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264
A
RATIONAL DEFENCE
OF TILE
GOSPEL.
[SEEM. XV.
Three,
whom
the
scripture
describes
as
persons, who
have
some
glorious communion
in
one
godhead
!
and
the
mystery
of
two
natures united
in
one person.
Now,
though the
way
and
manner
how
the three per-
sons,
Father,
Son,
and Spirit, should
be
one God,
and
how two
natures, human and
divine,
should be one
person
in
Christ
Jesus;
I
say,
though the
way
and man-
ner
how
these things
are;
is
not
so
easy to
be
explained
and
unfolded
by us,
and
above
our
own
present capacity
to comprehend and
fully to
explain, yet
I
could
never
find these
things proved impossible to
be.
If
I
must
re-
fuse
to
believe
a thing
that
I
know
not
the
manner and
nature
of,
there are
many things in
the
world
of
nature,
and
in
natural
religion,
that
I
must
disbelieve.
Let
them
explain to
me
in
natural
religion what
is
the eternity
of
God, what
ideas they can have
of
a
being
that
never be-
gan
to
be;
and then
perhaps
I
may be able to
explain to
them
how
three
persons can have communion
in
one god-
head, and
how two
natures can
be one
in
person.
I
am
well
assured, there
are
some
doctrines in natural religion
as
difficult to be
explained,
and
hard to
be
understood,
and
the
manner of
them
is
as
mysterious, as these
doc-
trines
of
revealed
religion, which
are
also
rendered
more
offensive to
the thinking mind,
by
some men's
attempts to
explain
them
in
an
unhappy manner.
But
we
may
go
a
step
lower
to
meet
this
objection, and
confound
it.
In the world
of nature
there are
mysteries
of
this kind, which
are
as
unaccountable
and
as
hard to
be
unfolded
as
the mysteries
of
grace.
It
is
the
doctrine
of
unions
both in the trinity and
the
incarnation,
which
renders
them
so
mysterious.
Now
this
doctrine of
unions
in
natural
philosophy
bath
been
hitherto
insolv-
able.
We
know
that
spirit
and
body
are united
to make
a
man
:
But
the
manner
how
they
are
united, remains
still
a
most
difficult
question. We
know
that
some
bodies
are
hard,
and
some
are
soft
;
but
what
it
is
that
ties
or
unites
hard
bodies
so
closely
together, and makes
them
so diffi-
cult
to be
separated,
is
a riddle
to the best
philosophers,
which they
cannot
solve
;
or what it
is
that
renders the
parts
of
soft bodies
so
easily
separable.
And many
other
things
there are
in
nature
as
mysterious
as
this.
Besides,
if
it were possible for
us
to
explain
all things
in
nature,
and to write a
perfect
book
of
natural
philo-