LIGHT, and SPIRIT, or air, which fills every part of the universe not possessed by other matter. This appellation was first given by God to the celestial fluid, or ether, when it began to act in disposing and arranging the earth and waters; that is the source of union in all the different parts of the material system. This resemblance between the Archetype and the type is perhaps the reason why the sacred writers when they speak of God, compare the Father to a consuming fire, the Son to an universal light, and the Holy Ghost to a subtle air or spirit. Thus Fire, Light and Air, the component parts of the pure fluid which fills the vast expanse, are types emblems and pictures of the Divine Essence, and its three consubstantial personalities. "This etherial fluid is, then, so to speak, the instrument, image and sensory of the Deity, to make use of Sir Isaac Newton's expression, upon which he acts immediately, and by which he acts upon all other corporeal beings. It is the physical spring of the universe that sets the great machine a going. It is this universal agent that animates and enlightens, moves and penetrates, unites and separates, compresses or expands, forms and produces, compound bodies of all kinds solid and liquid. Hence it is that in the Hebrew language, the plural word SCHEMIM, which expresses the different principles of the celestial fluid, signifies in different places of the sacred text, agents, formers, disposers, placers, shifters, enliveners, enlighteners, producers, augmenters, dividers, compressors, and separators. All the different forms, divisions and motions of solid, visible, tangible bodies, are produced by the action of this invisible universal fluid, according to immutable laws, known to God alone, and most proper to express his divine perfections, and accomplish his great designs." Ramsay's Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion. Part I. Book iv. p. 115, &c. "I have rejected none of the Newtonian discoveries that are founded upon incontestible experiments, or invincible demon (Gen. 1. 8.) and since that time THE HEAVENS * have been the great agents in disposing all material substances in their places and orders, and thereby producing all those great and wonderful effects which are attributed to them in the Scriptures, and which it hath been of late years the fashion to ascribe to attraction, gravity, repulsion, &c." But on this great and important subject I refer you with pleasure for further satisfaction to the Rev. Wm. Jones's "Physiological Disquistions. "That THE HEAVENS, under different attributes, corresponding with their different conditions and operations, were, together with the heavenly bodies, the first and grand objects of heathen strations. For it may be proved that the great Sir Isaac never taught, what some of his disciples have maintained, that attraction is an inherent, innate, absolute quality of all matter; nor an universal, immediate, perpetual impression of the author of nature: on the contrary, the sublime English philosopher supposes that attraction may be an effect and not a cause; that gravitation may be produced by impulsion; and that a subtle spirit or fluid is perhaps the primitive universal spring of nature. It is not my design, nor would it be proper here, to enter into the detail of particulars, nor explain the general phenomena of nature in this lower sphere; but it is perhaps possible to reconcile the antient doctrine of etherial matter, with all that is demonstrable or demonstrated in the Newtonian scheme." Id. p. 323. * ow from w to set in order, to arrange. That it is a plural noun from this root, appears from its frequent use in regimine with the final dropt. + Disquisition II. p. 47, &c. Idolatry, is certain, not only from the ancient names of the heathen Gods, but also from many plain declarations of Scripture. (See Deut. iv. 19; xvii. 3; Job. xxxi. 26-28; 2 Kings xvii. 16; xxi. 3-5; xxiii. 4, 5; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 3-5; Jer. viii. 2; xix. 13; Zeph. i. 5; Acts vii. 42, 43; Comp. Wisdom xiii. 1-3.) It may be here worth observing that Phornutus, in his first chapter concerning heaven, derives the Greek name for the Gods from position or placing.