the eternal existence of the Deity at all, as that particular mode of it, which the Scriptures inform us is the true

one.

Even were the Deity comprehensible in every thing but his eternity, the incomprehensibleness of that eternity would demonstrate the folly and absurdity of all speculations relating to the eternal generation of the Son. This absurdity is immeasurably increased by our utter inability to form an adequate conception of the Deity in any of his attributes. Wise and happy are they who humbly acquiesce in this necessity of their nature, and never torture their finite understandings by vainly attempting to make them comprehend infinity. But if any person's mind be so vitiated with vain philosophy, as not to be able to repose in the simple doctrine of Scripture as to the relation of God the Son to God the Father, without some analogy to reconcile that relation with their co-eternity; or if any one wish for such analogy to stop the mouths of gainsayers; since " God is a Spirit," he must seek for that analogy in the spiritual world, where he knows nothing sufficiently to found an analogy upon, but his own rational soul. It is by analogies drawn from its qualities and operations, divested, as far as the imagination can divest them, of all faults and imperfections, that we are able to form our best conceptions of all the acts and attributes of God. Very inadequate must ever be the ideas thus formed, even when there does exist something in our minds resembling, at an infinite distance, what is revealed to us of the Deity; and it is impossible for us to form any idea whatever of the manner of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father alone, (ovos ix μovov,) to which there is nothing in the operations of our minds that bears even an infinitely distant resemblance. Let no

one, therefore, so far deceive himself as to imagine that he can discern in the following passage, translated from the Thesaurus of Cyril of Alexandria,* any thing more than a faint illustration of the possibility of a spiritual generation, coeval with the existence of an incorporeal spiritual parent.

"If any one would investigate the generation from himself, (viz. of God the Son from God the Father,) he ought to consider the fructifications of intellect, and to endeavour rather to compare with them (than with physical propagations) the generation of the Word; and not to say that God is less capable of generating than body, because he generates not in a corporeal way. That the human intellect generates good thoughts, must necessarily be confessed. If it be impious to suppose that the human intellect is unfruitful, how much more absurd to think that the Supreme Intellect should be unproductive, and to deprive it of its proper fructification?”? Thus St. Cyril compares the generative faculty (if the expression may be allowed) of the Divine Nature to the necessary fecundity of Intelligence. And in another place he says, it may be conceived that the Son is in

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Made Bishop of Alexandria, a. d. 412. "His Thesaurus is a work upon the Trinity, in which he lays down thirty-five propositions about the Divinity and consubstantiality of the Son and Holy Spirit, which he proves exactly after the manner of the schools, by texts of Scripture, upheld and supported by arguments and syllogisms in form, which he uses to subdue the Arians and Eunomians, and to retort upon them those testimonies of Scripture which they commonly alleged. He propounds their objec tions in the same manner, and answers them with like subtilties." -DU PIN'S History of Ecclesiastical Writers.

2 See Bishop HORSLEY'S Tracts in Controversy with Dr Priestley. Disquisition iv. p. 521.

such sort begotten of the Father, as wisdom is of intellect." But this is carrying the matter too far, and proposing an explanation of an inexplicable mystery, instead of merely an illustration of its possibility. For this latter purpose, such comparisons as Cyril's are the best that can be found, and, I think, quite satisfactory; but the moment we attempt to raise them into theories for explaining the manner of the Eternal Generation, we get beyond our depth, and involve ourselves in error and confusion.3

It is stated in the Athanasian creed, as a Doctrine of Scripture, that "the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. And in this Trinity, none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than another; but the whole three persons are co-eternal together, and coequal." In that they are co-equal, none is greater or less than another in that they are co-eternal, none is afore or after other. But though there is this perfect equality in eternity, in power and glory; still there is a distinction of order and of office, by which the Father is the first Person in the Trinity, the Son the second, and the

:

3" 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 has been devised by man, or that may even occur to a man's own thoughts, to illustrate or explain its difficulties. Since 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."-HORSLEY'S Tracts, &c. Disq. IV.

Holy Ghost the third. This is inferred from the very names, Father and Son; from the fact of the Son having derived his being from the Father, and the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son; and from the Son's having been given2 and sent by the Father, and the Holy Ghost by the Father and the son.4

(G) P. 31.-In this peculiar sense, CHILDREN OF God.

Men are called Children of God, and God their Father, in various senses.

I. God is the "FATHER OF ALL," as the author and preserver of their being. See Ephes. iv. 6, 1 Cor. viii. 6, Acts, xvii. 28, 29. Luke, iii. 38. Mal. ii. 10, Is. lxiv. 8.

II. Since the Holy Ghost is God, God is in a more peculiar sense the Father of all who are "born of water and of the Spirit ;" that is, of all who "have been buried by Christ by baptism unto death," having thus in the appointed way, "washed away their sins," those deadly enemies of the soul, and received" the gift of the Holy Ghost," to enable them to "walk in newness of life."5 In one or both of these senses, we are all instructed to address God as "Our Father." See Mat. vi. 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 14, 15, &c. and xxiii. 9.

III. Not only all Christians; but all who at any time have professed to worship the true God, have professed

2 John, iii. 16.

4 John, xiv. 26, and xv. 26. 7 Acts, ii. 38.

3

John, iii. 17, and 1 John, iv. 9.

5 Rom. vi. 4. 6 Acts, xxii. 16.

(see John, viii. 41,) to be in a peculiar sense Children of God, and have occasionally been distinguished by that Title, as in Gen. vi. 2.

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IV. But only they who actually worship God in spirit and in truth; who obediently "hear God's words," and "love" him who "proceeded forth and came from God,” are indeed the Children of God, in the sense to which that title is confined in the Epistles of St. John. As "they which are of the faith, the same are the children of Abraham,"1 because they imitate the faith, and "do the works of Abraham ;" so are they also called " children of God," because they are sincere" followers," or imitators "of God, as dear children," because they cultivate true love even towards their enemies, "that they may be children of their Father which is in Heaven ;5 heartily, yet humbly endeavouring, "in the power of his might,"6 to be "perfect even as their Father which is in Heaven is perfect."

The expression "born of God," in St. John's Epistles, means having become children of God. To be born, or more literally to have been born of God, to be of God, and to be Sons of God, are one and the same thing: and the first time St. John uses the first of these expressions, he distinctly explains in what sense we are to understand it, namely, in the sense above deduced from his Gospel and other parts of Scripture, "If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him. Behold what manner of love the

1 Gal. iii. 7. 2 John, viii. 39. 3 Rom. ix. 8. 4 Ephes. v. 1.

Ephes. vi. 10.

7 Matt. v. 48.