CHAPTER XIII.

ESSENTIAL AGREEMENT AMONG CHRISTIANS RESPECTING THE TRUTHS TAUGHT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Ir God has spoken, it is our duty to hear. It is our duty to listen to whatever instructions He has seen fit in any way to give us; to endeavor to understand clearly what they are, and to carry into practice what they require. It is the same God, who has spoken to us in the constitution of nature, by the ministry of the prophets under the former dispensation, and in the Gospel by the voice of his Son, Jesus Christ. This idea it is necessary often to repeat; for however obvious a truth it is, that what is essential in religion must always be the same, as eternal and immutable, as the nature of Him, who is its object, and who has revealed it to us, there is yet a constant tendency in men to wrong apprehensions and misconception on the subject. We are apt to speak and to think of the religion of nature, the religion of the Jews, and Christianity, as different schemes; whereas in all that is properly religion, they are the same. The same God is the object of worship in each; the same spirit is inculcated, the same principles, the same duties, the same hopes. They differ as to the degree of clearness with which the same truths are made known; as to the number of subordinate truths connected with them; and they are accommodated to

the time and people for whom they were designed in many circumstances of external form and peculiarities of positive institution. It is a mistake to imagine, that the Mosaic Institution was intended to change any of the principles of natural and essential religion; and equally so to suppose that Christianity was designed to abrogate or to supercede either the fundamental truths or the spirit of the Jewish religion. What Moses and the prophets had taught, we are not to expect to find contradicted by another Messenger, sent with further instructions from the same author of light, and God over all. As it was the same God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past to the fathers by the prophets, that hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son, we shall doubtless find the New Testament giving us the same account, which we have before found in the Old, of his perfections, his government, his will, and his purposes.

I shall endeavor to show that this is the case, by a brief statement of what appear to be the principal instructions of the New Testament, and it will be acknowledged to be so by all, who receive those writings as the foundation of their religious faith, whatever differences of opinion there may be between them, as to some articles of the Christian doctrine.

Thus, in the first place, we find in the New Testament no direct instruction respecting the being and perfections of God, no positive assertion of them. But we find what is much more, we find them constantly implied, in every book, in every page, I

may almost say, in every sentence. That they should not make any part of the express instructions of Christ or his apostles, we can see the best reasons. Those instructions were addressed to persons, who had by previous revelations been taught the worship of the true God. They were addressed to the descendants of Abraham, by whom, and in whose family, the early patriarchal revelations were transmitted down; and to the disciples of Moses, the founder of the Jewish polity, and deliverer of that law, the very basis of which was the acknowledgment and worship of the one true God, and him alone. With the exception of our Saviour's discourse to the woman of Samaria, and Paul's address to the philosophers at Athens, we find, as we might expect, through the whole New Testament the doctrines respecting the being, perfections, and worship of God, not taught, but constantly supposed to be well understood, and received as truths, about which there was no question. So distinct and frequent are the notices, and so unequivocal the expressions which relate to the attributes of the Deity, that amidst the discordant and various opinions adopted by the several sects of Christians, and with whatever zeal they have been maintained in opposition to one another, neither of them is denied by any.

All Christians, I observe, unite in maintaining with equal zeal the Divine Unity, in asserting that the New Testament represents God as one Being, to whom belongs every possible and conceivable perfection, natural and moral. This doctrine is as strenuously insisted on by those, who hold to a trinity of

persons in the Deity, as by those, who believe in a personal unity. Now whatever seeming difficulty there may be in reconciling these apparently contradictory opinions; particularly as none have ever pretended to explain or to understand what is meant by a person as distinguished from a being, or to show wherein any number of distinct persons differ from the same number of separate beings; whatever difficulty, I say, or apparent inconsistency this may be thought to involve, it will only serve to show, that the unity of God is so clearly implied in the New Testament, that all agree in admitting, that no other doctrine supposed to be contained in those writings is to be understood in a sense inconsistent with it. I know of nothing that fixes so decisively what is taught in the New Testament on this subject, as this universal consent as to the main doctrine and the term by which it is expressed, amidst so wide a diversity of opinions, some of which are to many minds absolutely irreconcilable with it.

The same remark might be made with respect to the several divine attributes. Opinions are held by one sect of Christians, which seem to their opponents to be inconsistent with the veracity of God, to impeach his justice, to undermine his holiness, or to set aside his mercy; and yet those who hold these opinions are no less strenuous assertors than others of each of these attributes, and would consider it an impious robbery to strip the divine nature of either of these perfections. What then is our conclusion, but that the language of Christ and his apostles is so clear and

distinct on these subjects, that no inconsistency is so hard to be received, as that the truth or holiness, justice or mercy of God are to be given up. We have here, then, a firm foundation and broad basis on which all Christians can stand together.

There is an equal consent, again, having its origin in the same clearness of the instructions of the New Testament, as to the character of the divine Government, the government of providence over all, and the moral government over the rational creation. So frequently did the great teacher of Christianity inculcate the duties of a cheerful submission and pious trust in divine providence, and so various and strong were the expressions by which he chose to convey those instructions, that none are able so to misunderstand or to pervert them, as to make it a question, whether the world be under the care of the Creator. Without your heavenly Father a sparrow falls not to the ground. He clothes the lily of the field. He provides food for the birds of the air. He furnishes a supply for the most careless and improvident. He suffers not those to need it who toil not, who spin not, who gather not into store houses. The appeal is irresistible;-will he not clothe, will he not feed you? He that has read the Saviour's discourse, will not doubt whether the doctrine of a providence made a part of the faith he taught. But he taught the government of God in a higher sense. A government over reasonable beings, capable of virtue, having a sense of right and wrong, and accountable for their actions. This, too, no Christian does or can deny.