afflicted and oppressed, since their defects and omissions may require chastisement, and since also these are made the means of their excelling in virtue, of aiding their heavenly mindedness, and of qualifying them for a better state.

3. That as the administration under which man is placed is one of grace in harmony with justice, the dispensation of what is matter of pure favour, may have great variety and be even very unequal without any impeachment of justice. The parable of the labourers in the vineyard seems designed to illustrate this. To all God will be able, at the reckon. ing at the close of the day, to say, "I do thee no wrong;" no principle of justice will be violated; it will then appear that "he reaps not where he has not sown." But the other principle will have been as strikingly made manifest, "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my own?"

With nations the case is otherwise. Their rewards and punishments being of a civil nature, may be fully administered in this life, and, as bodies politic, they have no posthumous existence. Reward and retribution, in their case, have been therefore in all ages visible and striking, and, in the conduct of the great Ruler to them, "his judgments" are said to be "abroad in the earth." In succession, every vicious nation has perished; and always by means so marked, and often so singular, as to bear upon them a broad and legible punitive character. With collective bodies of men, indeed, the government of God in this world is greatly concerned; and that both in their civil and religious character; with Churches, so to speak, as well as with states; and, in consequence, the cases of individuals, as all cannot be of equal guilt or innocence, must often be mixed and confounded. These apparent, and sometimes, perhaps, from the operation of a general system, real irregularities, can be compensated to the good, or overtaken as to the wicked, in their personal character in another state, to which we are constantly directed to look forward, as to the great and ample comment upon all that is obscure in this.

For the discoveries of the word of God as to this attribute of the Divine nature, we owe the most grateful acknowledgments to its Author. Without this revelation, indeed, the conceptions which heathens form of the justice with which the world is administered, are exceedingly imper. fect and unsettled. The course of the world is to them a flow without a direction, movement without control; and gloom and impatience must often be the result: (5) taught as we are, we see nothing loose or dis

(5) The accomplished Quinctilian may be given as an instance of this, and also of what the apostle calls their sorrowing "without hope." In pathetically lamenting the death of his wife and sons, he tells us, that he had lost all taste for study, and that every good parent would condemn him, if he employed his congue for any other purpose than to accuse the gods, and testify against a

Jointed in the system. A firm hand grasps and controls and directs the whole. This governing power is also manifested to us as our friend, our father, and our God, delighting in mercy, and resorting only to severity when we ourselves oblige the reluctant measure. On these firm principles of justice and mercy, truth and goodness, every thing in private as well as public is conducted; and from these stable foundations. no change, no convulsion, can shake off the vast frame of human nte. rests and concerns.

Allied to justice, as justice is allied to holiness, is the truth of God, which manifestation of the moral character of God has also an eminent

place in the inspired volume. His paths are said to be " mercy and truth,"―his words, ways, and judgments, to be true and righteous. . His mercy is great to the heavens and his truth to the clouds. He keepeth truth for ever. The strength of Israel will not lie. It is impossible that God should lie. He is the faithful God which keepeth covenant and mercy he abideth faithful." From these and other passages, it is plain that truth is contemplated by the sacred writers in its two great branches, veracity and faithfulness, both of which they ascribe to God, with an emphasis and vigour of phrase which show at once their belief of the facts, their trust and confidence in them, and the important place which they considered the existence of such a being to hold in a system of revealed religion. It forms, indeed, the basis of all religion, to know the true God, and to know that that God is true. In the Bible this must of necessity be fully and satisfactorily declared, because of the other discoveries which it makes of the Divine nature. If it reveals to us as the only living and true God, a being of knowledge infinitely perfect, then he himself cannot be deceived; and his knowledge is true, because conformable to the exact and perfect reality of things. If he is holy, without spot or defect, then his word must be conformable to his know. ledge, will, and intention. On this account he cannot deceive others. In all his dealings with us, he uses a perfect sincerity, and represents things as they are, whether laws to be obeyed, or doctrines to be believed. All is perfect and absolute veracity in his communications. "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."

His FAITHFULNESS relates to his engagements, and is confirmed to us with the same certainty as his veracity. If he enters into engagements, promises, and covenants, he acts with perfect freedom. These are acts of grace to which he is under no compulsion, and they can never, there. fore, be reluctant engagements which he would wish to violate; because they flow from a ceaseless and changeless inclination to bestow benefits, and a delight in the exercise of goodness. They can never be made in Providence. 66 Quis enim bonus parens mihi ignoscat, ac non oderit hanc animi mei firmitatem, si quis in me est alius usus vocis, quam ut incusem deos, superstes omnium reorum, nullam terras despicere providentiam tester?" (Instit Lib. 6.)

naste or unadvisedly, for the whole case of his creatures to the end of ime is before him, and no circumstances can arise which to him are new or unforeseen. He cannot want the power to fulfil his promises, because he is omnipotent; he cannot promise beyond his ability to make good, because his fulness is infinite; finally, "he cannot deny himself," because "he is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent ;" and thus every promise which he has made is guaran. teed, as well by his natural attributes of wisdom, power, and sufficiency, as by his perfect moral rectitude. In this manner the true God stands contrasted with the "lying vanities" of the heathen deities; and in this his character of truth, the everlasting foundations of his religion are laid. That changes not, because the doctrines taught in it are in themselves true without error, and can never be displaced by new and better discoveries; it fails not, because every gracious promise must by him be accomplished; and thus the religion of the Bible continues from age age, and from day to day, as much a matter of personal experience as it ever was. In its doctrines it can never become an antiquated theory, for truth is eternal. In its practical application it can never become foreign to man, for it enters now, and must ever enter into his concerns, his duties, hopes, and comforts, to the end of time. We know what is true as an object of belief, because the God of truth has declared it; and we know what is faithful, and, therefore, the object of unlimit ed trust, because he is faithful that hath promised." Whether, therefore, in the language of the old divines, we consider God's word as "declaratory or promisory," declaring "how things are or how they shall be," or promising to us certain benefits, its absolute truth is confirmed to us by the truth of the Divine nature itself; it claims the undivided assent of our judgment, and the unsuspicious trust of our hearts; and presents, at once, a sure resting place for our opinions, and a faithful object for our confidence.

