fecure at least a fair and earnest attention to what I fhall have to offer in defence of the myfteries of the Gofpel. If these mysteries fhould be found to be real objects of faith, it will be neither right, nor fafe, to think, or to speak of them indifferently, unhandsomely, or contemptuously.

That the doctrines of the Church of England, the doctrine of one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, and that of the Refurrection of the Body, are as reconcileable to our ideas as the confiftency of free-will with neceffity, or of the Divine perfections with the existence of evil, I should suppose, no man can deny; and therefore the great queftion is, whether those doctrines be undeniably in thofe Scriptures which all with whom I am concerned acknowledge to be the rule of faith,

That, with refpect to the Trinity, the doctrine of the Church has been fo long, so frequently, fo copiously agitated with much less fuccefs, on our part, than might have been expected from fome of the best Soldiers of Jefus Chrift,

the

the weapons of whose warfare have been mighty in this spiritual field; this, I must confess, is a circumstance enough difcouraging; but however, not without its counterbalance in certain confiderations. The race is not always to the Swift, nor the battle to the strong. Matters are capable of being fet in new lights; nor will any exertion be desperate which has for its object the honour of God, and the peace of his Church. Men are wedded to their errors as much as to their vices; but as we are not to be remifs, or hopeless in our labours for the reformation of finners, though the whole world fhould lie in wickedness; fo neither should we be impeded or disheartened in our attempts for the converfion of infidels and heretics, by that pride, that prejudice, however contracted, that hardnefs, or that flowness of heart, which indisposes them for the reception of truth.—After all, inquiries of this nature are of very confiderable use and importance; they cannot fail at least to stablish, ftrengthen, and fettle ourfelves; to root and ground us in that faith which we shall find to be built upon the moft immoveable foundations.

That affertors and vindicators of this faith, that champions for the Church militant, might never be wanting in this place, the zeal and the piety, the wisdom, and the munificence of our founder hath nobly provided. The prefent inftitution is happily diftinguished by its location; and, in fome degree to answer and accomplish it's end, I shall proceed with as much confidence and fatiffaction as may reasonably be supposed to arife from a proper fenfe of obligation, a full perfuafion of the truth of the great doctrines in question, and particularly of the merits of the Trinitarian cause.

DIS

To

our bleffed Saviour referred the Jews for fatisfaction with refpect to his claims to the character in which he appeared among them; and to the Scriptures of the New Teftament, together with the other, I am to refer for proofs of thofe great but mysterious doctrines which I have undertaken to defend; the doctrines contained in the Liturgy, and in the Articles of the Church of England.

Without laying before you at present all, or the principal texts by which the doctrine

of

of the Trinity is fupported, or in which the abfolute divinity both of the Son and of the Holy Ghoft is explicitly afferted, or neceffarily implied, we may previously remark that, fuppofing them to be authentic, unequivocal, and intelligible, the infidel is in fact precluded from taking advantage of those paffages which are declarative either of the acknowleged humanity of Jefus Chrift, or of the gifts and operations of the bleffed Spirit: that humanity, and thofe operations being things manifeftly diftinct from the Divine effence, and real perfonality. What we fhall have to do therefore will be to enquire, in due time and place, whether the exceptions which have been made against the texts with which the catholic doctrine is fortified, are grounded in principles of common candour and common fenfe; or, in other words, whether the interpretations of anti-trinitarians are critically just, and agreable to the rules which are generally allowed to govern interpretation. In the mean time, it will be well worth while to examine, whether the doctrine before us