Note 27 — SERMON XII. The Scale of Blessedness: Or, Blessed Saints, Blessed Saviour, and Blessed Trinity. Psalm lxv. 4.—Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts. THE SECOND PART.

This discourse was delivered above twenty years ago, and the reader will observe some warmer efforts of imagination than riper years would indulge on a theme so sublime and abstruse. Since I have searched most studiously into this mystery of late, I have learned more of my own ignorance: so that when I speak of these unsearchables, I abate much of my younger assurance; nor do my later thoughts venture so far into the particular modes of explaining this sacred distinction in the godhead. There appears to me good reason to doubt, where there can be three distinct and different principles of consciousness, and three distinct and different wills in the one God, the one infinite Spirit. I was afraid to assert it in this sermon heretofore, and I am more afraid to assert it now. Reason and scripture join to teach me, that there can be but one God, and this God is a Spirit. What distinctions may be in this one Spirit, I know not: Yet, since I am fully established in the belief of the Deity of the blessed Three, though I know not the manner of explication, I dare let this discourse appear now in the world, as being agreeable so far to my present sentiments on this subject. A larger and more particular account of my most mature thought on the doctrine of the holy Trinity, may be seen in the last sermon of my third volume.—April 8, 1729.