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What is the Supreme

but if we stop there it will be of no use. Being of modern unbelievers? and of what account is their knowledge of him? As the Author of the machinery of the universe, he is admired, and magnified in such a way, as to render it beneath him to interfere with the affairs of mortals, or to call them to account.

The true knowledge of God is less speculative than practical. It is remarkable with what deep reverence the inspired writers speak of God. Moses, when relating his appearance at the bush, did not attempt to explain his name, but communicated it in the words which he heard. And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they will say unto me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I am that I am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I î hath sent me unto you. This sublime language suggests not only his self-existence, but his incomprehensibleness. It is beyond the powers of a creature even to be taught what he is.

"As to the being of God," says Dr. Owen, "we are so far from a knowledge of it, so as to be able to instruct one another therein by words and expressions of it, as that to frame any conceptions in our own mind, with such species and impressions of things as we receive the knowledge of all other things by, is to make an idol to ourselves, and so to worship a God of our own making, and not the God that made us. We may as well and as lawfully hew him out of wood and stone, as form him a being in our minds suited to our apprehensions. The utmost of the best of our thoughts of the being of God, is that we can have no thoughts of it. Our knowledge of a being is but low, when it mounts to no higher but only to know that we know it not. There be some things of GOD which he himself hath taught us to speak of, and to regulate our expres. sions of them; but when we have so done, we see not the things themselves, we know them not; to believe and to admire is all that we can attain to. We profess, as we are taught, that God is infinite, omnipotent, eternal; and we know what disputes and notions there are about omnipresence, immensity, infinity, and eter

nity. We have, I say, words and notions about these things; but as to the things themselves, what do we know? what do we comprehend of them? Can the mind of man do any thing more but swallow itself up in an infinite abyss, which is as nothing? Give itself up to what it cannot conceive, much less express? Is not our understanding brutish, in the contemplation of such things? and is as if it were not? Yea, the perfection of our understanding is, not to understand, and to rest there: they are but the back parts of eternity and infinity that we have a glimpse of. What shall I say of the trinity, or the subsistence of distinct persons in the same individual essence; a mystery by many denied, because by none understood; a mystery whose very letter is mysterious. -How little a portion is heard of him!"

In the epistles of Paul there are various instances in which, having mentioned the name of GOD, he stops to pay him adoration. Thus, when describing the dishonour put upon him by worshipping and serving the creature more than the Creator, he pauses and adds, Who is blessed forever, Amen! Thus also, speaking of Christ, as having given himself to deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of GOD AND OUR FATHER, he adds, To HIM be glory for ever and ever, Amen! And thus, when having spoken of the exceeding abundant grace shown to himself as the chief of sinners, he adds, Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever, Amen!

It is the name of God that gives authority, importance and glory, to every person or thing with which it stands connected. The glory of man, above the rest of the creatures, consisted in this: God ereated man in his own image; in the image of God created he him. This, and not merely the well-being of man, is the reason given why murder should be punished with death. He that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; FOR IN THE IMAGE OF GOD MADE HE MAN. This is the great sanction to the precepts and threatenings of the law: That thou mayest fear that fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD. Herein consists the great evil of sin; and of that sin especially which is committed immediately against God. Know thou therefore, and see, that it is an evil thing, and bitter, that thou hast forsaken THE LORD THY GOD, and that my

fear is not in thee, saith the Lord of hosts. If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him; but if a man sin against the LORD who shall intreat for him? The sin of the men of Sodom, though it had reached to heaven, yet was not completed till they persevered in it, when smitten of God with blindness. Pharaoh and the Egyptians had greviously oppressed Israel; but it was by persevering in their sins, notwithstanding the judgments of God, and presuming to follow his people into the sea, that they brought upon themselves destruction. Of this nature was the disobedience of Saul, the boasting of Sennacherib and Rabshakeh, the pride of Nebuchadnezzar, the profanation of the sacred vessels by Belteshazzar, and the shutting up John in prison by Herod. Each of these men had done much evil before; but, by setting themselves directly against GoD, they sealed their doom. It is on this principle that idolatry and blasphemy were punished with death under the theocracy, and that under the gospel, unbelief and apostacy are threatened with damnation.

GOD manifested himself in creation, in giving laws to his creatures, in the providential government of the world, and in other ways; but all these exhibited him only in part; it is in the gospel of salvation, through his dear Son, that his whole character appears; so that from invisible, he in a sense becomes visible. No one had seen God at any time; but the only begotten Son, who dwelleth in the bosom of the Father, he declared him. What is it that believers see in the gospel, when their minds are spiritually enlightened? It is the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ. Whatever is visible in an object is called its face. Thus we speak of the face of the heavens, of the earth, and of the sea; and in each of these the glory of God is to be seen: but in the face of Jesus Christ; that is, in that which has been manifested to us by his incarnation, life, preaching, miracles, sufferings, resurrection, and ascen sion, the glory of God is seen in a degree that it has never been seen in before. The Apostle, when speaking of God in relation to the gospel, uses the epithet blessed with singular propriety: According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God. The gospel is the grand emanation from the fountain of blessedness, an overflow of the divine goodness. It is the infinitely happy God, pouring VOL. IV.

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forth his happiness upon miserable sinners, through Jesus Christ. The result is, that as God is the Great Supreme, he must in all things occupy the supreme place. Thus we are required, by his law, to love him first, and then to love our neighbour as ourselves; and thus the coming of Christ is celebrated, first as giving glory to God in the highest, and then peace on earth and good will to men. Affectionately yours,

A. F.

LETTER V.

ON THE NECESSITY OF A DIVINE REVELATION.

My dear Brother,

Ir would be improper, I conceive, to rest the being of God on scripture testimony; seeing the whole weight of that testimony must depend upon the supposition that he is, and that the sacred scriptures were written by holy men inspired by him. Hence the scriptures, at their outset, take this principle for granted: yet in the way that the works of nature imply a divine first cause, so does the work of revelation. Men were as morally unable to write such a book as they were naturally unable to create the heavens and the earth. In this way the sacred scriptures prove the being of a God.

I wish to offer a few remarks on the necessity of a divine rev elation on the evidence of the Bible being written by inspiration of God, so as to answer this necessity-and on its uniform bearing on the doctrine of salvation through the cross of Christ: but, as this is more than can be comprehended in a single letter, I must divide it into two or three.

:

The

First I shall offer a few remarks on the necessity of a revelation from God. In establishing this principle, let it be obser ved, we are not required to depreciate the light of nature. word of God is not to be exalted at the expense of his works. The evidence which is afforded of the being and perfections of God, by the creation which surrounds us, and of which we ourselves are a part, is no more superceded by revelation, than the law is rendered void by faith. All things which proceed from God are in harmony with each other. If all the evidence which the heathens have, of the being and perfections of God, consist of traditional