Whereas the plain meaning is, that he was in the beginning with God, before he was made flesh, and came into the world."-(Clarke on the Trinity, p. 34.) See Bishop Taylor's Life of Christ, p. 13. Tertullian writes to the same purpose:-"You have the Son on Earth, you have the Father in heaven. It is not a separation, but a Divine disposition. Yet you ought to know that God is also within the abysses, and exists everywhere; but it is by his might and power; and likewise that the Son is everywhere with him, as not divided from him. In the dispensation, however, the Father would have the Son to dwell on earth, and himself in heaven.-(Adv. Prax. c. 23.)

LETTER XII.

TO THE REV. CHARLES LE BLANC.

CONSIDERATIONS OFFERED TO YOUR NOTICE TO ESTABLISH THIS GRAND TRUTH.

REV. SIR,

Having answered some of the principal objections which our opponents advance against us, it is proper we should now inquire, how we may satisfy our own minds as to the difficulties attending the grand truth, which it has been the business of these Letters to establish? And, in order to this, the following considerations are presented to your notice.

Almost every thing in the system of nature, notwithstanding the great improvements in modern philosophy, is attended with difficulties. If you look up to the heavens, you stand astonished at their greatness, and feel yourself incapable of comprehending that immensity which lies beyond those vast spaces which surround us. If you cast your eyes on the earth, you meet with as many mysteries of nature, as there are animals, plants, and creatures inanimate. You meet with insuperable difficulties in explaining the sensation of one, the vegetation of another, and the motion of a third. If you consider material nature in its wide extremes, of immense greatness and invisible minuteness, you are struck with amazement, and imagination is at a stand. If to the consideration of bodies, you take in that of their duration, time will shew you incomprehensible wonders, both in the succession of ages past, and in that which is future. If you turn your thoughts to spiritual essences, every thing surpasses your comprehension. You cannot comprehend either their manner of existing, or their manner of acting. Even the human soul is so great a paradox to itself, that it long since despaired, not only of comprehending, but of knowing itself.

And if so, Rev. Sir, is there any reason to assert, as our adversaries do, that there are no mysteries in Religion? Or have they sufficient ground to refuse their assent to the doctrine of our Lord's eternal Divinity, so clearly revealed in the Bible, because it is attended with such difficulties as are insuperable to the powers of reason? Is it any wonder if the difficulties with which we meet in the Christian religion, and especially those that regard the Divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity, should be found greater, much greater, than those which attend a philosophical inquiry into the system of nature? It would, indeed, be a

wonder if it were not so; because the constitution and capacities of our minds bear some proportion to natural objects, which are created and finite, and are much better qualified to inquire into their causes and properties, their connections and uses, than into those of religion, which are of a spiritual kind, and particularly what relates to the Infinite Godhead. Besides, the Blessed God has not prepared our minds, in the volume of Revelation, for meeting with mysteries in the frame of nature as he has in the objects of religion. He has told us that the mystery of Godliness is Great, and that the things of the gospel are accounted foolishness by the sons of science.

"But reason, they will say, reason is the principal light, and, in some respects, the principal revelation by which God makes himself known to man. By reason we are led to the Scriptures, and by that noble faculty we are delivered from the blindness of universal scepticism." Reason, as before observed, prepares the way to faith, by leading us to receive the Scriptures as a Divine Revelation; but when she has put the sacred volume into our hands, and has found the natural import of its language, she either is, or ought to be, silent. She has no right to demand, How can these things be? no right to dictate what the Almighty should reveal, or how he should speak? Nay, there is nothing more reasonable than to hearken to the voice of unerring wisdom and infinite authority with an implicit submission and an unsuspecting reliance.

There are two kinds of knowledge; one of curiosity, the other of practice; and this distinction takes place in all arts and sciences. Thus, for instance, in the art of navigation, we must know what a ship is—which seas are safe, and which dangerous-at what time such a sea is navigable, and when it is not so. This is essential

to the end of navigation; and this I call a knowledge of practice. But it may be inquired, why the sea is salt? What is the reason that such a sea has its flux and reflux more than another? And why such particular winds prevail more in this climate than they do in that? This I call a knowledge of curiosity; and it would be very absurd to fail of reducing the other to practice, because these questions contain such difficulties as are unanswerable. Again: I resolve to eat my common food, and, sometimes, when I have no appetite, because I know that without food my strength and life must fail. But were I to defer taking the necessary refreshment till I knew how the various transmutations are performed, or till I was able to comprehend how the food is turned into chyle, the chyle into blood, and the blood into flesh, all the world would laugh at my folly, while I should suffer the pains of hunger, perhaps the agonies of death, notwithstanding any pretended importance of such inquiries.

In the affairs of morality and divinity, there are also two kinds of knowledge; the one of practice, the other of curiosity. To worship Jesus Christ, I must know that he is God. To put my trust in him, I must look upon him as God; because it is written, "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from Jehovah." But it is not necessary that I should know the modus, and the adorable secrets of the hypostatical union. As to what is practical, it is this: To know that Christ is the Son of God, whom all rational creatures are bound to love, obey, and adore-That He created the heavens and the earth, and by Him all things consist-and that He is over all, God blessed for ever. But speculative and metaphysical inquiries into these things belong to a knowledge of curiosity; and are no other than

bold and presumptuous endeavours to penetrate the unsearchables of the Divine Essence, and the Divine Personalities.

God's design in that revelation which he has given, is to make known realities and facts, not the manner of them. So, in the works of creation, he discovers himself as an Almighty Being, whose power produced all things; but he does not answer a multitude of curious questions, devised by men of a speculative turn, relating to the manner in which Divine power produced the universe, and operates in the conservation of all things. In the constitution of the world, and the conduct of Providence, God gives us such a display of his perfections, as challenges our reverence and affection, our obedience and adoration; yet multitudes of insuperable difficulties attend the Divine Administration, from our not being able to comprehend how the holiness, and wisdom, and power of God concur in the permission of the most wicked actions, and in over-ruling them so as to promote some valuable end.

And thus it is in the Divine word, which contains as a doctrine, and reveals as a fact, the incarnation of the Son of God. These Divine declarations, "The Word was made flesh-God was manifest in the flesh," are plain and full to the point, especially if considered in connection with other infallible testimonies. But they do not, nor does the Bible at large, enable us to answer a number of difficult questions, which might be started about the modus of that wonderful fact. Nor, indeed, was this either necessary or practicable. It was not practicable; for as the minds of speculative men are ever teeming with unprofitable questions and perplexing doubts, the volume of Scripture must have been of an immense bulk to have provided solutions for them all. It was not necessary; for to know the modus of the grand reality