"I mean to show that there is an intelligible and necessary connection between the doctrinal facts of revelation and the character of God ..... and farther that the belief of these doctrinal facts has an intelligible and necessary tendency to produce the Christian character, &c." p. 20, 21.
"The object of this dissertation, is to analyse the component parts of the Christian scheme of doctrine, with reference to its bearings both on the character of God and on the character of man; and to demonstrate that its facts, not only present an expressive exhibition of all the moral qualities which can be conceived to reside in the divine mind, but also contain all those objects which have a natural tendency to excite and suggest in the human mind, that combination of moral feelings which has been termed moral perfection." p. 16.
"God has been pleased to present to us a most interesting series of actions, in which His moral character, as far as we are concerned, is fully and perspicuously embodied. In this narration, &c." p. 55.
"It [the Gospel] addresses the learned and the unlearned, the savage and the civilized, the decent and the profligate; and to all it speaks precisely the same language? What then is this universal language? It cannot be the language of metaphysical discussion, or what is called abstract moral reasoning ...... its argument consists in a relation of facts." p. 55.
Now that in these passages, the doctrines of the Gospel are resolved into facts which took place in God's governance, and that its mysteries are admitted, only so far as they are qualities or illustrations of these historical facts, seems to me, not only the true, but the only interpretation to be put upon his words. If they do not mean this, let this at least be proposed, as an approximation to the real meaning; in the meanwhile, let it be observed that nothing which has been said in the former portions of this discussion is at all affected by any failing, if so, in having fully elicited it.
