preffions, yet types and emblems confeffedly fignificant and characteristical will justify our fuitable conclufions. It may be questioned perhaps what is precifely to be understood by the Seven Spirits just mentioned, or by many other symbols in the Revelation; but it would be excefs of perverfenefs to doubt, whether the Lamb in our Apostle's allegorical prophecy be the emblem of Jefus Christ. Whenever therefore we obferve divine honours plainly afcribed to the Lamb, or find him spoken of in terms of equal importance and majesty with those which are predicated of him who is indisputably the true God, the inference is obvious and unavoidable. How then will the antitrinitarian evade the force of such paffages as these? And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, &c. beard I faying, Blessing and glory, and honour, and power, be unto him that fitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.* The Lamb fhall overcome them, for he is Lord of Lords, and King of Kings. † I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty, * Rev. v. 13. + Rev. xvii. 14. and and the Lamb are the temple of it; and the city had no need of the Sun, &c. for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof*: And he fhewed me a pure river of water of life, proceeding out of the throne of God, and of the Lamb. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, &c. hid themJelves in the rocks and the mountains, and faid unto the mountains and rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that fitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. If any man should affect to make a diftinction betwixt him that fitteth on the throne and the Lamb, or him who is faid to fit on the right hand of God, in proof of the fuperiority of the former, I would defire him to remember, that the throne in question is called fometimes fimply the throne of God; fometimes, as in a text lately produced, the throne of God and of the Lamb; that, in another place, the Lamb is faid to be in the midst of the throne; in another, to fit down in the throne of the Father; and that it is the throne of the Son of God which is for ever and ever. * Rev. xxi. 22. + Rev. xxii. i. Rev. vi. 15. So So likewise, notwithstanding the diverfity of conftructions to which the expreffion of the feven fpirits is liable, the perfonality, operation, and Divinity of the Holy Ghost may be demonftrated from the plain literal sense of many places in this book which are utterly void of emblematical ornament, or allufion. Indeed, the whole was evidently dictated by the Spirit, by whofe infpiration all jcripture was given, who alone fearcheth the deep things of God,* and under whose immediate direction our Apostle wrote this epiftle: for he tells us exprefly, before he communicates his Revelations, that he was in the Spirit on the Lord's day; and elfewhere, that he was carried away in the Spirit; and the folemn call to all perfons concerned is frequently repeated, He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit faith unto the Churches. † To all this we may add, that the personal inherency of the Spirit in the effence of the Godhead is demonftrable from St. Paul's illuftration of a paffage just now quoted from him. The Spirit, fays he, fearcheth all things, yea, the * 1 Cor. ii. 10. E + Rev. ii. 11. deep deep things of God. For what man, continues he, knoweth the things of a man, fave the Spirit of man which is in him? Even fo the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. If the confcious fpirit in man is man, the Spirit of God must be effentially God. I defire to obferve yet farther, that nothing lefs than a belief in the doctrine of the Trinity, as it is received in the Church, can fatisfy the full demands of the terms-faith, —and mystery,—which we meet with so repeatedly in the New Teftament, and to which there is so much reference under the old. The whole of the mystery of the divine will made known in the difpenfation of the fulness of times ;* the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world, &c; † or, if you please, the real character of the univerfal Saviour, who was to be both God and man, was a fecret from the beginning. This ftupendous doctrine was infinitely, and by the divine intention, too fublime for the carnal conceptions of the * Ephef. i. 10. + 1 Cor. ii. 7. Jews; Jews; who, whatever they might ultimately understand by, or hope from the Meffiah promifed to Adam, to Abraham, to the Patriarchs, and to others; and foretold by the Prophets in language clear and strong indeed, but at the fame time figurative, magnificent, and mysterious, expected, and primarily defired only a temporal deliverer, who should reftore again, and perpetuate the kingdom to Ifrael. Nay, it is abundantly evident that the Prophets themselves, thofe holy men of God who fpake as they were moved by the Holy Ghoft,* had not an infight into the full scope, and whole import of the facred truths and oracles which they delivered. Our Lord seems to allude to this ignorance, when he acquaints his disciples, that many prophets and kings had defired to fee the things which they faw, and had not feen them, &c. It is true this was faid by way of anticipation; because, as will be fhewn, it was not then even to them given to know the capital mystery of the kingdom of heaven. But St. Peter is plain and full upon this fubject, when, fpeaking, in his first general epistle, of the falvation obtained * 2 Pet. i. 21. E 2 + Luke x. 24. for |