motive power which acts upon it? It seems even reasonable to assert, with the voice of revealed truth, that it is the SPIRIT, which quickeneth: The flesh profiteth nothing.

Life, however, is motion, whether in the animal or the in

if we say, that God is his own freedom or his own necessity, we are too bold, if we mean by these terms more than this, that God acts according to his pleasure, and that all his pleasure must be just and

true.

To a Christian, then, the naked notion of an absolute necessity, independent of the divine controul, is as absurd and blasphemous a tenet, as the opinion of self-determination and free agency, independent of the divine direction, is untrue and impious. In all things, we should be guided by God; and certainly in all must be ruled by him. Otherwise, there is an end of all providence; and we might adopt the poems of Lucretius, in the room of the two Testaments, called the Bible. "God's will (says Bernard) is done concerning all men, and by all, but not in all; for his people only have this blessing-He is pleased with good things in themselves, and satisfied with his wise and good disposal even of the bad." "Judas did ill in betraying Christ (says Austin) but God out of his treachery produced a good, which Judas never thought of. God viewed our salvation; but Judas only filthy lucre." Farther; if matter could not exist but by spirit as matter, in any other view, will be eternal, and its own maker, which is preposterous) certainly, it cannot act but by spirit. It will follow, hence, that all the impressions, which may be derived to the soul from matter, must be arranged according to Spirit, and that this Spirit must be GOD. If this be admitted, as it seems but just to admit it, the divine providence opens to our view in its resplendent glory; free grace in its sovereign beauty; and all the attributes of God uniting in the salvation of man, with the utmost perfection and harmony. This is all the necessity for which a Christian should contend, and all which concerns him to know. And this he should know, because God hath taught it: This he should believe, because the Author of truth himself hath been pleased to reveal it.

He is bound to believe this, let his outward senses oppose or let sensible matter appear, as it may. Indeed, it is the great business of faith to live above mere sense and sensible objects: And hence again it may properly be asked, how then is faith to receive any ideas from them? It can receive none, but under such distributions of the sensible forms, which speak (as it were spiritual things, and so are composed to shadow forth what they have not in themselves. Such were the Levitical institutions, which led sense, even away from itself, up to faith; thereby proving themselves, when abstracted of their object, but weak and beggariy elements. A Christian now is not to judge from the appearances of matter, but to live above matter upon his God. This is one branch of the life of faith, which is contradistinguished from sense in almost every thing.

There is no absurdity in this, unless it be absurd to believe God, and to be persuaded that he cannot lie: And of this it becomes us to

tellectual world. In the one case, matter is moved: In the other, spirit. The first cause of both must be that GREAT LIFE, who only can be said to live independently, necessarily, and eternally. What had a beginning of life, owed that beginning to a superior cause; for no being can produce itself out of nothing. But God, having no beginning, existed from himself, and is consequently independent, necessary, and cternal. This he gives us to understand from his name JFHOVAH, which implies all that we can conceive, (and prebably much more) of life, without beginning, dependence, or end. In truth, He only lives; because he is the only cause of life, and the only determiner of its various modes of existence. He is the great Author of all understanding, therefore, the intellectual substances LIVE by him, and act in mind, thought, reason, and memory, by his power. He is the sole Creator of that gross substance called matter; therefore, all material natures ARE MOVED (having nothing akin to motion in themselves) by his activity and direction. He is the first be, at least, as fully assured, as we are of any evidence which can result from our corporal senses. It is possible, that these may deceive us; but it is impossible, that God should. We may err in the application of our senses; but God cannot be mistaken in the declaration of his will. Every idea of certainty, both in the moral and spiritual world, is derived from the existence of God, without whom all is darkness, anarchy, and error.

