would lead into a very perplexed and tedious detail, and is in reality of no use, because all of them approach to one or other of the three systems that have been mentioned. By assuming a new name they may seem to keep clear of the objections that have been urged against their parent system; but when they are narrowly canvassed, they are always found to be resolvable into the same principles, and they must be tried upon the same grounds.

Although for these reasons I shall not recite the names of all who have held some particular opinion about the Trinity, or attempt to discriminate their tenets, there is one exception which I cannot avoid making. Dr. Samuel Clarke is so deservedly held in high estimation for his abilities as a general scholar, and for the excellence and usefulness both of his sermons and of his discourses on the evidence of natural and revealed religion; his theory of the Trinity is a work executed with such labour and skill, and the controversy to which it gave occasion was carried on with such eagerness at the time, and is still referred to in so many theological treatises, that there would be an essential defect in this view of opinions concerning the Trinity, if no particular notice were taken of his system.

Dr. Clarke has entitled his book, The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. The first part is a collection and explication of all the texts in the New Testament relating to the doctrine of the Trinity. The collection is a complete and a fair one; his explication of some of the texts does not agree with the interpretation most generally received; but he defends his criticisms like a scholar and an acute reasoner; and upon this collection of texts and his explication of them, is founded the second part, in which what he accounts the true doctrine of the Trinity is set forth at large in fifty-five distinct propositions. He accompanies these propositions with references to the particular texts which support them, and often both with illustrations of his own, and with citations from ancient and modern writers; his object being to show that the doctrine which he professes to ground upon the Scriptures is also agreeable to the sentiments of the succession of ecclesiastical writers. It has been said that there is not the same fairness in his citations, as in the collection of texts. He not only omits those passages which are unfavourable to his

own opinion, but he often leaves out parts of the sentences which he quotes, and he gives them in so detached a form, that they sometimes appear to speak a meaning perfectly different from that which a reader, who has an opportunity of comparing them with the context, perceives to be the sense of the author. His book, therefore, is by no means a safe guide to those who wish to be instructed in the sentiments of the ancient church with regard to the Trinity. But to those who have derived that knowledge from other less exceptionable authority, or who read his book merely from a desire to know what Dr. Clarke himself thought, it presents the following consistent and intelligible scheme, which I give as the amount of the fifty-five propositions that constitute the second part of his book.

There is one living intelligent agent or person, who alone is self-existent, the author of all being and the origin of all power, who is supreme over all. With this first Supreme Cause and Father of all, there have existed from the beginning a second divine person, who is his Word or Son, and a third divine person, who is his Spirit; and these three are distinguished in Scripture by their personal characters. When the Scriptures mention the one God, the only God, or God by way of eminence, they always mean the Person of the Father. The Son derived his being and all his attributes from the Father, and therefore he is not the self-existent substance. But as the Scriptures have not declared the metaphysical manner of this derivation, they are worthy of censure who affirm that the Son was made out of nothing; and, as the Scriptures never make any limitation of time in declaring the Son's derivation from the Father, they are also worthy of censure who say that there was a time when the Son was not. The Son derived his being from the Father, not by mere necessity of nature, but by an act of the Father's incomprehensible power and will. In like manner, the Spirit, without any limitation of time, derived his being from the Father. The Son is sometimes called God, not on account of his metaphysical nature, how divine soever, but on account of his relative attributes and divine authority communicated to him from the Father over us. To the Son are ascribed all communicable divine powers, i. e. all powers which include not the independence and supreme

authority by which the God and Father of all is distinguished; for in this the Son is evidently subordinate to the Father, that he derived his being, attributes, and power from the Father. Every action of the Son is only the exercise of the Father's power communicated to him, and the reason why the Scriptures, although they style the Father God, and also style the Son God, yet at the same time always declare there is but one God, is, because there being in the monarchy of the universe but one authority, original in the Father, derivative in the Son, therefore the one God, absolutely speaking, always signifies him in whom the power and authority are original and underived. In like manner, the Holy Spirit, whatever his metaphysical nature be, and whatever divine power or dignity be ascribed to him, is evidently subordinate to the Father; and, in Scripture, he is also represented as subordinate to the Son, both by nature and by the will of the Father. And thus all authority and power are original in the Father, and from him derived to the Son, and exercised according to the will of the Father, by the operation of the Son, and by the influences of the Spirit.

