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THE WHOLE INTENDED TO EXCITE, AMONG THE RISING
GENERATION, A TASTE FOR SACRED LITERATURE; AND
TO PROMOTE A MORE EXTENSIVE ACQUAINTANCE
WITH THE BIBLE

BY ANDREW THOMSON.

"He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which
he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to
their children :

"That the generation to come might know them, even the children which
should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children;
"That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but
keep his commandments."-Psl. Ixxviii. 5-7

BRISTOL:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. CHILCOTT,

AND SOLD BY

BALDWIN, CRADOCK AND JOY, PATERNoster row, LONDON.

1826.

manners, and customs of the Jews and other oriental

nations.

Should the work experience a favourable reception from the public, it will be speedily followed by the New Testament history, embracing, very fully, the life and doctrines of the Redeemer. The two parts will form a complete series of sacred history, in which the truths of revelation are exhibited, as far as possible, in the language of Scripture itself: that in "the form of sound words," our children may be brought up "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."

BRISTOL, May, 1826.

Q. How did he make it?

A. "He spake and it was."*

Q. Is not the work of creation attributed in various parts of Scripture to the Father, Son, and Spirit?

A. Yes.

Q. Are there then three Gods?

A. No: "the Lord our God is one Lord."t

Q. Are we able to comprehend the mode of the Divine Subsistence?

A. No: "none by searching can find out God."‡
Q. Is the knowledge of God attainable by human

reason?

A. No: "the world by wisdom knew not God."§
Q. What does this demonstrate?

A. The necessity of Revelation.

Q. Where is the knowledge of God revealed?

A. In the scriptures of the Old and New Testa

ments.

Q. Who is the author of these books?

A. The Spirit of God: "holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."||

* Psalm xxxiii. 6, 9.

The original reading, Deut. vi. 4. "Jehovah our Elohim is one Jehovah" shews the care of Moses to prevent the introduction of Polytheism among the Israelites, and establishes the plural signification of Elohim.

+ Job. xi. 7.

§ 1 Corinth. i. 21. All the pagan mythologies illustrate this position of the Apostle.

|| 2 Pet. i. 21.

Q. To what great act are the persons of the Godhead* represented in scripture as being parties?

A. To the covenant of grace, entered into before the foundation of the world, for the redemption of man.† Q. Is any history of this covenant extant ?

:

A. Yes the scriptures contain little else than a history of this covenant.

Q. Was it developed at once to man?

A. No: it was disclosed gradually under three dispensations-the patriarchal, the legal, and the evange

lical.

Q. How did this covenant originate?

A. "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Q. What did the Saviour undertake for us?

A. To assume human nature "for the suffering of

*Though the truths of religion can acquire no support from "cunningly devised fables,” yet it may not be entirely useless to observe that in the mythologies of the Egyptians, Hindus, Celts, and Scandinavians, a triad of gods is especially acknowledged. And whether these systems were, as Sir W. Jones supposes, ramifications of one grand apostacy before the dispersion, or are peculiar to their respective countries, they all seem to exhibit some vestiges of that doctrine of the primitive faith-a Trinity in Unity. Our inability to explain how three persons can be one God, can no more be objected to the Christian faith, seeing it is a Divine revelation, than our incapability to explain the vegetative process, muscular motion, and an infinity of natural phenomena, can be objected to our actual knowledge of such facts.

+ Titus i. 2.

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