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doctrine of the Trinity may be proved from the first chapter of thebook of Genesis. But whether we admit of this or not, yet thistruth that there are three distinct Persons in the one divine naturemay be interred with sufficient evidence from a multitude of pas-sages in the Old and New Testaments diligently compared toge-ther; but it'would perhaps be rash to rest the proof of so sublimea mystery upon any single text of holy scripture, and would cer-tainly be so to rest it upon the text in question. There are indeedvarious passages in the Old Testament , of the phraseology of whichno rational account can be given, but that they indicate more thanone Person in the Godhead. Such are those texts already noticed;

“ And the Lord God said, let Us make man in Our image, after Ourlikeness;” and “ The Lord God said, behold the,man is becomelike One of Us.” To these may be added the following, whichare perfectely unintelligible upon any othersupposition ; “ And theLord God said, let Us go down, and there confound their lan-guage.” “ If, I be a Master (in the Hebrew adonim, masters),where is my fear?” “The fear of the Lord (Jehovah) is the be-ginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy (in the He-brew Holy Ones) is understanding.” “ Remember thy Creator(Hebrew thy Creators) in the days of thy youth.” “ And nowthe Lord God and His Spirit hath sent Me.” “ Seek ye out ofthe book of the Lord apd read ; for My mouth it hath command-ed, and His Spirit it hath gathered them.” “ Produce your cause,saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King ofJacob. Let them bring them forth, and shew Us what shall happen:let them shew the former thiugs what they be, that We may consi-der them; or declare Us things for to come. Shew the things thatare to come hereafter, that We may know that ye are Gods ; yea,do good or do evil, that We may be dismayed, and behold if to-gether.” That these texts most unequivocally demonstratea plurality of divine Persons, seems to us incontrovertible. Itdoes not, however, appear evident from these passages, or fromany other that we recollect in the Old Testament , that the Personsin Deity are three and no more: but no sober Christian will har-bour a doubt but that the precise number was by some means orother made known to the ancient Hebrews ; for inquiries leadingto it would be naturally suggested by the form in which the high-priest was commanded to bless the people. See N urn. vi. 24—20.Of this benediction it has been well observed, that if its three arti-cles be attentively considered, they will be found to agree re-spectively to the Three Persons taken in the usual order of the Fa-ther, the Son, and the IIolv Ghost. The Father is the author ofblessing and preservation. Grace and illumination are from theSort, by whom we have “ the light of the knowledge of the gloryof God, in the face of Jesus Christ .” Peace is the gift of theSpirit, whose name is the Comforter, and whose first and best'fruit is the work of peace. Similar to this benediction, but muchmore explicit, is the form of Christian baptism; which, to uswho live under the sunshine of the gospel, establishes the truth ofthe doctrine of the J rinity beyond all reasonable ground of dis-pute. “ Go (says our blessed Saviour) and teach all nations,baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of-lire Holy Ghost .” If those who believe the inspiration of thescriptures could require any further proof that the Godhead com-prehends a Trinity of Persons in one nature, we might urge uponthem the apostolical form of benediction; “The grace of ourLord Jesus Christ, and the love of God , and the communion ofthe Holy Ghost , be with you all.” But how, it will be asked,can three divine Persons be but one and the same God ? 'l his isa question w hich has been often put, but which, we believe, nocreated being can fully answer. The divine nature and. its man-ner of existence is, to us, wholly incomprehensible; and we mightwith greater reason attempt to weigh the mountains in a pair ofscales, than by our limited faculties to fathom the depths of in-finity. 'I’he Supreme Being is present in power to every portionof space, and yet it is demonstrable, that in his essence he is notextended. Both these truths, his inextension and omnipresence,are fundamental principles in what, is cal led natural religion; andwhen taken together they form, in the opinion of most people, amystery as incomprehensible as that of the Trinity or unity. In-deed there is nothing of which it is more difficult for us to form adistinct notion than unity simple, and absolutely indivisible; andwe are persuaded that such, of our readers as have been accustomedto turn their thoughts inwards, and reflect upon the operations oftheir own minds, will acknowledge the difficulty is not much less

