fhipped. Our Saviour's Commendation of the Scribe is, confequently, a ftrong Reinforcement of the genuine Meaning of the Text, By neceffarily-existing Subftance, Mafes means, you fay, the Manner of the Divine Exiftence: No other Beings but your Three do exift in that Manner. The Sense then is this. Hear, O Ifrael, the Lord (viz. fuch a Manner of Exiftence) your God, is one fuch Manner of Existence. And if he had meant this, the Ifraelites would have been no wifer for this Affertion of Mofes than You are. According to this Interpretation when the Scriptures tell us, that God made at firft one Man, from whom the reft defcended; we need not understand that he made one Being, but one fuch Manner of Existence, which was originally communicated to a confiderable Number of Men. For though Jehovah fignifies one Being neceffarily-exifting, one rò, yet it may fignify three feparate Beings; provided their Manner of Existence be of the fame Kind. Jehovah implies Being that exists by Neceffity: And confequently, if the Scripture asserts one neceffarily-exiftent Being, what Right have you to fuppofe three divifible Beings? What feems to have led you into your Miftake was this-Jehovah, neceffarily-existing Subftance, implies two Ideas; Neceffary Exiftence, and the Substance or Subftratum of that neceffary Existence.

In your Expofition you retain the former of thefe Ideas; and drop, the latter, that of the Subftratum. And whereas your Com

ment should have run thus; The Substance vefted with fuch a Mode of Existence as is there specified, is one Substance vefted with that Mode; by letting the Idea of Subftance flip out of the Account, you expound it thus: The Mode of Exiftence is one Mode of Exiftence. Is this, to turn your own Artillery upon you, to interpret Scripture according to the common Rules of Criticifm? Or is it not rather to put a forced an unintelligible Senfe when it admits of a plain and intelligible Conftruction? I fay, plain and intelligible; viz. that Being and Being may be fo clofely and infeparably united as to make one Being, because they have an indivifible περιχώρησις Ενυπαρξις, a clofe Inexistence and Permeation of one another, without any Poffibility of being fundered the one from the other. According to that of our Saviour-I am in the Father, and the Father in Me: And, the Father that dwelleth in me, etc. And is not this a much

more rational Solution of the Difficulty, as well as more agreeable to Scripture, than your's; who fuppofe a forlorn Mode of neceffary Existence to be meant in the Text without any Subftratum? Befides, what think you of that celebrated Text, There are Three that bear Record in Heaven, the

Father,

Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and thefe Three are One, Tò v ég, are one Being; one Nature; in Oppofition to the Words in the next Verfe, where the three Agents are faid to agree in one, ἐἰς τὸ ἓν ἐτσι, have an Uniformity, but are not united? If you difpute the Genuineness of the Text, I refer you to MILL, MARTIN, TWELLS, BLACKWALL on the facred Clafficks, and TRAPP's Moyer's Lectures; If you admit the Text, you must admit that they are One, not merely uniform in Effence.

The fecond Argument against it was, that it was to multiply Beings, without Neceffity. You had no Grounds to fuppofe three feparable Divine Beings, confequently the Suppofition of three fuch Beings was groundless. Scripture, as I have proved above, is against you; and you cannot bring one Shadow of a Proof from Reason, As much as you deal in wonder-working Magic, you cannot conjure up one thin, airy, unfubftantial Phantom of an Argument from the abftract Nature of the Thing. You may prove from Effects one first Cause, but not more than one; one being fufficient to produce all the Phænomena in Nature.

It is contrary to the Laws of Disputation only to affert what you fhould prove: viz. That you have Grounds for fuch a Suppofition. He that afferts a Thing fhould prove it. Thus defenceless is your Hypothefis, oppofed

by

by plain Texts of Scripture, and unfriended by Reason. And what has been hitherto by you advanced, appears to be nothing but the uneafy Efforts of an Hypothefis expiring unavoidably, yet ftruggling hard for Life. Let us fee whether you have better Success in what follows.

The third Argument againft it you transcribe; which is, that if your fupposed three infinite Subftances be divided, or (for it is the fame Thing here) divifible, they cannot all be infinite. The Reason, which you have not transcribed, is there fubjoined But if they be undivided or indivifible, then your Scheme coincides with that of the Orthodox; which is," neither 66 to confound the Perfons, nor to divide "the Substance.”

Though you do not
Substances, yet you
You granted too,

To this you reply; admit of three divided grant they are divifible. what I proved, that if they be divided, they cannot be infinite. If then (as you grant, and I have proved) Infinity excludes Divifion; it follows, that what is neceffarily infinite, must be neceffarily undivided. But your three infinite Beings are neceffarily infinite, as they are neceffarily exiftent; they do not admit of any Diminution or Addition; confequently, they muft be neceffarily undivided; and what is neceffarily undivided is indivifible. Or thus; If (as you allow) what is divided

cannot

cannot be infinite, then a Poffibility of Divifion fuppofes a Poffibility of their ceafing to be infinite; and a Poffibility of their ceafing to be infinite, fuppofes a Poffibility of their ceafing to be what they neceffarily are; which is a Contradiction in Terms.

Again; if nothing can act where it is not, then either each of your three Beings muft neceffarily co-exift every-where with an uninterruptible Fulness of Being without any Separability of the one from the other; or where there is a Separability of any one of them from the other, there is a Poffibility for that Being not to exift there- -Con

fequently, there is a Poffibility of his not being able to act there-Consequently there is a Poffibility of his becoming an impotent or imperfect Being-Confequently, he will not be neceffarily God-Confequently he is no God at all.

You retreat again to your impregnable Fortress, Confciousness. Confcioufness, you fay, cannot be fuppofed without any previous Diftinction of Being to fupport it. I grant it. But if the Trinity is Substance and Substance effentially united -If what is effentially united, is one; or, if indiffoluble Union conftitute Unity- then Confcioufness or Confcicufneles, whatever Diftinction of Being they may prove, cannot difprove the Unity. What is so neceffarily rivetted and united,

let