by invisible powers. Many of those are so well attested, that it argues a strange pitch of obstinacy, to refuse to believe a matter of fact when it is well vouched, and when there is nothing in reason to oppose it, but an unwillingness to believe invisible beings. It is true, this is an argument in which a fabulous humour will go far, and in which some are so credulous as to swallow down every thing; therefore all wise men ought to suspend their belief, and not to go too fast: but when things are so undeniably attested, that there I. is no reason to question the exactness or the credit of the ART. witnesses, it argues a mind unreasonably prepossessed to reject all such evidence. All those invisible beings were created by God, and are not to be considered as emanations or rays of his essence, which was a gross conceit of such philosophers as fancied that the Deity had parts. They are beings created by him, and are capable of passing through various scenes, in bodies more or less refined. In this life the state of our minds receives vast alterations from the state of our bodies, which ripen gradually and after they are come to their full growth, they cannot hold in that condition long, but sink down much faster than they grew up; some humours or diseases discomposing the brain, which is the seat of the mind, so entirely, that it cannot serve it, at least so far as to reflex acts. So in the next state it is possible that we may at first be in a less perfect condition by reason of this, that we may have a less perfect body, to which we may be united between our death and the general resurrection; and there may be a time, in which we may receive a vast addition and exaltation in that state, by the raising up of our former bodies, and the reuniting us to them, which may give us a greater compass, and a higher elevation. These things are only proposed as suppositions, that have no absurdity in them: so that if they should happen to be the parts of a revealed religion, there is no reason to doubt of it, or to reject it, on such an account. The last branch of this Article is, the assertion of that great doctrine of the Christian Religion concerning the Trinity, or Three Persons in one divine essence. It is a vain attempt to go about to prove this by reason for it must be confessed, that we should have had no cause to have thought of any such thing, if the Scriptures had not revealed it to us. There are indeed prints of a very ancient tradition in the world, of three in the Deity; called the Word, or the Wisdom, and the Spirit, or the Love, besides the fountain of both these, God: this was believed by those from whom the most ancient philosophers had their doctrines. The author of the Book of Wisdom, Philo, and the Chaldee paraphrasts, have many things that shew that they had received those traditions from the former ages; but it is not so easy to determine what gave the first rise to them. It has been much argued, whether this was revealed in the Old Testament or not; some from the plural termination of Elohim, which is joined to singular verbs, and from that of the Lord raining fire from the Lord upon Sodom, I. ART. (Jehovah from Jehovah); from the description of the Wisdom of God in the 8th of the Proverbs, as a Person with God from all eternity; and from the mention that is often made of the Spirit, as well as the Word of God that came to the Prophets; they have, I say, from all these places, and some others, concluded, that this is contained in the Old Testament. Others have doubted of this, and have said that the name Elohim, though of a plural termination, being often joined to a singular verb, makes it reasonable to think it was a singular: which by somewhat peculiar to that language might be of a plural termination. Nor have they thought, that since angels carry the name of God, when they went on special deputations from him, the angels being called Jehovah, could be very confidently urged that sublime description of the Wisdom of God in the Proverbs seems not to them to be a full proof in this matter: for the Wisdom there mentioned seems to be the Wisdom of creation and providence, which is not personal, but belongs to the essence; nor do they think that those places in the Old Testament, in which mention is made of the Word, or of the Spirit of God, can settle this point; for these may only signify God's revealing himself to his prophets. Therefore whatever secret tradition the Jews might have had among them concerning this, from whom perhaps the Greeks might have also had it; yet many do not pretend to prove this from passages in the Old Testament alone: though the expositions given to some of them in the New Testament prove to us, who acknowledge it, what was the true meaning of those passages; yet take the Old Testament in itself without the New, and it must be confessed that it will not be easy to prove this Article from it. But there are very full and clear proofs of it in the New Testament; and they had need be both full and clear, before a doctrine of this nature can be pretended to be proved by them. In order to the making this mystery to be more distinctly intelligible, different methods have been taken. By one Substance many do understand a numerical or individual unity of substance; and by Three Persons they understand three distinct Subsistences in that essence. It is not pretended by these, that we can give a distinct idea of Person or Subsistence, only they hold it imports a real diversity in one from another, and even such a diversity