terialifm, reafon thus, If the only true God be a truly divine and everlafting Father, he has a truly divine and everlafting Son; for how can he be truly God the Father who hath not truly a divine Son? This inference is fo obvious, that St. John whom you try to force into the fervice of Socinus, faith, He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the FATHER-He that denieth the

SON, denieth the FATHER alfo; because the oppofite and relative terms and natures of Father and Son neceffarily suppose each other. You muft therefore give up the true paternity of God the Father, or the falfe argument of Socinus.

"What! do you then believe in two or three "Gods? do you break the firft command of all "revealed religion, which is to believe in the

unity of God.?" No, Sir; We only believe that in the unity of the Godhead there is, without any divifion, a myfterious and adorable Trinity which our Lord calls The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghoft: We believe with St. John (1) That there are three who bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghoft, and (2) that these three are ONE: 1 John v. 7. We believe that when the Father fpake from the cloud on the Holy mount, and from heaven on the banks of Jordan, he faid, This is my beloved Son: hear Him. We obey this firft command of the Gofpel; We liften when our Lord speaks; and we hear him fay, I and the Father are one-one in our counsels and works, but efpecially one in our divine nature: Hence the propriety and ground of this capital Precept, You believe in God the Father,] believe alfo in ME[who am his only begotten Son.] Now, Sir, we beg that you will not so far honour Socinus as to pour contempt upon the Declaration of the Father, the command of the Son, and the Veracity of both: And this you nevertheless do when you

contend

I contend for an Unity which degrades the Son of God to a mere man, and makes it an act of ido. latry to believe in him, as we believe in the Father..

You and your friend Mr. Lindfey are Jewish Unitarians, I mean Unitarians ready to ftone the Son of God for fuppofed blafphemy, and Unitarians who crucify the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open," fhame: But we, whom you pity as deluded idolaters, are chriftian Unitarians: With the Apostles we believe that in the Deity there is an eternal paternity, an eternal fonship, and an eternal proceffion, which answer to the profound mystery of Father, Son and Holy Ghoft, held out in the form of baptifm as the one greatobject of our faith: and we reverence this divine paternity, Sonfhip and proceffion, as you admire the polarity, and attraction of the load-ftone, together with the impregnating effluvia which continually proceed from it, without your knowing. thofe myfterics of the natural world, otherwife than by the teftimony of other philofophers, and the experience you have had again and again, that they poke the truth, when they teftified that thofe myfteries were realities worthy to be be-lieved by every lover of truth.

Your objection being anfwered, I return to St. ·John and I ask again, where does he say that our Lord was a mere man approved of God? Is it where he declares, that he who honoureth not the Son honourseth not the Father, and that the Father hath committed -all judgment to the Son, that all men fhould honour the Son as they honour the Father? John v. 23. What sa finishing ftroke does the Apostle and our Lord give here to Socinianifm? How do all men honour the Father? Is it not by trufting in him, by praying to him, and by worshipping him as Jehovah, God over all bleffed for ever? And is

1.1... I

he

he a mere man, whom St. John, the Son and the Father want us thus to honour? does not this one verfe contain a demonftrative proof that St. John fpake too highly of our Lord, or that Socinus and you trample upon the divinity of the Son, which is one and the fame with the divinity of the Father, fince all men must honour the Son as they honour the Father?

From St. John's Gofpel, go to his Epiftles, and you will find him ftill ready to affert our Lord's divinity. Beginning his firft Epiftle, as he did his Gofpel, with an heart penetrated with a deep fenfe of his Master's divine greatness, he calls him the eternal life, which was with the Father: 1. John i. 2. That we may honour the Son as we honour the Father, he points out both unto us as the joint object of our faith: For representing fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jefus Chrift as the foul and the end of chriftianity, he exhorts us equally to continue in the Son and in the Father. 1. John i. 3, and ii. 24. because it is eternal life in its progreffive manifeftations to know God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.

