an infinite scheme, because we do not see the necessity and usefulness of all its parts, and call this reasoning."

It is surprising that any should consider human reason to be omniscient, and deify it, as the revolutionary maniacs did in France. If they do not deem it to be omniscient, why do they expect to be able to explain the "secret things which belong unto the Lord our God," and not give credit to "those things which are revealed to us, and to, our children, for ever?" When the great points of religion. are the subject of inquiry; when that "sacred mystery, hid from ages," the wonder of the universe, and which even "angels themselves do not comprehend, but desire to look into," and, after all their inquiries, are content to reverence, and adore at an awful distance; when this is brought before the mind for discussion, with what caution ought a mere creature to decide on a matter so abstruse, difficult, and sublime.

Man should gladly implore that Divine Illumination from above, which is promised in Scripture to the pious and the humble. When those who have been not only pious and humble, but also men of transcendent talents, have, for nearly eighteen hundred years, acknowledged the glory of the Eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty have worshipped the Unity; when the great majority of Christians have avowed this faith, surely the disputers of this world might rationally pause, before they presumed to deny the truth of this sacred mystery. They must consider it a very extraordinary fact, that such an immense majority of Christians, including the most learned and the most acute that the world ever saw, should have maintained the Doctrine of the Trinity, if it be not the Doctrine of God's Revelation. They cannot avoid being struck with the recollection, that many of these were so fully and deeply convinced, in the midst of perse

cutions, and at the approach of a violent death, that this was the sure "testimony of God," that they shrunk not from any terror or suffering; animated by "the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."-Again, at the time of the happy Reformation, when the whole collected body of Reformers sifted most minutely into every doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church; when they examined and reexamined every part of Christianity; is it not wonderful that they (without one exception,) should retain the Doctrine of the Trinity in their Creeds, their Articles, and their Liturgy? These men devoted the whole of their lives to the study of the Holy Scriptures, and these, with their dying lips, recommended most earnestly this faith to their surviving friends.-What then is the natural conclusion, but that the deeper is the research, the more serious and more diligent is the investigation, the stronger will be the conviction. If the Trinity be not the true doctrine, the

H

facts which I have mentioned are more wonderful than any well-attested circumstance in Universal History, more wonderful even than the miracles recorded in Scripture.

Let every believer humbly implore the grace of the Holy Spirit, to keep him stedfast in this faith; for "this is the

true God, and eternal life."

* 1 John v. 20.

LETTER III.

On the Atonement.

THE second of the two grand Doctrines, on which depends the whole of the Christian system, is the Atonement. Without a conviction of the truth of both, first, that the Trinity in Unity is revealed throughout the Bible, as constituting the Nature of the Deity; and, secondly, that the whole system of Providence appears equally evident to have been willed and graciously designed, that an adequate Atonement should be made for the sins of fallen man; we must return to what is called Natural Religion; we must at once abolish Revelation; we must presume that we "know God," without any necessity that the great Jehovah should reveal his peculiar nature (though not the mode of it) to us; and we must also presume,