How many deaths have some been delivered from and saved out of before conversion.  Some have fallen into rivers, some into wells, some into the sea, some into the hands of men; yea, they have been justly arraigned and condemned, as the thief upon the cross, but must not die before they were converted.  They were preserved in Christ, and called.

II.  THE TRINITY

If in the Godhead there be but one, not three, then the Father, the Son, or the Spirit must needs be that one, if any one only; so then the other two are nothing.  Again, if the reality of a being be neither in the Father, Son, nor Spirit, as such, but in the eternal Deity, without consideration of Father Son and Spirit as three, then neither of the three are any thing but notions in us, or manifestations of the Godhead, or nominal distinctions, so related by the word; but if so, then when the Father sent the Son, and the Father and Son the Spirit, one notion sent another one manifestation sent another.  This being granted, it unavoidably follows there was no Father to beget a Son, no Son to be sent to save us, no Holy Ghost to be sent to comfort us and to guide us into all the truth of the Father and Son.  At most it amounts to hut this:  a notion sent a notion, a distinction sent a distinction, or one manifestation sent another.  Of this error these are the consequences:  we are only to believe in notions and distinctions, when we believe in the Father and the Son; and so shall have no other heaven and glory than notions and nominal distinctions can furnish us withal.

If thou feel thy thoughts begin to wrestle about this truth, and to struggle concerning this, one against another, take heed of admitting such a question, “How can this be?” for here is no room for reason to make it out; here is only room to believe it is a truth.  You find not one of the prophets propounding an argument to prove it, but asserting it; they let it lie for faith to take it up and embrace it.

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.  Amen.”

In a word, if you would see it altogether, God’s love was the cause why Christ was sent to bleed for sinners.  Jesus Christ’s bleeding stops the cries of divine justice.  God looks upon them as complete in him, and gives them to him as by right of purchase.  Jesus ever lives to pray for them that are thus given unto him.  God sends his Holy Spirit into them to reveal this to them, sends his angels to minister for them, and all this by virtue of an everlasting covenant between the Father and the Son.  “Happy the people that are in such a case.”  He hath made them brethren with Jesus Christ, members of his flesh and of his bones, the spouse of this Lord Jesus; and all to show how dearly, really, and constantly he loveth us who by the faith of his operation have laid hold upon him.

The doctrine of the Trinity! that is the substance, that is the ground and fundamental of all, for by this doctrine and this only the man is made a Christian; and he that has not this doctrine, his profession is not worth a button.