Shep. But you can contract your finger, or stretch it out; can you not?

Dech. Yes; just as I please.

Shep. There must be somewhat, therefore, beside matter, in you.

Dech. Who questions it? It is my soul that moves my finger.

Shep. But the difficulty recurs again; for pure spirit cannot act on matter. These points, however, are too high for us; and man cannot comprehend himself. Let us try the extent of our comprehension in things inferior to us Do you know how that little fly in the window, was generated? How its food nourishes it? How it moves its wings? and what determines each of these seemingly irregular flights it makes from side to side?

Dech. I do not.

Shep. Well, that is an animal, and, consequently, of a nature too high for the comprehension of us, who are but animals ourselves. There is the leaf of a rose; can you tell us how it was unfolded from the bud? How the bud was protruded from the tree? or how the tree itself sprung from a small slip or seed?

Dech. No, indeed.

Shep. A vegetable is a very curious and delicate piece of machinery, and may be too fine and subtile for your understanding; but here is a piece of silver; you can easily tell us, by what power or quality its parts cohere more firmly than those of the rose-leaf I shewed you. It is no difficult matter for you, also, to tell us, how its extension, solidity, whiteness, and other qualities, adhere to its substance; and what that substance is?

Dech. I know nothing of the matter.

Shep. You surprise me! I imagined you, who could tell us, so peremptorily, what there may, and what there may not, be in God, could have given us a clear and perfect account of things so infinitely below him, and which it must be so much easier to comprehend.

Dech. All this is little to the purpose. In ourselves, and things about us, we see many qualities and effects; and though we know nothing of their natures or causes, we

have, by sense and experience, a certainty of the effects themselves: whereas the doctrine of the Trinity is not only unaccountable in itself, but founded, also, on mere report and hearsay; to which we cannot trust as confidently, as to the testimony of our senses.

Shep. This is flying back to the authority of the Scriptures, from whence we learn that doctrine, and not proving the impossibility of a personal distinction in God, from the knowledge of his nature, which is what you undertook to demonstrate.

Dech. But if I prove that doctrine to be contradictory in itself, that, surely, will suffice.

Shep. It will.

Dech. Do not the Scriptures, or the Catholic faith, as you call it, bid you believe that the Father is God, and the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God?'

Shep. They do.

Dech. And each of these persons is apart, and by himself, called God. Now I say, no expression can more strongly set forth, that there are three Gods, in direct contradiction to the first article of your own creed, that there is but one God.

Shep. What you say might, perhaps, be true, if that distinction in the divine nature, which makes an article of our faith, and which we express by persons, was precisely the same as that between man and man. But you don't consider what I just now hinted to you; that the first is represented to our minds by a similitude or résemblance to the latter, which resemblance or analogy we are forced to make use of, when we say God is a spirit, and the soul of man a spirit: for whatever difference there is between the divine and human personality, there is the same between the divine and human spirit; yet, be that difference ever so considerable, the analogy between them is such, as to furnish the only ground-work, and that a sufficient one, for all our knowledge of, and reasonings about God. But whatever sense may be forced from the words of our creed, you cannot say, that Christians understand by them, that there are three Gods, since they all maintain, that there is but one. Now I hope, sir, that our present dispute is not about words, but meanings; and, if it is, it must necessarily resolve itself

again into the former question, whether there can possibly be a personal distinction in the unity of the divine nature? The words in which you pretend to discover a contradiction, imply no such thing; if it were said, indeed, that there are three Gods, and yet but one God, this would be a contradiction or, when it is said that there is one God, and three persons, if the word person were shewn to be synonymous with the word God, and to signify the same thing; then this, also, would be a contradiction: but as every mortal understands one thing by God, and quite another by person; so it is a strange way of speaking to say, that he contradicts himself, who only affirms, there is one God, and three persons. But pray, sir, how are disputes about words to be ended?

Dech. By making those, who use them, define their meaning in other words.

Shep. And is it not the law of speaking, that every one, with whom we converse or dispute, should understand our words in such a sense as we declare we mean by them?

Dech. He hath no right to understand them in any other.

Shep. Therefore, sir, since we expressly declare there is but one God; is it not evident, howsoever imperfectly we express ourselves by the words, on which you charge a contradiction, that we are far from professing a faith in three Gods, by them, or any other words. Upon the whole, it must be owned, there is no contrariety in our meaning, whatever contradiction others may screw our words to.

