beings should be one being, is a proposition which certainly contradicts reason, that is _our_ reason; but it does not from thence follow that it cannot be true; for there are many propositions which contradict our reason, and yet are demonstrably true: one is, the very first principle of all religion, the being of a God; for that any thing should exist without a cause, or that any thing should be the cause of its own existence, are propositions equally contradictory to our reason; yet one of them must be true, or nothing could ever have existed. In like manner the overruling grace of the Creator, and the free will of his creatures; his foreknowledge of future events, and the uncertain contingency of these events, are to our apprehensions absolute contradictions to each other; and yet the truth of every one of them is demonstrable from Scripture, reason, and experience. All these difficulties arise from our imagining that the mode of existence of all beings must be similar to our own, that is, that they must all exist in time and space; and hence proceeds our embarrassment on this subject. We know that no two beings, with whose mode of existence we are acquainted, can exist at the same point of time, in the same point of space, and that therefore they cannot be one: but how far beings whose mode of existence bears no relation to time or space, may be united, we cannot comprehend; and therefore the possibility of such an union we cannot positively deny." And to those who assert that even if these doctrines are true, it is inconsistent with the justice and goodness of the Creator to require from them the belief of propositions which contradict, or are above the understanding which he has bestowed on them, he says, "to this I answer, that christianity requires no such belief: it has discovered to us many important truths, with which we were before entirely unacquainted, and amongst them are these, that three beings are sometimes united in the divine essence, and that God will accept of the sufferings of Christ as an atonement for the sins of mankind. These, considered as declarations of facts only, neither contradict, nor are above the reach of human reason: the first is a proposition as plain, as that three equilateral lines compose one triangle; the other as intelligible as that one man should discharge the debts of another. In what manner this union is formed, or why God accepts these vicarious punishments, or to what purposes they may be subservient, it informs us not, because no information would enable us to comprehend these mysteries, and therefore it does not require that we should know or believe any thing about them. The truth of these doctrines must rest entirely on the authority of those who taught them; but then we should reflect that those were the same persons who taught us a system of religion more sublime, and of ethics more perfect, than any which our faculties were ever able to