PROPOSITION IX. l55 operations. Yet I think it may be worth our enquiry, whether this solemn and awful denunciation of judgment, against those obstinate resisters of the gospel, and blasphemers of the Holy Ghost, might notbe written in such express and dreadful language to stand as a sacred fence and guard, against any attempts to di- minish his divine dignity. Thus I have fulfilled the proposal in the ninth proposition, and shewn a variety of other evidences of the deity of the Son, and of the holy Spirit. I will not pretend, that every text which I have here cited, is so plainly or necessarily determined, to the sense in which I have cited it, as to be free from all objections: Though the greatest part of them cannot reasonably be con- strued to any other sense, without an unnatural strainand force put upon them; to make them serve some Arian or Socinian scheme. And there is just reason to believe, that the all-wise God would never have expressed himself in these scriptures, in such a manner, and used the names of God,* Lord, Jehovah, so promiscuously in speaking of Christ, and of the holy Spirit, and that without any guard, any exception or limitation, if therehad been anyerror or danger in believing Christ or theSpirit, to have proper godhead in them. I do not pretend to instruct the learned world ; my design herewas to write for private and unlearned christians, and to lead them by the fairest and most obvious sense of scripture, into some acquaintance with thegreat doctrineof the Trinity. And it is my settled opinion, that achristian cannever safely build his faith,' in any important article of religion, upon such scriptures as wanta great deal ofart, and labour, and critical skill, to make them speak that article plainly. Yet because the adversaries of our faith, have endeavoured to pervert the natural sense of many a text, those who have a mind to see how the sense of several of these scriptures is confirmed, byjust criticism and rea soning, in opposition to the cavils and objections of men,.,may consult such authors, as have written largely on this subject, as Bishop Pearson, Dr. Barrow, Bishop Bull, Dr. Owen, &c. in the last age, and more lately Mr. Boyse, and Dr. Waterland, in their treatises of the Divinity of Christ, Dr. Waterland's sermons on that subject, Mr. Samuel Mather in his two Dis- courses on the Trinity, and the godhead of the Holy Ghost, Mr. Guyse's two volumes of sermons on the Deity of Christ, and the holy Spirit, and Dr. Knight's sermons on that subject, with se= veral others. I would remark yet further, that though several of these scriptures taken singly and alone, will not certainly prove that the peculiar divine characters are ascribed to the Son and the Spirit, because someof them may be otherwise construed ; yet ' es the two lastparagraphs, under Proposition II.
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