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still, while this supremacy and lordship of God. manifest may never be doubted, I argue not the less that Christ will suffer no worship to terminate in himself, as an ultimate object, but will lead it up into the invisible and infinite Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; where again no worship is received, nor petition answered, which doth not come through the manifest Godhead as its way, and from the indwelling Spirit as its source: so that the end of the whole matter is, that the creature is taken into the circle of the inter-communion of the blessed Trinity, and therein consisteth its blessedness and its stability.

Now I may say, that any difficulties which may appear on this subject vanish at once, to any one who will but look on Christ, who, though he was very God and very man, did not the less direct his worship unto the Father, and pray unto him continually. And when he gave that form of prayer, commonly called the Lord's Prayer, it was addressed unto the Father. This was not for example's sake, nor did it arise out of his humiliation, but is the example of what he shall ever be, as the Head of redeemed creation; evermore directing his homage unto the invisible God. Let no one think that this is to derogate from the Divinity of the Son, or of the Holy Ghost; any more than it is to derogate from the Divinity of the Father, to say that he dwelleth in us, by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and shall never otherwise be felt; any more than it derogates from the Divinity of the Father, to say that he is manifest in the Son. It is not the Holy Ghost inhabiting merely, but it is the substance of the Godhead, in the person of the Holy Ghost: and it is not the Son merely, sustaining and

redeeming all things, but it is the Godhead in the person of the Son: and it is not the Father merely that is worshipped, but it is the Godhead, in the person of the Father, and the Son is worshipped equally with the Father; and so, also, the Holy Ghost and the Father is manifested equally with the Son; and so, also, is the Holy Ghost: and the Father inhabiteth equally with the Holy Ghost; and so, also, doth the Son. The same substance is present in the threefold personalities; the personalities most distinct, the substance most entirely one. And herein is the mystery of the Trinity most excellent and most glorious; and herein are all Sabellian schemes of the Trinity, which do not hold the distinctness of the personalities, devoutly to be abhorred; for, if you keep not the personalities distinct, observe what follows. Confound the personality of the Son with the personality of the Holy Ghost, or deny the latter, which is virtually, yea, and avowedly too, a most wide-spread heresy; and it immediately follows, that every member of Christ, inhabited by the Holy Ghost, is upon an equal footing with Christ;-that every one of us is an Immanuel, or God with us, as certain blasphemously affirm;—and straightway there follows upon this a total loss of Christ's great act of love and of atonement. Again, confound the personality of the Father with the personality of the Son, which is to all intents and purposes done by worshipping the Son as the ultimate object of worship, instead of regarding him as High Priest and Intercessor, and you mingle at once God and the creature; and will come to worship him, not as a personal God, separate from the creature, but as a widely diffused power and omnipresent influence.

So that, without the doctrine of the Trinity of persons in a unity of substance, the whole scheme of redemption and revelation, of a creation, of a fall, and of a regeneration, is an ineffectual and vain display of power and suffering, which accomplisheth nothing.

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II. So much have I to say with respect to the light which this discourse of the Incarnation casteth upon the actings of the one Godhead in a Trinity of Persons to the ends of creation, revelation and worship: and I now proceed to see what light it sheddeth upon the re-constituted creation under Christ the Head thereof. In creation there are three things to be kept distinct by an impassable gulph. The first is, the redeemed creature; the second is, the Head of the redeemed creature; the third, the invisible God. If the creature jostle or mingle with its Head, then the procuring cause of its redemption, and the abiding cause of its stability, atonement, intercession, manifestation of God, and every thing else, which since the Fall hath been transacted, and till the giving up of the kingdom remaineth to be transacted, becometh a dead and unmeaning thing. Therefore, I say, the Head of the redeemed creation and the redeemed creation must be distinct and separate by a gulph impassable. This is the first distinctness; and these two existences so distinct must yet be united more closely than any visible union: for every visible union is disunited, as the body from the soul, and the members of the body from each other; but by an indissoluble union must the redeemed creature be united with its Head, in order that it may know and feel that it standeth only in Christ, and through Christ only can worship the Father. Now

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this union, beyond all unions close, yet in distinctness and separation impassable, is compassed by the union of the two natures in the person of Christ. Christ the Head, being God and redeemed manhood in one person, which redeemed manhood maketh the redeemed creature of one substance with him; so that in that manhood every elect creature standeth, and yet no elect creature tasteth of his Godhead; and thus is the Christ personal separated from, yet united to, the Christ mystical, with all that dependeth thence. To constitute the union, the Holy Ghost laboureth; to preserve the distinctness, the distinct personality of the Son from that of the Holy Ghost prevaileth: and finally, to prevent the creature thus redeemed by the Holy Ghost, and headed up in Christ, from aspiring to, or mixing with, the invisible Godhead; to throw in another impassable gulph between the creature redeemed by the Son, inhabited by the Spirit, and the invisible, infinite, incommunicable, incomprehensible Godhead, the distinct personality of the Father prevaileth. So that to accomplish this threefold distinctness, (and unless this be accomplished all, all, is vain,) nothing prevaileth, but the distinct separate personalities of the Godhead, never to be confounded, in one substance never to be disunited. The doctrine of the Trinity is the only view of God which will give him separateness from the creature, and yet communicate to the creature of his indefectibility and blessedness and the great end served by the coming of the Son of God in the flesh is, the making known of the great truth of the Godhead as one substance in three persons subsisting, whose distinctness from one another is the ground and basis of all distinction between the redeemed creature inhabited

and possessed by the Holy Ghost, and its Head, which is the Lord Jesus Christ; and between these two, considered as the whole visible existence, and the invisible Godhead. This necessity of perfect distinctness between these three subsistences-to wit, the redeemed creature, the Head of the redeemed creature, and the invisible Godhead, is the reason, and ground, and fruit of the doctrine of the three persons in the Godhead.

Now, this is a subject of such great importance in itself, and in its consequences so unbounded, and withal a subject so little understood, or treated as a speculation,--whereas, it is the only defence against Spinozism, and Sabellianism, and that philosophy of the West and religion of the East, which makes God the soul of the creatures, or the creatures an emanation from God,-that I deem it good to open it at some length, and to shew how it is the essence and the substance of all sound doctrine whatsoever concerning the creatures, and concerning God the object of the creature's worship.

1. The end of God, in giving existence beside himself, is to communicate life in such a way as shall consist with his own being and glory. Accordingly, the creation was completed in a living soul; but Adam, thus formed, was not the perfect or complete creature, but only the likeness or type of him that is to be. And therefore Adam could not have eternal or immortal life to give; which required that the life should be manifested, which was done in the person of Christ, who brought life and immortality to light. In him was life, and to him only it belongeth to convey life, who could say, "I am the life. I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me shall never die he that believeth in me hath everlast

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