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scheme, taken in its full extent, Christ, the author and giver of it, is described under what I may call three branches of character, Being,' Acting,' and Suffering. As Jehovah,' Christ is-BEES, or EXISTS; as Adoni,' he ACTS; as Alue,' he SUFFERS. The first branch of character is inherent and essential, the other two are not essential, but official and assumed. Thus Christ is Jehovah by nature, Adoni by commission, and Alue, by voluntary condescension. This the whole code of Scripture demonstrates; but with this distinction, that it is the Old Testament which affords the proofs, while the New Testament makes the application. Our Saviour himself being witness, it is the Old Testament which testifies of him';' in proof of which, beginning at Moses and 'the prophets,' he did, on a certain occasion, expound to his disciples, in all the Scriptures, the things concerning himself; while his apostle, St Paul, did persuade' those who came to him, in his lodging at Rome, concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening. So little ground is there for the derogatory opinion, which too many, calling themselves Christians, have formed, regarding the present usefulness of the scriptures of the Old Testament: an opinion, in which all the avowed enemies of the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, do boldly triumph; the more on this, greatly to be regretted, account,

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› St John v. 39.

2 St Luke xxiv. 27.

3 Acts xxviii. 23.

account, that they are confirmed in this opinion, by some of the avowed friends of that essential doctrine.

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It is however enough, for my present purpose, that I am possessed of such strong authorities for affirming that Jesus Christ, as One in the Triune essence of Jehovah, is so minutely described, and ⚫ testified of,' in the Old Testament scriptures; and that without any of the modern forms of expression, such as secondary,' generation,' filiation, Sonship,' and the like, which are seen to carry an idea of inferiority in their very sound. The nature of my undertaking does not require me to go further, and precisely state the evidence for a Trinity ' in Unity,' which Moses and the Prophets, and the Psalms' afford. And yet there is a historical and well attested fact, which I cannot resist submitting to the reader's devout attention, as, in my judgement forming, to say the least, a strong presumption, that a Trinity in Jehovah had been the original doctrine of revelation, and the belief of the primitive world.

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It is well known, that the earliest deviation from the purity of instituted worship, of which we have any account, was the plausible device of worshiping the host of heaven, the visible creatures, instead of the invisible Creator. In the language of St Paul, men changed the truth of God," (that is, the true system of religious worship, which Jehovah

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had established), " into a lie." that is, a falsehood of their own invention. How soon after the dispersion at Babel, (when the whole earth was of

one lip, and of one speech'), this corruption may have crept in, we are not informed. It seems in Moses's time to have been prevalent, from the circumstance of his requiring the children of Israel to take good heed unto themselves,' lest when they saw the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, they should be driven to worship and serve them ",' &c.

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Now, it is matter of notoriety to every oriental scholar, that the Hebrew language has no singular noun, whereby to express the word HEAVEN. The Greek and Latin languages, in sacris, adopt the Hebrew idiom. In the Lord's prayer, for instance, the words are, y os povos-Gr. ' qui es in cælis,' Lat. which art in the heavens. Sometimes, indeed, our translators have rendered the Hebrew, in the plural number-" The heavens declare the glory of God"-(literally, in the Hebrew, number 'the glory of Ai3. The heavens therefore, being plural by name, must, consistently with the structure of the Hebrew, as an ideal language, be plu

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I Rom. i. 25.

2 Deut. iv. 19. and xvii. 3. The words translated' host of heaven · have a singular coincidence with the "truth of God," or Jehovah Aleim. Na bost, is singular, corresponding to the singular mm, Jehovab.

,אלהים the heavens, are plural, corresponding to the plural השמים

Aleim.

3 Psalm xix. I.

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ral in essence. Thus, it is by elementary action and re-action, that the established mechanism of the mundane system is kept up and carried on. And, as the first perverters of the true theology made the 'Shemim' their Aleim,' which, in after times, the Greek idolaters rendered into their language, by the word ',' there will appear a striking analogy between the Hebrew word for heavens,' and the Greek word for God.' The analogy is the more complete from this circumstance, that is derived from the root, which, as a verb, signifies to place; while is confessedly derived from the obsolete Greek word w,' the root of the reduplicate verb τίθημι, pono,' put,' place. But, besides coupling, a plural noun, with the noun, host,' in the singular number, Moses expressiv asserts, that God called the firmament ' (p) heavens;' thus expressing, as some learned men have thought, (and certainly there is no heresy in adopting their opinion), that the three elementary agents of fire, light,' and air,' form a triune firmament; and, on this account, are the 'heavens' said, by the Psalmist, to declare the glory of God; that is, to represent, or numerically explain the glory of Al,' the sight' of which 'glory, Moses, in strict conformity with this opinion, does acknowledge to be like devouring FIRE'. In this case, I may well ask, whether there exists any inferiority or subordination in the material, and

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1 Exod. xxiv. 17.

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atmospheric trinity? Are they not, by the tenour of their formation, all of equal condition, character, or aptitude, for their several functions? Why not therefore extend this character of the representative to the object represented; and, through this our glass' of sense, view, though darkly,' the Divine essence? There is a time coming, when we shall see оWTOV TROS TROUWTOV' face to face, the προσωπον προς προσωπον πgоσwлα, faces or persons in Jehovah; not indeed in all the essential splendour of Divine glory, (as I question, whether even the beatified saints will, as creatures, be capable of immediately beholding that), but through the medium, or veil, or brightness, of glorified humanity in him, the Adoni, the Alue, the the GOD-MAN, whom we shall then see

• natws 851-as He is "'

It would not afford edification to the reader, nor be attended with any sort of satisfaction to myself, to wade through the absurd Theogonies of later antiquity. How these were vamped up into a system for the adoption of the Grecian and Roman sages; and how that system was at heart despised, although persevered in, by those sages, is sufficiently well known. Even Socrates, the great patron of what modern philosophy chooses to denominate Theism,' (a term similar, to say the least, in sound, with Deism,") when dying, as is said, for the belief of the true God, did sing a hymn to Apollo, (which

II Cor. xiii. 12.

21 St John iii. 2.

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