This, therefore, is the way, the onl}^ way that we rationally can, and that which in duty we ought to proceed in and by, for the assert- ing and confirming of the doctrine of the holy Trinity under consider- ation,— namely, that we produce divine revelations or testimonies, wherein faith may safely rest and acquiesce, that Ood is one; that this one God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; so that the Father is God, so also is the Son, and the Holy Gliost likewise, and, as such, are to be believed in, obeyed, worshipped, acknowledged, as the first cause and last end of all, — our Lord and reward. If this be not admitted, if somewhat of it be not, particularly [if it be] denied, we need not, we have no warrant or ground to proceed any farther, or at all to discourse about tlie unity of the divine essence, or the distinction of the persons.
We have not, therefore, any original contest in this matter with any, but such as deny either God to he one, or the Father to be God, or the Son to be God, or the Holy Ghost so to be. If any deny eitlier of these in particular, we are ready to confirm it by sufficient testi-
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monies of Scripture, or clear and undeniable divine revelation. When this is evinced and vindicated, we shall willingly proceed to manifest that the explications used of this doctrine unto the edification of the church are according to truth, and such as necessarily are required by the nature of the things themselves. And this gives us the method of the ensuing small discourse, with the reasons of it: —
I. The first thing which we affirm to be delivered unto us by di- vine revelation as the object of our faith, is, that God is one. 1 know that this may be uncontrollably evinced by the light of reason itself, unto as good and quiet an assurance as the mind of man is capable of in any of its apprehensions whatever; but I speak of it noAV as it is confirmed unto us by divine revelation. How this assertion of one God respects the nature, essence, or divine being of God, shall be de- clared afterward. At present it is enough to rejsresent the testimo- nies that he is one, — only one. And because we have no difference with our adversaries distinctly about this matter, I shall only name some few of them. Deut. vi. 4, " Hear, 0 Israel ; The Lord our God is one Lord." A most pregnant testimony ; and yet, notwithstand- ing, as I shall elsewhere manifest, the Trinity itself, in that one divine essence, is here asserted. Isa. xliv. 6, 8, " Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his Redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last ; and beside me there is no God. Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any." In which also we may manifest that a plurality of persons is included and expressed. And although there be no more absolute and sacred truth than this, that God is one, yet it may be evinced that it is nowhere men- tioned in the Scripture, but that, either in the words themselves or the context of the place, a 2^lurcditl/ of persons in that one sense is intimated.
II. Secondly, It is proposed as the object of our faith, that the Father is God. And herein, as is pretended, there is also an agree- ment between us and those who oppose the doctrine of the Trinity. But there is a mistake in this matter. Their hypothesis, as they call it, or, indeed, presumptuous error, casts all the conceptions that are given us concerning God in the Scripture into disorder and confu- sion. For the Father, as he whom we worship, is often called so only with reference unto his Son ; as the Son is so with reference to the Father. He is the " only begotten of the Father," John i. 14. But now, if this Son had no pre-existence in his divine nature before he was born of the Virgin, there was no God the Father seventeen hundred years ago, because there was no Son. And on this ground did the Marcionites^ of old plainly deny the Father (whom, under
' Marcion was a native of Pontus, and a celebrated heretic, who lived and pio- pagated his oriors in the middle of the second ceiitnry. He seems to have been
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the New Testament, wc worship) to be the God of the Old Testament, who made the world, and was worshipped from the foundation of it. For it seems to follow, that he whom we worship being the Father, and on this supposition that the Son had no pre-existence luito his incarnation, ho was not the Father under the Old Testament; he is some other from him that was so revealed. I know the folly of that inference ; yet how, on this opinion of the sole existence of the Sou in time, men can prove the Father to be God, let others determine. " He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son ;" but " whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God," 2 John 9. Whoever denies Christ the Son, as the Son, that is, the eternal Son of God, he loses the Father also, and the true God ; he hath not God. For that God which is not the Father, and which ever was, and was not the Father, is not the true God. Hence many of the fathers, even of the first writers of the church, were forced unto great pains in the confirma- tion of this truth, that the Father of Jesus Christ was he who made the world, gave the law, spake by the prophets, and was the author of the Old Testament ; and that against men who professed themselves to be Christians. And this brutish apprehension of theirs arose from no other principle but this, that the Son had only a temporal exist- ence, and was not the eternal Son of God.