The intelligent reader will pardon the length of this note, if it appear in the least to establish, what the author means it should establish, That all matter was produced by God, the creating mind, and that it is modified according to his will; that all spirit is derived from God, the only first Spirit, and hath no right or true end but communion with God; that both matter and spirit are controuled in all things by the constant superintendence of his PROVIDENCE; that they cannot act for good, without his efficient aid, nor, for evil, without the permitted abuse of his power; and that there is no necessity in any created beings, beside that of their dependence upon him, nor any self-determination, beyond the limits of his will.

In this view, it is evident, that man is free when he acts by and according to him, who is the author of all freedom; and a slave, when, abusing the powers given to his nature, he attempts to act without or against him. In the one case, as a child of God, he is privileged to walk in his glorious liberty; and in the other, as a bond-man of that evil spirit who exists without that liberty, he is taken captive by him; while that spirit himself is held in chains of darkness by the power of his Maker. Thus every man, in his depraved state, is at best but the slave of a slave. Righteousness and true holiness are the essential liberty of the divine nature itself: And therefore sin and corruption, having no communion with the Almighty, though under his controul, are weakness, misery, and bondage.

R

cause of all existence; therefore, in Him all things, whether spiritual or material, bave their being.

Hence, it appears, that God only is THE LIFE, properly so called, and that no other being hath a life of its own, independent or underived. It is nonsense, as well as blasphemy, to say of a creature, that he is life of itself: and all beings are creatures but ONE, who, in an eternal distinction, is denominated GOD THE CREATOR.

Now, then, we must adopt these conclusions, that whate ver being is truly and justly called the life, as the cause of life, is and can be no other than God: And that whatever being is thus termed by divine revelation, is therefore most truly and strictly so.

That the FATHER hath life in himself, nobody will deny. Here all men, who believe there is such a being as God, are agreed: And as for those, who venture to deny his existence, their understandings rather demand our pity than an argument. A fool only can affirm, There is no God.

Of CHRIST it was said, that in him was life, and the life (or that life) was the light of men: And he says of himself, openly and expressly, I am the life. Hence, then, the Father and the Son, assuming this essential name, claim to be true and very God.

That the SPIRIT is also life, will appear both from the attribute being applied to him, and from the exercise of the attribute by him.

more

In Rom. viii. 10. The Spirit is called life, in opposition to the condemnation or death, which comes by the transgression of the law. He is termed, not only Life, but what is emphatical, the very Spirit of Life, in many places of the New Testament; and stronger still, in the Old Testament, the Spirit of lives. As if it had been said, He is life, the very life of life, the original life of all lives. To denominate the Holy Ghost thus, is calling him God by the strongest terms which could be used. It is representing him essential (as it were) to the divine Essence; because he is called the very Spirit of that life, in which the essence exists. He is denominated hereby the very energy of its energies, the very principle of its action ad extra, the divine glory of its power in all the creatures. Compared with this, to say simply, that the Spirit is God, though it be the same truth, is certainly not the same forcible expression of the truth. God (as it were) clothes the assertions of the Spirit's divinity and glory by periphrases and terms, which may excite the strongest faith and comfort in the hearts of his people, and leave without excuse those who, knowing not his grace, have dared to dispute his being.

If we consider the Holy Spirit's exercise of this attribute.

of life, we may be still farther convinced of the same important doctrine, revealed by his name. The Spirit (says the apostle) giveth life. 2 Cor. iii. 6. He gives natural life, spiritual life, and eternal life, and, in this view, He is the Spirit of lives. All live by Him. It was the breath or inspiration of the Spirit of lives, which communicated natural existence to all the creatures, at the beginning. Gen. vii. 22. And when that breath is taken away, they die, and return again to their dust. Ps. civ. 29.

