he
Spirit, have paid divine honours to both, after they have sought the
knowledge of the truth with the utmost diligence and prayer; when they
have been in the holiest and most heavenly frames of spirit, and in
their devoutest hours; when they have been under the most sensible
impressions of the love of the Father and the Son, and under the most
quickening influences of the Blessed Spirit himself; in the devotions of
a death-bed, and in the songs and doxologies of martyrdom.' 'Now can
we,' he asks, 'suppose that in such devout and glorious seasons as
these, God the Father should ever thus manifest His own love to souls
that are degrading Him by worshipping another God? That Christ Jesus
should reveal Himself in His dying love to souls that are practising
idolatry and worshipping Himself instead of the true God?'

But there are other passages of a very different tendency, in which Dr.
Watts virtually gives up the whole point at issue, and apparently
without being conscious that he is doing so. On the worship of the Holy
Ghost, for example, he writes. 'There is great silence in Scripture of
precepts or patterns of prayer and praise to the Holy Spirit.'
'Therefore,' he thinks, 'we should not bind it on our own consciences or
on others as a piece of necessary worship, but rather practise it
occasionally as prudence and expediency may require.'[448] On the famous
question of the Homoousion, he thinks 'it is hard to suppose that the
eternal generation of the Son of God as a distinct person, yet co-equal
and consubstantial or of the same essence with the Father, should be
made a fundamental article of faith in the dawn of the Gospel.' He is
persuaded therefore 'that faith in Him as a divine Messiah or
all-sufficient and appointed Saviour is the thing required in those very
texts where He is called the Son of God and proposed as such for the
object of our belief; and that a belief of the natural and eternal and
consubstantial sonship of Christ to God as Father was not made the
necessary term or requisite of salvation;' neither can he 'find it
asserted or revealed with so much evidence in any part of the Word of
God as is necessary to make it a fundamental article of faith.'[449] And
once more, on the Personality of the Holy Ghost, he writes: 'The general
and constant language of Scripture speaks of the Holy Ghost as a power
or medium of divine operation.' Some places may speak of him as
personal, but 'it was the frequent custom