to them. Though the Trinity in unity, therefore, were no Chris-tian doctrine, mysteries must still be believed; for they are as in-separable from the religion of nature as from that of revelation ;and atheism involves the most incomprehensible of all mysteries,even the beginning of existence without a cause. We must in-deed form the best notions that we can of this and of all other mys-teries; for if we have no notions whatever of a Trinity in unity,we can neither believe nor disbelieve that doctrine. It is howeverto be remembered, that all our notions of God are more or lessanalogical; that they must be expressed in words which, literallyinterpreted, are applicable only to man ; and that propositions un-derstood in this liieral sei.se may involve an apparent contradic-tion, from which the truth meant to he expressed by them wouldbe seen to be free, bad we direct and adequate conceptions of thedivine nature. On this account it is to be wished that men treat-ing of the mystery of the Holy Trinity , had always expressedthemselves in scripture-language, and never aimed at being wisebeyond what is written. In the scriptures the Three Persons aredenominated by the terms Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or byGod ; the Word, who is also declared to he God ; and the Spirit ofGod. If each be truly God , it is obvious that they must all havethe same divine nature, just as every man lias the same human na-ture with every other man; and if there be but one God , it isequally obvious that they must be of the same individual substanceor essence, which no three men can possibly be. In this there is adifficulty ; but, as will be seen by and by, there is no contradic-tion. The very terms Father and Son imply such a relation be-tween the two Persons so denominated, as that though they are ofthe same substance, possesed of the same attributes, and equallyGod , ju<t as a human father and his son are equally men, yet thesecond must be personally subordinate to the first. In like man-ner the Holy Ghost , who is called the Spirit of God, and is saidto proceed horn the Father, and to be sent by the Son, must beconceived as subordinate to both, much in the same way as a sonis subordinate to his parents, though possessed of equal, or even ofsuperior powers. That this is the true doctrine, appears to us un-deniable from the words of our Saviour himself, who, in a prayeraddressed to his Father, styles him by way of pre-eminence, “ theonly true God, ” as being the fountain or origin of the Godheadfrom which the Son and the Holy Ghost derive their true divinity.In like manner, St. Paul, when opposing the polytheism of theGreeks, sajs expressly, that “to us there is but one God , theFather , of whom aie all things, and we in, (or for,) him: and oneLord Jesus Christ , by whom are all tilings, and we by him.”But if the Son and the Holy Ghost derived their nature as well astheir personality from the Father, will it not follow that they musthe posterior to him in time, since every effect is posterior to itscause? No; this consequence seems to follow only by reasoningtoo closely from one nature to another, when there is betweenthe two but a very distant analogy. It is indeed true, that amongmen, every father must be prior in time, as well as in the order ofnature, to his son ; lint were it essential to a man to be a father, soas that he could not exist otherwise than in that relation, it is ob-vious that bis son would be coeval with himself, though still as pro-ceeding from him, lie would be posterior in the order of nature.T his is the case with all necessary causes and effects. The visiblesun is the immediate and necessary cause of light and heat, eitheras emitting the rays from his own substance, or as exciting theagency of a fluid diffused for that purpose through the whole sys-tem. Light and heat therefore must be as old as the sun ; and hadhe existed from eternity they would necessarily have existed frometernity with him, though still, as his effects, they would havebeen behind him in the order of nature. Hence it conies to passthat as we must speak analogically of the Divine nature, and whentreating of mind, even the Supreme mind, make use of words lite-rally applicable only to the modifications of matter, the Nicenefathers illustrate the eternal generation of the Second Person of theblessed Trinity by this procession of light from the corporeal sun,calling him God of God , light of light. Another comparison hasbeen made use of to enable us to form some notion, however in*adequate it certainly is, how three divine Persons can sub-sist in the same substance, and thereby constitute but one God .Moses informs us, that man was made after the image of God .That this relates to the soul more than to the body of man, hasbeen granted by all but a lew gross antbropomorpbites ; but itlias been well observed, that the soul, though in itself one indi-visible