This system was regarded at its first appearance as heretical. A prosecution was commenced against the author by the lower house of Convocation in England; and he was attacked by many divines, at the head of whom is Dr. Waterland. After reading a great part of what has been written by Dr. Clarke and his antagonists, it appears to me that the difference between them may be stated within a narrow compass. Dr. Clarke avoids the most offensive expressions used by the Arians. Instead of calling Christ a creature, or limiting the beginning of his existence, he says "that the Son was eternally begotten by the will of the Father." But the word eternally in this sentence means nothing more than that the Son was begotten before all ages, before those measures of time which the succession of created objects furnishes, in the incomprehensible duration of the Father's eternity: and the phrase "by the will of the Father," implies that the Father might not have produced the Son, or that he might have produced him at any other time as well as at the time when he did; so that however great the powers are which the Father hath been pleased to communicate to the

Son, he is not essentially God, but there are, in the manner of his existence, a mutability and a dependence inconsistent with our ideas of the Divine Nature. The opinion of Dr. Clarke, therefore, is in reality that of the Semi-Arians, who were called Homoiousians, because they exalted Christ above the rank of creatures, and held that, not by necessity of nature, but by special privilege, he was like to God. On the other hand, according to the third system, eternity in its proper sense, and necessary existence, are ascribed to the Son. All the attributes of the godhead are conceived to belong to him by nature, and it is not supposed possible that he could be other than that which he is. Dr. Clarke and his opponents agree that the Son is not self-existent; for both account the Father the fountain of deity. But Dr. Clarke thinks, that, since the Son is not self-existent, he does not exist necessarily, while his opponents affirm, that, with the consent of the Father, and according to his will, yet by necessity of nature, the Son derived his being from the Father. Dr. Clarke and his opponents agree that the Son is subordinate to the Father; but the subordination of Dr. Clarke implies an essential inferiority of nature, while his opponents do not admit of any difference in point of duration or dignity, and understand the word subordination as respecting merely order. Dr. Clarke and his opponents agree that the Father and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are three distinct persons, to every one of whom the name God is applied: but Dr. Clarke considers that name as belonging in its highest sense to the Father, and only in an inferior sense to the other two, and thus maintains the unity of the godhead upon the same principle with the Arian system, while his opponents, making no distinction between the word God when applied in Scripture to the Father, and the same word when applied in Scripture to the Son, and inferring, from the language of Scripture, that it may also be applied to the Spirit, have recourse to the principles which were stated under the third system, for maintaining the unity of three persons, each of whom is truly God.

In stating this unity, the opponents of Dr. Clarke adhered to the word which had been used by the council of Nice, saying that the three persons were ouoov6101, con-substantial, which is rendered, both in the English Articles

and in our Confession of Faith, "of one substance." It did not escape the acuteness of Dr. Clarke, that the phrase is ambiguous. "One substance" may mean one numerical substance, i. e. a substance which is one in number, individual; or one generical substance, i. e. the same in kind, that which belongs to all of one kind, as Aristotle said all the stars are uovia. On account of this ambiguity, Dr. Clarke required his opponents to declare in what sense they understood the word; and by a succession of writers, who followed his steps, and wished to expose the third system as untenable, the following dilemma is often stated. "If you mean, by con-substantial, that the three persons are of the same individual substance, you destroy their personality; for three persons, of whom each has not his own distinct substance, but who are in one substance, are only different modifications or manners of being, so that your Trinity becomes nominal and ideal, and in your zeal for the unity of the godhead, you recur to Sabellianism. If, on the other hand, you mean by con-substantial, that the three persons are of the same generical substance, then you destroy their unity; for three persons, having the same substance in kind, have each of them his own substance, and are, in reality, three beings."

This dilemma, like many others which appear to be inextricable, is merely captious. For the ancients, who seem to have understood ouoovios, as marking a generical identity of substance, declare that they consider the three persons as not separated from one another like three individuals of the same species, but as united in a manner more perfect than we are able to conceive; and the moderns, many of whom seem to understand con-substantial as marking a numerical identity of substance, declare that they consider each of the three persons as having a distinct subsistence, and the divine substance as in this respect essentially distinguished from every thing material, that without diminution or division it extends to three persons. The difficulty, therefore, arising from the ambiguity of the word con-substantial, with which those who hold the Catholic system have been so often pressed, is only a proof that it is a vain attempt to apply the terms of human science to the manner of the divine existence,