/1 166 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OP THE TRINITY, that upon a fresh and unbiassed search of matters a mature and deliberate view of the scriptural doctrine of the Trinity, as I find it in the bible, and a new survey of the several schemes found out to explain it, I am more firmly established than ever in this doctrine, that Father, Son, and Spirit, are the one true God, yet subsisting in three persons : But as to the various schemes of explication, there is not any of them can prevail upon me any farther now, than to receive them as possible or probable expli- cations of a very deep and difficult doctrine of scripture. But suppose the professors of any of the best of these schemes should find sufficient arguments from the word of God, to demonstrate the truth of their own scheme, and could prove it beyond all contradiction, that their particular explication of the Trinity, is the very doctrine that is revealed in the Holy Scrip- ture, yet I am sure they can never prove that it is clearly and plainly revealed there. But it still requires much skill and labour of reasoning to draw it out from scripture, and set it in an evident light. Paor. XV.-Thence I infer, that it can never be necessary to Salvation, to know the precise Wayand Manner how one God subsists in three Personal Agents, or how these Three Persons are one Goo. The reasons of this proposition are very evident : 1. Though the doctrine of the Trinity seems to be a funda- mental article of christianity, yet the particular explication of this sacred doctrine, as we have hinted before, cannot be a fun- damental, because " it is not any where revealed to us in scrip- ture, in so plain and manifest language, as. the fundamental articles of our religion are and must be :" For the scriptures were written to make the meanest of men wise to salvation ; even the babes in Christ, and the weak, and the unlearned, the " base and the foolish things of this world, whom God hath chosen and called ;" 1 Cor. i. 27. Now that it is not so, plainly re- vealed, appears, because learned and pious men, who have made a honest search after 'truth, derive their several explications of this doctrine by long and difficult trains of reasoning, and are often ready to commit mistakes, and to run counter to the most established principles of natural reason, and sometimes contra- dict themselves too in this work. I will not denybut there may be several truths both of na- tural and revealed religion that are merely drawn by reasoning and consequence, which may yet be necessary to salvation. But then-thesetare,such as areopen and obvious 'to the first view of reason, and such' as lie very near the surface of scripturé,'if I may so express it, and may be inferred with the greatest ease by men of the lowest rank of understanding. Such easy and ob- vious consequences may contain fundamental doctrines. Btie
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