HKB
not enough, the Deist might justly say, that there is no cogent reason why I should not believe the Trinity; you must show me some cogent reason why I should.
But the case is quite different with a Christian, who accepts the Scriptures as the Word of God, yet refuses his assent to the plainest declarations of these Scriptures, and explains away the most express texts into metaphor and hyperbole, because the literal and obvious interpretation is (according to his notions) absurd and contrary to reason. He is bound to show, that it is so in any sense, not equally applicable to the texts asserting the Being, Infinity, and Personality of God the Father, the Eternal and Omnipresent ONE, who created the Heaven and the Earth. And the more is he bound to do this, and the greater is my right to demand it of him, because the doctrine of Redemption from sin supplies the Christian with motives and reasons for the divinity of the Redeemer far more concerning and coercive subjectively, that is, in the economy of his own soul, than are all the inducements that can influence the Deist objectively, that is, in the interpretation of Nature.
Do I then utterly exclude the speculative Reason from Theology? No! It is its office and rightful privilege to determine on the negative truth of whatever we are required to believe. The Doctrine must not contradict any universal principle: for this would be a Doctrine that contradicted itself. Or Philosophy? No. It may be and has been the servant and pioneer of Faith by convincing the mind, that a doctrine is cogitable, that the soul can present the Idea to itself; and that if we determine to contemplate, or think of, the subject at all, so and in no other form can this be effected. So far are both logic and philosophy to be received and trusted. But the duty, and in some cases and for some persons even the right, of thinking on subjects beyond the bounds of sensible experience; the grounds of the real truth; the life, the substance, the hope, the love, in one word, the Faith: these are Derivatives from the practical, moral, and spiritual Nature and Being of Man.
[72] At a period, in which Doctors Marsh and Wordsworth have, by the Zealous on one side, being charged with Popish principles on account of their Anti-bibliolatry, and the sturdy adherents of the doctrines common to Luther and Calvin, and the literal interpreters of the Articles and Homilies, are, (I wish I could say, altogether without any fault of their own) regarded by the Clergy generally as virtual Schismatics, dividers of, though not from, the Church, it is serving the cause of charity to assist in circulating the following instructive passage from the Life of Bishop Hackett respecting the dispute between the Augustinians, or Luthero-Calvinistic divines and the Grotians of his age: in which Controversy (says his biographer) he, Hackett, "was ever very moderate."