Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/199

Rh characters, by crossing from one side of the stage to the other, and can assert one thing on the one side, and contradict it on the other, and by such altercation call himself a wise man on this side, and a fool on that? And what is the consequence of such ambiguity of character, but that whilst he stands in the middle, and looketh towards each side, he beginneth to imagine that there is nothing real in either, and thus perhaps, that there is neither one God nor three, and consequently no God? For this is the true source and origin of the naturalism that so much prevaileth at present throughout the world. No one in heaven can pronounce such an expression as a trinity of persons, each whereof singly is God; for the heavenly atmosphere, which is the medium for the conveyance and propagation of angelic thoughts, as our air is of natural sounds, is in opposition to such an expression. An hypocrite indeed can utter something like it, but then the tongue of his voice, in the heavenly atmosphere, soundeth like the gnashing of teeth, or croaketh like a raven that attempteth to imitate the note of a nightingale. I have been informed also from heaven, that it is as impossible to extirpate a belief, confirmed and rooted in the mind, in favour of a trinity of Gods, by an oral confession of one God, as it would be to draw a full grown tree through its seed, or a man's whole chin through a single hair of his beard.

By the apostolic church is meant, not only the church which existed in various places, whilst the apostles lived, but for two or three ages after their