Temp. These words, you are disputing about, are not to be found in the Scripture, but only in the Athanasian creed; and therefore I think myself but little concerned to know whether they contain a contradiction, or not. Let those look to it, who confess their faith by that creed; they, no doubt, as Mr. Shepherd hath observed, are the properest persons to interpret those words, which they make their own, by so often, and so solemnly, repeating them; and it must be confessed, they all assert the unity of the divine nature in most express terms. As to the doctrine of the Trinity, I must say this, at least, that it is even more amazing than that of the incarnation; yet, prodigious and amazing as it is, such is the incomprehensible nature of God, that I be

lieve it will be extremely difficult to prove from thence, that it cannot possibly be true. The point seems to be above the reach of reason, and too wide for the grasp of human understanding. However, I have often observed that, in thinking of the eternity and immensity of God; of his remaining from eternity to the production of the first creature, without a world to govern, or a single being to manifest his goodness to; of the motives that determined him to call his creatures into being; why they operated when they did, and not before; of his raising up intelligent beings, whose wickedness and misery he foresaw; of the state in which his relative attributes, justice, bounty, and mercy remained, through an immense space of duration, before he had produced any creatures to exercise them towards; in thinking, I say, of these unfathomable matters, and of his raising so many myriads of spirits, and such prodigious masses of matter, out of nothing, I am lost and astonished, as much as in the contemplation of the Trinity. There is but a small distance, in the scale of beings, between a mite and me: although that which is food to me, is a world to him, we mess, notwitstanding, on the same cheese, breathe the same air, and are generated much in the same manner; yet how incomprehensible must my nature and actions be to him! He can take but a small part of me with his eye at once; and it would be the work of his life to make the tour of my arm; I can eat up his world, immense as it seems to him, at a few meals; he, poor reptile! cannot tell but there may be a thousand distinct beings, or persons, such as mites can conceive, in so great a being as me. By this comparison I find myself vastly capacious and comprehensive, and begin to swell still bigger with pride, and high thoughts; but the moment I lift up my mind to God, between whom and me there is an infinite distance, then I myself become a mite, or something infinitely less; I shrink, almost, into nothing. I can follow him but one or two steps in his lowest and plainest works, till all becomes mystery, and matter of amazement, to me. How, then, shall I comprehend himself? How shall I understand his nature, or account for his actions? In these he plans for a boundless scheme of things, whereas I can see but an inch before me; in that he contains what is infinitely more inconceivable than all the wonders of his creation put together;

and I am plunged in astonishment and blindness, when I attempt to stretch my wretched inch of line along the immensity of his nature. Were my body so large, that I could sweep all the fixed stars, visible from this world in a clear night, and grasp them in the hollow of my hand; and were my soul great and capacious, in proportion to so vast a body; I should, notwithstanding, be infinitely too narrow-minded to conceive his wisdom, when he forms a fly: and how, then, should I think of conceiving himself? No; this is the highest of all impossibilities. His very lowest work checks and represses my vain contemplations, and holds them down at an infinite distance from him. When we think of God in this manner, we can easily conceive it possible, that there may be a Trinity of persons in his nature.

Dech. But, surely, if you thought thus of God, you could not imagine a being, so infinitely great, would humble himself, and, taking on him the nature of man, suffer poverty, and persecution, and the punishment of a slave, for the relief of mites and reptiles; such as we must be, in comparison of him.

Shep. O! sir, consider him in the immensity of his goodness, as well as of his greatness; and this will sufficiently account for that wonderful act of condescension. But I observe, the whole difficulty that lies against your receiving the doctrine of the incarnation, and the Trinity, arises from your measuring God by yourself; you could not stoop to such indignities for the relief of creatures so far beneath you; you could not suffer so patiently for those who persecute and revile you with such bitterness and contempt, and so maliciously aim at your life; and therefore you imagine God could not do it; but he is infinitely gracious and good. There is no insect so small, nor even an atom of matter so minute, as not to share in his attention and care. He feeds the young ravens, he watches over the life of a sparrow, he clothes the lilies; and as to man, who is a being of much greater importance, he numbers the very hairs of his head; and therefore must be supposed to care for his immortal soul, with the tenderness of a most affectionate Father. You, Mr. Dechaine, are unable to demonstrate the impossibility of more than one person in one human soul; and yet such do you conceive the unity of God to be, from your