of all possible knowledge, was
still opaque even to Bull and Waterland;--because the Idea itself--that
'Idea Idearum', the one substrative truth which is the form, manner, and
involvent of all truths,--was never present to either of them in its
entireness, unity, and transparency. They most ably vindicated the
doctrine of the Trinity, negatively, against the charge of positive
irrationality. With equal ability they shewed the contradictions, nay,
the absurdities, involved in the rejection of the same by a professed
Christian. They demonstrated the utterly un-Scriptural and
contra-Scriptural nature of Arianism, and Sabellianism, and Socinianism.
But the self-evidence of the great Truth, as a universal of the
reason,--as the reason itself--as a light which revealed itself by its
own essence as light--this they had not had vouchsafed to them.

Query XV. p. 225-6.

The pretence is, that we equivocate in talking of eternal generation.

All generation is necessarily [Greek: anarchon ti], without dividuous
beginning, and herein contradistinguished from creation.

Ib. p. 226.

True, it is not the same with human generation.

Not the same 'eodem modo', certainly; but it is so essentially the same
that the generation of the Son of God is the transcendent, which gives
to human generation its right to be so called. It is in the most proper,
that is, the fontal, sense of the term, generation.

Ib.

You have not proved that all generation implies beginning; and what is
more, cannot.

It would be difficult to disprove the contrary. Generation with a
beginning is not generation, but creation. Hence we may see how
necessary it is that in all important controversies we should predefine
the terms negatively, that is, exclude and preclude all that is not
meant by them; and then the positive meaning, that is, what is meant by
them, will be the easy result,--the post-definition, which is at once
the real definition and impletion, the circumference and the area.

Ib. p. 227-8.

It is a usual thing with many, (moralists may account for it), when
they meet with a difficulty which they cannot readily answer,
immediately to conclude that the doctrine is false, and to run
directly into the opposite persuasion;--not considering that they may
meet with much more weighty objections there than before; or that they
may have reason sufficient to maintain and believe many things in
philosophy and divinity, tho