It is remarkable, Sir, that in confequence of the oneness of the Father and of the Son, St. John ules (after our Lord) a variety of expreffions entirely fubverfive of your error, The Father dwelleth in me, faith Chrift; I am in the Father, and the Father in me: If any man love me, I and my Father will come to him; John xiv. 10, 11. Nay, this Apoftle, who concludes his Epiftle, by a charge to keep ourselves from idolatry, ufes the appellations of Father, God, the Son of God, and Jefus Christ as partly fynonymous. Take fome examples. Behold, what manner of love the FATHER hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the [adopted] fons of GOD. Now are we the [adopted] Jons of GOD, but we know, that when He [GOD manifeft

manifeft in the flesh] fhall appear, we shall be like HIM (in his glorified humanity) 1 John iii. 1, 2.Again, Hereby know we the love of GOD (manifeft in the flesh) becaufe HE (God our Saviour) laid down his life for us. 1 John iii. 16-Yet again

We have known and believed the love that God hath to us, God is love.-Herein is our love made perfect that we may have boldness in the day of judgment (or as it is expreffed 1 John ii. 28.) that when He· God the Son] fhall appear, we may not be afhamed before Him at his coming) because as He is (in his form of a fervant, a loving, humble man) fo are we in this world; i John v. 16, &c. Once more: Hereby perceive we the love of GOD because He God the Son] laid down his life for us: 1 John ii. 16. From a careful comparison of these paffages it is evident that St. John confiders the Father and the Son, in his form of God, as do intimately one, that he joins them together as the great Object of our faith, and ufes the high title of God for the name of our Lord Jefus Chrift, the God man who laid down his human life for us, and before whom we fhall apear in the great day.

Take another proof that St. John honours the Son, as he honours the Father. Summing up his firft Epiftle, he faith: The Son of God is come, and hath given us an underftanding that we may know Him that is true [that we may know Him that is the only true God, the Father eternally one-with his only begotten Son] And we are in Him that is true, even in [or by] his Son Jefus Chrift This is the true God and eternal life: [For the eternal Godhead refides in the Son, as truly as it does in the Father, and flows to us more immediately from the Son: who is peculiar y God our Saviour, and the fountain of our eternal life.} 1. John v. 20. Thus St. John concludes this Epif

tle

tle; as he began his Gofpel: Not by afferting with you that Jefus Chrift is a mere man, or by refufing to give him any higher title than that of a man approved of God; but by calling him God, the true God, the living God, yea everlasting life itself. And the drift of this excellent Epiftle is fo evidently to hold forth the Son's and the Father's common Divinity that the fum of the whole is, Whofoever denieth the Son, he hath not the Father: But he that acknowledgeth the Son; hath the Father alfo: 1 John. ii. 23.

the Son.

The fame vein of Anti-Socinian doctrine run's through St. John's fecond Epiftle, of which we have the fubftance in these words: He that abideth in the doctrine of Chrift, he hath both the Father and If there came any to you, and bring not this do&rine, [but make you believe, that committing fin is confiftent with our victorious faith, or that the Father is Jehovah alone, and that the Logos, God the Word was not manifefted in the Refh to take away our fins :] receive him not into your Aoufe, neither bid him God fpeed; for he that biddeth him God fpeed is a partaker of his evil deeds. 2 John ix. 10. For many deceivers are entered into the world who confefs not that Jefus Chrift [the Logos who was in the beginning with God and was God] is come in the fresh fome of whom deny his real divinity, and others his real humanity.] This is a deceiver and an antichrift; 2 John verle 7. For he is antichrift who denieth the Father and the Son it being impoffible to deny God the Son, without denying God the Father.] John H. 22. Yea fo perfect is the onenefs of God the Father, and of his only beggoten Son, that St. John gives the elect Lady this anti-Socinian bleffing. Grice, mercy, and peace be with you [equally] from GOD THE FATHER, and from the Lord Jefus Christ, THE SON OF THE FATHER: 2 John 3. Another