known to us; we therefore know not in what way spirits are individualised. If this were known to us, we might be able to approach somewhat nearer to the characteristic distinctions of the three persons of the Godhead. The utmost point to which we can now attain is, that there must be some analogy between spiritual and human personality. There must be individuality, however constituted. For whatever may be the nature of the analogy between our future persons, when this mortal shall have put on immortality, and the persons of pure spirits, or between the persons of pure created spirits and the three eternal Persons of the Godhead, it must at least be inconsistent with any conception of personality derived from the light of reason to deny that individuality is its inseparable adjunct.

Prior to the publication of "The Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles" by the Rev. E. H. Browne, I was walking, like Cruden, in his Concordance, by the light of the Bible alone, for I could find but little satisfaction in the variety and depth of conjectural illustrations with which previous expositions abounded.

This defect Professor Browne has amply supplied. He is profoundly learned, without being obscure, and my position with respect to him shall not prevent my saying that his work places him at the head of modern divines. Nevertheless I think him inferior to the "Author of the Concordance," for the reason, as I believe, that Cruden was not in the situation of an advocate for the Articles of that Church, which, however admirable a branch of the universal Church of Christ, is neither infallible, nor without fault.

By the aid of Professor Brown's Exposition it is easy to see the dilemma in which the most objectionable clauses in the Athanasian Creed-those, namely, which respect the three divine persons-originated.

"The Fathers," he tells us, "who used the language which has been inserted in the Creeds and generally adopted in the Church, never thought, when they used to speak of three persons in one God, of speaking of such three persons as they would speak of persons and personality among created beings. They did not consider, for example, the persons of the Father and the Son, as they would have done the persons of Abraham and Isaacthe persons of the Holy Trinity, as they would have the persons of Peter, Paul, and John, which are separate from one another, and do not in any way depend on each other for their essence."

Now what is the conclusion to which Professor Browne has himself come with respect to the persons, however intimate may be their "inhabitation?"

After showing with irresistible perspicuity, from Scrip. tural texts and contexts, that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and yet that there are not three but one God, he proceeds to show with the same Scriptural erudition, and with equal perspicuity, that "the Father is a distinct person, the Son is a distinct Person, and the Holy Ghost a distinct person."

Why, then, does not the Creed end here, since the individuality of each of the three divine persons is as clearly set forth in the appropriate texts, as their inhabitation in the Godhead is in others? Why, but because, forsooth,

we must not form the same notion of the three divine persons that we do of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John.* Now, surely, our incapacity to comprehend the nature of the divine personality does not alter the fact that the persons are three in number; nor entitle us to say with St. Athanasius, or with any other uninspired saint, that they are not three incomprehensibles.† As well might it be said that there are no incorporeal spirits, because we cannot form any conception of the nature of their individual existence; and yet we are not the less compelled to believe that there are such, both good and evil, and that, however the evil may be kept in check by that seed of the woman which shall eventually overcome the wiles of Satan, yet that he is ever at work, tempting us to do despite to the Living God, by preferring the fruit of unrighteousness to that of the tree of life.

If the clause in question were merely fighting with a shadow, the effect of it would be comparatively unimportant, and what I am now writing comparatively vain, and uncalled for. But the notion of individuality in the three persons of the Godhead is a vital point of Christianity. For if the Son were not in some manner or other personally and individually distinct from the Father, how could He leave the Father's bosom, or how be sent from the Father on His errand of mercy upon earth? He, who was very God of very God, left the effulgent glory of the Godhead, and was made man; and I would fain believe, that, if this were dispassionately

Exposition, vol. 1. p. 81, 1st Ed.

↑ When our Saviour uses the words "I and my Father," could He have established the personal individuality of each more conclusively?

considered, apart from the subtleties of Churchmen on the one side, and of metaphysical Rationalists on the other, it would go a great way towards the removal of that objection of Unitarians which is founded on their inability to see the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father in the man Christ Jesus.

Whilst the scheme of human redemption requires that the Saviour of the world should have been its Creator, it equally requires that He should be so circumstanced with regard to the divine essence, as to have been able, by the sacrifice of Himself, to reconcile mercy with justice, in the only way in which it could have been effected.

Having thus endeavoured to vindicate myself from any charge of inconsideration respecting a subject of such infinite importance as the doctrine of the Trinity, it may not be amiss to show that I am equally actuated by a sincere regard for the truth, in expressing myself so strongly as I have done on one or two other points with which the doctrines of our Church are implicated. Such, for instance, as the article of our Saviour's descent into hell, introduced into the Apostles' Creed; and the state of departed souls generally, between death and the day of judgment.

St. Paul has exhorted us not to sorrow, concerning them that are asleep, even as others which have no hope; "for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him; for this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,

with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

To me it seems incredible that any one can read the above texts, and well consider them in connection with what St. Paul says in the 15th chap. of his 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, and still persist in believing that there may be deep in the earth (as Bishop Horsley maintains), or elsewhere, a region where disembodied spirits remain in an expectant state, either of bliss or wretchedness, till time shall be no more. But I am not now going to renew in detail the argument about disembodied spirits; all I wish to do at present is to vindicate the motives of my anxiety to combat what I believe to be somewhat more than a mere vulgar error.

The most voluminous writer on the subject of a "Middle State" is, I believe, the Hon. Archibald Campbell; who has brought forward innumerable texts to show that there is no perfection of bliss till after the second coming of our Lord, and that it therefore necessarily follows that there must be an intermediate state.

In fact, Mr. Campbell's vast volume may well be looked upon as a romance, founded on misinterpreted texts of Scripture and conjectural passages from the Fathers. To confute him the pen of a Cervantes would be the proper weapon; but luckily this is not required in the present day, when it would be difficult to meet with a

⚫ 1 Thess. iv. 15, 16, 17.