sign and fortunately for my soul; I was, on entering the university, put into the hands of a gentleman, who abhorred modern orthodoxy, and made the essential constitutive happiness and perfection of every intelligent being consist in the conformity of our mind to the moral rectitude of the Divine Nature. This excellent man convinced my understanding, that even faith in Christ is of an inferior nature to this, and that it is only the means to obtain it. Such a conformity and obedience of the heart and conscience to the will of God ought to be my religion, as it was the religion of our Saviour himself.

"Thus, Madam, was I instructed by a master of arts, my private tutor, and when to his lessons I added my own careful examinations of the vulgar faith, and the mind of our Lord as I found it in the books, I was thoroughly satisfied, that an act of faith is an act of reason, and an act of reason an act of faith, in religious matters; that our Lord was not the great God; nor a part of that compound, called the Triune-God; the miserable invention of divines; but, a more extraordinary messenger than the prophets under the law chosen by the divine wisdom, to publish the will of God to mankind, and sent under the character of his son, and spiritual heir of his inheritance the church, to new-form the

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ages, and fix such good principles in the minds of men, as would be productive of all righteousness in the conversation that he was sent to destroy sin and the kingdom of satan; and to bring the human race to a perfect obedience to the will of the Supreme Being.

"All this, Madam, was as plain to me as the sun in summer's bright day; and therefore, instead of laying aside my understanding, and believing things without any rational ground or evidence at all; instead of going into orders, to draw revealed conclusions from revealed propositions, and by a deep logic, make scripture consequences, that have no meaning in the words, for the faith of the people; I was so free and ingenuous as to let my father know, that of all things in the world I never would be a parson, since the character obliged me to swear and subscribe to articles I could not find in my Bible; nor would I, as a layman, ever read or join in the service of reading the tritheistic liturgy and offices he used in his family. I was determined, though I lost his favour and large fortune by the resolution, to live and die a Christian deist; confessing before men the personal unity and perfections of the true God, and the personal mediatorial office of Jesus Christ. As St. Paul maintained the personal unity and absolute supremacy of the true God,

and in his description of the Deity, did not tell the Athenians, that he was a Triune Being, to be considered under the notion of three persons, of three understandings and will, in a co-ordinate triplicity of all divine attributes and perfections; but one individual personal Agent-one great Spirit, or mind, self-existent, and omnipotent in wisdom and action -one supreme Almighty Creator and Governor of the world, the God and Father of Jesus Christ; I shall therefore, in obedience to the apostle, and to the other inspired writers, believe in and worship the same God, the one God, the only true God, as our Lord says in Matthew and Mark; through the alone mediation and intercession of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and only begotten Son of God; depending upon the effectual aid and assistance of the blessed Spirit, in hope of a glorious immortality. This is, this shall be my religion, whatever I may feel from an antichristian tyranny, on account of the confession. Though an outrage of uncharitable zeal should strip me of every worldly comfort, and reduce me to a want of bread. If I should become a spectacle to men and angels by this faith, yet I will believe as Jesus Christ and his apostles have ordered the world to believe. No unintelligible cant, or scholastic jargon for me. The Holy Ghost has in scripture expressed it sufficiently and unexceptionably clear, that there is One Su

preme Independent First-Cause of all things, a Spirit, that is, One Spirit, One God; I am God, and there is none like me: I am God, and there is none else, beside Me; with Me; none but Me; Thus does the Holy Ghost declare; and what signify the despicable, heretical declarations of the doctors, in respect of this?

"Then, as a test of Christianity, the same blessed Spirit adds, that Jesus is the true Messiah, was sent from God to reveal his will for the salvation of man, and is the only Mediator betwixt God and man. Thus has the Holy Ghost regulated our faith and practice, and I think it incumbent on me to mind what he says, and flee the invented pieties of our theologers. I did so, and disobliged my father. I lost his favour entirely. He would take no farther notice of me, and I became as you see a wanderer."

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This discourse, delivered with my fire and action, amazed Miss HARCOURT SO greatly, that for some time after I had done, she could not speak, but continued looking with great earnestness at me. At last however she said, I am glad, Sir, it has been my fate to meet with you, and must, when there is more time, converse with you on this subject. My father and I have had some doubts as to the truth of the Athanasian creed; but he told me, he did not choose to examine the thing, as it had the sanction

*of ages, and was believed by the greatest divines in all nations. If it be wrong, let the churchmen answer for it. But this does not satisfy me; and since I have seen one that has forsaken all rather than live a disciple of Athanasius, after a thorough examination of the system; and that you have now said some things against it that shew the folly of believing it, and make it a faith the most preposterous and unreasonable, I am determined to enquire into the merit of it, and see if Christians ought to acknowledge the supreme dominion and authority of God the Father; that the Father is absolutely God, the great God in the absolute supreme sense by nature; and the Son, only a God by communication of divinity from the Father, that is, by having received from the Father, the supreme cause, his being, attributes, and power over the whole creation or, if they ought to ascribe supreme authority, and original independent absolute dominion to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; three distinct supreme Gods, and yet but one supreme God, as the church informs us in her famous creed, and thereby makes us swallow a contradiction, as I have often thought, and a doctrine against which a great number of texts can be produced. This I will examine. My reason shall be no longer silent in so important a case. If a Trinity in unity