I affirm, that natural reason is not the rule and measure of expounding Scripture, no more than it is of expounding any other writing.  The true and only way to interpret any writing, even the Scriptures themselves, is to examine the use and propriety of words and phrases, the connexion, scope, and design of the text, its allusion to ancient customs and usages, or disputes.  For there is no other good reason to be given for any exposition, but that the words signify so, and the circumstances of the place, and the apparent scope of the writer require it.

This and the following paragraph are excellent.  ‘O si sic omnia’!

Ib. p. 153.

Reconcile men to the doctrine (of the Trinity), and the Scripture is plain without any farther comment.  This I have now endeavoured; and I believe our adversaries will talk more sparingly of absurdities and contradictions for the future, and they will lose the best argument they have against the orthodox expositions of Scripture.

Good doctor! you sadly over-rated both your own powers, and the docility of your adversaries.  If so clear a head and so zealous a Trinitarian as Dr. Waterland could not digest your exposition, or acquit it of Tritheism, little hope is there of finding the Unitarians more persuadable.

Ib. p. 154.

Though Christ be God himself, yet if there be three Persons in the Godhead, the equality and sameness of nature does not destroy the subordination of Persons:  a Son is equal to his Father by nature, but inferior to him as his Son:  if the Father, as I have explained it, be original mind and wisdom, the Son a personal, subsisting, but reflex image of his Father’s wisdom, though their eternal wisdom be equal and the same, yet the original is superior to the image, the Father to the Son.

But why?  We men deem it so, because the image is but a shadow, and not equal to the original; but if it were the same in all perfections, how could that, which is exactly the same, be less?  Again, God is all Being:—­consequently there can nothing be added to the idea, except what implies a negation or diminution of it.  If one and the same Being is equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead, but inferior as man; then it is + ‘m-x’, which is not = + ‘m’.  But of two men I may say, that they are equal to each other.  A. = + courage-wisdom.  B. = + wisdom-courage.  Both wise and courageous; but A. inferior in wisdom, B. in courage.  But God is all-perfect.

Ib. p. 156.

  So born before all creatures, as [Greek:  prototokos] also signifies,
  ‘that by him were all things created’.

’All things were created by him, and for him, and he is before all things’, (which is the explication of [Greek:  portotokos pasaes ktiseos], begotten before the whole creation’, and therefore no part of the creation himself.)

This is quite right.  Our version should here be corrected. [Greek:  Proto] or [Greek:  protaton] is here an intense comparative,—­’infinitely before’.