human personality, we must be able to comprehend, and fully to describe, that infinite disproportion that is between them, or else must be charged with using words without any manner of ideas annexed to them, and so our cause must fall to the ground. If, indeed, the divine personality were finite, like that of the creature, then it might be required that a finite mind should account for it: but since it is not so, but incomprehensible, we are bound to believe what we cannot comprehend. But have we no ideas at all of the distinct personality of the Father, Son, and Spirit? To this we may answer; that we have finite ideas thereof, and more than these we have not of any of the divine perfections. We are taught, by scripture, to say that they are distinct persons; and we know what those personal characters, or properties, from whence our ideas take their rise, signify, when applied to men; but, at the same time, abstract, in our thoughts, every thing from them that argues imperfection; or, in short, our conceptions hereof proceed in the same way, as when we think of any of the perfections of the divine nature: these, as well as the divine personality, are equally incomprehensible; yet, while we say they are infinitely more than can be in any creature, we, notwithstanding, retain such ideas of them, as tend to answer those ends of religion, which suppose that we apprehend something of them that is conducive hereunto. We are now to consider, (3.) The use of reason in proving or defending the doctrine of the Trinity, or any other doctrines of pure revelation. They could not, indeed, have been at first discovered by reason, nor can every thing that is revealed be comprehended by it, yet our reason is not to be laid aside as useless; therefore some call it a servant to faith. Thus revelation discovers what doctrines we are to believe, demands our assent to them, and reason offers a convincing proof that we are under an indispensable obligation to give it: it proves the doctrine to be true, and such as is worthy of God, as it is derived from him, the fountain of truth and wisdom; and this office of reason, or the subserviency thereof to our faith, is certainly necessary, since what is false cannot be the object of faith in general; and nothing unworthy of God can be the matter of divine revelation, nor consequently the object of a divine faith.