The perfections of God in which we may share, or as they have been called his communicable per fections, are wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. His incommunicable, or his essential attributes, are his eternity, self-existence, immutability, omnipresence, Ste. These may be called the attributes, or characters of his perfec tions, to which we can conceive no limits or bounds. In these attributes we cannot participate: they con stitute the essential nature of Deity, and without them God would not be an object of religious ho mage and adoration. It might be highly interest ing to contemplate a being just, and good, and wise, and holy; but no religious homage could be clue to such a being, did his perfections admit of any limitations, or were he not infinitely removed above all chance, and above all change, and not af fectable by any of the vicissitudes which attach to all created things.
The providence of God, or his care over the world which he has made, is proved by the existing state of the visible universe. To suppose that the world and its inhabitants can exist without the im mediate care and superintendence of God, would be to suppose them independent of his power: but if we may venture to assign limits to the power of God, we would say that it is limited by this, that he cannot do any thing that is unworthy of himself, nor make any thing independent of his' power. To create any being, or any thing absolutely indepen dent, would be to impart his own incommunicable perfections; and this we may safely pronounce to be impossible: it exceeds even the power of omni potence to make any thing as great as the uncreat ed Deity. In every thing, then, that lives or grows, or exists, we see not a natural efficiency, but a di vine energy; even in the rudest mass of inanimate matter, we see a divine power; because it is held together, and retains its form and qualities, only in consequence of those laws which God has estab lished, and which preserve their force, only be cause his will keeps them in operation.
Thus far, all that is taught in Scripture respect ing the unity of God, and his universal providence, is confirmed by every argument of enlightened rea son. In the government of the world, we see none of that discordance which marks divided empire; even those things which, at first sight, might ap pear as irregularities in the plan, are found, on closer inspection, to be essential parts of it, and to bear unequivocal testimony to the unity and over ruling providence of God. But the Scriptures give us some information respecting the mode in which the divine nature subsists, which it does not appear that reason could ever have suggested. We allude to the doctrine of the Trinity, of which, we arc in clined to think, no vestige can be found, except among those who have received it, directly or in directly from the sacred Scriptures.
It is true that something resembling this doctrine is to be found in the mythology of some of the gen tile nations. It seems to be acknowledged in the theology of Ilindostan, in the characters of Brama, Vishnu, and Seva, whose image, in the most an cient representations, appears as a human body with three heads. A species of Trinity also was taught in the schools both of Pythagoras and Plato, and is largely insisted on by the followers of the latter. The doctrine of Plato on this subject is, that there arc three principles in the Deity, goodness, intelligence, and vitality; and that these three, though distinct, arc more one than any thing in na ture of which unity may be predicated; as no one of them can be supposed without the other two. When Christianity began to prevail in the world, many Platonists embraced it; and when the doc trine of the Trinity began to be impugned, they at tempted to defend it as a docrine of reason, by af firming that it was taught in the philosophy of Plato: whilst the unconverted Platonists maintain ed that the Christians had borrowed the doctrine from the Grecian philosopher. Had the language of Plato on this subject been as clear as that of his followers, we should have concluded that he had de rived his knowledge from the traditions current among the Jews, and which had passed from them to other nations of the east. But, after all the la bours of Cudworth, we cannot perceive that Plato teaches any thing resembling the Christian Trinity. Something more like to it appears in the doctrines of the Pythagoreans, as represented by Simplicius, who tells us that one of their authors describes the First One as being above every existing substance; the ,Seeond One as represented by Ideas, or Intelli gible Species; and the Third One, as Vital or Psy chical (4-uxigov) and partaking of the nature of both the former.* But it is evident that this is a philosophical con ceit, founded on opinions which had long been pre valent. In the esoteric doctrines of several of the ancient philosophers, the divine nature was consi dered as one and indivisible, immovable and unaffect able: at the same time they considered God as diffus ed through all things, and all things as partaking of the nature of God: hence they conceived his nature to exist both in the intelligible species, by which they supposed all things to he apprehended by the understanding, and also in the visible system of things which arc the objects of our external senses. This gave a kind of triplicity of modification to the divine nature, which was nevertheless considered to be, in itself, simple and one.