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you have fallen into it. I must own that I do not understand all which your words would insinuate; but the tone of triumph in which it is announced, implies that you have found, in your opinion, a weak point. You call it (p. 37, 38.)
"a noble passage, which we can never sufficiently admire;"
you tell us,
"you can always triumphantly appeal to your own writings to prove that you have always maintained on abstract grounds, even when you were not assailing individuals, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not explicitly revealed in Scripture. We shall cite the passage we allude to, because we delight in transcribing truth, and because we would recommend our beloved children to have it engraven on the doors of their houses, as a public announcement of the orthodoxy of their faith, and the righteousness of their conduct."
But what, then, if this statement, for which its author is thus assailed, occur in the writings of those who have been ever regarded as great lights of our Church, and that, in relation to the same subjects? Your irony will reach rather further than you intended.
I will cite two only, Hooker and Bp. Beveridge.
Hooker then says (Eccl. Pol. i. 41.),
"There hath been some doubt, likewise, whether containing in Scripture, do import express setting down in plain terms, or else comprehending in such sort, that by reason we may from thence conclude all things which are necessary. Against the former of these two constructions, instance hath sundry ways been given. For our belief in the Trinity, the co-eternity of the Son of God with his Father, the Proceeding of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, the duty of baptizing infants; these, with such other principal points, the necessity whereof is by none denied, are notwithstanding in Scripture no where to be found by express literal mention; only deduced they are out of Scripture by collection."
Bp. Beveridge is much fuller, speaks upon the whole subject, and yet it would be difficult to point out any difference between his statements and those of the Tracts. The passage is part of the Preface to his learned Essay on the Canons of the Primitive Church:
