the term " Father," as applied to God by Christians, is alike appropriate.
But the pastor will teach the faithful that, on hearing the word "Father," besides the ideas already unfolded, their minds should rise to the contemplation of more exalted mysteries. Under the name of " Father," the divine oracles begin to unveil to us a mysterious truth which is more abstruse, and more deeply hidden in that inaccessible light in which God dwells a mysterious truth which human reason not only could not reach, but even conceive to exist. This name implies, that in the one essence of the Godhead is proposed to our belief, not only one person, but a distinction of persons: for in one Divine nature there are three persons; the Father, begotten of none; the Son, begotten of the Father before all ages; the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son from all eternity.
But in the one substance of the Divinity the Father is the first person, who with his only begotten Son, and the Holy Ghost is one God and one Lord, not in the singularity of one person, but in the trinity of one substance. These three persons, (for it would be impiety to assert that they are unlike or unequal in any thing) are understood to be distinct only in their peculiar relations. The Father is unbegotten, the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Ghost proceeds from both; and we confess the essence of the three Persons, their substance to be so the same, that we believe that in the confession of the true and eternal God, we are piously and religiously to adore distinction in the Persons, unity in the essence, and equality in the Trinity. When we say that the Father is the first person, we are not to be understood to mean that in the Trinity there is any thing first or last, greater or less let no Christian be guilty of such impiety, for Christianity proclaims the same eternity, the same majesty of glory in the three Persona but the Father, because the beginning without a be ginning, we truly and unhesitatingly affirm to be the first person, who, as he is distinct from the others by his peculiar relation of paternity, so of him alone is it true that he begot the Son from eternity: for, when in the Creed we pronounce together the words " God" and " Father," it intimates to us that he is God and Father from eternity.
But as in nothing is a too curious inquiry more dangerous, or error more fatal, than in the knowledge and exposition of this, the most profound and difficult of mysteries, let the pastor instruct the people religiously to retain the terms used to express this mystery, and which are peculiar to essence and person; and let the faithful know that unity belongs to essence, and distinction to Persons. But these are truths which should not be made matter of too subtile disquisition, when we recollect that " he, who is a searcher of majesty, shall be overwhelmed by glory." [1] We should be satisfied with the assurance which faith gives us that we have been taught these truths by God himself; and to
- ↑ Prov. xxv. 27.
