372 THE ARIAN INVITED TO ORTHODOX FÁITH. Now, if we review all these considerations, and join the force of them together, perhaps it will appear, that the explica- tion of the Trinity, by the idea of a divine being with his two divine powers, will allow such a personality to the Word and holy Spirit, as may be sufficient to answer the representation given of them in scripture. Yet I will by no means contend for the use of the word per- son to express the divine nature of Christ, or the Holy Spirit. 1 have oftenasserted, and repeat it again, that when I express the doctrine of the Trinity by three persons being one God, I mean no more, than that there " are three, who have sufficient communion in one godhead to have proper divine names, titles and attributes ascribed to them, and sufficient distinction from each other to sustain the various characters andoffices that are assigned to them in scripture." Perhaps the word person may be the best word we have to express the character of God the Father, or of Christ as God- man, in his complete constitution, as a complex being : Yet, perhaps, it may not be the very clearest and happiest term that could possibly have been found to express the characters of the Word and Spirit in a philosophical manner, considered as mere distinctions in the divine nature. But let it be remembered, that it is not the custom of scripture, nor the design of the great and blessed God, to represent either heavenly or earthly things to us in their own philosophical nature, where our concern in them does not depend upon a philosophical knowledge of them : And therefore in these matters God is pleased to accommodate his language to the sentiments of. the bulk of the people to whom they were first written. So the scripture speaks of the motion of the sun, of the fixation, or establishment and foundation of the earth, of the pillarsof the heavens, of theheart and reins giving instruction, as being the seat of the soul, according to the. He- brew opinion, though these things are not literally and philoso- phically true. Now since our salvation does not depend upon the knowledge of the precise points of unity and distinction, be- tween Father, and Son, and Spirit ; or .whether the Word and Spirit be proper powers, or proper persons in their own sublime nature ; but upon their divine all-sufficiency to fulfil their offices, and support their relations to us : It is very probable that God condescended to talk to his people according to their own way of thinking and talking, and to represent himself as acting by his divine powers under the character of persons, without giving us any account of the real philosophical distinctions in his incompre- hensible essence, how great or how little they are : And the reason of this his conduct may be, because an exact and just philosophical account of these things is, perhaps, too transcen- dent for our conceptions in the present state, or that it was not
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