184 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THn TRINITY. have not such real commnnidn in bile nature, as these three say erect persons have in one godhead. But since these things are so difficult to determine, I will never contend with my brother, or fellbw-Christian, who scruples to use the word person in this doctrine; provided he will but allow such a distinction between the sacred three, as is sufficient to support their distinct chant-, tens and offices assigned tó-them in scripture : And this is all that I mean by using this word. Yet since the wordperson is the best word that we know, andcomes nearest to the ideas or conceptions, which the scripture seems to give us of the distinc- tion betweenFather, Son, and Spirit ; I use it still with great freedom and satisfaction, in a sense near a-kin to the common sense Of the word. A MORAL ARGUMENT. At have usedone moral argument at the end of the tenth proposition, to prove the true and proper Deity of Father, Sun, and Spirit: so I shall propose another of the same kind under this proposition, to confirm both the doctrine of their Deity and distinct personality together : And it is this, This great article of belief, that " Father, Son, and Spi= lit are three persons, and yet one God," is so sublime in its na= time, so impossible to be found out by human reason if it had not been revealed ; it carries in it such an appearance of contradic- tion at first, it is so exceeding hard to explain and reconcile, even when it is well considered by us ; and it is so shocking and Offensive in the most usual explications of it to the great pre- tenders to reason, that it can hardly be supposed how it should enter into the minds of men at first ; and how it should have seen so generally believed in the christian church in almost all 'ages of Christianity; if it had not been very plainly revealed, and strongly confirmed in scripture so that those honest and consci= entioüs men could not wink against the light and strength of evidence, nor turn the scripture to any other sense. It is not to be imagined that such a doctrine of the Trinity, which has no countenance from the light of nature nor any man- ner of allurement in it to gratify the lusts or fancies of men, nor flatter the pride of human reason, should ever have come, with- out most forcible evidence, into the heads of such multitudes of great and wise men, who thought and searchedwith freedom for themselves, and who read the bible with a honest enquiry after truth ; I say it is not to be imagined that such a strange article should ever have been believed by these men, and brought into the church, or subsisted there somany hundred years, and espe- ciálly since the reformation, were it not for the plain, strong, over-bearing light, and resistless proofs of it that are found in
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