from the substance of the Deity itself, that some things belong to the Person which do not belong to the Substance: for the Substance neither begets, nor is begotten; neither breathes, nor proceeds. If this carries in it some thing that is not agreeable to our notions, nor like any ART. thing that we can apprehend; to this it is said, that if God I. has revealed that in the Scripture which is thus expressed, we are bound to believe it, though we can frame no clear apprehension about it. God's eternity, his being all one single act, his creating and preserving all things, and his being every where, are things that are absolute riddles to us: we cannot bring our minds to conceive them, and yet we must believe that they are so; because we see much greater absurdities must follow upon our conceiving that they should be otherwise. So if God has declared this inexplicable thing concerning himself to us, we are bound to believe it, though we cannot have any clear idea how it truly is. For there appear as strange and unanswerable difficulties in many other things, which yet we know to be true; so if we are once well assured, that God has revealed his doctrine to us, we must silence all objections against it, and believe it: reckoning that our not understanding it, as it is in itself, makes the difficulties seem to be much greater than otherwise they would appear to be, if we had light enough about it, or were capable of forming a more perfect idea of it while we are in this depressed state. Others give another view of this matter, that is not indeed so hard to be apprehended: but that has an objection against it, that seems as great a prejudice against it, as the difficulty of apprehending the other way is against that: it is this; they do hold, that there are three Minds; that the first of these three, who is from that called the Father, did from all eternity by an emanation of essence beget the Son, and by another emanation that was from eternity likewise, and was as essential to him as the former, both the first and the second, did jointly breathe forth the Spirit; and that these are three distinct Minds, every one being God, as much as the other: only the Father is the fountain, and is only self-originated. All this is in a good degree intelligible: but it seems hard to reconcile it both with the idea of unity, which seems to belong to a Being of infinite perfection; and with the many express declarations that are made in the Scriptures concerning the unity of God. Instead of going farther into explanations of that which is certainly very far beyond all our apprehensions, and that ought therefore to be let alone, I shall now consider what declarations are made in the Scriptures concerning this point. The first and the chief is in that charge and commission which our Saviour gave to his Apostles to go and make dis E 19. ART. ciples to him among all nations, baptizing them in the name I. of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. By name is meant either an authority derived to them, in the virtue of which all nations were to be baptized: or that the persons so Mat.xxviii. baptized are dedicated to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Either of these senses, as it proves them all to be Persons; so it sets them in an equality, in a thing that can only belong to the Divine Nature. Baptism is the receiving men from a state of sin and wrath, into a state of favour, and into the rights of the sons of God, and the hopes of eternal happiness, and a calling them by the name of God. These are things that can only be offered and assured to men in the name of the great and eternal God; and therefore, since, without any distinction or note of inequality, they are all three set together as Persons in whose name this is to be done, they must be all three the true God; otherwise it looks like a just prejudice against our Saviour, and his whole Gospel, that by his express direction the first entrance to it, which gives the visible and fœderal right to those great blessings that are offered by it, or their initiation into it, should be in the name of two created beings, (if the one can be called properly so much as a being, according to their hypothesis,) and that even in an equality with the Supreme and increated Being. The plainness of this charge, and the great occasion upon which it was given, makes this an argument of such force and evidence, that it may justly determine the whole matter. A second argument is taken from this, that we find St. Paul begins or ends most of his Epistles with a salutation in the form of a wish, which is indeed a prayer, or a benediction, in the name of those who are so invocated; in which he wishes the churches Grace, Mercy, and Peace, from God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ*; which is an invocation of Christ in conjunction with the Father, for the greatest blessings of favour and mercy that is a strange strain, if he was only a creature; which yet is delivered without any mitigation or softening in the most remarkable parts of his Epistles. This is carried farther in the conclusion of the second Epistle to the Corinthians; 2 Cor. xiii. The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with you. It is true, this is expressed as a wish, and not in the nature of a prayer, as the common salutations are: but here three great 14. *Rom. i. 7. Rom. xvi. 20, 24. 1 Cor. xvi. 23. 1 Cor. i. 3. 2 Cor. i. 3. Eph. vi. 23. Phil. i. 2. Phil. iv. 23. i. 2. 2 Thess. iii. 18. 1 Thess. v. 28. 2 Thess. |