With respect to spiritual life, man by the fall was cut off and alienated from the life of God In this view, the human spirit is accounted as dead, and affirmed to be so in a multitude of texts; because it hath now no true spiritual action, no pure motion; and because it is in that state, separated from the holiness of HIM, whose life is holiness itself, and in communion with which all perfect creatures are moved and concentered towards him. Thus, not to think what is good, not to love what is good, not to comprebend what is good, not to follow what is good; is that cessation from the most truly spiritual motion, which constitutes spiritual death. If all death be the privation of life; this is most eminently so.Now, who could restore this life, who could reposses the human mind with activity for God, but God himself? Yet the Spirit of life doeth this; it is his office to do it; and he takes this name, among other reasons, to denote, that it is his own peculiar office to do it. The law of THE SPIRIT OF LIFE in Christ Jesus, bath made me free (says St. Paul) from the law of sin and death:-For the minding, will, or purpose, of the Aesh, is death; but the minding, will, or purpose, of the Spirit, is life and peace. Rom. viii. 2, 6. margin. See the whole chapter.

As the SPIRIT gives natural and spiritual, so he bestows everlasting life. He that soweth to the SPIRIT (says the apostle) shall oF THE SPIRIT reap life everlasting. Gal. vi. 8.

It appears, then, that the SPIRIT is both the LORD and the GIVER of life"--of life abstractedly, i. e. of all the life, which we can understand or know. And if this be his title and his power; if there be no energy but by him, no principle of being but from him; what shall that opinion be called, which denies him to be God? Shall we say, that it is an absurdity? It must be so, if a contradiction to all truth and evidence can merit the name. Shall we believe it to be blasphemy? It cannot be otherwise, if a word spoken against the Holy Ghost shall never be forgiven, either in this world or in the world to come. O how fearfully, then, do they presume; how dangerously do they trifle with their own souls; who, not content with speaking a word against this blessed Comforter, write volumes upon volumes in degradation of his

glory, and seek to make proselytes to the most daring defamation of his person among men!

As the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, have each life in themselves, and are therefore three persons; so, there being but one original life, the three persons, by claiming that original life, do declare themselves to be but one undivided essence. They could not be persons, if they had not this life distinctly: They could not be one essence or God, if there was any separation or difference in the life. Hence the co-essentiality and co-equality are as common to each, as the life is common to all: They co-exist, as one God; and yet exist in distinction, as three persons. Thus, each is called JEHOVAH in Scripture, and is certainly JEHOVAH yet there is but ONE JEHOVAH, and can be but one. Of course, the three persons are, in a mode inconceivable by the creatures, the one Jehovah; and the one Jehovah exists in the three persons; or the Scripture will contradict itself, and be untrue; which is either impossible or it is not a divine revelation. Each of the three persons, then, is selfexistent, or each cannot be Jebovab, which is the name for self-existence, and which means the same thing with the baving life in himself. They are also co-existent, or of equal existence; else, it is impossible, that they should be of one essence. There is not, there cannot be, higher or lower, inferior or superior, difference or inequality, in JEHOVAH : for such discord would destroy the very sense of the name, and is repugnant to every scriptural, and even rational, idea of the perfections of the Godhead. As each person claims the essential attributes; these attributes could not be essential, perfect, and divine, unless the three persons were equally so. It is impossible, that either of them should hold the same attributes in a higher or lower degree; for that notion destroys the very idea of the essentiality of those attributes, and divides and distributes, what is absolutely indivisible and unimpartible.

Those people, therefore, who suppose any inferiority in the Godhead, do not seem perfectly aware to what conse quences their notion will lead them, and how, by supposing it, they entirely darken the divinity of two of the divine persons, and in fact deny the personality itself. Otherwise, to avoid this conclusion, they must run into absolute tritheism, or, if they please, into positive idolatry. Thus,

Incidit in Scyllam, qui vult vitare Charybdim.

It may be said, and it has been said," that God is a Spirit, and that this name of Spirit may belong to him as one indistinguishable person."Respecting the subtlety, purity, and absolute immateriality of his nature, it is undeniable, that God is Spirit, a Spirit, one Spirit; because he is one nature, and one essence; and, in this respect, the Father, Son, and