QUESTION V. 483 Yet these accidental inconveniences are not a sufficient rea- son for our supine and perpetual contentmemt with confused sen- timents and unintelligible speeches about the modus of sacred truths, if clearer ideas are any ways attainable. There are just and strong motives that may excite us to search into the deep things of God, and to propose all our improvements in knowledge, to the world and the church, though there are no reasons or mo- tives sufficient to impel us to impose our improved notions on others, or to raise contentions and quarrels on the account of them. All our particular illustrations therefore, or clearer concep- tions of this sublime doctrine which God at any time may have favoured us with, should be proposed to the christian world with great modesty, with a humble sense of our falliblenatures, with a gentle address to the wise and to the unwise, without imposing upon their judgments or dictating to their faith, and with a zea- lous care to maintain all those necessary practical regards to the holy Trinity, which are of so muchgreater importance. And if it be an unreasonble thing to dictate to our fellow- christains, and urge our particular sentiments on them in these mysterious points, how much more culpable and domineering is it to establish any especial form of human explication of this sa- cred doctrine as a test of orthodoxy and christianity ! How vain apresumption it is with a pretence of divine authority to impose mere human explications upon the consciences of men, and to forbid them all the sacred blessings of especial communion in the gospel, unless they testify their assent to such a particuliar hypo- thesis or scheme of explication, which the imposera confess to be human, and yet impose it in their own prescribed form of words. The persons who are guilty of this uncharitable practice may consecrate their impositions, and their excommunications with holy names, and call them pure zeal for the divinity of Christy hut I suspect it will be found in the great day to deserve no bet- tera character than amistaken zeal for the honourofChrist, min- gled perhaps with zeal for the divinity of their own notions, which they bad incorporated with the plain and express revela- tions of the godhead of Jesus Christ our Lord. He that makes a private and particular explicationof any doctrinewhich is dark and doubtful in itself, and not clearly re- vealed in scripture, as necessary as the doctrine itself, which is plain and clearly revealed, puts the matter of faith and opinion on the same foot, and intrudes too much upon the authority and kingdom of our Lord Jesus inhis church. n h2
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