* For the ancients, says he, took those for Gods whom they found to move in a certain regular manner, thinking them to be the causers of the changes of the air, and of the conservation of the universe. Those then are Gods which are the disposers and formers of all things. §" * Θεοι from Θεσις. † Θεοι. + Θητηρες § Fas est et ab hoste doceri. Dr. Priestly, in his zeal to prove that the doctrine of the Trinity originated with Plato and Philo, brings forward the "comparison of the Divine Being and his influence in the moral world, with the sun and its rays in the natural world; which" he adds, Plato did not pursue to any great length, "but which being taken up and carried on by Philo, and the Christian fathers, contributed greatly to the formation of the doctrine of the Christian Trinity. According to the Philosophy of the ancients, rays of light were something emitted by the sun, but still belonging to him, and never properly separated from him; but after being emitted in the day, were drawn into their source at night. As by these rays objects become visible, so that they serve as a medium of communication between the eye and the visible object; in like manner Plato must have supposed, that the medium by which the mind distinguishes intellectual objects was a Divine Influence or some ALEIM,* the THE HEAVENS are often used in Scripture as a name of the true God; of THE eternal and ever blessed Trinity. See 2 Chron. xxxii. 20; (Comp. 2 Kings xix. 14, 15. Isai. xxxvii 14, 15;) Dan. iv. 26. On this last text it may be observed, that a comparison of this verse with the preceding, with verse 17, and with thing emitted from the Deity, and drawn into him again at pleasure; and by making the mind or understanding to be one thing, and the soul itself another; he gave a further handle for the hypothesis of a Divine efflux, different from the Divine Being himself. This vous, therefore, synonymous to Logos, was afterwards supposed to be that principle which was occasionally emitted from the Divine Being, whenever any thing external to him was to be produced, himself being supposed to be immovable." Priestly's Early Opinions. vol, i. p. 338. It is delightful to the friends of truth to mark the support it derives from the concessions of its adversaries. In the above extract there is no small portion of misconception as to the manner in which the comparison, between the supreme Trinity and the material Trinity of nature, is stated; but it contains an acknowledgement that this comparison was recognized by "the Christian fathers, by Philo and his master Plato," what the Anti-trinitarian philosopher has traced up to Plato for us, we trace further back to the prophets, to Moses, to the patriarchs, to" the Spirit of revelation in the knowledge of the Father and of Christ." Neither the doctrine of the Trinity nor its recognized illustration originated with the Fathers of the Christian church nor with the Platonic school; they are both of Divine origin. The Dr. has carried us back through half the retrograde journey in tracing it to its source; and these pages will assist the reader in travelling the other half of the road, which is smoother and less liable to be mistaken, because it is confined to the pages of one volume, and that volume written by inspiration of God. אלהים * Chap. v. 21, seems clearly to determine that the rule or authority of which it speaks is absolute and not delegated; and that, consequently, by THE HEAVENS we are to understand the true ALEIM, or the persons of Jehovah. In like manner heaven is in the New Testament used for God. Matth. xxi. 25; Mark xi. 30, 31; Luke xv. 18; xx. 4, 5; John iii. 27. And thus "the kingdom of THE HEAVENS," (plur.) occurs frequently in St. Matthew for the kingdom of God. It has been already stated that the matter of THE HEAVENS subsists in three consubstantial conditions. These three great agents in nature, which carry on all its operations are the FIRE at the orb of the sun, the LIGHT issuing from it, and the SPIRIT or gross air, constantly supporting * Ougavos seems to be derived from two Hebrew words, and to denote the circulation of the celestial fluid. See Parkhurst's Gr. Lexicon on the word. + “That air and fire are different conditions of the same elementary matter of the heavens, is so far from being a new opinion, that it is a doctrine of great antiquity. If air resolves itself into fire, and fire in its turn reverts to air, it seems nothing more than what is commonly observed in water, which assumes the solidity of ice, and coalesces into the fleecy form of snow, or becomes rare and impalpable in vapour: under all these conditions it is nothing but the one simple substance of water, to which it returns sooner or later. When you affirm that a snow ball, and the water in a cauldron, are of the same substance, who can deny it? A child who should feel both, would not easily understand how this could be; and yet, are we not all |