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Such are the adorable attributes of the ever-blessed God which are distinctly revealed to us in his own word; in addition to which there are other and more general ascriptions of excellence to him, which though, from the very greatness of the subject, and the imperfection of human conception and human language, they are vague and indeter. minate, serve, for this very reason, to heighten our conceptions of him, and to set before the humbled and awed spirit of man an overwhe ming height and depth of majesty and glory.

God is perfect. We are thus taught to ascribe to him every natural and moral excellence we can conceive; and when we have done that, we are to conclude, that if any nameless and unconceived glory be neces sary to complete a perfection which excludes all deficiency; which is capable of no excess; which is unalterably full and complete-it exists in him. Every attribute in him is perfect in its kind, and is the most

elevated of its kind. It is perfect in its degree, not falling in the least below the standard of the highest excellence, either in our conceptions, or those of angels, or in the possible nature of things itself. These various perfections are systematically distributed into incommunicable, as self existence, immensity, eternity, omniscience, omnipotence, and the like, because there is nothing in creatures which could be signified by such names; no common properties of which these could be the common terms, and therefore, they remain peculiarly and exclusively proper to God himself: and communicable, such as wisdom, goodness. holiness, justice, and truth, because, under the same names, they may be spoken of him and of us, though in a sense infinitely inferior. But all these perfections form the one glorious perfection and fulness of ex cellence which constitutes the Divine nature. They are not accidents, separable from that nature, or superadded to it; but they are his very nature itself, which is and must be perfectly wise and good, holy and just, almighty and all-sufficient. This idea of positive perfection, which runs through the whole of Scripture, warrants us also to conclude, that where negative attributes are ascribed to God, they imply always a positive excellence. Immortality implies "an undecaying fulness of life;" and when God is said to be invisible, the meaning is, that he is a being of too high an excellency, of too glorious and transcendent a nature, to be subject to the observation of sense.

God is all-sufficient. This is another of those declarations of Scripture, which exalt our views of God into a mysterious, unbounded, and undefined amplitude of grandeur. It is sufficiency, absolute plenitude and fulness from himself, eternally rising out of his own perfections; for himself, so that he is ALL to himself, and depends upon no other being; and for all that communication, however large and however lasting, on which the whole universe of existent creatures depends, and from which future creations, if any take place, can only be supplied. The same vast thought is expressed by St. Paul, in the phrase " A LL IN ALL," which, as Howe justly observes, (Posthumous Works,) " is a most godlike phrase, wherein God doth speak of himself with Divine great. ness and majestic sense. Here is an ALL in ALL; an all comprehended and an all comprehending; one create, and the other uncreate; the former contained in the latter, and lost like a drop in the ocean, in the all-comprehending, all-pervading, all-sustaining uncreated fulness." "Ir him we live, and move, and have our being."

God is unsearchable. All we see or hear of him is faint and shadowy manifestation. Beyond the highest glory, there is yet an unpierced and unapproached light, a track of intellectual and moral splendour untra. velled by the thoughts of the contemplating and adoring spirits who are nearest to his throne. The manifestation of this nature of God, never fully to be revealed, because infinite, is represented as constituting the

reward and the felicity of heaven. This is "to see God." This is "LO De for ever with the Lord." This is to behold his glory as in a glass, with unveiled face, and to be changed into his image, from glory to glory, in boundless progression and infinite approximation. Yet, after all, it will be as true, after countless ages spent in heaven itself, as in the present state, that none by "searching can find out God," that is, "to perfection." He will then be "a God that hideth himself;" and widely as the illumination may extend, "clouds and darkness will still be round about him.-His glorious name is exalted above all blessing and praise.—Thine, O Lord is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head over all.-BLESSED be the LORD GOD of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things; and BLESSED be his glorious NAME for ever, and let the whole earth be filled with his GLORY. Amen and Amen."

CHAPTER VIII.

GOD.-The Trinity in Unity.

We now approach this great mystery of our faith, for the declaration of which we are so exclusively indebted to the Scriptures that not only is it incapable of proof à priori; but it derives no direct confirmatory evidence from the existence, and wise and orderly arrangement, of the works of God. It stands, however, on the unshaken foundation of his own word; that testimony which he has given of himself in both Tes. taments; and if we see no traces of it, as of his simple being and operative perfections, in the works of his creative power and wisdom, the reason is that creation in itself could not be the medium of manifesting, or of illustrating it. Some, it is true, have thought the trinity of Divine persons in the unity of the Codhead demonstrable by natural reason. Poiret and others, formerly, and Professor Kidd, recently, have all attempted to prove, not that this doctrine implies a contradiction, but that it cannot be denied without a contradiction; and that it is impossible but that the Divine nature should so exist. The former endeavours to prove that neither creation, nor indeed any action in the Deity was possible, but from this tri-unity. But his arguments, were they adducer, would scarcely be considered satisfactory, even by those whose belief in the doctrine is most settled. The latter argues from notions of duration and space, which themselves have not hitherto been satisfactorily established, and if they had, would yield but slight assistance in such an investigation. This, however, may be said respecting such attempts, that they at least show, that men, quite as eminent for strength of