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given me, that they may be one, as we are!

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us that the world may believe that thou hast sent me! And the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me."* How close must that union be which is thus illustrated by the eternal union subsisting between the Father and the Son, and also by the union between body and soul. Now if any one was before disposed to condemn my 'mode of illustrating the union of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, let him at length be silent, when he beholds the same method applied by Jesus Christ himself. Is there not here an evident application of the very series which we have so often employed. As the body is united to the spirit, so Christians are united to the Son of God, and so also the Son is united to the Father. As the Father is in the Son, so the Son is in his faithful followers, in like manner as the soul is in the body. The Holy Spirit is subordinate to the Son. The Father works in us through the Son, and

John xvii. 1 20-23.

through the Spirit; the Son works in us through the Holy Spirit. Our approach to the Son, and our communion with him, are in and through the Holy Spirit which he has given us: our approach to the Father is through the Son, and in and through the Holy Spirit. The Son is in the bosom of the Father: we are in the bosom of the Son. What, therefore, as my own speculation, I have suggested with much diffidence, I now with more boldness affirm as the truth of Christ. Who shall condemn, where he hath justified? We have found the Son of God represented by Ezekiel on a throne high and lifted up above the seraphim and cherubim. We know that through him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers. Let us, therefore, humbly worship and adore him. Yet all these things hinder not the application of the series to the illustration of the Godhead, under the cautious restrictions which we have formerly laid down.

"For this cause I bow my knee unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and in earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints

what is the breadth and length, and depth and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God."* May God now graciously hear and answer this prayer of Paul, and give us grace, that, with all fervency of spirit, we may repeat it from generation to generation.

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CHAPTER XXIX.

OPINION OF DR. ISAAC WATTS WITH RESPECT TO THE PROSPECT OF IMPROVEMENT IN THEOLOGY.-TESTIMONY OF ST. JOHNWARNING OF PROPHECY.-ACTUAL STATE OF THE PROFESSING CHURCHES OF CHRIST. PRACTICAL CONCLUSION.

THE magnitude of the conclusions to which we have been led by following out those simple principles with which we began, has made me often distrustful of my reasoning; and not without much jealous circumspection have I advanced through subjects so lofty, and of such momentous importance. The consciousness, however, of having proceeded thus cautiously, only gives me now more confidence in the result which I have obtained. No vain or idle curiosity has prompted my inquiry, no arrogant self-confidence has directed it. But now as always, having been much chastened and afflicted of God, and taught experimentally both the power of his rod, and the riches of his free goodness, I am ready to bow myself to the dust, saying with the Psalmist,

"Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother my soul is even as a weaned child." But humility could not direct the suppression of that truth, to which God has affixed his sign and seal by revelation; and however men may misrepresent or calumniate, no fear of human opinion ought to deter from public avowal of the truth the man who has within him the testimony of an upright heart, and, as he may humbly trust, the concurrence of the Divine Spirit. But perhaps I too much anticipate controversial opposition and calumnious representation. It is at least comfortable to find, that some wise good and evangelical writers have confidently looked forward to some such solution of the mysteries of Christianity as this book affords. The reader will peruse without prejudice the words of the justly celebrated Dr. Isaac Watts.

"Nor should a student in Divinity," he observes, "imagine that our age is arrived at a full understanding of every thing that can be known by the scriptures. Every age since the reformation hath thrown some further light on difficult texts and paragraphs of the Bible, which had been long obscured by the early rise of Antichrist: and since there are at present many difficulties and darknesses hanging about certain truths of the

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