A

FULL ANSWER

TO AN

ESSAY ON SPIRIT.

WHEREIN

All the Author's Objections, both Scriptural and Philosophical, to the Doctrine of the TRINITY; his Opinions relating to the Uniformity of the Church; his Criticisms upon the Athanasian and Nicene CREEDS, &c, are examined and confuted.

WITH

A Particular EXPLANATION of the Hermetic, Pythagorean, and Platonic TRINITIES.

AND

A PREFACE, giving some Account of an Author who published in Defence of the ESSAY.

VOL. II.

PREFACE.

IT was not my intention to trouble or detain the Reader with a Preface; but some time after the following sheets were ready for the press, a pamphlet came forth with this title-A Defence of the Essay on Spirit; with Remarks on the several pretended Answers; and which may serve as an antidote against all that shall ever appear against it. If the book itself should really be able to support such a Title-page, and be found answerable to the latter part of it, my labour can avail but little. I think, however, that I may be pretty secure of its making any impression to my disadvantage, as the author of ît, in the first place, does not seem rightly to understand the very scope and design of the piece he has undertaken to defend.

He tells us, that the author of the Essay's "whole "book seems only intended, not to enforce

any ex66 planations of his own, but to shew how ineffectual "all attempts to explain this mystery (the doctrine

"of the Trinity) have been hitherto." Now, if he has enforced no explanations of his own, then it would be impossible for me to extract and produce them: but the substance of them, in short, is as follows;-The person of the Father, only, is the one supreme intelligent Agent: the Son, and Holy Spirit, are not really God, but called so, because by an authority communicated to them from the Supreme, they are 'commissioned to ACT AS GODS, with regard to those inferior beings committed to their charge.—And so far is the Essay writer from endeavouring to exclude every explanation, that his whole book is principally calculated for the support of this.

Let it also be considered, that in the dedication prefixed to his Essay, he hopes that "his sentiments "will by gentle degrees come, by the blessing of "God, to be made a part of the established religion "of the country "." If, therefore, as it is asserted in the Defence, he has enforced no explanation of the Trinity; and it is nevertheless hoped in the Essay, that his sentiments will be made a part of the estaFished religion; this is in effect to hope, that Nothing (by the blessing of God) will be established as a fundamental of the christian faith. So that this Gentle

a Defence, p. 5.

See chap. V. of the following Answer

SP. 51.

man,