the weapons of whose warfare have been mighty in this spiritual field; this, I must confefs, is a circumstance enough discouraging; but however, not without its counterbalance in certain confiderations. The race is not always to the Swift, nor the battle to the strong. Matters are capable of being set in new lights; nor will any exertion be desperate which has for its object the honour of God, and the peace of his Church. Men are wedded to their errors as much as to their vices; but as we are not to be remiss, or hopeless in our labours for the reformation of finners, though the whole world should lie in wickedness; so neither should we be impeded or disheartened in our attempts for the conversion of infidels and heretics, by that pride, that prejudice, however contracted, that hardness, or that flowness of heart, which indisposes them for the reception of truth. After all, inquiries of this nature are of very confiderable use and importance; they cannot fail at least to stablish, strengthen, and fettle ourselves; to root and ground us in that faith which we shall find to be built upon the most immoveable foundations.

That affertors and vindicators of this faith, that champions for the Church militant, might never be wanting in this place, the zeal and the piety, the wisdom, and the munificence of our founder hath nobly provided. The present institution is happily diftinguished by its location; and, in some degree to answer and accomplish it's end, I shall proceed with as much confidence and satisfaction as may reasonably be supposed to arife from a proper sense of obligation, a full perfuafion of the truth of the great doctrines in question, and particularly of the merits of the Trinitarian cause.

DIS

DISCOURSE II.

T

O the Scriptures of the Old Testament our blessed Saviour referred the Jews for fatisfaction with respect to his claims to the character in which he appeared among them; and to the Scriptures of the New Testament, together with the other, I am to refer for proofs of those great but mysterious doctrines which I have undertaken to defend: the doctrines contained in the Liturgy, and in the Articles of the Church of England.

Without laying before you at present all, or the principal texts by which the doctrine of

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of the Trinity is supported, or in which the absolute divinity both of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is explicitly afferted, or necessarily implied, we may previously remark that, supposing them to be authentic, unequivocal, and intelligible, the infidel is in fact precluded from taking advantage of those passages which are declarative either of the acknowleged humanity of Jesus Christ, or of the gifts and operations of the blessed Spirit: that humanity, and those operations being things manifestly diftinct from the Divine essence, and real personality. What we shall have to do therefore will be to enquire, in due time and place, whether the exceptions which have been made against the texts with which the catholic doctrine is fortified, are grounded in principles of common candour and common sense; or, in other words, whether the interpretations of anti-trinitarians are critically just, and agreable to the rules which are generally allowed to govern interpretation. In the mean time, it will be well worth while to examine, whether the doctrine before us is not proveable by evidence which, though indirect and collateral, is irrefistible. There is hardly any such thing as framing a sentence, or a propofition that cannot be prevaricated with; but the tenor of a context, and the weight of circumstances will not eafily admit of sophistication.

According to the Athanafian Creed, as it is called, "the Catholic Faith is this; that " we worship one God in Trinity, and Tri"nity in Unity; and that the Godhead of "the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy "Ghost is all one: the Glory equal, the "Majesty co-eternal." But what faith the Scripture? Saith it not, in effect, the fame also? That the Father is the first Person in the Trinity, merely in order of nomination; the Son, the second; and the Holy Ghost, the third; is sufficiently demonstrable from many confiderations. In the first place, though the three divine Persons are usually mentioned in a manner which at first sight seems to import an order of a different kind, yet this order is upon some occasions