In Verse. Astronomers can trace A comet's various race. Nor snow, nor ice, nor rain, Were ever sent in vain. THE CONCLUSION. IT may not be amiss to conclude this little book with a short view of the unspeakable advantages of Reading and Writing. The knowledge of letters is one of the greatest blessings that ever God bestowed on the children of men. By this means we preserve for our own use, through all our lives, what our memory would have lost in a few days, and lay up a rich treasure of knowledge for those that shall come after us. But the Arts of Reading and Writing we can sit at home and acquaint ourselves what is done in all the distant parts of the world, and find what our fathers did long ago in the first ages of mankind. By this means a Briton holds correspondence with his friends in America or Japan, and manages all his traffic. We learn by this means how the old Romans lived, how the Jews worshipped: We learn what Moses wrote, what Enoch prophesied, where Adam dwelt, and what he did soon after the creation; and those who shall live when the day of judgment comes, may learn by the same means what we now speak, and what we do in great Britain, or in the land of China. In short, the Art of Letters does, as it were, revive all the past ages of men, and set them at once upon the stage; and brings all the nations from afar, and gives them, as it were, a general interview: so that the most distant nations, and distant ages of mankind, may converse together, and grow into acquaintance. But the greatest blessing of all, is the knowledge of the Holy Scripture, wherein God has appointed his servants in ancient times to write down the discoveries which he has made of his power and justice, his providence and his grace, that we who live near the end of time may learn the way to heaven and everlasting happiness. Thus Letters give us a sort of immortality in this world, and they are given us in the word of God to support our immortal hopes in the next. Those therefore who wilfully neglect this sort of knowledge, and despise the Art of Letters, need no heavier curse or pu nishment than what they chuse for themselves, namely, "To Jive and die in ignorance, both of the things of God and man." If the terror of such a thought will not awaken the slothful to seek so much acquaintance with their Mother Tongue, as may render them capable of some of the advantages here described, I know not where to find a persuasive that shall work upon souls that are sunk down so far into brutal stupidity, and so unworthy of a reasonable nature. TO "THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY." THE late controversies about the important Doctrine of the Trinity, have engaged multitudes of christians in a fresh study of that subject; and amongst the rest I thought it my duty to review my opinions and my faith. In my younger years, when I endeavoured to form my judgment on that article, the Socinians were the chief or only popular opponents. Upon a honest search of the scripture, and a comparison of their notions with it, I wondered how it was possible for any person to believe the bible to be the word of God, and yet to believe that Jesus Christ was a mere man. So perverse and preposterous did their sense of the scripture appear, that I was amazed how men, who pretended to reason above their neighbours, could wrench and strain their understandings, and subdue their assent to such interpretations. And I am of the same mind still, But while I was then establishing my sentiments of the Deity of the Son and Spirit by the plain expressions of scripture, and the assistance of learned writers. I was led easily into the scholatic forms of explication; this being the current language of several centuries. And thus unawares I mingled those opinions of the schools, with the more plain and scriptural doctrine, and thought them all necessary to my faith, as thousands had done before me. When I lately resumed this study, I found that the refiners of the Arian heresy had introduced a much more plausible scheme than that of Socinus. While I read some of these writers, I was so much divested of prejudice, and so sincerely willing to find any new light, which might render this sublime doctrine more intelligible, that some persons would have charged me with lukewarmness and indifference. But I think my heart was upright in these enquiries. And as the result of my search, I must say, that I am a steadfast and sincere believer of the godhead of Christ still. For though these authors give a rational and successful turn to some places of scripture, which I thought once did contain a substantial argument for that truth, yet there was never any thing that I could find in these new writings, that gave me a satisfying answer to that old, that general and extensive argument for the Deity of the Son and Spirit, which I have proposed in its clearest light in the eighth proposition. The expressions of scripture on that head were so numerous, so evident, so firm and strong, that I could not with any justice and reason enter into the sentiments of this new scheme. But after a due survey of it, I was fully convinced, that the professors of it, who denied the Son and Spirit to have true and eternal godhead belonging to them, were so far departed from the christian faith. I render hearty thanks to God, who hath so guarded the freedom of my thoughts, as to keep them religiously submissive to plain revelation; and has made these later enquiries a means to establish my faith in this blessed article: The Father, Son and Spirit, are three * persons and one God, and to confirm it by juster and brighter evidences, than I was possessed of before. *Let it be ever remembered, that both in the title, the preface, and throughout the whole treatise, I take the word "person" to signify no more than a sufficient distinction between the sacred Three, to sustain the distinct characters and offices assigned to them in scripture, |